Things Younger Than John McCain

Thought you would all love this. I heard about the blog last week and never had a chance to post a link.

A couple of my favorite things that are younger than John McCain:

1). The Golden Gate Bridge

2). Penicillin

3). Minimum Wage

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Clinton Fights On & Obama Takes a Page from Karl Rove

Senator Hillary Clinton has hinted that she will keep her fight going until the convention, placating potential Florida and Michigan voters and in turn, bolstering her populist stance for a shot at VP.  

On the same day that the Obama camp is whispering to the press that he has moved on and has begun his search for a running mate, Clinton has declared publicly that she is willing to stay in as long as it takes.  Under the guise of counting Florida and Michigan’s primary votes, she is keeping herself relevant in the race and claiming, in no uncertain terms, that Obama is thinking prematurely about Veep candidates before her campaign has drawn its last breath.

You may think differently, but I’m still sold on the idea that Hillary’s camp is making these statements to preserve the overture that she is the only candidate that can begin the healing of the Dems if her name is next to Obama’s on the ballot.  Her immediate shift in messaging, on the same day as Obama’s ‘confidential search’ for a V.P. got underway is what clues us in on her thought process.

On the other side of the Democratic primary fight (you know, the one with the ‘potential nominee’ attacking the ‘presumptive nominee’?) Senator Barack Obama is now taking Sen. John McCain to task on ethics lapses. In so doing, Obama is also tipping his hand on what his strategy is going to look like in the fall.

Employing the Karl Rove tactic whereby a candidate should attack his opponents on issues where they are strong, Obama is going to attempt to get some miles out of questioning McCain’s (seemingly) stellar ethics record. The junior Senator from Illinois is calling McCain out for having lobbyists on his campaign staff, being caught for it and ultimately (and embarassingly) dismissing them.

And though I think that it is good strategy for Obama, and it fits well with his overarching message about McCain being ‘politics as usual’, I have to give credit to McCain’s staffers in their response to these charges. Mr. Obama, they said, still has not disclosed whether his campaign associates might also be lobbyists, which should raise questions about what the Senator might be hiding.

Kudos to you, McCain camp. You’ve properly dismissed the baggage you would carry into the General Election, admitted to it, let yourself be attacked on it but still maintained the moral high ground by essentially saying ‘if we’re willing to fire our lobbyists, why isn’t Obama doing the same thing?’

I hate to admit it. I like what Obama did here, but I like the McCain response better. The Obama strategists and messaging folks might take a good lesson out of this exchange – before you attack, you’d better be able to defend against a similar counter-attack.  

 

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Delegate Tracker: Reaching The End

Sen. Barack Obama has gained what could be the equivalent of the nomination, but at the high cost of dragging Hillary Clinton with him. Though she is not an outright Obama-nay-sayer anymore, she is still very much a part of this race and it is to her that a lot of attention is still focused.

Not that it’s a bad thing. The Obama-Clinton-2008-knock-down-drag-out-fight has registered thousands of new Democrats and has stirred up so much favorability for party this year that pundits are now predicting Dems to shatter records for unseating Congressional GOP incumbents. I’m still not sold on that latter point, but no one can deny the anti-Republican rhetoric that even some of the most conservative folks in America are using these days.

It’s not a good time be in any party other than the one with a gentleman named Barack Obama at it’s helm. And, just so there’s no confusion, I’m prepared to say that he is comfortably in control for until Election Day – though I doubt that I’m going out on much of a limb here. However, I am in the minority when I say that there will still be a role for Hillary Clinton in this new administration, and one that I believe can still involve her being called the first Madame Vice President.

If we’re going to talk about people who most deserve the Vice Presidency, no one should discount her from the list. She’s made the only electoral gains in states that Barack Obama must carry in the General Election and is the most prominent Democrat on everyone’s mind right now. She can also raise money by the boatload, her husband is a peerless force both inside and outside the party and she has had over a year in which she has softened her image in the eyes of the American public.

That being said, there is a general rule in politics that all presidential nominees follow: choose a running mate that cannot hurt you. He/she doesn’t have to help you, they just can’t hurt you. This is the consideration that all potential Vice Presidential candidates must receive and the metric by which all presidential candidates must use to justify their pick. If they hope to win, of course.

I honestly don’t see how Hillary Clinton, fighting on the undercard, has the potential to seriously hurt Obama’s chances.  Given all that she has proven in this race, she’s more of an asset to him than any other person out there.

The bottom line is that if there is a for a history making ticket, it’s right now. Obama would be an absolute fool for not considering her, especially for all that she brings to the table.

…And now a note about the latest Delegate Tracker.  It has been updated to reflect Obama’s majoirty of pledged delgates post-Kentucky/Oregon. However, NBC News has Obama leading in Delegates and Superdelegates and has added Sen. Edwards’ delegates to Obama’s totals. It doesn’t appear that the other news organizations have done this, thus the ‘zero’ under the NBC column. Enjoy.

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Hillary Clinton: Savior of the Democratic Party?

Sen. Hillary Clinton is positioning herself to be successful, relevant and powerful –  except not as President of the United States, but maybe as Vice President.

Reviewing what has happened in the past few weeks and months of this campaign, followers of current events will notice a pattern of positive reporting around the Democratic Party and the growing prospects of a Democratic win in November. You will also notice that the negative press around Clinton has not survived despite her continual, and somewhat intractable, campaign for the presidency.

In short, she has weathered the storm of criticism quite well. Sure, she lost Edwards. And even if she loses the rest of the primaries or bows out of the race, she will still be able to claim ‘gatekeeper’ status in this 2008 Election. Dare I say that the unanticipated savior of the Democratic Party has arrived?

Let me explain. Hillary is keeping the news cycle rolling in her favor. She wins West Virginia by a wide margin, and though it is a secondary story in the major media outlets, she’s getting ancillary press coverage that questions Obama’s viability with working class voters. She is still picking up superdelegates. She is choking up on CNN. And now she’s returning to the battlefield and on to the next primary with an undercurrent of doubt about Obama’s viability.

Hillary is still here and she is still getting the press to follow her every move.

Welcome to Bill Clinton Politics 101. And while I, and many other professionals, ascribe this notion of phoenix-like political recovery to him, it’s nothing new in the world of messaging and marketing.

For instance, The Politics of Messaging maintain that:

1). When you make a mistake, admit you were wrong (before being caught with a smoking gun)

2). Do nothing to reinforce a negative view about yourself, and

3). Take advantage of positive news by positioning yourself to benefit from it.

Her recent press coverage should bear this out. Not only has she succeeded in letting the public (tacitly) know that her mistake was being ostensibly defeated by Obama (obeying rule #1), but she’s doing so in a way that allows her to be magnanimous and take advantage of the positive press that all Democrats are getting these days.

Look at the way her speeches are non-controversial. Look at how she has been quietly campaigning at small stops and rallying every last supporter that is willing to come out for a stump speech. And lastly, look at the role Bill Clinton is playing by gathering his own set of voters in rural areas.

The Hillary of Today is much different than the Hillary of Yesterday. She is non-abrasive and sprinkling her message with determination. She’s becoming the Hillary that we always wanted and the one that we will want as Vice President. As in rule #2, the Clinton camp realizes that reinforcing the negative stereotype that many have of Hillary spells political death for her.  She’s playing nice because now, she has to.

So, she’s softening her image and softening the ground so that she can attempt a run at the Vice Presidency. If there is any hope of her becoming VP, it’s by doing exactly what she is doing. Getting people to like her and by exploiting Obama’s weaknesses by winning over white, older, blue collar men and women.

All this leads to rule #3. Hillary’s campaign is thriving on the perception that the Democratic Party is not united. What this means is that Hillary has and will continue to establish a constituency of her own.

Why has Hillary been saying that she can carry the independent voters in a General Election? Because she can. The one thing that Democrats need right now is a unified party with a unified message to finally put the nail in the coffin of the GOP in November.

Let’s face it, the only way Dems are getting good press these days is by the widely held assumption that there will a Democratic president in office in 2009. Here’s where Hillary takes advantage of the positive news.

All the Dems need is someone who can unify the party, start the healing and help them go to the convention stronger than ever. Since Hillary is winning independent voters in important states and she is no longer running contrary to Obama’s cause of hope, she is setting herself up as a potential unifier. Capitalize on the great press that Dems will win in November, swoop in and heal the party, and give them a powerful ticket all at once.

While I’m not saying that she will be successful, it is possible. And if this is the end she has in mind, she’s certainly playing her hand perfectly.

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Twitter

I finally caved in. Follow me on Twitter and you can see every witty thing I have to say.

http://twitter.com/Jefferson_Smith

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Superdelegate Tracker: Hillary Clinton Now Losing In Superdelegate Totals

It has officially gotten a lot worse for Senator Hillary Clinton’s Campaign. The word coming from the New York Times and the Associated Press is that Clinton is now trailing Senator Barack Obama in superdelegate totals and it looks like there might be no end to the bleeding.

In truth, this is the time that the superdelegates have been waiting for. Without a true winner in the past few months many of them were not willing to stick their neck out to shift the balance in favor of one candidate or the other. Obama’s recent North Carolina win last week, and the media coronation that followed, has assured any undecided super-d that the danger of declaring their allegiance too early has clearly passed.

Obama’s latest superdelegate pick-ups have now given him a lead in every measurable category over Hillary Clinton. As a result, one could easily envision a scenario in which Obama surges ahead in collecting superdelegates and claims the 2,025 total delegates/superdelegates he needs to clinch the nomination.

Those super-d’s who have decided to declare for Obama post-Indiana/North Carolina were, in all likelihood, simply waiting for an opportunity like this to present itself. I doubt that many will follow suit, but enough may that it could render the remaining primaries moot (perhaps even more so than they already are).

Though I will offer a word of warning here. As much as I have dedicated a lot of space to analyzing the faulty arithmetic that has led Senator Clinton into her own electoral quagmire, I have recently come to believe that keeping Hillary in the race might have a silver lining.

The current state of affairs, despite how important you may think it is for the Democrats to start the healing process, is actually beneficial to the Democratic Party. Dan Balz said it best last week when he mentioned the incredible success that the Dems are having in registering new party members and organically growing new campaign organizers. As soon as this history-making race went past Iowa and New Hampshire, voters for Hillary and Barack invested themselves even more in their party. The media circus also stirred up interest never before seen in a presidential election, much less a presidential primary season.

The Democratic Party has been reeling over the past 20 years. Its non-answer to the Republican marketing and issue machine has left it at an organizational disadvantage and funding disadvantage, which it is finally starting to pull out of. Thanks to a miserable 8 years of President Bush, Democrats are reaping the rewards of public opinion gone sour.

For as much as Hillary’s presence in this race is angering Obama supporters, threatening disunity and increasing the potential of alienating independent voters, calling the race because super-d’s flock to Obama’s side will hurt party organizing in the remaining states. Not only will voter’s feel robbed of the opportunity to have their voices heard (and the press will hammer that point home, I can assure you), the Democrats would lose the opportunity to register thousands of Democratic voters and build up an organization that has been lacking in so many ways for so many years. There’s no need to stop this train before it reaches its last stop.

Let the last vote be cast in Puerto Rico before we call it quits.

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