An extensive Public Policy Institute poll finds that Obama has increased his lead across all demographic groups in California.  The actual survey in .pdf is here.

First, the top line numbers:

Obama  54
McCain  37

Clinton  51
McCain  39

Quickest and easiest way for Barack Obama to finish off Hillary Clinton?  Easy, get the majority of uncommitted superdelegates to jump on board and shut this down before Clinton's kamikaze tactics irreparably damage both candidates.  In pursuing this strategy, Obama is likely focusing on three points.  One, Obama is almost certainly going to have the most pledged delegates by Denver, and if Clinton takes it away with the help of Supers, a lot of his supporters will walk or stay home in November, leading to landslide McCain victory.  Two, if Clinton continues the "kitchen sink" approach, he'll have no choice but to unload a ton of oppo on her in the seven weeks ahead of the Pennsylvania primary that will seriously damage both candidates and the Party; best to shut it down now.  Three, he's more electable than Clinton, and if they want to win the White House and expand Congressional majorities, get behind him now.  

Since the Potomac primaries, I've been making the case to anyone who will listen that Hillary Clinton can't win the Democratic nomination without destroying her general election chances.  But in response to Booman’s diary, after yesterday's results, I now see a plausible scenario for a HRC victory that will not irretrievably alienate a significant chunk of Obama supporters that she’ll need to win in the general election.  While each hypothetical event is independently plausible (I've studiously avoided improbable scenarios like a colossal Obama gaffe), it’s extremely unlikely that everything will fall into place as described.  In fact, I'd say the chances of Clinton pulling off a non-self-immolating victory are roughly the same as the likelihood of a somewhat inferior football team prevailing after trailing by three touchdowns with 8 minutes to go in the 4th quarter.  

Poll junkies rejoice!  The new Hotline poll is just out, and it's very extensive, with many questions focused on John McCain's 2008 electability along with the requisite Bush numbers.  Interesting questions abound like "Who Best Represents the Democratic Party?"  "Who Should Best Represent the Democratic Party?"  "Does the following Bush administration official MOSTLY HELP or MOSTLY HURT George W. Bush?"  Read the entire PDF file here.

The numbers how that McCain would be very difficult to beat in a general election, given his strong favorability numbers across the board.  There's a separate poll on Republican attitudes towards McCain, for those interested in his appeal in the GOP primaries.

Some selected key figures:

Bush job approval

Approve: 36
Disapprove: 61

It's silly to look to the futures market for guidance, I'll admit right off the bat.  Especially in the Leak investigation.  The only people who truly know what's going on -- the lawyers in the Special Prosecutor's office -- likely don't have the time to make trades on Intrade.  There's no evidence that the traders know any more than any other junkie refreshing Daily Kos, Drudge Report, HuffPost, Washington Note, etc., every twenty minutes.  They're probably reading the same tea leaves.  Still, even an observer as savvy as Joh Marshall noted the recent collapse of Miers futures, falling from $60.00 to $35.00 in one day.  Were insiders doing their best Dr. Frist impersonation and cashing in?  It may be nothing, but then again, who knows?  

However scant, every reasonably successful liar leaves a trace of writing for the public record.  And the LA Times has uncovered some of Miers' writings produced when she was President of the Texas Bar.  Miers' columns sound pretty mainstream -- she focused on diversity and legal representation for all, which are issues that are pretty standard fare in the legal industry.      

 

Playwright, filmmaker, and confidence-game aficionado David Mamet's advice to Democrats?  Take some poker lessons.  Then maybe the party will learn the value of aggression and seizing initiative.  It's a pretty good article, and one that should be of great interest to Kossacks if only because Mamet's poker strategies echo the attack and contrast strategy advocated by this blog and others.  Nut graph in extended:

So somebody (on Santorum's staff, maybe?) leaked the internal GOoPer poll showing a 37% support for the "nuclear option".  

The strange part of the story is here:

I was in Ohio monitoring the election with the Democratic Party in Lima.  There are reports of numerous incidents of intimidation and irregularities by Republican challengers, especially in minority neighborhoods.  This has scared people from voting.  

Look, one thing is clear: the Republicans pulled out all the stops in Ohio to keep minorities and other Democratic voters from voting.  We need to fight fire with fire.  

Kerry needs to push the Republican intimidation of minority voters.  It's not just enough to count the provisional ballots.  Because of Rethug tactics, a bunch of minority voters couldn't vote.  

WHAT ARE WE DOING ABOUT IT?

We caved in Florida.  We can't do it here.  Fight the Rethugs with everything you got.  And Kerry and the Democrats need to push the intimidation story 100%.  Because it's real.  I was there.

IT'S NOT THE PROVISIONALS.  IT'S INTIMIDATION OF MINORITIES!  THAT'S THE STORY WE HAVE TO PUSH.

Ben Konop, recently added to the Kos Dozen, will be on "Majority Report" tonight on Air America.  He should be on around 7:30 p.m.

All the folks who have generously contributed their time and/or money to Ben's surging campaign will have a chance to tune in to hear the candidate talk about his candidacy.  Don't worry, the Sox will be up 12-0 on the Yankees by then, so there won't be a scheduling conflict.  

 

As we've seen throughout the campaign, Bush has three tactics in answering any questions on Iraq.  One, change it to an attack on Kerry's "flip-flop".  If that doesn't work, then it's the canard about how the Iraqi people love freedom and we must not waver.  And if the questioner persists, the final trump card is: "The world is safer without Saddam in power."  

You can be sure he'll repeat this line over and over during the debates, challenging Kerry to answer whether he'd prefer to have Saddam in power every chance he gets.  

How should Kerry answer?  Has Kerry's answers thus far worked?  

Slate got its hands on a leaked video from the notorious Dole/Blitzer interview that shows Dole saying "he's right" after CNN played McCain's "You oughta be ashamed, Governor Bush" clip.  

I almost feel sorry for Dole.  Given his behind-the-scenes reluctance, he clearly doesn't revel in being a hatchet man these days.  But he seems to have done it out of some misbegotten sense of loyalty.  By participating in Bush's smear campaign, however reluctantly, Dole tarnished his own carefully-maintained rep as well.  

What these self-loathing "loyal" Republicans like Dole and McCain have forgotten is that their loyalty should first be to truth and country, and only second to their party.  Instead, GOP motto has become Republicans first, Americans second, decent, honorable human beings third.  

Sad, really, what that party has become.

Faced with diminishing productivity at work due to outrage over the Swift Boat Liars?  Enraged by the public's blase reaction to Bush's continued mendacity?

This hilarious  piece in Reason (of all places) nails what it's like to be an emotionally unstable blogger in this heated election.  

Is Kerry floating the "Gephardt fits all the criteria I've laid out" meme as a ploy to generate excitement for an eventual Edwards pick?  

I blogged about this possibility last week, and it looks like that's how it's playing out.  Today, the press corps and Dem activists shrugged and groaned when the Browless One looked inevitable...at least until the Edwards rumors started to fly again.  

Had Kerry not done the bait & switch, the choice of Edwards would've been seen as predictable & inevitable.  Now, there's palpable suspense as people are hanging by their nails waiting to see who's tapped for the job.  So the Geppie trial balloon may well have been a brilliant ploy to generate excitement for a predictable choice, if Edwards does end up on the ticket.

It's not yet clear how exactly Kerry's planning to attack Bush.  As this NY Times piece states, the campaign is still formulating a strategy.  Right now, he's got multiple attacks.  "This is the biggest say-one-thing-but-do-another president in the modern history of the United States", Kerry would scold in his verbose manner.  Or he talks of Bush's "stubborn" leadership leading the country down the cliff.  It seems both attacks are terrific independently, but together they render his message somewhat incoherent.  (The press and the general voters, we all know, likes a meme, a label that can be easily attached.)  

What I suggest is a two-pronged strategy:

Mike Oxley (R-OH-4), the chairman of the House Financial Services committee, is one of the major fundraisers for Republicans nationwide.  Despite representing a working class industiral district, Oxley has been the archetypal Republican corporate shill, grabbing tons of corporate money from PACS in exchange for writing tax breaks and corporate giveaways for the banking and financial services industry, as this overview of Oxley's fundraising details.   Indeed, Oxley's indefatigable thirst for corporate money and influence peddling has helped Ohio Republicans dominate state politics.

Now comes word that he may be implicated in a scandal involving one of his chief fundraisers - the top lobbyist for mortgage finance giant Freddie Mac.

[I posted the following on my blog, but I'm interested to see if fellow Kossack Clarkies agree with the analysis.  Thanks.]

So Wes Clark has dropped out.  Having watched various Clark appearances on C-SPAN, I couldn't help but think he still would be the strongest general election candidate, had he been given the chance.  The reasons why I supported initially remained: He still has by far the most glowing resume and politically attractive biography of the contenders; he has a keen understanding of foreign policy and was a quick study on domestic issues; he's a good speaker who has improved markedly in stump speaking and debating in four months time; and he was against the Cheney/Wolfowitz War.  Unlike Dean and Kerry, he remains the candidate most resistant to Republican smears.  Unlike Dean and Edwards, he'll be credible on national security matters.  Unlike everyone else, his history of political independence will actually help him in the general election with swing voters.   And unlike Kerry (but like Edwards and Dean), he'll give people a reason to vote for him instead of merely against Bush.  

But what Ryan Lizza says here is right on: Clark's candidacy hinged on being the electable anti-Dean, and once Dean self-destructed, Clark never really found his bearings.

Ironically, Clark suffered the same problems that Dean suffered: namely, in a primary season where the press and the voters are concentrating solely on "electability" and the horse race, harmless "gaffes" are magnified into headline events, to be dissected endlessly by the likes of Howard Fineman and Peggy Noonan.  Unlike Edwards, Kerry and Gephardt, experienced pols who stick rigidly to talking points, Dean and Clark were repeatedly victimized by the press as "gaffe-proned" candidates used to soul-deadening repetition.  Dean's "missteps" seem to be the result of an impulsive need to live dangerously, an impulse cheered by Deaniacs as a sign of authenticity.  But it was refreshing, the way McCain's candor in 2000 was refreshing in a sea of campaign robots.   Clark's problem isn't so much candor as inexperience, an inexperience that was highlighted in instances when he tried too hard to prove his Democratic party bona fides to primary voters.  Clark over-corrected by being way too emphatic, such as guaranteeing no terrorist attacks or opposing any limits on abortion.  And his notorious arrogance would flare up on occasion, like his "Kerry's a Lieutenant, I'm a general" remark.

But those infractions hardly doomed him, because they didn't get much play in the media.  There was seemingly a blackout of Clark soon after Iowa through no fault of his own.  Clark was written off after he began to fade in New Hampshire after the Iowa surprise.  Quite simply, General Clark was the wrong man at the wrong time.  His candidacy didn't offer that contrast with Kerry that the reporters craved, and it was lost in the stories of Dean's collapse.  Clark might've been able to kickstart his stalled campaign by a strong debate performance, which has proven to be the last key event of the Democratic primary season.  But in that crappily moderated debate, the General was inundated with ridiculous "gotcha" questions ("Michael Moore said the President was a deserter.  Why have you not denounced this slander on the President?") while Kerry was lobbed softballs.  That faltering performance, unfair or not, doomed the General's candidacy in NH.  Afterwards, the media saddled him with the "not ready for prime time" tag by the pundits, a charge he couldn't shake even though he was often terrific in town hall venues and in the South Carolina debate.  

After NH, there were three main storylines: Kerry's emergence as frontrunner, Dean's collapse, and the Kerry v. Edwards showdown in South Carolina.  Lost amongst this was Clark, who was tabbed as an also-ran after "finishing a distant third in NH despite campaigning unopposed for two weeks."  Funny thing is, if the media spun his finish another way, "Clark finished third despite entering the race late, catching up to candidates who've spent a year in the Granite State.  Now the campaign moves to the South where Clark, as the most organized and well-funded Southern candidate, may emerge as Kerry's strongest threat. "  But the Clark stories had run its course, and the Edwards stories were fresher, as was his candidacy.  

After NH, Kerry became the "strongest candidate" in the minds of primary voters who barely got a look at him.  And Clark managed only to damage Edwards by beating him in Oklahoma and splitting the vote in Tennessee.  Now the race is pretty much called.  Now Clark will return to Arkansas, wondering what might've been had he:

• decided to contest Iowa.  Given his money and publicity at the time, he might've finished where Edwards did.
• did better in the NH debate.  Had Clark finished at 18% or so, he might've emerged as Kerry's primary challenger.

Too bad.  The CW after Iowa was that the results hurt Dean and Clark most.  It's one time that the CW was right on the money.  And the Democratic Party, I think, will suffer as a result.