A little more than two weeks before the Democratic primary in Iowa’s third Congressional district, Ed Fallon has challenged Congressman Leonard Boswell to shift his support as a superdelegate from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama.

It’s a shrewd move for several reasons.

First, Iowa’s third district went for Obama in January, as yesterday’s press release from Fallon underscores:

Fallon says, “Even though Hillary Clinton finished behind Barack Obama and John Edwards in the Third Congressional District, Congressman Boswell continues to ignore the will of the majority by saying he will cast his superdelegate vote for Clinton.”

Fallon worked with John Edwards through the Iowa Caucuses and then endorsed Barack Obama in February. Fallon says, “Both Obama and Edwards are people whose principles reflect my belief that we need to get big money out of politics and stand up to the special interests to accomplish real change in this country. It’s time to come together and focus on defeating John McCain in November.”

As I’ve written before, Fallon yard signs are often seen in the same yards as the Obama “HOPE” signs, while Boswell’s yard signs are frequently paired with Hillary signs.

Any further publicity that aligns Fallon with Obama, and Boswell with Clinton, can’t hurt the challenger and may even sway some undecided Democrats.

Second, Obama is coming back to Des Moines this Tuesday for a victory rally on the night when he is expected to win a majority of the Democratic Party’s pledged delegates. This will surely be a big media event.

Fallon spoke at a Nation for Change rally supporting Obama in Des Moines last month. Whether or not Fallon is able to address the crowd this coming Tuesday, Obama’s visit may generate some media coverage about which prominent Iowans are supporting Obama, and which are still with Clinton.

Third, since Boswell has rejected all invitations to debate, Fallon will not have many more opportunities to trip up the incumbent before the June 3 primary. Challenging Boswell to back Obama is a way to shift the media narrative.

Speaking of debates, Boswell has said he could not spare the time for them because he is too busy working on the farm bill and other legislation. But Congress has already sent the farm bill to President Bush and is likely to be in recess during the last week in May. It’s too bad that Boswell can’t be straightforward about his reasons for not debating Fallon.

A final note before I end this post: after trying for more than a week, I have so far been unable to get any comment from Boswell’s campaign or his Congressional office on whether Boswell was the Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee who on May 8 supported a Republican effort to add the Senate version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (which includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies) to the fiscal 2009 Intelligence authorization bill.

I am still trying to get someone who works for Boswell to confirm or deny this speculation and will bring you up to date on this soon.

I was reading this post by Fmr. Clinton Labor Secretary (and current Obama supporter) Robert Reich that lays out three scenarios for why Hillary is staying in the race. Here are the condensed versions:

1. The Clintons still think they can win.

2. Hillary is positioning herself for a run in 2012 or 2016.

3. Hillary is looking for the best deal from Obama. (I would add the DNC to this deal-making)

Dr. Reich's analysis concludes that it's a mixture of all three, and I agree. I also agree that by this point, most of her motivation has to be coming from the second and third. With that in mind, I want to look at some very specific things she might be negotiating for.

Short Term Goals:

    1. Campaign Debt Relief

     Hillary is in hock by at least $21 million dollars, and she's written off millions of dollars in personal loans. Obama, on the other hand is sitting on over $200 million dollars and a massive donor list. While campaign finance laws mean that he can't simply write her a big Publishers' Clearinghouse sized check–he can fundraise for her and let her in on his donor list. And, as this LA Times article suggests, many Obama supporters would be glad to write Hillary a check if she buries the hatchet. Just as long as she doesn't bury it in Obama's back. 

    2. Seat the Michigan and Florida Delegates

    As Dr. Reich points out, this would be a huge moral victory for Hillary. It would also keep Michigan and Florida happy, avoiding a convention rules fight and sore feelings in the general election. If nothing else, it would allow Hillary the high note on which to end her campaign and change the media message, which otherwise dwell on her “failed campaign”. Not to mention that it would put her in good standing in those state should should she take a run in 2012 (God forbid) or 2016.

    3. A Hand in Choosing Obama's Vice-President

    If Hillary can't be Obama's vice-president (and it's looking like a remote possibility that she can), she more than likely wants to be in on the selection process. If she's positioning herself for a 2012 or 2016 run, she needs to keep her position as the preeminent female Democrat. Obviously it's going to make a political comeback down the road much more difficult if she has to square off against Vice President Kathleen Sebelius in 2016, (or VP candidate Sebelius in 2012). 

    My guess is, she would like to see a VP candidate who is sympathetic to her and appealing to her supporters, as well as (and this is key) someone who would make a backroom pledge to step aside in either 2012 or 2016 should Hillary want to run again.  Evan Bayh, Wes Clark, and Bill Richardson would all fit the bill nicely.

I've got a long diary coming in the next week or two on tips for Barack Obama's volunteers as they reach out to Democrats who did not support Obama in the primaries.

For today, I have just a short message for you.

Heaping scorn on those who supported Hillary Clinton and are disappointed that she is losing does not help your candidate.

If you care about beating John McCain, show a little more empathy and a lot less hostility toward the hardcore Clinton supporters. Otherwise you will only deepen the alienation they feel from the Obama-loving crowd.

When talking to someone who is disappointed that Obama will be our nominee, try to focus on positive reasons to support him, delivered without gloating.

Someone has urged me not to pay much attention to the electoral vote trackers

on the front page of MyDD, because in some respects they differ from state polling averages you will find at pollster.com or at Real Clear Politics.

Jerome Armstrong, the founder of MyDD, addressed concerns about the electoral vote tracker in this post:

As it says, when you click on either of the map counters of EV’s:

“This Electoral Vote Map is updated constantly to forecast the 2008 Presidential election based on the latest available state polling.”

The very latest poll in each state, without weighting or averaging.

There isn’t a bias as to the pollster, if you see the poll listed as credible on Pollster.com, or RealClearPolitics.com, it’ll be included. But, if the latest poll is tied, then the result remains the same as the previous latest poll.

This is a forecast made by the very latest poll. If you see a mistake, perhaps a poll was missed that is the latest, then point it out, and one of the admins will make the change.

The forecast isn’t a prediction of the election, but a simple up-to-the-minute poll temperature of the state polling.

(update) And yes, you can edit the map yourself, as one user explains:

1) When you first log onto mydd, it populates the two maps with the most recent single poll for each state.

2) If you then click on the map and change it (for example, you don’t believe that Hillary would lose WA to McCain), the numbers update to your settings – now it becomes like an EV calculator

3) The next time you log on, or refresh the page even, the counters go back to their poll-generated state.

Polling averages (for instance, of the five most recent polls in a state) are great when you have several polls taken within a short period of time, as we’re likely to have this fall.

But I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to average the last five polls in a state if that takes you back a couple of months.

Some people have objected that the MyDD tracker recently showed Iowa in Clinton’s column against McCain. That was based on a Research 2000 poll taken on April 22 and 23, which showed her slightly ahead of him, 43-42. Currently, the most recent poll is from Rasmussen on May 13, which showed McCain beating Clinton in Iowa 45-42. As you can see if you click over to MyDD, Iowa is now red for McCain against Clinton.

You may prefer polling averages to whatever the latest poll says, and I will too, once we start getting more frequent releases of state polls. For now, I think that MyDD’s methodology is sound.

Armstrong is probably the blogosphere’s most prominent Obama critic, and Clinton supporters usually dominate the recommended diary list at MyDD, but I encourage you not to write off everything you see at that site, even if you don’t like Clinton. Anyway, front-pager Jonathan Singer is a big Obama advocate.

Paul Street has published a thought-provoking piece at Black Agenda Report: The Deeper Racism in Iowa: Beneath the White Obama Craze.

I recommend clicking through and reading this whole article, but here are some passages that illustrate the argument he is making:

Barack Obama’s January 3rd Democratic Caucus victory in Iowa demonstrated that a Black man – or, at least, this particular Black man – could attract winning numbers of white voters. The candidate’s supporters claimed Iowa signaled a new day, that “race doesn’t matter” anymore in the United States. They are in a fantasy of denial. Not only does race remain imbedded in American social relations, but Iowa is especially afflicted with the compulsion to throw African Americans in prison more frequently than any other state. “Liberal” Iowans, proud that their state began a cascade of Obama victories, find it more difficult than ever to face up to the racism that distorts all cross-racial interaction in their cities and towns.

Interestingly enough, you don’t see many if any white liberal Iowa City Obama supporters involved in efforts to fight and overcome routine institutional racism and racial harassment in their city and state.

Given the purported anti-racism behind their support for Obama, they seem remarkably indifferent to – and ignorant of – Iowa’s status as the nation’s leader in disproportionate black imprisonment.

Some of the black and liberal students here find this a paradox.  I have a different perspective. Two days before the heavily Caucasian Iowa caucus, one forthcoming and self-critical caucus-goer and neighbor told me something I’d been suspecting for some time. Obama, he said, was “a way for liberal and moderate whites around here to pat themselves on the back for not being too prejudiced to vote for a black guy.”  But it was all premised, he agreed, on Obama being a “good,” that is non-threatening, middle-class, academic-friendly, and “not-too fiery black” – one who seemed unlikely to confront institutional white supremacy in any way more meaningful than attaining higher office. Like the racially accomodationist, white-friendly media mogul and mass Obama marketer Oprah Winfrey (who came through Iowa to stump for him a few weeks before that state’s critical Caucus), Obama capitalized on middle class whites’ rejection of openly bigoted “level-one” (state-of-mind) racism only because he reassured them he would honor their refusal to acknowledge and confront the continuing power of deeper, “level two” (state-of-being) – societal and institutional – racism in American life. I have spoken with local middle-class whites for whom loving the “good” (bourgeois) black Obama is the other side of the coin of hating the “bad” and “underclass” blacks who are becoming more evident in Iowa City.

The town’s white liberals don’t seem interested in tackling the deeper institutional racism that lives on beneath the surface while they congratulate themselves for being willing to back a certain non-threatening kind of black candidate. They certainly don’t want to look closely at the unpleasant picture of how racial and class oppression produce  pain and inequality in their own schools, neighborhoods, and community. They respond very well to what Black Agenda Report’s Glen Ford has identified as Obama’s “strategy to win the White House” by “run[ning] a ‘race-neutral’ campaign in a society that is anything but neutral on race.” As Ford notes, “the very premise – that race neutrality is possible in a nation built on white supremacy – demand[s] the systematic practice of the most profound race-factual denial, which is ultimately indistinguishable from rank dishonesty.”

I would like to hear your views on this piece, especially if you are an Obama supporter and/or an Iowa City resident.

I figured that if John Edwards hadn’t endorsed by now, he would wait until all of the states had held their primaries, but he proved me wrong today.

The video of his speech endorsing Barack Obama, as well as his interview on Larry King Live this past Monday, can be found here in NCDem Amy’s diary.

I find it interesting that they chose Michigan as the venue for the big endorsement rally. Obama may realize that he could be in some trouble in Michigan, since he didn’t campaign there before the January primary and didn’t get behind any re-vote plan for the state.

The timing of the endorsement stepped on Hillary Clinton’s big victory in West Virginia yesterday. Still, I am glad that Edwards paid tribute to Hillary today as well:

It is very very hard to get up every day and do what she’s done. It is hard to get out there and fight and speak up when the odds turn against you. What she has shown is strength and character and what drives her is something that each and every one of us should appreciate. She cares about working people…men and women in Iraq…she is a woman made of steel and she is a leader in this country not because of her husband but because of what she has done…When this nomination battle is over, brothers and sisters, we must come together as Democrats and in the fall stand up for the future of America to make America better. We are a stronger party because Hillary Clinton is a Democrat…and we will have a stronger presidential nominee in the fall because of her work.

I don’t think Edwards is a good match for Obama as a VP candidate, but I would like to see him out there campaigning for Obama in the coming months. I believe that he could help Obama in states such as Michigan and Ohio.

According to the electoral vote counter on the upper left side of the front page at MyDD, John McCain is currently projected to defeat Obama 290-248. Obama would win the Kerry states minus Wisconsin, Michigan and New Hampshire, plus Iowa and Colorado–not nearly enough.

Ironically, Hillary is currently in a much stronger position against McCain, even though she has in essence no chance of winning the Democratic nomination anymore. The electoral vote counter for her, on the upper right side of the front page at MyDD, has her beating McCain 291-247. Hillary would be projected to win the Kerry states minus Wisconsin and Michigan, plus Ohio, Florida and Iowa.

UPDATE: At MyDD, Josh Orton notes that Elizabeth Edwards was not up on the stage with her husband tonight. One might interpret this to mean that she disagrees with the endorsement (she has already said she prefers Hillary’s health care reform plan). However, my hunch is that she is limiting her overnight travel away from their two school-age children. There was no compelling need for her to be there. After such a long campaign, during which the kids traveled with Elizabeth much of the time, she may just prefer to be at home.

At TalkLeft, Big Tent Democrat had high praise for Edwards’ speech and made an interesting point I hadn’t thought about:

John Edwards, populist hero with a proven record of connecting with white working class voters has vouched for Barack Obama. Does Kentucky buy it?

The Kentucky contest, previously a foregone conclusion for the Media, now becomes a test. For Barack Obama. He needs to go in to Kentucky, WITH John Edwards, and fight for their votes. He needs to show he cares about the voters of Kentucky. Particularly white working class voters. An interesting development indeed.

My money is still on a Clinton blowout in Kentucky next Tuesday.

Hillary Clinton trounced Barack Obama in West Virginia. With 95 percent reporting, she has 67 percent and he has 26 percent. Clinton received approximately 140,000 more votes than Obama. I don’t know why John Edwards was still on the ballot in WV, but he seems to have gotten almost 7 percent of the vote.

In her victory speech, Hillary mentioned Dalton Hatfield, an 11-year-old from Kentucky who sold his bike and video games to donate about $400 to the Clinton campaign. This prompted an Obama supporter to post an idiotic diary at Daily Kos, suggesting that Hillary had “sunk lower” than Richard Nixon did when he delivered his famous “Checkers” speech in 1952.

Clinton supporter Trix had the ultimate comeback:

 Something tells me that… (11+ / 0-)

Recommended by:

   Rimjob, dhonig, wader, desmoinesdem, homogenius, Lying eyes, rcald, Mikesco, Barry in MIA, lineatus, Namtrix

if this were a story about a kid selling his bike to donate the proceeds to Obama, you’d be going on and on about how inspiring Obama is to children.

Hillary Clinton turned me into a newt. I got better.

by Trix on Tue May 13, 2008 at 08:13:56 PM PDT

On the Republican side, John McCain only managed about 76 percent of the vote in WV, with 10 percent going for Mike Huckabee and 5 percent choosing Ron Paul.

I have to agree with isucyclones94, though, who commented in the previous thread that Democrat Travis Childers’ victory in the special election in Mississippi’s first Congressional district is the biggest story of the night.

This is a district with a partisan index of R+10, and the Republicans worked hard to link Childers to Obama and Reverend Jeremiah Wright:

Yet Childers won by a margin of 54-46. I totally agree with Jonathan Singer’s take on this outcome:

  1. I don’t want to go so far as to say that this is the end of the Republican Party, because it’s not. But this is as bad news as the GOP could possibly get at this point. They lost a district that leans 6 points more Republican than the nation as a whole in Illinois in March. They lost a district that leans 7 points more Republican than the nation as a whole earlier this month in Louisiana. Now they lost a district that leans 10 points more Republican than the nation as a whole in Mississippi. If they can’t win in Mississippi’s first congressional district, where can they win?

  2. The Republicans tried to make this election about two people: Barack Obama and Reverend Jeremiah Wright. And despite running this type of campaign, they lost. While it is true that Childers distanced himself from his party (and implicitly from Obama), the fact is that the Obama/Wright smears simply DID NOT WORK. The Republicans are going to have to get a new game plan, and the establishment media are going to have to get a new meme. Sorry folks.

The head of the National Republican Congressional Committee didn’t even try to spin the loss (click the link for his full statement).

Also, in the Democratic primary for the open U.S. Senate seat from Nebraska, netroots hero Scott Kleeb beat Tony Raimondo by a large margin, 68-25. Kleeb came pretty close to winning Nebraska’s third Congressional district in 2006, despite a very strong Republican tilt in that district. Raimondo is a Republican who switched parties just so he could run for the U.S. Senate. Good for Kleeb.

In a state as red as Nebraska, Republicans are favored to hold this Senate seat, but Kleeb will make them work for it.

The demographics are horrible for Obama, and he has hardly campaigned in the state, while Clinton has spent a lot of time there.

I’m going with 62 Clinton, 38 Obama.

For good on-the-ground reports about the campaign, read diaries by “Carnacki”:

http://www.mydd.com/user/Carnacki

The tv ad Obama ran in West Virginia can be viewed here:

http://link.brightcove.com/ser…

It’s not a bad ad, but I don’t like the halo around his head when he’s standing in front of the cross. I understand why he wants the cross in there, to combat rumors he is a Muslim, but I find the halo irritating.

At least he didn’t run on “clean West Virginia coal”!

Put your predictions for today’s primary results in the comments.

As I have said before, I think Hillary Clinton was wrong to make a summer gas tax holiday the centerpiece of her campaign for several weeks. I am glad that didn’t pan out for her in the Indiana and North Carolina primaries.

However, as bad an idea as a gas tax holiday would be (delivering more profits to oil companies, not really helping consumers, not helping to reduce our demand for oil), it would only be bad for a few months.

Take a look at the ad Obama is now running in Kentucky:

Also view the direct-mail piece the Obama campaign has sent out in Kentucky.

Now, maybe Obama is only pandering to Kentucky Democrats to avoid a blowout in the May 20 primary, but my fear is that if elected he would actually follow through and invest more national resources in so-called “clean coal.”

Every new coal-fired power plant built is a 50-year investment in the wrong direction, with much worse long-term consequences for our climate and environment than any summer holiday from the federal gas tax.

It’s 10:30 am on Thursday, and I just got off the phone with a very aggressive phonebanker for Barack Obama. I don’t know where this guy was from. It sounded like his accent was from somewhere in the northeast, and it sounded like he was calling from a phonebank, and not working as a volunteer from his home.

I explained at least 10 times that I am not going to give money to Barack Obama’s campaign this year, because I don’t feel that he needs my money, and I am going to focus on supporting state and local candidates who need my money more.

This guy was tenacious, though (some would probably find his manner obnoxious). He kept telling me that Obama does need my money more, that this is the most important thing, why can’t I give to Obama and local candidates, it’s going to come down to every last dollar, etc.

Finally I just started laughing. I told him that he and I have a respectful disagreement, but I’m still not giving Obama any money this year.

I wonder if their scripts tell them to be that insistent when someone has already said more than a half-dozen times that she is not going to contribute. I did emphasize that I will certainly vote for Obama.

Obama has been raising money hand over fist all year, and he recently passed 1.5 million unique donors. John McCain has underperformed in fundraising since becoming the presumptive Republican nominee. If Obama loses the general, it’s not going to be for lack of resources.

Right now, I think Barack Obama can make a stronger case with the superdelegates for why they should hand him the nomination instead of giving it to Hillary Clinton. (As is clear, neither candidate can get a majority of delegates without the superdelegates.)

However, every time I inch toward hoping that Obama will win the nomination, he says or does something that alienates me. As I’ve written, Hillary’s advocacy of a gas tax holiday this summer is a major red flag for me. But I learned today that Obama has sent out a direct-mail piece in Kentucky that proclaims, “Barack Obama believes in clean Kentucky coal.” (click the link to see the design)

People, there is no such thing as clean coal. Even if they develop carbon-capture technology in the next decade, there will still be environmental problems related to coal mining and other pollution caused by burning coal. The carbon-capture itself could be problematic, if the carbon is sequestered by turning large quantities of underground water into carbonic acid.

I also have to wonder if Obama really does believe in Kentucky coal. His own energy policy calls for not expanding coal-generated power until sequestration technology is available. For a guy who usually campaigns on being able to tell Americans the truth, even if it isn’t what they want to hear, Obama sure seems to be pandering to Kentucky Democrats. One recent poll in the state shows him more than 30 points behind Clinton. He’s not going to win the May 20 primary in any case, but I’m sure he would prefer not to lose by a 2-1 margin.

If Obama is just pretending to be for “clean Kentucky coal,” that undercuts his claim to be a different kind of politician. And if he really does believe in “clean Kentucky coal,” that’s worse from my perspective.

I didn’t watch Obama’s victory speech in North Carolina tonight, but Populista put up the transcript in this diary.

Populista particularly liked this passage:

So don’t ever forget that this election is not about me, or any candidate. Don’t ever forget that this campaign is about you– about your hopes, about your dreams, about your struggles, about securing your portion of the American Dream.

But I have to say that what is wonderful to many Obama supporters couldn’t be more of a turnoff to me.

That excerpt takes me back to one of the things I disliked about Ronald Reagan in the 80s–the way he used this self-actualizing, empowering rhetoric to get people to project their hopes and dreams onto his candidacy.

I want my candidate to be standing up for the core values of the Democratic Party, which can be defined–not for every American’s hopes and dreams, which could mean anything.

What politician can really claim to stand for everyone’s hopes and dreams? Anyway, some Americans are hoping for policies that are abhorrent to me.

Sometimes Obama seems to be telling me to just believe in myself, but if I need to hear that message I can buy a self-help book or go see a psychotherapist. We need concrete actions from the president, and not just a belief that we can do anything we put our minds to.

I should add that other parts of Obama’s speech tonight, where he got specific about the policies he favors, are much more to my liking.

And this was pure John Edwards:

This is the country that allowed my father-in-law– a city worker at a South Side water filtration plant– to provide for his wife and two children on a single salary. This is a man who was diagnosed at age thirty with multiple sclerosis– who relied on a walker to get himself to work. And yet, every day he went, and he labored, and he sent my wife and her brother to one of the best colleges in the nation.  It was a job that didn’t just give him a paycheck, but a sense of dignity and self-worth. It was an America that didn’t just reward wealth, but the work and the workers who created it.

The idea of treating work and wealth fairly, and rewarding both, is exactly the frame we need to use when we talk about changing the tax code.

I also liked the way Obama said, “we can’t afford to give John McCain the chance to serve out George Bush’s third term.”

More like that, please.

Obama wins by double digits in North Carolina (56-42 with 95 percent reporting).

Clinton is ahead narrowly in Indiana (52-48 with 87 percent reporting). However, heavily African-American Lake County, where Gary is located, has not reported yet, and even the Obama supporter Markos finds that suspicious.

UPDATE: Clinton held on to win Indiana narrowly, 51-49, but Obama’s blowout in NC was by a bigger popular vote margin than Clinton’s in Pennsylvania. She needed to do better. I am glad that demagoguing on the gas tax didn’t pay off for her.

For Obama to keep it that close in Indiana bodes well for him, because he’s had a rough few weeks. However, I still disagree with those who say Hillary should pack it in. [UPDATE: Given that Obama’s popular vote lead now seems insurmountable, she may well want to quit, although I don’t think it would be terrible to wait until after the rest of the primaries.] Let all the states and territories vote, and then let the superdelegates settle this in mid-June. Voters are energized all over the country, and they should all have a chance to express their will. If Obama is ahead in the popular vote as well as the pledged delegate count, I think he should be the nominee.

On a related note, I thought Clinton supporter Todd Beeton made an excellent point today:

I was asked the other night: “Why is Hillary still in this thing?” I responded, “Has Barack won the nomination? Because if he has, why is he still campaigning?” Seriously, if the nomination is so settled as many Obama supporters like to claim, he’s free to just go home to Chicago. No one’s stopping him. Yet it’s Hillary Clinton who is the object of the ire of Obama supporters who seem to honestly believe that Hillary Clinton’s winning the nomination would be tantamount to her robbing him of something he hasn’t won yet. What a joke.

UPDATE: Wow, Donna Brazile, a self-described “undeclared” superdelegate who talks like an Obama supporter, made some worrisome comments tonight on CNN. Talk Left has the whole transcript here:

http://www.talkleft.com/story/…

Key excerpt:

BRAZILE: Well, Lou, I have worked on a lot of Democratic campaigns, and I respect Paul. But, Paul, you’re looking at the old coalition. A new Democratic coalition is younger. It is more urban, as well as suburban, and we don’t have to just rely on white blue-collar voters and Hispanics. We need to look at the Democratic Party, expand the party, expand the base and not throw out the baby with the bathwater.

She and Clinton supporter Paul Begala had quite the exchange after that.

It concerns me that some Obama supporters seem so unfazed by his failure to connect with certain key Democratic constituencies.

Elected officials and policy advocates are getting increasingly annoyed by Hillary Clinton’s decision to make this nominating contest about her really bad proposal to suspend the gas tax this summer and pay for it with a windfall tax on oil companies.

Today Tom Harkin weighed in on the issue, telling reporters that Congress will not take up this proposal. Even if the gas tax holiday were enacted, Harkin suggested, consumers would not benefit much, and the Iowa Department of Transportation would lose about $75 million in revenues to rebuild infrastructure.

Friends of the Earth Action, which supported John Edwards for president and had been sitting out the campaign since he left the race, today endorsed Barack Obama, largely because of the gas tax issue:

“We endorse Senator Obama because we believe he is the best candidate for the environment,” said Friends of the Earth Action President Brent Blackwelder.  “The ‘gas tax holiday’ debate is a defining moment in the presidential race.  The two other candidates responded with sham solutions that won’t ease pain at the pump, but Senator Obama refused to play that typical Washington game.  Instead, Obama called for real solutions that would make transportation more affordable and curb global warming.  He showed the courage and candor we expect from a president.”

Friends of the Earth Action ran radio and television ads on behalf of Edwards in the early-voting states, and the group is now running this ad supporting Obama:

As I’ve said many times, I would vote for either Obama or Clinton in the general and have no strong preference between the two. I would hate to see Hillary gain the inside track for the nomination through this kind of political posturing, though. It’s such a bad idea on so many levels.

Obama appears to be feeling the heat on this issue. A few days ago his campaign put out a television ad calling the gas tax holiday a “bogus” idea that would just help big oil companies (click the link to view that ad). However, his closing ad in Indiana and North Carolina moves away from that issue to a more general message:

Meanwhile, Clinton seems to think she has hit pay dirt, and has made the gas tax the focus of her closing ad in the states that will vote tomorrow:

For a laugh, I highly recommend this diary by Matt Stoller, CONFIDENTIAL/URGENT POLITICAL PROPOSAL, which skewers Hillary’s proposal on the gas tax by presenting it in the format of those scam e-mails promising to make you rich.

Please put up your predictions for the Indiana and North Carolina primaries in the comments. I say these results will be mirror images of each other: Obama will win NC 55-45, and Hillary will win Indiana by the same margin.

The mainstream media’s atrocious coverage of this presidential election campaign should concern every Democrat, no matter which candidate was your first choice.

While it’s no surprise anymore to see pundits overwhelmingly supporting Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton, even I was shocked to read this diary by Clinton supporter alegre.

She pointed out this post by Time magazine’s blogger Mark Halperin, who is about as mainstream as they come and whose blog is probably read by almost every journalist covering this campaign. The post is called, “You Can’t Make This Up,” and here is the entire text:

Hillary Clinton enthusiastically picked a filly named Eight Belles to win the Kentucky Derby and compared herself to the horse. Eight Belles finished second. The winner was the favorite, Big Brown.

Eight Belles collapsed immediately after crossing the finish line, and was euthanized shortly thereafter.

Ha ha–get it? The woman picked the female horse to win the race, but not only did that horse lose to the big brown front-runner, she had to be put down afterwards! You can’t make this up!

Does anyone think Halperin’s editors would have let a comparable post slip through?

You Can’t Make This Up

Barack Obama enthusiastically picked a horse named Great Black Hope to win the Kentucky Derby and compared himself to the horse. Great Black Hope finished second. The winner was the favorite, Flyer.

Great Black Hope collapsed immediately after crossing the finish line, and was euthanized shortly thereafter.

No, they wouldn’t, and it’s unlikely any journalist would even try to make fun of Obama identifying with a horse that lost and had to be put down after a race.

Sick.

When was the last time Demo Memo, noneed4thneed and I agreed on something related to this year’s presidential campaign?

We’re all against the terrible idea of temporarily suspending the federal gas tax between Memorial Day and Labor Day. I have already written about why this is bad policy, but I want to call your attention to this post by Chris Bowers, which explains how disastrous Hillary Clinton’s idea is politically on several levels.

You should read Bowers’ whole post, but here are some of my favorite passages:

  2. Clinton is threatening other Democrats on the gas tax holiday, claiming that opposing it means you are with the oil companies.

[there’s a YouTube here you can watch if you click through to Open Left]

     Not only is that nonsensical, it is reminiscent of the many times that Bill Clinton favored legislation in the face of opposition from the left: NAFTA, welfare reform, the telecommunications act, the Defense of Marriage Act, etc. She isn’t taking on the oil companies with this proposal, she is taking on the American left, just as her husband frequently did while he was President. Clearly, we can expect more of this if she were to become President.

  3. So, why is Clinton taking on the left and helping out oil companies? To score political points. Her campaign has said this in public [….]

     Given that one of the two or three main image problems the Democratic Party has faced over the past couple decades is the perception that we don’t stand for anything and lack core values, publicly stating that a policy proposal is good because it is helping you in the polls is extremely damaging. Of course, it is also the sort of language that both Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton use on a regular basis, and which we should obviously expect a lot more of should Hillary Clinton become President. This will have lasting, negative effects on the image of the Democratic Party.

  4. Where did this policy come from? This isn’t a policy that Clinton has been campaigning on for a while–she just came up with in over the last two weeks. Given that she is willing to make some new gimmick the centerpiece of her public policy discussion on a whim in order to score political points, how can we ever believe that she won’t just dump whatever current policy proposals she has if, in so doing, she believes she can score political points with some right-wing gimmick policy?

[…]

The gas tax holiday episode collects all of my worst fears about a possible second Clinton presidency in a single, dark, place that I haven’t entered since the 1990’s. Are we to suffer through another Democratic President who will make impromptu, right-ward shifts toward bad policy, justified in nonsensical, Orwellian language, all the while claiming such a move must be done because it will score huge political points even though it is ultimately a bad political calculation, and then threaten the entire Democratic Party to fall in line behind such a move or else? This is basically all of my worst fears about Hillary Clinton becoming President rolled up into one giant ball of tin-foil and dropped on my front porch.

That about sums it up for me.

Clinton supporters claim that her proposal is different from John McCain’s, because she would impose a windfall tax on the oil companies to make up for the lost revenue from the gas tax holiday.

But if you know anything about how Congress works, you know that the part about the windfall tax would probably get stripped out by amendment (plenty of Congressional Democrats vote with Republicans when it comes to oil companies), or in the conference committee. Then we’d be stuck with the gas tax holiday that Hillary has been demagoguing on for the last couple of weeks, and oil companies would benefit.

By the way, I mentioned a few days ago that Hillary’s proposal seems hypocritical in light of her opposition to a similar gas tax holiday in 2000.

But that very same year, Obama voted to temporarily suspend the gas tax in the Illinois Senate. So he has not always taken a principled stand against this dumb idea either. (hat tip to Jeralyn at Talk Left)

Speaking of Talk Left, Big Tent Democrat made a brilliant observation yesterday. Commenting on a report that the gas tax holiday idea is “DOA” (dead on arrival) because House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer have spoken out against it, Big Tent Democrat noted that

it is funny how they can not declare FISA telco immunity DOA or how they could never declare Iraq funding without a date certain DOA. I have little respect for the leadership of Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer.

Me neither.

It sounds like he is leaning that way.

Ron Paul had a strong showing in several states that may be closely contested assuming Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee. I would think Nevada would be very much in play, for instance.

Clearly a significant portion of the Republican base is still not sold on McCain. As I wrote last week, Paul got nearly 16 percent of the Republican primary voters in Pennsylvania (about 128,000 people). That was more than John Kerry’s winning margin in Pennsylvania against George Bush in 2004.

If you want to know the details about the pledged delegates and superdelegates for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, keep an eye on the 2008 Democratic Convention Watch site. On the left side of the front page, they are continually updating the delegate counts. Almost every day a superdelegate or two declare their allegiance.

The Daily Kos has also put a delegate counter at the top of the front page, and MyDD has its own counter on the front page of that site, but I think the Democratic Convention Watch blog has the most complete information.

If you want to know where Clinton and Obama currently stand against McCain in any state, check the front page of MyDD, where you will find electoral vote counters on the upper left and upper right side of the screens. These are continually updated with the latest state polls.

I noticed today that for the first time in several weeks, both Obama and Clinton lead McCain in electoral votes. For a long time both were behind, and then for a week or so Clinton was leading McCain while Obama trailed him.

The counters show maps of the U.S. with the states in red or blue, so you can see at a glance that Clinton and Obama have very different paths to victory against McCain.

Today Obama would be projected to beat McCain 275-263 by winning all of the Kerry states except New Hampshire, plus Iowa and Colorado.

Clinton would be projected to beat McCain 287-251 by winning most of the Kerry states except Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and New Hampshire, plus Iowa, Ohio, Florida and Missouri.

The electoral vote trackers change almost every day, so keep checking the front page of MyDD if you are interested.

Joe Trippi wrote an interesting piece for Campaigns and Elections called “What I Should Have Told John Edwards.”

Trippi regrets that when Edwards asked him if he should drop out of the presidential race, he

didn’t go with my gut.

I didn’t tell him what I should have told him: That I had this feeling that if he stayed in the race he would win 300 or so delegates by Super Tuesday and have maybe a one-in-five chance of forcing a brokered convention. That there was a path ahead that would be extremely painful, but could very well put him and his causes at the top of the Democratic agenda. And that in politics anything can happen-even the possibility that in an open convention with multiple ballots an embattled and exhausted party would turn to him as their nominee. I should have closed my eyes to the pain I saw around me on the campaign bus, including my own. I should have told him emphatically that he should stay in. My regret that I did not do so-that I let John Edwards down-grows with every day that the fight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama continues.

[…]

It was a longshot, to be sure, but there remained the chance of a three-way battle going all the way to the convention. I thought we could make a big dent in Ohio by appealing to middle-class working people. The same in places like Kansas, Colorado and the Dakotas. It was possible to make those a dead-heat for all three candidates in terms of delegate wins. And today, as I write this, I realize we might have had as many as 500 delegates heading into Pennsylvania and North Carolina, two states that would probably be strong for Edwards.

That would mean Edwards, Obama and Clinton would go into the convention without any of them close to sealing the nomination. You would have had months of Obama and Clinton banging away at each other, with Edwards able to come across to weary Democrats as a welcome, fresh face. You’d have the electability argument begin to play to Edwards’ advantage, since he always did well against McCain in polling. These possibilities and more played through my mind.

Let me make clear that in January, I was 100 percent behind Edwards staying in the race until the convention, even though it was obvious after the New Hampshire primary that his chance of becoming the nominee was virtually zero.

I wrote front-page diaries for the national blog MyDD on Ten Reasons for Sticking with John Edwards and why all Democrats should be glad to see Edwards stay in the race. That second piece included the following passage:

The bottom line for me is that Edwards is talking about the issues in a way that Clinton and Obama never have and never will. In the debates, his campaign rallies, and his television advertisements, he is calling attention to problems that the corporate media filter out all too often.

Many Obama supporters are frustrated that Edwards has not dropped out of the race and endorsed their candidate. They think he is only splitting the anti-Hillary vote.

I think everyone should be happy that Edwards will hang in there, even though others are currently favored to win the nomination. I believe that the Republican hate machine will not unload on Clinton or Obama until they are certain that Edwards is out of the race. Since Obama has not yet faced tough scrutiny from the media, it is all the more important for Edwards to stay in the mix.

Since January the Democratic primary race has degenerated into identity politics and personal attacks, with little focus on issues Edwards brought to the table, like the excesses of corporate power.

Nor has his departure brought the Democratic contest to a rapid conclusion. When Edwards was on one of the talk shows in late March (I think it was Leno), he said that when he dropped out, he expected that the Democratic nominee would have been decided by mid-March. So quitting the race didn’t achieve the goal he had in mind.

In my heart, like Trippi, I feel disappointed that Edwards did not stay in for the duration. If he had been there for the debates, the moderators might have asked a few more substantive questions, or the Clinton and Obama campaigns might have altered their own strategies.

On the other hand, I doubt very much that given the media environment of late January, Edwards could have won 300 delegates on Super Tuesday, as Trippi suggests. If he had won fewer than 100 delegates, the pressure on him to drop out would have been so overwhelming (with major donors and superdelegates jumping ship) that I doubt he would have had a very good showing in Ohio on March 4.

My head tells me that one way or another, the media and the Democratic power-brokers would have been able to force Edwards out long before the primaries in Pennsylvania, Indiana and North Carolina.

What do you think? Leaving aside whether you think Edwards had any chance of winning the nomination at a brokered convention, do you think the Democratic Party and our eventual nominee would have been better served by having him stay in the race longer?

An Edwards supporter I’m still in touch with online brought these links to my attention, and I felt they were worth sharing. A few weeks ago, both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton appeared at a “Compassion Forum” and answered some questions about God and prayer backstage.

The Christian Broadcasting Network’s website has some transcripts and audio clips. Here is

Obama answering the question, “In the quiet moments of your day, what do you pray for?” (click through for the audio link)

“I pray throughout the day but at night before I go to bed I have a fairly simple prayer. I ask that God forgives me for my sins. I thank him for all that he has given me especially my family which is a great treasure. I ask that he give peace to people in need and people in trouble and I ask that he makes me an instrument of his will. I figure that covers a lot of ground.”

That’s a good prayer, and it certainly does cover a lot of ground.

I was blown away by Hillary’s response to the question, “When you stand before God, what might a question be that you’ll ask Him?” (this is an excerpt, click through for the whole text):

I would ask how could a loving God have let so much despair, suffering and pain be part of the human experience? What were you teaching us? What were you modeling for us? We know that you had your son suffer excruciatingly and he died for us and I can’t thank you enough for that gift but so many people who seem so innocent have also suffered so much. Was there any point at which you thought you could perhaps just you know, reach out and just lessen it a little or did you expect us to do that? Was that our job? Is that what we were called to do with the gifts that you gave onto us?”

All I can say is, I would like to be there when God answers those questions.

Speaking of religion and politics, I have avoided writing about Reverend Jeremiah Wright, because I don’t feel I have anything unique to add to the discussion.

Obviously, I don’t believe Obama agrees with the more offensive comments Wright has made. On the contrary, this conjecture by Obama supporter Matthew Yglesias has the ring of truth for me:

it’ll hurt him electorally because Obama’s going to have a hard time explaining that I take to be the truth, namely that his relationship with Trinity has been a bit cynical from the beginning. After all, before Obama was a half-black guy running in a mostly white country he was a half-white guy running in a mostly black neighborhood. At that time, associating with a very large, influential, local church with black nationalist overtones was a clear political asset (it’s also clear in his book that it made him, personally, feel “blacker” to belong to a slightly kitschy black church). Since emerging onto a larger stage, it’s been the reverse and Obama’s consistently sought to distance himself from Wright, disinviting him from his campaign’s launch, analogizing him to a crazy uncle who you love but don’t listen to, etc.

So I am not the least bit worried that Obama shares Wright’s views.

I do get depressed thinking about the endless attack ads that will feature Wright’s inflammatory remarks (juxtaposed with Obama not putting his hand over his heart and Michelle Obama saying this is the first time in her adult life she’s been proud to be an American). It fits so well with the typical Republican playbook against Democrats: brand them as extremist and unpatriotic.

At least this has come out in the spring, rather than after Labor Day, when it could have done the most damage to our likely presidential nominee. On the other hand, I’m annoyed that Obama was able to keep Reverend Wright under wraps until after most of the states had voted.

If Wright had been a household name six months ago, I do not believe Obama would have won the Iowa caucuses.

When I think of all the Obama supporters and leaners who told me last year that John Edwards was unelectable because he has a big house and got an expensive haircut, I just shake my head. Some people imagined that Obama’s media honeymoon would never end, and the Republicans wouldn’t be able to dig up anything damaging about him.

UPDATE: My husband and I loved Jon Stewart’s segment on the media’s coverage of Reverend Wright during The Daily Show on Wednesday. Catch the rerun on Thursday if you can.

Buried at the end of a detailed post on the dueling delegate counts provided by the Clinton and Obama campaigns, Chris Bowers put forward a great idea for a Michigan/Florida compromise:

If I were in charge, I would seat Florida’s pledged delegates as is, and seat the pledged delegates from Michigan Clinton 73-55 Obama. From that point, I would strip both states of their superdelegates. This way, the voters of the two states are not punished, but the superdelegates who are responsible putting both states in this mess are. I actually think that this should become the standard punishment for states that flout the primary calendar: keep the pledged delegates, but strip the superdelegates with no possibility of reinstatement. I also really like the idea of superdelegates whining that they should be seated at the convention. That would be an hilarious press conference.

I have written before that it would be suicide for Obama to go into the general election campaign having argued for ignoring the primary votes in Michigan and Florida. I was open to a revote, but the Obama campaign made sure that didn’t happen in either state. Bowers’ idea makes a lot of sense to me. Rank and file voters should not be punished for the screwups of party leaders.

Meanwhile, JedReport put up a good diary at Daily Kos blaming the superdelegates for prolonging the primary election campaign.  

I think the extended race is on balance good for the Democrats, because voters are being energized all over the country (click here to read about the surge in Democratic voter registration in Oregon).

But if you’re an Obama supporter who’s frustrated that the race continues, JedReport’s diary indicates that your anger at the Clinton campaign or the media is misplaced. The superdelegates could have brought down the curtain on this race two months ago, but they have stood on the sidelines.

My only quibble with JedReport is that the pledged delegate count, which he thinks should guide the superdelegates’ decision, does not necessarily reflect the will of the people.

So far there have been at least two states (NV and TX) where Obama emerged with more pledged delegates despite having fewer people turn out to support him.

Also, the caucus systems in many states produced lopsided delegate counts that (in my view) do not reflect the will of the voters. Does anyone really think that Minnesota Democrats would have favored Obama over Hillary by a 2-1 margin in a primary?

Not only that, one caucus-goer in Wyoming had as much influence over the pledged delegate race as 19 primary voters in California (here is the link).

I’m for changing the system to ban caucuses for purposes of presidential candidate selection. Also, I would want to change the way pledged delegates are allocated so that no candidate could lose the popular vote in a state while winning the pledged delegate count.

Of course, this does not excuse the strategic failure of the Clinton campaign to have a game plan for the caucus states.

But if we are going to ban superdelegates, or require superdelegates to get behind the pledged delegate leader, then we better have a more equitable system for allocating the pledged delegates. It’s wrong for Obama to net as many pledged delegates from a low-turnout caucus state as Hillary netted in the Ohio primary blowout.

Over at Daily Kos, Markos has a post up about “Clinton’s shameless hypocrisy on the fuel tax”:

   Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday criticized Barack Obama for opposing the concept of suspending the gas tax during the peak summer driving months, a plan both she and Republican John McCain have endorsed.

   The idea to suspend the 18.4 cent federal gas tax and 24.4 cent diesel tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day was first proposed by McCain, the likely Republican presidential nominee, as a way to ease the economic burden for consumers during the summer.

   Obama does not support the “gas tax holiday” and has said the average motorist would not benefit significantly from such a suspension; by some estimates, the federal government would lose about $10 billion in revenue.

   “My opponent, Senator Obama, opposes giving consumers a break,” Clinton said, campaigning in North Carolina. “I understand the American people need some relief.”

For once I agree with Markos–this is a bad, bad move by Hillary Clinton. His main point is that she’s a huge hypocrite, because she argued against a similar gas tax holiday when she was running for the Senate in 2000.

Even worse from my perspective, she has flipped to supporting a horrendous idea floated by McCain. I explained why suspending the gas tax is is bad policy in this post.

It’s bad politics as well, because Hillary adopts the Republican “tax relief” frame to score a political point against our likely Democratic presidential nominee. She should never suggest that McCain is more sensitive to the needs of consumers than Obama is. That is flat-out wrong.

This is not how she should be making her case against Obama.  

Poligirl wrote a good diary about an op-ed piece by Elizabeth Edwards in today’s New York Times: “Bowling 1, Health Care 0.”

She slammed the media for its superficial coverage of the presidential campaign during the past year, and particularly during the weeks leading up to the Pennsylvania primary:

Did you, for example, ever know a single fact about Joe Biden’s health care plan? Anything at all? But let me guess, you know Barack Obama’s bowling score. We are choosing a president, the next leader of the free world. We are not buying soap, and we are not choosing a court clerk with primarily administrative duties.

Political junkie that I am, I do know something about Joe Biden’s health care plan (no thanks to the mainstream media). Elizabeth Edwards tells it like it is:

What’s more, the news media cut candidates like Joe Biden out of the process even before they got started. Just to be clear: I’m not talking about my husband. I’m referring to other worthy Democratic contenders. Few people even had the chance to find out about Joe Biden’s health care plan before he was literally forced from the race by the news blackout that depressed his poll numbers, which in turn depressed his fund-raising.

And it’s not as if people didn’t want this information. In focus groups that I attended or followed after debates, Joe Biden would regularly be the object of praise and interest: “I want to know more about Senator Biden,” participants would say.

But it was not to be. Indeed, the Biden campaign was covered more for its missteps than anything else. Chris Dodd, also a serious candidate with a distinguished record, received much the same treatment. I suspect that there was more coverage of the burglary at his campaign office in Hartford than of any other single event during his run other than his entering and leaving the campaign.

Who is responsible for the veil of silence over Senator Biden? Or Senator Dodd? Or Gov. Tom Vilsack? Or Senator Sam Brownback on the Republican side?

The decision was probably made by the same people who decided that Fred Thompson was a serious candidate.

I said many times last year that if Biden had the media hype Obama was getting, he would be a strong contender for the nomination. He had a great stump speech and performed better in every debate than Obama did, but all you heard from the leading analysts was that Biden was a gaffe machine.

Thanks again to poligirl for including a link to an audio interview of Elizabeth Edwards talking about her op-ed piece.

How many presidential campaigns will our infotainment complex get wrong before they finally give people the news coverage they deserve?

A while back I stopped reading the “Edwards should endorse Obama” diaries at Daily Kos, because I was tired of getting drawn into arguments with Hillary-haters in the comment threads. Moreover, I really don’t care whether John Edwards endorses a candidate–it wouldn’t change my feelings about either of the contenders.

When Elizabeth Edwards recently confirmed that she prefers Hillary’s health-care plan and will appear alongside Clinton when she campaigns in North Carolina, some of the Obama fans at Daily Kos went ballistic. Again, I avoided those diaries, because I am tired of trying to explain to people that yes, many health-care experts agree that some form of individual mandates are needed in order to provide truly universal health care.

Today longtime Edwards supporter Benny put up a rant at the EENRblog about somebody’s open letter pleading with Elizabeth Edwards to endorse Obama. I wasn’t planning to read the diary Benny was complaining about, but edgery highlighted an amazing assertion that prompted me to click over.

This statement in Bcgntn’s diary is what grabbed my attention:

Senator Clinton may believe without Lyndon Johnson the Civil Rights Act 1964 would not have come into being.  I recall those years.  People were out on the streets in protest.  The community concluded it was time for a change.  The President merely signed the papers.  

I’ve written before about how annoyed I was in January when the Obama campaign took Hillary’s comments about LBJ and twisted them into some allegedly racist remark denigrating Martin Luther King Jr.

But that’s not my main point today. What that Obama supporter wrote reflects a fantasy shared by too many Obama supporters, in my opinion: namely, that if he is elected, Obama is going to do what his people-powered movement demands.

One of my biggest concerns about Obama has always been that he seems likely to make far too many concessions to the Republican agenda or to DC pundits’ conventional wisdom. He has chosen not to lead on some of the key battles in the U.S. Senate. He talks a lot about finding consensus and bringing people together. His strategy for winning the open-primary states has been to maximize his support among Republicans and independents who cross over.

When you look at his very cautious voting record and avoidance of leading on any controversial issue, it seems highly unlikely to me that he will govern like a progressive. There will be many days when Obama has to choose between doing what Tim Russert and David Broder would like, and doing what the Obama fans at Daily Kos would like, and I think the Kossacks will be the disappointed ones on those days.

I’ve raised this point with several thoughtful Obama supporters, such as Populista, the 14-year-old who will probably be a great progressive leader someday. The consensus seems to be that if he gets elected, Obama will have to listen to the activists who have done so much to support his presidential campaign. He has empowered people who are the change we’ve been waiting for.

This to me seems as deluded as saying that the civil rights legislation of 1964 happened because the “community concluded it was time for a change.  The President merely signed the papers.”

I am not old enough to remember 1964, but I challenge any Obama supporter to find me one historian of that period who will agree with that contention. The fact is, LBJ dragged Congress kicking and screaming to do much more on civil rights than probably any other president could have gotten passed.

Don’t discount the importance of presidential leadership. People were out in the streets protesting the Vietnam War for years before we finally got out of there.

If Obama gets elected, he will not have the clout with Congress that LBJ had. But even if he did, I simply don’t see Obama as the kind of leader who would go to the mat to push a strong progressive agenda through a resistant Congress. He seems more likely to move halfway toward the Republican position, then declare victory.

Like I always say, I would love to be proven wrong if Obama does manage to get by John McCain. But don’t imagine that the people-powered movement will be calling the shots, and President Obama will just be signing the papers.

This morning I saw a friend who is an Edwards delegate to the third district convention coming up this Saturday. He was complaining that he’d received no direction from the Edwards campaign, or from prominent Iowans for Edwards, about what he should do.

Before the county conventions in March, the Edwards campaign did almost nothing to shore up support from delegates elected on January 3 at the precinct caucuses (besides an e-mail from Roxanne Conlin and Rob Tully that went out two days before the county conventions, urging delegates to stick with Edwards).

Today Lynda Waddington reported at Iowa Independent that

Yesterday, Iowa delegates that are pledged to Clinton and those who remain pledged to the suspended presidential run of former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards received a full-page, full-color reminder of the upcoming Democratic district conventions.

Click the link to see the visual of the mailer, but here is a key excerpt aimed at the Edwards delegates:

“John Edwards ran his campaign with compassion and conviction and lifted this campaign with his deep concerns for the daily lives of the American people. He and I both put forth universal health care plans, not because it was easy, but because health care for every man, woman and child is vital to giving every American family the opportunity for the American dream.

Together, let’s make universal health care a reality. I would be honored to have your support at your Congressional District Convention.”

It will be interesting to see if this works. At the county conventions, most of the Edwards delegates who switched moved toward Obama. I know of some like my friend who favor Clinton, though, partly because the Clinton health care plan is closer to what Edwards proposed.

Looks like Hillary is winning this thing by about 10 percent, 55-45 with 94 percent reporting.

If you just consider Pennsylvania’s demographics, that isn’t too surprising. However, we’re coming out of a month in which she was massively outspent by Obama, and the media narrative has been that she is unlikely to win the nomination now.

The official memo from the Obama campaign notes that Clinton failed to make significant gains in the pledged-delegate count. True, but what does it say about Obama that he couldn’t close the deal despite spending more than his opponent and having generally more favorable media coverage?

As a memo from the Clinton campaign pointed out earlier today, Obama spent a lot of money on negative advertising and negative direct-mail pieces in Pennsylvania. He still couldn’t make the sale.

I like the way Todd Beeton (a Clinton voter in the California primary) reacted to the spin from Obama-leaning analysts at MSNBC:

I have to say I was amused to hear Keith Olbermann announce with child-like glee at 8:01pm that the race was too close to call and how that had to make the Clinton campaign nervous. The subtext of his enthusiasm was clearly shadenfreude that Hillary Clinton was going to underperform expectations. I thought to myself: where the hell has he been? Time after time exit polls overestimate Barack Obama’s performance, not to mention that on election nights past, namely Feb 5th and March 4th, neither California nor Ohio, solid Clinton wins both, was called for her right away either. And sure enough, 93% in and she’s still up by the magic 10%.

Then just a few minutes ago, Keith asked an uncomfortable Tom Brokaw whether it is wise for Hillary Clinton to be Bush to Obama’s Gore in Bush v. Gore.

Riiight.

Seriously, at what point are these guys going to start holding their own candidate accountable for why this thing is still going on instead of complaining that Hillary is competing in contests that she is winning.

But Todd, didn’t you know that the Clintons are evil, and everything bad that happens to Obama is orchestrated by them?

I am glad that Clinton didn’t listen to the Obama fan clubbers who demanded that she drop out a month ago. There was record-breaking turnout today in a state that has not influenced the nominating process in recent history. Oh yeah, and Democrats made huge gains in voter registration in a critical swing state this past month.

In other news, a Democrat almost won a special election in Mississippi’s deep-red first Congressional district. Looking like a great year to be a Democrat!

What’s going to happen in Pennsylvania today?

Markos predicts a Clinton victory by 8 percent and more than 200,000 votes:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…

Obama supporter poblano backs up his similar prediction with some interesting analysis:

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com…

If Obama keeps this one close (within 5 percent), it will be viewed as a blow to Clinton. If she crushes him like she did in Ohio, it will not be enough to win her the nomination, but it will increase doubts about Obama’s ability to close the deal with Democrats. He massively outspent Clinton over the past six weeks in Pennsylvania.

I think Clinton will win, but not in a blowout: 53-47.

Put your predictions in the comments section.

Every once in a while on one of the national political blogs, a supporter of Hillary Clinton or John Edwards will assert that Barack Obama won the Iowa caucuses by busing in thousands of ineligible voters from out of state.

As any regular reader of this blog knows, I am no fan of Obama, and I’ve strongly criticized some aspects of the Iowa caucus system.

But I have yet to encounter any serious observer of Iowa politics who believes Obama won Iowa by cheating. I have been talking to many volunteers for the Clinton and Edwards campaigns in Iowa, and a few staffers, while researching a future diary on how those candidates might have beaten Obama here. Literally no one I’ve talked with has claimed that Obama did not legitimately win the caucuses.

No doubt there were some people from out of state who fraudulently registered to vote here on caucus night. I’ve heard that may have been a particular problem in some areas of Scott County. But I haven’t seen any evidence that the Obama campaign orchestrated any fraud, and there’s no way the cheaters were numerous enough to account for Obama’s margin of victory here.

If you don’t believe me, read this story from the Des Moines Register: Caucuses drew few ineligible voters:

The Register review of voter registration data from all 99 counties reveals a low rate of new voter applications filled out on caucus night by people whose addresses later could not be verified.

Only 1.5 percent of the new voter identification cards mailed to voters who registered on caucus night were returned to county auditors as undeliverable. That’s an indication that the vast majority of new caucus-night voters had a bona fide address in Iowa.

State officials say the low error rate is impressive, especially since caucus-night turnout vastly exceeded expectations and overwhelmed local party officials around the state.

The other argument I hear from the occasional conspiracy theorist on a different blog is that Obama’s campaign bused in large numbers of students from out of state. First, that would have affected turnout in a relatively small number of Iowa’s 1,800 precincts.

Second, as long as those students attend Iowa colleges and live in state most of the year, I have no problem with a campaign helping them get back to their campuses in early January. What’s the qualitative difference between that and my giving someone in my neighborhood a ride to the caucus if he or she can’t drive?

The caucuses never should have been scheduled during the winter vacation of most colleges anyway.  

I won’t be posting often this weekend. I’m going to visit cousins for a Passover seder today (chag sameach to the Jewish Bleeding Heartland readers!). Tomorrow I’ll be spending a lot of time at Earth Day in the Junction.

Have a great weekend, and put up a diary if you’ve got anything interesting to report.

Consider this an open thread to talk about the big Obama rally for change in Des Moines today, or about  any Earth Day events this weekend.

Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards were all on the Colbert Report on Thursday.

The whole show was hilarious, so catch the rerun on Friday if you’ve got cable. But I just had to post this You Tube of Edwards doing “The Word” segment (thanks, NCDem!):

Too funny.

On the Daily Show, Jon Stewart absolutely skewered the moderators of that ABC Clinton-Obama debate. Also well worth watching the rerun. I couldn’t find that video on the Comedy Central site yet, though.

We don’t turn on the tv while children are awake, so I won’t be watching. Maybe I will catch the repeat later.

If you watched, let us know how the candidates did.

UPDATE: The consensus in the liberal blogosphere is that the questions were a disgrace, even by the low standards set in other presidential debates this cycle. More than 40 minutes passed before a question on a real issue came up. Hugely important issues were never brought up–instead it was one stupid “gotcha” question after another directed at Barack Obama.

I’m glad I didn’t waste my time.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Judy Woodruff, who moderated the AARP forum for PBS last September, was the only journalist who did well at any of the presidential debates last year. She asked substantive, direct questions about real issues and followed up appropriately. No trick questions, no wasting time on the overblown media flap of the week.

Just got this e-mail from the Polk County Democrats:

From the Obama Campaign:

Dear Polk County Democrats,

The presidential season is still upon us and it has been fabulous to have watched the campaigns evolve in Iowa and continue to battle their way through the rest of the country.

As we all know, regardless of who the nominee is, we have work to do together as Democrats to elect a Democratic President to the White House and keep our Congress controlled by the Democrats

In the spirit of unity, we wanted to make it clear that the Obama campaign is not promoting a candidate in any of the local, state or congressional campaigns. We reject any efforts that give that impression.

If you have any questions and want to reach our campaign, please don’t hesitate to send an email to iowa@barackobama.com and we will get back to you.

Some of you may have heard about an upcoming Obama rally on Saturday. The Nation for Change Rally is being organized SOLELY by a grassroots group of Iowa Obama supporters who are excited about Senator Obama and would like to spread his message. If you would like more information on the event (Saturday, April 19th at 2:30 pm at Capitol) please email Cheryl Fasano at angelswings51@hotmail.com.

Sincerely,

The Iowa Obama Campaign

Anyone know what this is about? I have not heard of any state, local or Congressional candidates trying to claim they have Obama’s backing.

I know that Ed Fallon is planning to be at that Obama rally on Saturday. Are they worried that the appearance will be construed as an endorsement of Fallon by Obama?

who is repelled by the overheated Hillary-hating rhetoric coming from some Obama supporters. Rebecca Traister has written a good feature for Salon. Go read the whole thing to see how bashing Hillary alienates even some women who have voted for Obama. Traister writes,

I began reporting this story in part because, as a 32-year-old woman who is more liberal than either candidate, and who was quite torn until Super Tuesday, I had found myself increasingly defensive of Clinton in the face of the Obama worship that rules the mostly white, liberal, well-educated circles in which I work and travel. I was confused by the saucer-eyed, unquestioning devotion shown by my formerly cynical cohorts, especially when it was accompanied, as it often was, by a sharp renunciation of Hillary Clinton, whose policies are so similar to her opponent’s. I was horrified by the frequent proclamations that if Obama did not win the nomination, his supporters would abstain from voting in the general election, or even vote for John McCain. I was suspicious of the cultlike commitment to an undeniably brilliant and inspiring man — but one whom even his wife calls “just a man.”

I am a loud feminist and a longtime Clinton skeptic who was suddenly feeling that I needed to rationalize, apologize for, or even just stay quiet about my increasing unease with the way Clinton was being discussed. Meanwhile, I was getting e-mails from men I didn’t know well who approached me as a go-to feminist to whom they could express their hatred of Hillary and their anger at her staying in the race — an anger that seemed to build with every one of her victories. One of my closest girlfriends, an Obama voter, told me of a drink she’d had with a politically progressive man who made a series of legitimate complaints about Clinton’s policies before adding that when he hears the senator’s voice, he’s overcome by an urge to punch her in the face.

Obama fans, you don’t have to like Clinton, but if you want to help your candidate, keep your feelings about Hillary in perspective (or if you can’t do that, at least keep them to yourself).

Your guy’s voting record in the U.S. Senate is almost exactly the same as hers, as big-time Obama supporter DemocraticLuntz has shown. The policies proposed by Obama and Clinton during this campaign are very similar as well.

Remember: your candidate is winning now and will need all hands on deck after the primaries are over. You don’t want to drive away anyone who might otherwise be inspired to volunteer for Obama.

The usually-fascinating diarist poblano (see diary history here) has put up an interesting analysis of how a possible “unity bounce” for our nominee would affect the general election outcome.

Poblano cites a piece by Chuck Todd, who argues:

Currently polls show McCain either narrowly ahead or even with both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. It is impressive considering how poorly the GOP, and specifically the president, are viewed by the public.

  But it is a faux lead. If the de facto Democratic nominee is clear within the next 4-6 weeks, that person will see a poll bounce. And according to GOP pollster Steve Lombardo, it could be one heck of a bounce, like post-convention. He anticipates the Democratic candidate will move up 10 points once the primary race is over.

Click through to see how poblano calculates a bounce like that would affect Obama’s chances of winning key states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

I hope he’s right, although I am not convinced that such a large “unity bounce” would materialize.

Meanwhile, Daily Kos front-pager smintheus showed yesterday that the extended primary season has a lot of benefits for the Democratic Party as a whole. Look at Pennsylvania, where the primary is almost always meaningless. Democrats are registering enormous numbers of new voters as both Clinton and Obama mobilize supporters. Also, large numbers of people registered as independents or Republicans have switched to Democrat:

Perhaps the most remarkable news is that Democrats now hold a majority in two suburban Philadelphia counties that have been predominantly Republican for many years, Montgomery and Bucks.

[…]

And nearby in both Chester and Delaware, where four months ago Republicans had about 65,000 more registered voters per county, the deficit has been cut to 35,000.

[…]

All in all, there have been massive Democratic gains this winter in suburban Philly. Democrats also picked up another 50,000 registrations in Philadelphia.

[…]

What does it mean for the April 22 primary? Philadelphia and suburbs have added about 140,000 new Democrats this year, the rest of the state another 167,000.

Even if some of these people are Democrats-for-a-day who want to vote for Obama in the primary just to dispense with Hillary, the majority are likely to vote again for Democrats in the general election.

Keep in mind that Gore won Pennsylvania by about 200,000 votes, but Kerry only won by about 100,000 votes. The people mobilized to participate in this exciting primary season could make the difference between us or McCain winning that crucial state in November.

Relax, Obama supporters. Let the primaries play out and stop screaming for Hillary to drop out now.

If you still don’t believe that the idea of Barack Obama as a consistent opponent of the Iraq War is a “fairy tale,” read this diary by Marcy Winograd:

By dusk on Wednesday, the California Obama campaign had purged almost all progressive anti-war activists from its delegate candidate lists.  Names of candidates, people who had filed to run to represent Obama at the August Democratic Party National Convention, disappeared, not one by one, but hundreds at a time, from the Party web site listing the eligibles.  The list of Obama delegate hopefuls in one northern California congressional district went from a robust 100 to an anemic 23, while in southern California, the list in Congressman Waxman’s district almost slipped out of sight, plunging from a high of 91 candidates to 17.  Gone were strong women with independent political bases.  

Who was left standing, still in the running for the Sunday delegate caucuses? The bundlers and their girlfriends, the men and women who skirt campaign finance laws by bundling cash, a bundle of $2,000 here and a bundle of $2,000 there — and some, though certainly not all, of the Obama precinct captains, loyalists from day one.

If CA is any example, progressive leaders in Penn better watch their back.

In anticipation of Sunday’s populist delegate caucuses, the Obama campaign deleted 950 from its list of 1700 delegate hopefuls. The Clinton campaign only knocked off 50 of their 950 delegate candidats.

[…]

Who did the Obama campaign kick to the curb?  Brian Leubitz, a Calitics blogger with a mighty pen, Tad Daley, former policy advisor to Cranston and Kucinich and a career fellow with the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Alan Toy, a disabled rights activist and Chair of the American Civil Liberties Union chapter in Santa Monica, and a nameless, yet tireless grassroots volunteer who toiled nights making precinct maps …. and me.

Marcy Winograd.

In case you’re wondering where you’ve heard Winograd’s name before, she was the peace activist who challenged Congresswoman Jane Harman in the Democratic primary for her district in 2006. Harman won that primary by a 2-1 margin, but the challenge did seem to improve her voting behavior.

As Winograd mentioned, one of the bloggers at the California progressive community blog Calitics was among those purged from the delegate candidate list. Calitics already put up a bunch of links to news reports about the purge of anti-war activists from the Obama delegate lists:

I just spent about 40 minutes at a bar in Oakland talking with two absolutely crushed Obama supporters who got cut from the delegate list in CA-9. They couldn’t believe what happened. And they want answers.

I guess they weren’t the change they’ve been waiting for after all.

When will the Obama campaign remove Colin Kahl, the guy who wants to keep 60,000 to 80,000 U.S. troops in Iraq at least through the end of 2010, from his position as coordinator of Obama’s working group on Iraq?

UPDATE: The Obama campaign caved after a public outcry:

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008…

It still worries me that their instinct was to get peace activists off the Obama delegate lists.

David Mizner has written a diary I recommend to all supporters of Barack Obama. It highlights behavior that inadvertently harms Obama’s campaign by driving away some Democrats who otherwise lean toward him.

Mizner was an active supporter of John Edwards for president, as his diary history shows. Like me, he wrote regular front-page posts advocating for Edwards at MyDD. But after Edwards dropped out, Mizner voted for Obama in the New York primary on February 5.

On its surface, Mizner’s latest piece is an inside-baseball critique of editorial bias at the Daily Kos. He demonstrates how Markos Moulitsas has in recent months become an uncritical cheerleader for Obama, after being skeptical toward all the Democratic candidates in 2007.

But I recommend this diary not because you should care about what some blogger thinks of Markos. Rather, I think Mizner has touched on the alienation many Democrats feel when they encounter the overheated Hillary-hating and Obama-loving rhetoric from Obama fans:

It’s no coincidence that in the last two months the site has devolved into a propaganda organ for the Obama campaign. Although it’s aggravating to come across Drudgery at the top of the rec list and casual claims that Hillary is a sociopath, it’s not the nastiness that’s worrisome (freedom is untidy); it’s the laziness, the unquestioning partisanship, the lack of brainwork. These days at Daily Kos there’s no exchange of ideas, no debate. Obama is good, Hillary is bad, case closed.

It’s probably not wise to go looking to Daily Kos or any other political blog for Truth, but the progressive blogosphere fancies itself the reality-based community, and that commodity is in short supply at the mothership. If you’re a progressive untouched by enthusiasm for Obama or hatred for Hillary, you must be wondering what race Kossacks are watching. In the race I’ve watched, Obama has not campaigned as a transformative progressive. In the race I’ve watched, he has failed to offer a single bold policy initiative, coddled a virulent homophobe for political purposes, voted to fund the war in Iraq and justified doing so by parroting a disgusting rightwing talking point, echoed the GOP claim that the Social Security system is in crisis, refused to join Edwards in opposing the Global War on Terror framework, joined George Bush in seeking to expand the size of the military by 92,000 troops, said he would increase the military budget, supported corporate free trade, enlisted Tom Daschle to assemble a base of support on K-Street, raised buckets of cash fromlobbyist-law firms, and bashed unions for helping Edwards until he himself was the beneficiary of labor’s largesse. Et Cetera.

A dozen links in that passage didn’t come through when I copied and pasted, but click to the original diary and you’ll see that Mizner has the links to back up what he is saying.

This passage also made a crucial point that Obama supporters rarely acknowledge:

I’m not going to defend the Clinton campaign’s race-baiting or its praising of McCain at Obama’s expense. Nor, though, will I defend the Obama’s campaign sexism, or its willingness to claim race-baiting where there is none. I believe history will show both that the Clnton campaign wanted to turn Barack into the “black candidate” and that the Obama campaign wanted to turn Hillary into the racist candidate. They both exploited racial resentment.

Several links in that paragraph didn’t come through. The most important one is to the memo that the Obama campaign distributed in South Carolina, which sought to portray the Clintons as using racially divisive rhetoric. That memo was designed to give Obama an edge among blacks and white liberals, and it worked, but it also distorted Hillary’s comments about Lyndon Johnson and Bill’s comments about the “fairy tale.”

My impression is that intense Obama supporters can’t understand why everyone isn’t as outraged as they are over the latest stupid comment by some Clinton supporter. First, the Obama campaign has crossed lines too, as Mizner points out. Second, many progressives have, according to Mizner,

abdicated the job of trying to hold Obama accountable. Both Move On and Blue Majority gave him endorsements without offering so much as constructive criticism. Kos himself hasn’t written one word critical of Obama in several weeks, during which time Obama has sent nothing but alarming signals on the sphere’s signature issue: Iraq. Unlike Hillary, he wouldn’t ban corporate mercenaries and his advisors are describing his modest withdrawal plan as a “best case scenario” and calling for a large residual force. Also unmentioned by Kos and the other Daily Kos front page bloggers is Obama’s attempt to denythat he once held certain liberal positions.

Again, the links did not come through, but you can find many in the diary.

When Obama puts up red flags, and onetime reasonable progressives have nothing but praise for him and condemnation for Hillary, it turns off a lot of Democrats.

Speaking of the devolution of political discourse lately, I can’t resist linking to a diary Mizner wrote last month: “Do You Miss Edwards Yet?” The opening paragraph was a classic:

Ah, 2007. How I long for those halcyon, pre-Ferraro days when a major issue in the primary was the dangerous influence of corporate power. Thanks to Edwards, the Big Three battled over who would be more willing and able to take on corporations. There was reason to doubt that the policies proposed by Obama and Clinton–and even by Edwards, perhaps–would deliver the bold change they promised, but at least the issue of corporate power was front and center. Now, though, with Edwards gone, the issue is barely an issue, and somewhere CEOs and Wall Street execs are laughing.

Ain’t that the truth.

The Republican presidential candidate is at a big financial disadvantage compared to the likely Democratic nominee.

John Kerry raised over $40 million in March 2004 after clinching the Democratic nomination. He was still far behind George W. Bush in the money race, because the president had not had to compete in the primaries and could devote a lot of time to big-ticket fundraisers.

John McCain clinched the Republican nomination on February 5 and formally won enough delegates to be the nominee on March 4. But he only managed to raise $15 million in March. According to Marc Ambinder, Mitt Romney has promised to help McCain raise another $15 million or so from Romney supporters.

To put that in perspective, Barack Obama raised more than $40 million in March, and Hillary Clinton, who is quite the longshot for the Democratic nomination, managed to raise about $20 million that month.

At MyDD, Jonathan Singer noted that Obama raised more money in March alone than McCain raised in the entire first quarter.

I know a lot of you are worried about the continuing Democratic contest, but I think we should relax and let the rest of the primaries play out. The likelihood is that after Puerto Rico votes on June 7, Obama will be far enough ahead that the superdelegates will move decisively in his direction.

Meanwhile, McCain isn’t going to be building any kind of warchest that Obama can’t match.

Over at Century of the Common Iowan, noneed4thneed put up a link to the latest Rasmussen poll of Iowa. Holy cow–Obama beats McCain here 46 percent to 42 percent, but Hillary loses to McCain 51 percent to 36 percent. McCain has hardly ever campaigned here and finished fourth in the Republican caucuses. Noneed4thneed noted that Rasmussen found

McCain leads Clinton by a two-to-one margin among unaffiliated voters. However, Obama leads McCain 46% to 37% among those same voters.

The latest round of Survey USA polls had a similar finding (sorry, no link). Obama and Hillary look poised to win a comparable number of electoral votes against McCain, but they do it in different ways. Obama was ahead in Iowa against McCain, but Hillary was trailing the Republican. Assuming Obama is the Democratic nominee, I have to believe he would be heavily favored to win Iowa. Rasmussen's poll may show his lead within the margin of error, but Obama has a huge volunteer army to draw on here from the caucuses, while McCain didn't build any kind of organization in Iowa.

Barack Obama says he will withdraw U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months if elected president. He was recently endorsed by Bill Richardson, who advocated keeping no residual troops in Iraq (combat or otherwise).

So I was intrigued by this story from the New York Sun about a confidential policy paper written by an adviser to Obama:

http://www.nysun.com/national/…

The paper, obtained by The New York Sun, was written by Colin Kahl for the center-left Center for a New American Security. In “Stay on Success: A Policy of Conditional Engagement,” Mr. Kahl writes that through negotiations with the Iraqi government “the U.S. should aim to transition to a sustainable over-watch posture (of perhaps 60,000-80,000 forces) by the end of 2010 (although the specific timelines should be the byproduct of negotiations and conditions on the ground).”

Mr. Kahl is the day-to-day coordinator of the Obama campaign’s working group on Iraq. A shorter and less detailed version of this paper appeared on the center’s Web site as a policy brief.

Both Mr. Kahl and a senior Obama campaign adviser reached yesterday said the paper does not represent the campaign’s Iraq position.

I would like a stronger statement from Obama that he categorically rules out keeping tens of thousands of troops in Iraq through the first two years of his administration.

Otherwise Bill Clinton will be proven correct: the idea of Obama as a consistent opponent of the Iraq war is a “fairy tale.”

A lot has changed since I offered my last predictions on who the next vice president. For starters, both parties are fairly certain of who their nominees will be. Alliances have shifted; political fortunes have risen and fallen. We've seen some early signs of what the general election will bring. Therefore, there's no reason not to start talking vice-presidents. In Part I I'll take a look at possible Obama vice-presidental picks, and in the interest of fairness, I'll look at some McCain picks in Part II. The links are to some YouTube videos that illustrate the person's personality and style.

Heavyweight contenders: 

VA Sen Jim Webb: There's a lot of buzz surrounding Sen. Webb right now, and for good reason. He brings a lot to the table, first and foremost of which is deep military and government experience as a Vietnam vet and fmr Sec. of the Navy. He's a fresh face, from a swing state, and a macho Democrat who personifies change. Plus, what better for a candidate who looks to heal the racial divide than a Vietnam veteran who is happily married to a Vietnamese-American?

BUT, Webb does have a few black eyes. He is often gruff, and could have the possibility of making gaffes on the trail. He also has been married three times and may have skeletons in his closet. Plus, considering a sitting senator hasn't won the presidency since Kennedy–should we run a Senator/Senator ticket?

VA Gov. Tim Kaine: Gov. Kaine was one of the first public officials to jump on the Obama bandwagon…before there was a bandwagon. He's a popular and successful governor of a southern swing state to boot. On top of that, he has a sterling record: missionary in Honduras, graduate of Harvard Law, lawyer specializing in cases of people denied housing based on race or disability and crime-busting mayor and governor who got the state through the Virginia Tech tragedy. On paper, he's perfect.

BUT, he's only been governor for two years, bringing up the experience question. Also, he carries little name recognition outside of Virginia. Further, he's only passable on the stump–not a great orator.

NM Gov. Bill Richardson: Recent convert to the Obama camp, Gov. Richardson has long been touted as vice-president to whoever the nominee would turn out to be. To make a long story short, he's got experience out the wazoo. He's also Latino, offering the potential to make a historic candidacy even more historic. He's also well-known around the country, can be firebreather on the stump and a generally good-humored person with a very fashionable beard.

BUT, a lot of the country has an opinion of him as a political sycophant (as seen best on a pre-Iowa SNL skit). He's also known to make gaffes and is often hit-or-miss when he speaks. Also, it remains to be seen if a Richardson veep run would alienate the Clinton camp, still sore over his defection.

Be glad Hillary Clinton didn’t take the advice of the Barack Obama supporters who have been urging her to drop out for more than a month now.

Democrats are making huge gains in voter registration in Pennsylvania, a must-win state for our nominee this fall.

Does anyone think this would be happening if both candidates weren’t working the state hard in the runup to the primary?

Smintheus has more on the Pennsylvania trends at Daily Kos:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…

And Jonathan Singer adds some useful analysis on Pennsylvania at MyDD:

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008…