After sifting through the absolutely horrifying stories about the Chinese earthquake and the refusal of the Burmese junta to let aid workers aid, it was a relief to get to the domestic politics section of the New York Times this morning.
There, however, I came across an article (buried back on page A18), A Usually Legal Practice That Wears Black Eyes that struck me as a little bit funny, a little bit sad, and as a big reminder about why Obama and his campaign are valuably different.
Basically, it's a story of the Clinton campaign's reliance on "street money" or "walking around money." The humor is that, in a move reminiscent of the plan to pay bloggers for pro-Clinton posts, the Clinton campaign essentially has to buy its support -- and it still lost. (Even if such measures -- and/or Obama's refusal to engage in them -- made the difference in Texas and Pennsylvania.)
I delved back into the world of cable news yesterday afternoon after a weeks long self imposed ban on all things CNN and MSNBC. And I was pleasantly surprised by something I heard on Hardball. The lead in to the video below was, of course, the voting along racial divides. Then Bob Herbert says that the division between Obama and "white working class voters"(I'm beginning to despise that phrase) is not so much about race, but about generational divisions. Which is very true, but the media thinks race is more explosive and easier to define. Then Chuck Todd says something that gave me a shiver....
In the aftermath of the Reverend Wright tornado, many of Barack Obama’s most ardent supporters have begun to feel a bit of trepidation, a kind of uncertainty that is deeply unsettling. What was easily the most trying week for the Obama campaign appeared to follow a week that was nearly as bad. With the Clinton campaign on the war path, pressing their message that Obama’s candidacy would be doomed in November, and with a hungry media, happy to oblige in repetition, it has become difficult for some to wade through the spin to the truth. Is November really slipping from Obama’s grasp? Is the nomination?
A significant fraction of the people voting for Clinton in the Pennsylvania Democratic Primary have no plans to vote for her in the fall.
According to the CNN exit poll, in an Obama:McCain match up 15% of those voting in the Democratic primary would vote for McCain in November. Of these voters, 90% reported voting for Hillary Clinton. In a Clinton:McCain match up, 10% of the Pennsylvania Democratic voters indicate that they would vote for McCain. Of these, 69% voted for Obama in the primary and 31% voted for Clinton.
Clearly, Obama voters were reflecting greater Democratic Party loyalty than the Clinton voters. Were these disaffected Regan Democrats? Were racism and misogyny or did these voters never intend to vote for either candidate and were simply creating mischief.
If these votes are discounted from the total, the margin of Clinton's victory was 6.2 rather than 9.2%.
This has nothing to do with race, god, guns, abortion, or anything Wright said, that's a list of excuses. It's about strategy. It was the predominately Black urban areas Obama didn't do well enough in that killed him. Another diarist pointed out he did better in rural areas than he expected to. Democrats win PA with a proportionally larger turnout in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia than in rural areas. Obama didn't get the proportionally larger turnout in urban areas he needed; that cost him the primary and will cost him the general.
Only Pennsylvanians can win Pennsylvania. We were fighting a 3 way battle here; Obama's people, his supporters in PA who are used to running things, and Hillary's lead. We've won this state by fighting the Republicans with everything we have; we know how to win here, it takes 110%, and we can't do it without autonomy and unconditional support from National. Applying a bit of cultural relativism here would go a long way; we already know how to win here. Don't tell us to do something else and be surprised whey you lose. You can never win PA doing things your way, but we can win it for you if you let us do things right, and play by our rules.
Democrats are divided. Progressives once certain that they would support the Party nominee, are now, no longer sure that they can. People on the Left for the first time in their lives are looking to the "Right." Staunch Liberals state they will vote Republican in 2008 if the candidate of their choice is not the Party's nominee. Many Democrats say they will not vote at all. Much damage has been done. The political process has become a play for power or an attempt to create chaos.
I know this is exceptionally discouraging to many, but I believe that Ed Rindell's comment about the people of his state can possibly be extrapolated to many states in the GE: "This country isn't ready for a black president." That people would use THAT excuse to vote against a great candidate is stunning to me, but I think Obama will have to talk about it more as the campaign stretches on...
Here's a link with more anecdotal stories from Obama volunteers
Barack Obama now leads Hillary Clinton by over 150 elected pledged delegates, which is more than 15 times her net gain of 10 delegates in the Pennsylvania primary.
Hillary Clinton appropriately calls her Pennsylvania win an "overwhelming victory". With less than thrice (408) the total delegates of Pennsylvania (158) to be elected in the remaining races, what kind of superlative of "overwhelming victory" does she imagine to be given to her by the universe?
Another way of making Obama's abstract delegate lead of 150+ very concrete is this list of Clinton's victories which she has described as blowouts, landslides and game changers and which combined give her less than a net gain of 150 delegates: Pennsylvania (10), Texas (-5), Ohio (7), California (38), Massachusetts (17), New York (46), Tennessee (12), New Mexico (2), New Jersey (11), Arizona (6), Rhode Island (5). Obama leads Clinton by the equivalent of these huge victories in big states.
I’ve been thoroughly disappointed all week about the result of Pennsylvania’s primary, but finally sucked it up this morning and took a look at the New York Times exit polls to try to get an understanding of Pennsylvania’s demographics and what caused Clinton’s victory (and what, if anything, Obama needs to do differently there to win this fall).
In doing so, I stumbled upon some statistics that strongly suggest that McCain supporters voting for Clinton could have caused a three percentage-point swing in Clinton’s favor. While this would obviously not be enough to change the victor in the Pennsylvania primary, it appears that this phenomenon (first observed in the Texas primary) is having more than a trivial effect on the overall contest. My analysis is below the fold.
Just as the Clinton campaign keeps putting forth different ways to count the votes (and by extension, different ideas about which votes should be counted and which should be discounted), they have changed their story on how much money they have and how much they have earned several times in the past week alone. Where are we now? Let's take a look.
This diary was prompted by a conversation I had with my wife when some talking head reiteraated the "Clinton double digit win" story again this morning. When I said that was not true, my wife responded "she did win by ten per cent". I figured I'd check it out. On Tuesday my recollection was that the margin was somewhere between 9 and 10 per cent. Checking both the official Pennsylvania website and CNN revealed a fascinating anomaly. An anomaly that CNN needs to explain. More below.
Earlier today, a diary was posted bringing to light the impact that a bunch of college kids in Pennsylvania had in keeping Clinton's victory below 15% and reducing her delegate pickup by at least two. Let's show them that we appreciate their efforts.
He's lost certain constituencies and will continue to lose them if he doesn't expand his message.
I will preface this with the fact that I like Obama, but there are 5 reasons why he's getting the smackdown and they have nothing to do with negative attacks and everything to do with the weakness of the campaign and the message.
If he doesn't address these areas he's going to continue to get hit with them in the general.
I believe this is a reasonable perception of what Hillary has over Obama. It has nothing to do with anything about the changing politics as we know it. That message doesn't work with everyone. No message does. It might even seem unrealistic to some.
I have been casually tracking Obama's new donors over the past 24 hours. Last night the count past through 1,375,000 mark. This evening at about 8:30 the count was 1,428,959.
Obama's average donation is about $96. That's about 5 million in the past 24 hours from new donors alone. That doesn't include offline contributions and donations from previous donors.
In the late afternoon, using the $96 per contribution estimate, he was clocking over a 1/4 of a million per hour. It looks like Obama is doing fine.
Of course who knows what misspeaking Hillary's numbers really are.
What's remarkable is the sharp increase in new donors after Obama loses the primary. That means that more people are engaging in a more substantive manner.
Yesterday I asked dozens of voters around the Lehigh Valley to talk about what they did and did not admire in the presidential candidates. I sought out areas where I thought I'd hear some of the harsher judgments on them.
What I didn't hear endorsed by even a single voter, Democrat or Republican, were any of those scandals that the traditional media has obsessed over during the last few months. Nobody mentioned "bittergate". Obama's relation to Ayers came up only once; an older couple in Allentown thought the Ayers allegations were confusing and irrelevant. The words "Bosnia" and "sniper" never came up at all.
It's not that I didn't evoke some negative opinions. One middle-aged voter in an up-scale Allentown neighborhood declared that Hillary will bring in socialism, and she said with what appeared to be pride that she couldn't think of a single positive thing to say about Obama. But even so, nobody cared to mention the bizarre "scandals" that have loomed so large in media coverage. In fact only a single voter thought the Philadelphia debate was anything but a waste of time.
Most of the people I spoke to want the traditional media to drop the trivial nonsense and start informing voters about the issues they do care about: the economy, Iraq, healthcare, the mortgage crisis, outsourcing jobs. Nearly everybody agrees that the country is in crisis, and they want to know what the plan is to fix the mess. They have the quaint notion that the traditional media ought to take an interest in that as well.
Well, I need to correct one statement I just made. An activist I met outside a polling place did say he'll never vote for Obama because of Rev. Wright. But he's a Redstate blogger, a self-described neocon whose main complaint about the Iraq war is that Bush did not "bomb Iraq into a parking lot". Otherwise a jovial enough Republican, but hardly typical of the other voters I met - none of whom approve of the war or occupation of Iraq. In fact, one woman who'd like to vote for McCain in November said she really hopes he'll change his mind about staying in Iraq because McCain's position is untenable. So I think the right-wing bloggers have a corner on the Wright "scandal" for now. The public as a whole doesn't seem to realize that it's supposed to care.
Last night in my household was difficult. The Pennsylvania results sent me into a state of virtual despondency, and a pall descended over an otherwise frenetic and vibrant family normally quickened by the optimism of the two young college-aged adults in residence. We were indeed a sad lot, until a most extraordinary thing occurred.
As I sat licking my wounds and despairing for the future of our Republic, my son and I suddenly found ourselves completely transfixed by a late-night PBS airing of David Haig's excellent anti-war drama, My Boy Jack.
Quite by happenstance, and perhaps even by grace, two generations experienced simultaneously a reminder of exactly why we are joined together in this battle and why we will see it through to the finish.
There are superdelegates and supervoters. I am one of the latter, having sacrificed money, time, creativity and my health to volunteer for this campaign. The fact is Obama is still winning and is still the likely nominee, but I don't feel so hot right now.
Much of that has to do with the fact that I'm very sick with a horrible cough, fever and sore throat. I must have come into contact with a Hillary supporter in PA and gotten cooties from her negative campaigning and vile Deathmarch to Denver. She is poison, and I fear I've been temporarily infected.
