Puerto Rico Might Surprise Us

Naturally I was thrilled by Oregon last night and moderately disappointed by Kentucky. It was nice to see Obama carry the cities of Lexington and Louisville amidst an otherwise grim map. Oregon performed for him just as I always knew it would - if any place is Obama country, the socially progressive, environmentally conscious Beaver State is. Above all, I was happy for my candidate - I can think of few better places to wrap up a campaign.

As stated before, Obama should carry both Montana and South Dakota. He has Tom Daschle working for him in SD, and I would think Montana would more or less follow the trend of neighbors like Wyoming and Idaho.

I'm starting to wonder, though, if Puerto Rico is going to be Clinton country as has been predicted earlier. A few reasons come to mind:

• The territory's governor, Anibal Acevedo Vila, has endorsed Obama. On the other hand, he's been indicted, so maybe the endorsement is a wash.
• Polling in PR hasn't been frequent enough to absorb the impact of Bill Richardson's endorsement of Obama, or the Clinton campaign's shrill reaction. Richardson, moreover, will be campaigning for Obama on the island.
• The last Gallup poll on the Clinton-Obama matchup had some startling revelations - in particular, Obama holds a 51-44 lead over Clinton among Hispanic voters. It's been a long two months since Texas, enough time for Clinton to lose ground in this constituency (particularly by making racially charged statements). On the other hand, it might be hard to extrapolate from Hispanics in general to Puerto Rican voters in particular.
  
• Puerto Rico is as distinct an entity as any that has yet voted. Perhaps the results most relevant for this contest are those of the island of Guam - another U.S. territory populated by the descendants of Spanish settlers (Obama won there by 7 votes). Owing to its peculiar legal status, Puerto Rico's vote will likely be shaped by all kinds of local issues that have had little or no impact elsewhere - such as the Clinton administration's 1990s refusal to close the controversial naval weapons facility on the island of Vieques (which has been linked by some studies to serious toxic contamination). Maybe that's still a live issue there.

I have my doubts as to whether we should have primaries in places that won't vote in the general election, and what seems like a courtesy for small places like Guam or the Virgin Islands takes on a whole new meaning where Puerto Rico is concerned - the island has an estimated population of four million, making it bigger than several dozen mainland states. But what's done is done. A Clinton win in Puerto Rico will not change the outcome, but I'm starting to doubt that she can take the island for granted. Among the last three contests, this might be the most interesting of all.

The Popular Vote Mirage

The last redoubt of the Clinton campaign, entering today's Oregon/Kentucky doubleheader has been the claim that they are ahead in the popular vote – ergo Hillary should get the nomination. This is a less seedy argument than its predecessor, that Hillary was the choice of "hard working Americans, white Americans" but it's not that much more true. Below are a set of reasons, based on statistics at RealClearPolitics, why super-delegates are unlikely to put much stock in this argument, and why media outlets shouldn't treat it at face value.

• Hillary's claim is predicated on counting the vote totals from Florida and Michigan. Let's just talk about Florida for a second. Counting it is extremely problematic since Obama's strength as a candidate is predicated on him spending time on the ground in states. He never had the chance to do that in Florida, making the contest there a rigged game (yet again).
  
  
• As we all know by now, he wasn't even on the ballot in Michigan. Both he and Edwards adhered to the request of the party organization and had their names withdrawn. Anyone claiming Michigan was a fair, valid contest needs to get their head examined.
  
  
• Whether or not his name was on the ballot, these contests were undermined by the fact that voters in both states were liable to read that they did not count. Turnout by Michigan Democrats significantly trailed turnout by the state's Republicans - a curious anomaly in this year of record Democratic participation. If Clinton wants to claim she is the candidate of less-educated voters, those voters less likely to read the news, the flip side of that coin is that all us eggheads for Obama were more likely to read that these were rogue primaries and decide not to take vital time away from our doctoral theses. Again, I'm just going by the crude characterizations that the Clinton campaign has inflicted on the nation.
  
  
• Let's come back to Michigan - again. Clinton's claim is predicated on o - zero - votes for Obama in the Wolverine State. That is bullshit. More than 200,000 people voted for "Uncommitted" - meaning they supported either Edwards or Obama. If you count just half of them in his camp, he retains the popular vote lead. This is why delegates are a better measure anyway - Obama would reap, by virtue of Edwards' endorsement, all of the Uncommitted delegates.
  
  
• Four states are not counted in the popular vote total: the caucus-voting states of Iowa, Maine, Washington, and Nevada. They don't report their totals. If they did Obama, who won three of them, would retain the lead.
  
  
• Even then, most importantly of all, counting the caucus totals alongside the primary totals is exceedingly dubious. It amounts to changing the rules in the middle of the game. States choose to have primaries or caucuses with the guarantee that they will not lose representation because of their choice. Caucuses, with their precise schedules, sacrifice turnout in exchange for a more deliberative process. States should not be suddenly penalized for their choice - and the caucus caucus includes important swing states such as Iowa, Minnesota, Colorado, and Washington.

How will tonight affect this outcome? It may not alter it substantially. Clinton's percentage point margin in Kentucky will exceed Obama's in Oregon, but increased turnout in Oregon might serve to cancel that out. Owing to its mail-in ballot system, Oregon regularly leads the nation in turnout. South Dakota and Montana will add to Obama's column; Puerto Rico will likely help Clinton a fair amount. A popular vote margin based on Puerto Rico, however, would be a strange thing to sell to super-delegates, but the Clinton campaign has made a specialty of pitching such bills of goods. A candidate who could argue for the gas tax holiday with a straight face won't have any problem arguing this kind of dubious math.

FINALLY!

John Edwards is set to endorse Obama this evening in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

O'Reilly: The Golden Years

Below is delightful footage of the young Bill O'Reilly on the set of Inside Edition, doing the voodoo that he does. I'm not sure what year this footage comes from: the mention of a new Sting album helps, but only in that it narrows down the candidates to 1991-1992 (The Soul Cages) or 1993-1994 (Ten Summoner's Tales).

Anyway, enjoy.

Telling Headline of the Day

From CNN:



Kind of an "either-or" then?

Of Course She Meant It That Way

There are a few reasons why I think Hillary Clinton didn't slip up when she made the statement at right.

One is the frank fact that she didn't have to. She has a number of demographics she could have cited as rationales for her continued campaign. She could have said something like the following:

I am the stronger candidate with older voters, who are very common in states like Pennsylvania and Florida.

Or:

I am the stronger candidate with female voters, and our party's recent presidential victories all relied on a massive lead among women.

Or even:

I am the stronger candidate with working class voters, as demonstrated in Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Any of these three formulations would have made a case for her that wouldn't have been either offensive or implausible. They aren't necessarily irrefutable - the gap on issues during the general election will be far wider - but they are common enough currency during this season. She had to clarify, though - she had to specify white voters.

The same thing happened with Bill Clinton when he tried to dismiss Obama's win in South Carolina by likening it to Jesse Jackson's wins there in 1984 and 1988. These were telling examples. South Carolina used a caucus, not a primary, back in the 80s. The innocuous case to make would have been:

Well John Edwards won it in 2004, but it didn't catapult him to a lead in subsequent voting.

But Bill didn't make it. He chose the analogy that only made sense on the grounds of race.

Surely by now she would know not to tread lightly on questions like that. After all the times Bill has been slapped around for his post-South Carolina remarks, and after the dramatic implosion of Geraldine Ferraro, one would think Hillary - the more controlled member of the family - would know better than to go there. But she's going to campaign in two very white states: West Virginia and Kentucky. Sad to say, these kinds of appeals may not cost her much in either place (though they may further galvanize Oregonians to vote for Obama).

So, the deliberate choice of demographics is one reason to think this wasn't an unfortunate slip. Another is the fact that the Clinton campaign has used such language before. Wrote Ryan Lizza in the New Yorker of a speech by Bill in rural Pennsylvania:

“Hillary is in this race today because of people like you,” he told one white working-class audience. “She’s in it for you and she’s in it because of you. People like you have voted for her in every single state in the country.” People like you. The phrase hung in the air and the room quieted. Clinton didn’t say what the people who voted for Obama were like, but the suggestion was that they were somehow different.

Separately, one of Clinton's strategists specifically cited her performance among white voters. The Clinton campaign sees its saleability among whites as one of its last best rationales for continuing, consequences of such slice-and-dice campaigning be damned.

Does Hillary think that white Americans are the only hard-working Americans? No. Does she think she can eke out more votes by making quiet appeals to racial chauvinism? It would seem so. As she herself would put it, there is a pattern emerging, and it should make the rest of us sick.

Starting with the Republican in the Mirror

Sunday's Washington Post features a nice article on the woes of the Republicans in the House of Representatives: "As Losses Mount, GOP Begins Looking in the Mirror". 2008 has not been a good year for them. First they lost Dennis Hastert's seat in Illinois - a large, traditionally Republican, rural district - in a special election. Last Saturday, the bell also tolled in Louisiana, where a longstanding Republican district fell to a Democratic candidate in a special election. The GOP had held the Louisiana seat since the 70s - a remarkably long time, considering how many Republican seats only flipped to them in the 90s.

Losing strongholds in special elections has prompted quite a bit of hand-wringing among the once-proud House Republicans, who have lost more than 30 seats beginning in November 2006. This Tuesday, another special election in Mississippi has them on edge, as Democrat Travis Childers appears to be running well in another traditionally Republican district. Efforts to link Childers to Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama may not work - they didn't in Louisiana. I'm struck by a quote by Tom Davis, a retiring Republican from Northern Virginia (whose district will also likely go blue in the fall). Speaking about the contrast between Bush and Obama, Davis said: ""When Bush tries to articulate a vision, he will butcher the Gettysburg Address. Obama, he will make an A&P grocery list sing."

Though the article describes Davis "choosing his words carefully" it's quite clear how much regard House Republicans have for the Bush administration. By following it faithfully, and forfeiting any pretensions of oversight, they may have destroyed their party's chances to have a majority for years to come. Nancy Pelosi has abandoned more cautious predictions about 2008 and is instead looking forward to the opportunity to create an historic Democratic majority that might last a good long while - resembling, perhaps, what Democrats had between 1954 and 1994 (though probably not enduring for four decades).

What are House Republicans doing? As the article attests, Minority Leader John Boehner is trying to "rebrand" the party. It's hard to see how that will happen. Just this past week, the House GOP delegation appeared at a photo opportunity with Bush. They have rhetorically painted themselves into a corner with their steadfast support of the worst president in recent history. Proposed shifts in policy seem remarkably unoriginal: renewed support for making English the official language, more support for border controls, etc. Were they looking for new wine to put in new bottles, the Republicans might fundamentally rethink their position on the environment, but don't wait around for that. Whatever happens in Mississippi on Tuesday, they are bound to face some rough times.

Can We Please Stop Trying to Choose the Vice Presidential Candidates??

When the Democratic candidates last debated, ABC and its moderators so thoroughly disgraced themselves, that it is truly hard to know where to begin in trying to describe the event. Chuck Gibson and George "I Used to Care" Stephanopoulos asked a shitstorm of inane and insulting questions of Senators Obama and Clinton that dominated the first hour of the debate, only turning to questions about actual policy long after their asininity and ABC's frequent commercial breaks had driven away most viewers.

One that comes to mind, though, for its unflinching stupidity was the question of whether Obama and Clinton - there in the illustrious presences of Gibson and Stephanopoulos - would make a binding commitment to ask the other to share the ticket with them.

Needless to say, both candidates demurred on a question that was not only painfully naive, but actually quite arrogant. If candidates have personal decisions to make on the campaign trail, surely the most personal is the choice of a vice presidential candidate. The prospect of a major news network pressing candidates to make a particular choice, or even thinking that such a choice could be determined in April, not in July or August was disgusting.

It was also, however, only the most egregious example of the phenomenon. Armchair veep picking is the latest 2008 parlor game, and I've been asked a number of times who I would pick for Obama. My answer remains that it's incredibly premature to make this call.

To begin with, we're still not out of a very long primary season. Hillary Clinton seems to believe that she can ride to victory with the support of "hard-working Americans, white Americans" as though the electorate of 2008 was the electorate of 1852. This belief is delusional at best and racist at worse, but so long as she remains in the race, the contours of the general election will remain indistinct. Clinton voters and a lot of independent voters have not yet been presented, or forced themselves to recognize, the choice at hand: between Obama and McCain. It is one thing to declare that Hillary is the only acceptable candidate; it is quite another to come to grips with the sizable gaps in policy positions between Obama and McCain. Months ago prominent conservatives were declaring that they would never support McCain, come hell or high water. One doesn't hear as much of that now, especially not from a certain OxyContin abuser. Why? The realities of the main event do sink in over time.

Until they do, or at least begin to, it's strikingly premature to speculate about how Obama will want to fill out his ticket. Will he want to target older voters? A particular region of the country? Working class voters? Female voters? Polls taken around July, when VP picks are announced, will say a lot more about these calculations than polling data from the beginning of May. I mean, duh.

There is, moreover, the reality that these choices are often very personal and very idiosyncratic. Sometimes they are forced on the candidate – John Kerry had to be strongly convinced that Edwards was his man, and clearly this was not a partnership for the ages. At other times, though, they can revolve around rationales that are, at the very least, very unpredictable. Insider accounts of how Gore chose Lieberman make it clear that the choice was driven by some very unlikely reasons. And, for that matter, I'd love to know how exactly Dick Cheney went from being Bush's VP selector to his VP candidate. Anyone who tells you they know exactly how this choice will be made is either a liar or a fool.

Do I have picks that I'd like to see Obama make? Sure. One that comes to mind for me is Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln, who is an eminently likable, qualified, experienced individual who would round out the ticket regionally, and gender-wise. I wouldn't go so far, though, as to say that she should or will be the choice because there is too much right now that is simply unknowable.

There is also the question of the unity ticket - of Obama choosing Clinton. I think it's really unlikely, and I think it would be a very bad idea. It seems another media-created Frankenstein monster, although Clinton offered some fuel for the idea when she hinted at it after Ohio. I'd go so far as to say I resent the media forcing this idea on the Obama campaign. Moreover, it simply wouldn't work. There's a lot of bad blood between the campaigns, and the Clintons give every indication that they are taking their loss personally. I don't see how they could be harmonious partners with Obama after this, and I don't see that they would make a lot of effort to coordinate with the head of the ticket. Hasn't Bill Clinton damaged enough presidential candidates for the year? Moreover, it would severely compromise Obama's definition of himself to take on these consummate, cynical insiders as partners. Independent voters would have very good reason to rethink support of Obama were he to do this. Even I would be dismayed.

So, in short, take that nervous prognosticating energy and turn it toward something vaguely more predictable . . . like the 2008 NBA Draft, only 47 short days away (at the end of June). Once that's done, maybe we'll have something to talk about.

There Will Be Clintons

Because it's been a long two and a half months, and because she says she's still in it, one more primary-themed cartoon is called for. NB: This will only make sense if you've seen the film "There Will Be Blood." Otherwise, it will probably be incomprehensible.

["The Third Nomination" - Definition: The third Democrat since Bill Clinton to receive the party's nomination for the presidency.]

The scene: Senators Obama and Clinton meet one final time . . . in a bowling alley near Clinton's Chappaqua residence.

Have you a valediction, Hillary?

For a brief, enchanting, few hours last night Indiana looked winnable. The rest of the state had been counted and all we were waiting on was Lake County, home to the city of Gary. Clinton led by about 40,000 and then, whoosh, 25% of the Lake County precincts came in and hacked that lead in half. It looked as though Obama was on the verge of seizing Indiana, too, but the remaining results from the county broke even more or less, allowing Clinton to claim a narrow victory in the Hoosier State (though not one devoid of taint, since with an edge of 20,000, it's entirely possible that her victory margin is due to Rush Limbaugh's efforts to keep her candidacy on life support).

It was, of course, a Pyrrhic victory. Obama thoroughly reamed her in North Carolina after weeks of Clintonian hot air about seriously challenging him in the Tarheel State. His margin of victory there was such as to erase any gains she scored in Pennsylvania last month. We are once again back to the same margins that existed before Pennsylvania or before the Texas/Ohio round.

Clinton's hope of finagling her way to the nomination died last night, whether she realizes it or not. The number of pledged delegates left just dropped by nearly 50%, and the remaining states will more or less cancel each other out: Kentucky will nullify Oregon and vice versa; South Dakota and Montana will balance out West Virginia. There's still Puerto Rico, but Clinton is going to draw some guffaws if she claims that winning there speaks to anything about how she would do in the general election.

Her campaign's latest tack seems to be a last ditch effort to pack in Florida and Michigan, and to raise the bar on victory from 2025 delegates to 2209. It would, of course, depend on the active aid of Howard Dean, who has shown little sympathy for this position before. There is also her bizarre and frankly contemptible hope of swaying Obama's pledged delegates, but that would be a tactic more worthy of Robert Mugabe than a former first lady. There are reports of pledged Obama delegates getting letters from friends or colleagues imploring them to switch, but I doubt that will work, either.

Clinton's candidacy is, in short, just about cooked. It's about time, but it remains to be seen whether she realizes it. Given the epic degree of spinning and self-deception that have defined her candidacy from Day One, it's not at all clear that she does.