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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The Hillary Clinton Deathwatch

The Hillary Deathwatch widget from Slate…probably the most timely thing that I’ve come across in recent days. Apparently, the internet news mag started this great little graphic last week. As I’ve been saying for so long here, it’s only a matter of time before Clinton needs to throw the towel in and now I’m glad someone caught on with a great little graphic. Enjoy!

The Hillary Clinton Deathwatch

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Delegate & Superdelegate Trackers: A Post-Indiana/North Carolina Update

In a 24 hour period, Sen. Barack Obama has started to sound presidential and Sen. Hillary Clinton’s message is getting lost in the weeds. Take a look at just a few minutes of Obama’s speech from North Carolina and you’ll see what I mean. If you’re the presumptive nominee, you should be talking like this guy.

If this is our Democratic nominee (and I have said in this space for a long time that I think he is) the question now becomes, how did Hillary fall so hard?

As we so often do here at thinkmatter, let’s look at her messaging. Peter S. Canellos of the Boston Globe yesterday had picked up exactly the line that the Clinton campaign had been hoping every reporter would. Specifically, a softer, less opportunistic and distinctly blue collar Hillary who understands the needs of everyday people.

“Few politicians in American history have carried less of a reputation for “Cheers”-like camaraderie than the senator from New York, who was widely seen as cold and calculating.

But that stereotype has been cast aside by many voters, replaced by its positive twin: The same steely-eyed characteristics that made Clinton seem cold now make her seem purposeful; what was once seen as calculation is now determination.

Part of the transformation has been a matter of comparison. Some people think her opponent, Barack Obama, has an academic aloofness to him. Next to him, Clinton’s grittiness stands out in far sharper relief.”

This is an unprecedented success for a candidate, and an especially unusual one for a candidate like Hillary, whose past reputation has been weighed down by perceptions that she’s an…ahem, ‘rhymes with rich’.

Had this cream-puff story carried any water into the May 6^th contests, she would have gotten a pass for the last few months she has spent essentially asking for the most unprecedented thing in American political history – crown her the nominee based on her own projection that she could be a better candidate against McCain. Ignore the numbers and vote tallies, she’s saying, and make me your nominee because I might have a better shot at winning in November.

Unfortunately, her campaign is faced with an entirely different storyline. Instead of the glowing reviews she was getting prior to Indiana/North Carolina, she woke up today faced with a sharp rebuke of her continued candidacy:

“Very early this morning, after many voters had already gone to sleep, the conventional wisdom of the elite political pundit class that resides on television shifted hard, and possibly irretrievably, against Senator Hillary Clinton’s continued viability as a presidential candidate.

The moment came shortly after midnight Eastern time, captured in a devastatingly declarative statement from Tim Russert of NBC News: “We now know who the Democratic nominee’s going to be, and no one’s going to dispute it,” he said on MSNBC. “Those closest to her will give her a hard-headed analysis, and if they lay it all out, they’ll say: ‘What is the rationale? What do we say to the undeclared super delegates tomorrow? Why do we tell them you’re staying in the race?’ And tonight, there’s no good answer for that.” Jim Rutenberg writes in today’s New York Times.

I understand the strength of her logic before Indiana/North Carolina. For many voters casting their ballots in a primary season, the ‘electability’ question is often taken into account when voting for a candidate. But after her showing in these primaries, it will be a Sisyphean effort to convince entire groups of electors (namely superdelegates and the Democratic Party establishment) to take this into account over and above the will of the voters.

Her arguments are now seen for the absurdity with which they were formulated. She has no measurable numbers on her side and now that she took such a huge hit in North Carolina, it would be difficult for her to achieve any viability from here on out.

Now, she says that she will fight until there is a nominee.

If you will permit me just one last thought before the unveiling of the Delegate and Superdelegate tracker. How long do we think the Republicans won’t latch themselves on to the following storyline: “The political ambitions of a few people are now superseding the interests of many Americans. Democrats aren’t bickering about policies, they are simply bickering about ambition. It’s not about becoming president, it’s about what you want to do when you are president. Sen. McCain is going around the country touting his plans to solve real problems for real Americans, and Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton are simply trying to outwit and outflank each other just for the sake of a seat in the Oval Office. The Democrats arent’ talking about real issues.” Commence launch of potential GOP talking points.

Staying in this race hurts her and it hurts Sen. Obama. Let’s see what she does after the last primary in June. The smart money might be on her striking a deal to become V.P. prior to the Puerto Rico Primary. Of course, the even smarter money might be on Obama marginalizing her by addressing only Senator McCain in his speeches and letting the press hammer her into dropping out.

All speculation aside, if we see anything at all in the next few weeks, it’s going to be Hillary scrambling.

And now, the long awaited Delegate and Superdelegate Trackers.

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‘Meet The Press’ and ‘This Week’ Now Relevant to the Presidential Primary for the First Time

NBC’s Sunday morning juggernaut and ABC’s less successful little brother have finally achieved some relevance outside the Beltway. The Boston Globe, Washington Post and New York Times are all referring to the cross-network debate that Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama held between themselves on NBC’s Meet the Press and ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopolous just prior to the primary showdown this Tuesday. Opinions about suspending the gas tax dominated the jabs Clinton and Obama threw at one another and made the network execs happy when they woke up Monday morning to the front page news about the sparring on their shows.

To the average American these programs are on the channels they flip through on their way to cartoons for the kids. The only audience that they really attract are journalists, wonks and of course, campaign staffers. Perhaps this is why the candidates took pains to throw out indirect questions about the other’s competence in handling public affairs; it allowed them to score hits with the live viewers and facilitate a carry over into print the next day (where average Americans will actually see it).

A good strategy for both camps and an especially economical way to get a cadre of reporters talking about you when you’ve only done one TV interview. Playing these two shows at the same time and obliquely engaging in an unchoreographed debate is a shotgun blast that achieves some good print attention on issues you want voters to think about before going to the polls in Indiana and North Carolina.

Hillary wants to get her populist message accross so that voters will think about the price of gas when driving to their polling location. She wants them to think about her electability and if she can handle other  crisis’s around the world . Not a bad tactical move for her messaging and by attacking Obama, she maintains the offense that could win her one (or both) of these states.

Seizing the opportunity with Tim Russert, Obama came out Sunday to put to bed his relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and made a further plea to the American people that Clinton’s gas tax was simply Washingtonspeak. He knows that his back is against the wall and if Hillary is scoring points with a plan to immediately reduce the burden on America’s wallets, he had better have a quick quip to cut her down.

I’m starting to doubt his effectiveness in these past few days and am growing less confident that Indiana and North Carolina are going to pan out according to Obama’s designs. Sure, Clinton is still trailing overall (and badly, I might add) but thus far his jabs have had soft landings since the Rev. Wright debacle. Obama seems wobbly on his feet and isn’t snapping off hard punches like he was in the early rounds. I think Hillary has rattled him and it might take some time after these next two primaries for him to get back into his former fighting shape.

Can I keep the boxing metaphor alive any longer? I’ll stop here, but I will say that I can’t wait for the results tomorrow night. Boxing, boxing, boxing.

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Why Clinton Can Never Win (and a Post-Pennsylvania Delegate Tracker Update)

Barack Obama would desperately like to shoot the underdog. She’s wounded and she limits the healthy members of the group from making any forward progress. Too bad the small town people in Pennsylvania who cling to guns or religion couldn’t spare the ammo to deliver the fatal shot.

And so we move on. The American media is jumping on the Clinton camp’s statements that this fight will go to June or even to the convention this summer. She has pointed out that with this victory, and if you include the vote totals from Florida and Michigan, she is leading in the popular vote. Which is true, but Florida and Michigan aren’t in play.

The fact remains that Clinton is still battling from behind. She is trailing in the delegate count, popular vote totals (sans Florida and Michigan) and the number of contests won.

She’s losing in all the categories that everyone likes to call ‘objective measures’ and seeing this, Senator Clinton knows that she must cast doubt on Senator Obama to have any hope of making further headway. Or if not headway, she can hope to further damage his now vulnerable persona.

Expect Clinton to hammer on the electability question and claim that her victories are more meaningful for November, despite there being fewer of them.

Let’s see her take on electability first. Senator Clinton is claiming that Obama cannot be elected over McCain because he is too untested and too open to the vicious attacks the Republicans will throw at him. This is the smart move on her part. Her campaign has been pointing to his inexperience from Day One and as we get closer to November, this is just another way of her illustrating her experience over his.

However, she is just as open to this argument as Obama is. Clinton’s negativity rating nationally is incredibly higher than either McCain or Obama and therefore the electability question cuts both ways. If she insists on going down this road, she will need to be prepared for the consequences.

Clinton’s second argument is that the states that went for her contain more swing voters that will be an important demographic in November. This might be the more solid claim she has on her side. Her appeal spans older people, working-class whites, and women – those independent minded voters who may have voted Democratic in the primary season, but will surely be tempted to vote Republican in November.

In theory, this is the right move for her. If she can claim the mantle of populist, her vote totals in swing states will only grow. Arguably, this does translate into her being the more ‘electable’ candidate in November.

But past performances are no indicator of future trends. If she can successfully argue the point, I still doubt it will mean a perceptible difference in the outcome of the nomination. She has barely made a dent in Obama’s delegate totals even though she is picking up larger, more independent-minded Purple States.

The numbers simply don’t match her arguments – nor does the thought that she is more electable than Obama. With nearly 20 years in the national spot light, those swing voters that liked her in Pennsylvania have six months to remember why they typically vote for a Republican for president.

Despite her win, her arguments are only words and do not transform the numbers that simply aren’t on her side. She is building a house of cards that may topple with her having to accept defeat or battle bitterly for a runner-up Veep spot on the ticket. I just don’t see this going her way.

And now… the new Delegate Tracker.

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