Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant

Morley Winograd and Michael Hais have written a new book, Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube and the Future Of American Politics. In it they say that every 30 or 40 years in the history of America there is a generational transition in politics and we’re in for one now.

A big one.

The Millennial Generation are those who are born between 1982 and 2003. There’s about a million more millennials than there are baby boomers, and twice as many than the generation that preceded it, Generation X.

Winograd and Hais discussed their book last night on The Newshour:

JUDY WOODRUFF: How do you characterize their — their political views? I mean, you point out that they are voting more Democratic than Republican. But is there a way of labeling them?

MICHAEL HAIS: Well, we refer to them as a civic generation. And that means that they are a generation that is not intent on — as other types of generations are — not intent on implementing their own personal moral values, but rather in rebuilding civic institutions, in acting together as a group to resolve political problems, which we expect the millennials to do, problems such as health care that have really bedeviled the U.S. political process for the last 40 years or so.

MORLEY WINOGRAD: So, their parents raised them share. And they had them watch “Barney” and make sure that everybody was treated equally. And we came to win-win situations.

So, they come to the political process with a collective point of view, and therefore tend to be Democratic. And, in fact, this is the first generation in about five decades where a greater number label themselves as liberal, rather than conservative.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Why is it — what is it about Barack Obama that has turned so many of them out?
MORLEY WINOGRAD: Well, he has a unifying message, so it’s — that’s important, because these are not a generation interested in the confrontational culture wars of the boomers.

But he — and his background, which is very diverse in and of itself, so he sort of captures that nature of this generation. But I think maybe the most important thing is that he’s combined that message with the right medium. He’s really organized on social network — around social network platforms to build the kind of support he’s been able to demonstrate, at least in many of the states.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein reports that supporters of Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton who comment on the pro-Clinton blog Taylor Marsh got ahold of an email list and have been emailing demanding, even angry, emails to superdelegates — and there are signs that some superdelegates are now very unhappy campers:

As the Democratic primary nears its long-awaited conclusion, undecided superdelegates have been drowned under a sudden deluge of angry, sometimes vicious emails from Hillary Clinton supporters urging them to not fall in line behind Barack Obama.

The letter writing campaign picked up steam late Thursday evening when several superdelegates confirmed that a coordinated effort had been launched, apparently independent of Clinton’s campaign, to raise last-minute concerns about Obama’s candidacy and present the specter of voter defections should the Illinois Democrat become the nominee.

[UPDATE: Marsh has responded to the HP piece with a long post of her own blasting the report and stressing that she had nothing to do with what her readers decided to do. It begins:

I in no way have anything whatsoever to do with the narrative being pushed in Sam Stein’s post over at Huffington Post. Stop.

Whatever my readers are doing is their business. I am in no way involved. Stop.

Read it in its entirety. FOOTNOTE: Marsh has been a contributor to the Huffington Post herself.]

Back to the Huffington Post:

In more than dozen messages sent yesterday evening and shared with The Huffington Post, supporters of Clinton emailed a laundry list of political and exceedingly personal attacks on Obama’s candidacy, including criticisms of his prior associations and claims that he, not Clinton, had played the race card. The letters underscore the high emotional pitch of the late stage Democratic primary as well as the utter conviction among many supporters of both campaigns that their candidate is solely worthy of the nomination.

So have the letters made many superdelegates see the light and decide to announce that they’ll support Clinton — even though Clinton at this point isn’t ahead in the number of pledged delegates, the popular vote, campaign funding collections or even (by ABC’s recent claim) superdelegates?

Not quite:

Such campaigns targeting superdelegates have mostly been avoided out of fear that the party officials would react negatively to outside pressure. And at least four superdelegates on the receiving end of yesterday’s emails suggested that they did more harm to Clinton’s cause than good.

In one exchange, Donna Brazile, Al Gore’s campaign manager and a stalwart of the Democratic Party, responded with frustration to a writer’s threats of defection. “Honestly, this is the 9th email today,” she wrote before 8:00 pm. “So I believe you’re ready to not only destroy Roe versus Wade, voting rights, civil liberties and civil rights. Perhaps adding trillions more to the deficits through non-stop tax cuts to the wealthy and 100 more years in Iraq. Yes, please join Rush and McCain asap. The train has left. Catch it.”

The Clinton campaign did not return a request for comment as to whether it was behind the email campaign.

That last sentence means the Clinton campaign (a) is trying to figure out how to defuse this without alienating its committed supporters (whom students of politics could consider need to be committed for sending less than respectful emails to superdelegates who are their last hope), (b) doesn’t want to give this more publicity, (c) tacitly supports the effort.

Stein gives readers a bit of feedback on how some superdelegates are reacting to this new form of abusive political spam:

At least two other party insiders wrote the Huffington Post expressing concern over the scope (”I’ve received emails like this for weeks but tonight it started in mass) and negativity of some of the Obama attacks, including one red-state Democrat:

“I spent my entire life in the two reddest states in the entire U.S. so please excuse me if I fail to discern the nuances of the arguments sent my way this evening in what appears to be an orchestrated campaign to intimidate the remaining unpledged delegates by threatening to leave the party and vote for a third Bush term if I and others like me don’t vote for Sen. Clinton,” wrote the exasperated superdelegate. “I have been uncommitted throughout this campaign because I wanted to see how the candidates performed in a variety of settings. I am proud of them both. But I am horrified by this effort to threaten votes for McCain if super delegates don’t vote for Sen. Clinton. I have received hundreds of emails from both sides - but I can say without exception that I have not received a single email from an Obama supporter that threatened a vote for McCain if I didn’t support Sen. Obama. You really ought to be ashamed.”

If you look at what is going on now:

–Hillary Clinton created a controversy with her comments about being a better candidate because she appeals more to white voters.

–Bill Clinton will get lots of play (and some who see it will agree with him) in his latest public burst of anger.

–Paul Begala raised eyebrows by saying “”Obama can’t win with just the eggheads and African-Americans…” (OOPS! There goes the Humpty Dumpty vote..)

–Clinton supporters are flooding superdelegates with threatening emails. They seem to forget that politics also involves trying to persuade, not just intimidate.

Bill Clinton often talked about wanting to build a “bridge to the 21st century.”

But, increasingly, the Clinton camp seems as if in terms of common sense political coalition building, it’s trying to burn its bridges in the 21st century.

We in America can talk about the virtues and vices of presidential candidates we support.

We in America can argue about which political party is going to destroy or uplift the country.

We in America can pontificate about race baiting, race hustling, race pitching, race riding, race stirring, race healing, race blah blah in this political season.

We in America can scream about who’s elitist, has testicular fortitude, is Maverick like, old, black, a woman, has four legs, flies to the moon, lives on the moon, tough on terrorism, is Messiah-like, prone to “Pastorgates”, has toxic spouses, etc this silly season.

We in America can just shut up.

Because the game changing $4.00/gallon gas is upon us. When the average reaches that mark, we in America are going to feel it and feel it good. Our very lifestyle is at serious risk. The very American “going out for a ride” will lose its luster. The family road trip will be shelved or shrunk in distance. The weekend getaway becomes a weekend DVD fest at home. The grocery store becomes ominous because of prices. I can go on and on.

Senators Clinton, Obama, and McCain aren’t ready to deal with the way this will change American life. Heck, Washington likes to play games with itself. But for millions of Americans who lives will be affected detrimentally by ever increasing fuel costs, the word bitter and the feeling of bitterness will just become part and parcel of American life. No matter how many despots we depose, that will play second fiddle to the new American way of life.

Are you ready to ride my fellow Americans? Are we as a country ready to deal with this issue head on without politics?

They must have run out of duct tape at Home Depot — or Hillary Clinton’s advisers must believe that an angry Bill Clinton arguing with a female voter who interrupted him in West Virginia is going to win over people who don’t already support Hillary Clinton. For a veteran politician, he can’t turn a lemon (being interrupted) into lemonade (handling it with skill to win over doubters).

Because here he goes again. Watch the clip below. Here he is arguing with a voter who disputed an assertion he made about Hillary Clinton’s claim that she improved health care under his administration. This IS red meat for those who already love Hillary and want her to fight and denounce Barack Obama all the way to the convention.

But to many independent voters, Republicans, Democrats — and probably superdelegates — when they watch this clip they will think: Do we REALLY want to allow this man to take virtual center stage for four — or EIGHT — more years? Oh, please, Mommy, make him go away…

Some Presidents become more endearing and their political skills actually blossom once when they leave office. They grow on people.

Bill Clinton is growing on many people like a fungus.

Make sure you watch the voter’s comment at the end. Presumably, the Clintons want to win over more than their current supporters, but you’d never know that from Bill Clinton’s defensive and angry response.

UPDATE: In fact, Hillary Clinton DOES deserve some credit for improving health care under Bill Clinton. READ THIS. But rather than rattle-off specifics, Clinton became angry and turned it on the voter, turning himself into a kind of radio talk show host. (At least you can TURN OFF the radio and not listen to talk show hosts.)

Eric Allie, Caglecartoons.com

As the Bush era draws to a close, Europeans are anxious to know what about American policy will change when he’s gone - particularly if a Democratic victory occurs as planned.

According to this lead article from French business magazine Challenges, while a Democrat in the White House will mean a leftward tilt - it won’t be anything like the European left - and it certainly won’t mean the end to American Exceptionalism.

The article says in part:

“In view of the ongoing presidential campaign, the American exception seems as strong as ever. Where else but in America would a primary race go on for more than a year? Where else would candidates obtain tens of millions of dollars a month from their supporters? Where else would party foot soldiers have the chance to select the candidate for the highest post? … All three candidates take lyrical flight in discussing the American dream. Above all, none will hesitate to resort to force.”

And in describing what a Democratic regime might look like, the article cautions:

“Clearly, a Democratic victory in November would undoubtedly open the door to a more left-wing America. But it would be a kind of American left, certainly not modeled on Europe. Both candidates have rejected a “single payer” system for health insurance, like the Canadian and European models. The change ahead will not mean the end of the American exception, but the end of American triumphalism.”

LEADING ARTICLE

Translated By Kate Davis

May 8, 2008

France - Challenges - Original Article (French)

All countries are exceptional. But the United States gladly considers itself exceptionally exceptional, different from all other developed countries in its social organization and its fundamental values. The State is less extensive and the distribution of wealth more unequal. The United States is also more strongly committed to what Margaret Thatcher called the “Victorian values:” individualism, voluntarism, patriotism.

Thus the Bush government, which supports conservative values domestically and demonstrates an unlimited self confidence externally, is the most “exceptional” known in recent years. But at the end of Bush’s mandate, isn’t the United States entering a new cycle, characterized by the rejection of conservatism and a convergence with Europe’s standards?

In reality, three quarters of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction and for example, vigorously support a system of universal health care. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both have promised to address that. They also want to improve their image in the world. The next government will certainly initiate significant reforms, such as closing Guantanamo or adopting a more rigorous environmental policy in order to address some of the country’s more aberrant characteristics.

Yet in view of the ongoing presidential campaign, the American exception seems as strong as ever. Where else but in America would a primary race go on for more than a year? Where else would candidates obtain tens of millions of dollars a month from their supporters? Where else would party foot soldiers have the chance to select the candidate for the highest post? John McCain won the nomination of his party despite strong internal opposition. Barack Obama is the leader of an uprising against the Democratic old guard.

All three preach a patriotism specific to the United States. John McCain boasts of his service in Vietnam. Barack Obama claims that there is no red or blue, but only one America united by common values. The three candidates take lyrical flight in discussing the American dream. Above all, none will hesitate to resort to force. John McCain sings, “Bomb, bomb [bomb, bomb bomb] Iran.”

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated foreign press coverage of the U.S. elections.

Whatever happened to the Melting Pot? Now we learn that “Barack Obama is faring better than might be expected among Jewish voters, beating John McCain in Gallup Poll Daily general-election matchups and trailing Hillary Clinton only slightly in Jewish Democrats’ preferences for the Democratic nomination.”

This crucial piece of information tells us what? That Jews don’t blame Obama for the anti-Semitic outbursts decades ago by Louis Farrakhan, who is admired by his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright? Is this something we need to know? A wise old editor I worked with used to say about such useless information, “Uninteresting, if true.”

As pollsters and political “experts” turn this election year into a demographic nightmare, pinning labels on voters by race, gender, religious affiliation, age, income, education, everything but height and weight, the dominant theme of the campaign coverage has become parsing everything that divides Americans and deciding which politician profits from which.

Obama keeps talking about reaching across those divisions, but the media story line keeps magnifying them. All of this perpetuates the beliefs of Karl Rove and his ilk that the way to win elections is to divide and conquer.

Voters, who have seen how well that worked out for them in the past eight years, may be ready to defy the labels and surprise the experts. Now that would be interesting, if true.

Cross-posted from my blog.

How dirty does the upcoming 2008 campaign promise to be? The focus has been on what the GOP might try to do to Democratic Senator Barack Obama if he gets the Democratic presidential nomination. But MSNBC’s David Shuster contends that the Republicans also have a treasure chest of goodies ready to use against Senator Hillary Clinton if she heads the ticket:

Two Republican officials at the Republican National Committee who are involved in “opposition research efforts” in preparation for the general election say the RNC’s oppo research dossier on Sen. Clinton runs more than 1,200 pages in length.

FYI: In some newsrooms two sources (not named in the story but revealed to editors) are enough to confirm a story. Some editors insist on three if it’s a huge development. MORE:

According to these officials, the book includes “previously undisclosed information about Hillary Clinton’s connections to the Whitewater scandal, travel office firings, and Democratic fundraising efforts.” Given that the book has not been shared with us, we’ve been unable to confirm this assertion. Furthermore, the Republican officials would not describe the nature of the “new information.”

However, I was not directed away from a front-page story in today’s Washington Times about memos/documents from the estate of Sam Dash, Ken Starr’s ethics adviser during the early stages of the Whitewater investigation. The Dash Whitewater memos and documents have been turned over to the Library of Congress (where they were presumably available to the Washington Times reporter/researcher). The documents reportedly show that prosecutors concluded that Hillary Clinton concealed information and misled a federal grand jury about her work for the Savings and Loan at the heart of the Whitewater investigation. The allegation that she concealed and misled is not new, and was sourced by reporters who covered the investigation in the 1990s (including me) to “attorneys close to Starr” or “sources in the office of the independent counsel.

The documents from Dash’s estate, however, mark the first available “documentary evidence” that Ken Starr’s office drafted a criminal indictment of Senator Clinton, also known as a “pros memo” and debated verbally and through written memos whether Clinton should actually face charges.

According to Shuster, they decided not to go after Clinton because they had doubts about the strength of their evidence and their ability to convict a first lady.

But such memos, documents, and etc. about the internal debate in the office of the independent counsel could be a gold mine for negative ads, etc.

So this means Obama is pristine and won’t face negative campaigning that will fill hours of air time for Sean and Rush et al? Hardly.

By the way, to put the RNC’s opposition research effort into context, I’m told the dossier on Senator Obama is 1,000 pages in length and that Republican researchers spent a few weeks in Chicago recently collecting information on Obama’s ties to the Weather Underground” and separately to Tony Rezko (who is currently on trial for federal corruption charges).

The difference here is: Clinton’s campaign has been saying she is totally vetted and that there is nothing new that can come out or be used against her. If there are some alleged 1,200 pages to play with, it’s unlikely that she’d face a free issue-oriented path to the White House.

Prediction: The formidable slime/distraction machine will run…no matter who is the Democratic nominee.

I began this piece the other day and should have posted it then. I’m late to the party. I was responding to a commenter who wrote:

It’s really sad how much the talk circles around race.

It’s a constant reminder how far we haven’t come.

Even though I knew that to be true, this campaign is just a daily reminder.

The comment was in response to me quoting Thomas Schaller. The irony is that much as I liked what Schaller had to say the other day I’m highly ambivalent about him. I’ve been railing against his Whistling Past Dixie plea for Democrats to abandon the South and turn Southern racism into a (p.18) “burdensome stone to hang around the Republicans’ neck” for a very long time.

Democrats are too quick to hang that racist label on Republicans, and tactical ideas like Schaller’s miss the point don’t they? Back when Schaller wrote his book I was advocating that we should instead address our own racist past as highlighted by Republican Bruce Bartlett in, Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party’s Buried Past, and redouble our efforts to fight racism whenever and wherever we find it.

You’ve got to wonder if Hillary’s not getting away with her nonsense now — party bigwigs, where are you? — because of our own record of putting strategy before substance! (Speaking of which, I can only hope Ms. Genardo is wrong about John Edwards not endorsing because he’s holding out for a Cabinet position.)

Now I’m no expert on demographic shifts and voting patterns but these days events seem to be taking on a life of their own. And I’m left wondering if, hoping even, that with Blacks having moved back to the South, this religious, rural, evangelized, conservative Southern region that flipped from Democrat to Republican might surprise everybody and just as quickly flip right back.

Voter stats from the Georgia primary in February show an unprecedented surge of black and young Democratic voters:

— Democrats cast nearly 53 percent of the 2,007,544 ballots counted on Feb. 5.

— Within the Democratic primary, African-Americans cast 55 percent of the vote. This is the first time that’s happened. White voters made up just a tad less than 40 percent of the Democratic vote.

— White voters made up 96 percent of the Republican presidential primary vote.

— African-Americans cast 30 percent of all votes on Feb. 5. In November 2006, with gubernatorial candidate Mark Taylor at the top of the Democratic ticket, black voters cast only 24 percent of all ballots. This is the number causing Republicans to lose sleep.

— In addition to juicing turnout among black voters, the Feb. 5 primary showed signs of a shift in party preference among the state’s youngest voters. You read above that Democratic voters accounted for 53 percent of all ballots.

But 61 percent of voters 24 and under picked up a Democratic ballot.

— Young voters are notoriously unreliable, but young African-American voters — 24 and under — had a voter turnout rate of 26 percent. That’s remarkably strong. Turnout among young white voters was 22 percent — again, not too shabby.

Josh Goodman at Governing Magazine casts a skeptical eye on whether blacks could ever be enough to push Georgia over to Obama in the general election, but still finds their impact could be considerable: Read the rest of this entry »

A Gallup analysis of exit-poll data finds Democratic Senator Barack Obama’s support among white voters if he runs against GOP Senator John McCain is about the same as Senator John Kerry’s was in the 2004 Presidential election:

Barack Obama’s current level of support among white voters in a head-to-head matchup against John McCain is no worse than John Kerry’s margin of support among whites against George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election.

Much of the talk following Tuesday’s Indiana and North Carolina primaries has focused on just how electable Obama — now the highly probable nominee — will be in the general election. The Clinton campaign has argued that Obama’s weaknesses among white voters and blue-collar voters will hurt him against McCain in the fall.

But it appears that the way Obama stacks up against McCain at this point is similar to the way in which Kerry performed against Bush in 2004 within several key racial, educational, religious, and gender subgroups. That is, the basic underlying structure of the general-election campaign this year does not appear to be markedly different from that of the 2004 election. This conclusion is based on an analysis of exit-poll data from 2004 compared to the Obama-McCain matchup in 4,000 Gallup Poll Daily tracking interviews conducted during the first five days of May.

My DD’s Jonathan Singer (who is a former TMV coblogger) writes:

Read the rest of this entry »

First, if you’re wondering what I as a Hillary supporter think about Hillary’s decision to continue running after yesterday, the answer is I don’t know what I think of it as a strategy.  Naturally I would like to believe that she could still somehow prevail.  I am not sanguine.  People are speculating that she is now running for the VP slot.  We’ll see. 

But — and this matters more to me — I most definitely admire her for her unswerving commitment to see the process through.  Despite the pissing and moaning in the media, and whatever the outcome, I predict that the day will certainly arrive when people will look back with awe and amazement at  Hillary’s insistence in going the distance against all odds and wish that they had chosen her.  She is indomitable.  I like that in a Democrat and so should other Democrats.  Alas, many of them are so beguiled by the media myths about Hillary that they just can’t see what a force of nature she really is.  

Obama could learn a lot from her and he’d be a better (future) president for it.  Instead, I imagine we’ll be stuck with him in his current incarnation — all rhetoric, all the time.   

Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, I interviewed the author and political pundit, Cliff Schecter about his latest book, The Real McCain: Why Conservatives Don’t Trust Him - and Why Independents Shouldn’t. You can read more about the book at its website and I also recommend this article in U.S. News and World Report.

In his book, Schecter makes the case for why, although he supported McCain in his run in 2000, McCain no longer deserves support and in fact, his candidacy should be fought actively, without hesitation and on all fronts. Schecter outlines his reasons for these sentiments and fills in those reasons with more details than you may be able to absorb. Schecter draws a portrait of both McCain’s political trajectory and the parallel trajectory of how his political choices since 2001 are a thumbing of his nose at the very people who got him to the presidential precipice in the first place.

A couple of disclosures before I offer you my phone interview with Cliff: I’ve never been a McCain supporter. And I haven’t known of Schecter that long either - here’s the first post I ever wrote about Schecter. However, it was fascinating talking to someone with a seemingly vast knowledge base about someone whom I’ve never really studied.

JMZ: You argue on behalf of former McCain supporters who should be able to realize that McCain isn’t what he once was. Who, then, is the alternative and why?

CS: Well. There’s always, “What we have versus what we’d like to have.” I’m an Obama supporter and he has a lot of appeal to Independents. But he hasn’t done it the way McCain did it – by attacking his own party in big speeches. Obama has done it by standing up, not by splitting. Obama talks about rising above partisanship and reaching out to all people on all sides and getting past the muck where politics has gotten so nasty. Obama says, I’m going to talk to you like an adult. And that’s what McCain had called “straight talk” – but he hasn’t given us much of that [this election cycle.]
Read the rest of this entry »

Cartoonists are having a field day with the results from last night’s Indiana and North Carolina Democratic primaries. A large number of them are lampooning Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party’s divisions.

Here are three of the most timely ones (we’ll run others throughout the day tomorrow):

Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune

Mike Lester, The Rome News-Tribune

RJ Matson, Roll Call

Ultimately stunning.

Just when you feel guilty of being so critical of the Clinton campaign you get this.

Lawrence O’Donnell, writing in The Huffington Post, says he has talked with a “senior” Clinton campaign official who told him Senator Hillary Clinton will quit the Presidential race by June 15. Fact or not?

Today Clinton vowed to stay in the race “until there is a nominee.”

O’Donnell writes:

A senior campaign official and Clinton confidante has told me that there will be a Democratic nominee by June 15. He could not bring himself to say the words “Hillary will drop out by June 15,” but that is clearly what he meant. I kept saying, “So, Hillary will drop out by June 15,” and he kept saying, “We will have a nominee by June 15.” He stressed what a reasonable person Hillary is.

Everything about our conversation implied that he had already had this reality-based discussion with Hillary.

O’Donnell says, in essence, that the official told him Clinton will continue to campaign, get as many delegates and votes as she can, and then make her pitch to superdelegates. But she knows the math.

Yes, Clinton spokespersons publicly seem to be lost on gravity-free planet Clinton, but privately they know the end is near.

This is the kind of report that will likely be denied by top campaign officials (if it was meant to be official it would be by a named spokesman). But when people write something with such specificity, it is almost certainly sourced.

But it does contradict other reports — including our post here.

When will we know if it’s fact or not?

By June 15th. It’s truly impossible hard to believe Clinton would risk her long-range political future by battling tooth and nail all the way to the convention — particularly if a parade if Superdelegates starts marching towards Obama and party elites are itching to start the campaign against GOP presumptive nominee Senator John McCain.

CNN just showed Senator Hillary Clinton at a campaign appearance, gearing up for the upcoming West Virginia primary — and the subject comes up: with the number of pledged delegates, the popular vote and fund-raising against her, why won’t she quit her battle with Senator Barack Obama for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination?

The New York Daily News has an article detailing the reasons why. And a key reason, the paper says, is her camp’s feeling that Obama has little appeal to white collar voters:

While the case for Hillary Clinton to stay in the race is shakier than ever, one ugly reason for staying in could be found Tuesday amid the ruddy, sun-kissed Hoosiers who cheered her on to victory at the Indianapolis Speedway.

With Clinton posing alongside pioneering Indy speedster Sarah Fisher, there were almost no African-Americans to be seen. Many in the white, working-class crowd were simply not ready to back Barack Obama….

Such feelings leave Clinton and the Democratic Party in a tough spot. With the largest number of remaining delegates now being party insiders, they have to decide if Obama can overcome enough of that antipathy - essentially deciding if enough working-class whites will back away from the black candidate, whether because of the false Muslim rumors, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright flap or old-fashioned racism.

The paper reports that this need “gives her a reason to stay in the race.”

So how long is it likely to go? According to the Daily News, it’s likely Clinton will fight on all the way to the convention, unless there is a truly massive outcry for her to leave:

Two separate sources in the Clinton orbit insisted Tuesday night it’s now more likely Hillary will pursue her quest until the August convention in Denver - unless party leaders rise up en masse and publicly tell her it’s time to stop. The math, after all, remains solidly in Obama’s favor.

“I can think of no reason why it would not go to the convention now,” one top Hillary Democrat predicted. “Why should she get out?”

And then there’s a section that could be a red warning flag:

Some insiders still want to make sure no new bombshells will explode around the freshman Illinois senator.

Will there be new allegations surfacing? Perhaps in original, blind sourced reporting on the Drudge Report? If those surface, look for fingers to be pointed at the Clinton campaign, even if it’s not the source.

He could slip and stumble some more, her polls could continue to be strong, and once the party decides what to do with Florida and Michigan, his lead in the popular vote will be very narrow,” an insider said.

A top Democratic source with insight into Bill’s and Hillary’s states of mind says the Clintons are convinced that a Democratic presidency is all but certain no matter how messy the fight for the nomination.

In that scenario - which the Obama side and some Democratic elders worry is wishful thinking at best, delusional at worst - there’s no downside for Hillary doing whatever it takes for as long as it takes.

The problem is the meaning of “whatever it takes.” If it’s via a continued campaign aimed at driving up Obama’s negatives so they can convince Superdelegates Obama is unelectable, it’s likely to received a lot more poorly by party bigwigs than it would have been two weeks ago.

Already former Senator and presidential candidate George McGovern today jumped ship from Clinton and endorsed Obama. And there are new reports that Clinton has had to lend her campaign $6.4 million more — bringing the total $11.4 million. If this keeps up, watch for late night comedians to do jokes with her name and Mitt Romney’s in the punchline.

If Clinton plays out her campaign based on issues and makes a graceful exit, the Democrats have a chance at unity. If her campaign remains an aggressive negative campaign, complete with eleventh hour negative campaign ads, it could backfire with some superdelegates and will make the Democrats’ attempts to unify their fractured party even more difficult — not to mention negate any possibility of a “Dream Ticket” which more and more seems like an In Your Dreams Ticket.

FOOTNOTE: Just how bad was the political news last night. GO HERE and look at the photos that show how poorly Bill Clinton serves his wife when he stands by her side after a defeat.

Cartoon by John Darkow, Columbia Daily Tribune, Missouri

For more blog discussion on this story go here.

So what happened to Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in last night’s Democratic presidential primaries?

To find out, you can read a host of news articles and weblog posts (including several perspectives here on TMV). Two MUST READS that just hit the Internet are columns by Dick Polman and Christopher Hitchens.

Polman — one of the country’s best political columnists starts out with this:

Behold these case studies of clinical denial…

Britney Spears, last December: “My sister’s not pregnant.”

John McCain, in January: “Any recession is psychological.”

Hillary Clinton, last night: “I win, he wins. I win, he wins. It’s so close!”

Polman then strips the assertion down detailing a host of factors. Here are some excerpts (read the original in full to get all the details):

1. By slaughtering Clinton in North Carolina and neary beating her in the wee hours in Indiana, Barack Obama racked up an overall net gain of 200,000 popular votes…..

2. Her squeaker win in Indiana, combined with her landslide loss in the more populous North Carolina, means that she will slip farther behind in the overall pledged-delegate competition…..

3. On the psychology/perception front, Obama’s performance last night foiled the Clinton argument that she owned the momentum and that the frontrunner was inexorably fading…..

4. Unpledged superdelegates want to see some clear evidence that voters view Clinton as the more electable and more appealing candidate, despite Obama’s frontunner status. Neither race last night supplied that kind of evidence…..

Polman says it’s “strains credulity” to think (a) Clinton will find fundraising easy, (b) the party will decide to give her Michigan’s delegates, (c) and that “superdelegates are going to deny the nomination to the candidate who, barring a documented revelation that he is an alien from a hostile planet, is now demonstrably poised to finish out the primary season with the most pledgees and popular votes.”

He concludes:

I suspect that the Clintons know all this, despite her display of public denial….And her husband clearly recognizes the lay of the land. He stood behind Hillary last night looking as if he’d been smacked with a two-by-four. The visual of Bill meant more than anything she had to say. The end of an era was in his eyes.

Hitchens provides less detail but makes some pointed observations…and again cannot get the image of Bill Clinton’s face as he stood behind his wife on a very bad political night out of his head:

Of all the slogans that Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama might have picked to distinguish themselves from one another, “Prolier Than Thou” was probably the least convincing.

Yet in the closing days of the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, it seemed as if the two graduates of the nation’s most privileged law schools, and the two former residents of the Ritziest parts of Illinois, were in a race to don the bluest collar and the most stained factory overalls.

Not since a desperate George Herbert Walker Bush (father of the current incumbent) started munching on pork-rinds, donning a Teamster cap and squeezing behind the wheel of a big rig in 1992 have I seen anything so condescending and ridiculous as the recent competition between Clinton and Obama to down the most beers, pose with the most guns, boast of the most hunting expeditions and so forth.

What did the voting boil down to?

However, it was not really the class vote at which people were looking. In North Carolina, Senator Obama reaped almost one hundred per cent of a constituency which the commentators quite frankly called by its primary color.

In Indiana, that constituency is not such a large share of the electorate.

Nobody especially likes to bang on about this, but this is as good an explanation as any for the discrepancy between the two candidates and the two states.

And, since West Virginia and Kentucky are next up – and reporters are almost unconsciously describing these two states as for some reason more “natural” for the former First Lady – in a short while we will be seeing the pendulum of politics swing back again.

There is less and less point in pretending that this campaign is not “about” race.

As far as I can calculate it, though, Mrs Clinton can carry all the next five states AND Puerto Rico and still not get an arithmetical majority.

Nonetheless, she continues to act as if she knows something that the rest of us do not. And I can tell you that it spooks the Obama campaign.

He ends looking at her speech in Indiana…and Bill Clinton:

And she looked tireless and energetic and full of vim and vigour in her – ill advised I felt – electric blue trouser-suit. It’s this amazing love of combat for its own sake that has won her so much grudging respect even from many Republicans.

However, just take a look at the speech and notice the lugubrious, white-haired, red-faced, scowling and bored figure standing so listlessly just behind her.

How can a campaign once renowned for slickness and spin have permitted such a horrid spectre at the feast?

And this dreary, resentful and shambolic person was once himself described as the country’s first black president. If his wife loses we shall know why.

Indeed. I’ve said it here many times: when the story of this campaign is written it will be said that Bill Clinton on balance sandbaggged his wife’s campaign.

The negativity that he reportedly championed (and did convince her to implement) helped divide the party and harden opposition to her. Raising the race card, even though he denies he did, put Hillary Clinton in a position where she started the primaries enjoying strong black voter support that Obama had problems getting, to her loss in North Carolina where she got less than 10 percent of the African-America vote. The Clinton’s frittered away a key constituency — a glaring fact of their campaign. She needed the black vote.

It’s definitely too early to write the Clinton’s political obituaries.

But if Hillary Clinton’s candidacy dies and they call CSI, CSI will likely find Bill Clinton’s fingerprints.

Cartoon by RJ Matson, The New York Observer

John McCain says free enterprise will make it more efficient, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama want to tinker with it, but the evidence keeps mounting that American health care is a disaster that keeps overwhelming not only the uninsured but those who have “coverage.”

The New York Times reports, “Many of the 158 million people covered by employer health insurance are struggling to meet medical expenses that are much higher than they used to be–often because of some combination of higher premiums, less extensive coverage, and bigger out-of-pocket deductibles and co-payments.

“With medical costs soaring, the coverage many people have may not adequately protect them from the financial shock of an emergency room visit or a major surgery. For some, even routine doctor visits might now take a back seat to basic expenses like food and gasoline.”

Meanwhile, none of the presidential candidates is willing to acknowledge that the American health care system is broken by massive inefficiency, insurer greed and widespread fraud.

Even before they win the presidency and wider margins in the Senate and House, Democrat leaders are undermining the campaign promises of Obama and Clinton by making it clear that the next Congress won’t follow through on even their watered-down proposals.

If voters want health care, they will have to hold their Congressional candidates’ feet to the fire by letting them know that they are really hurting and not being treated right by the clients of the health care lobbyists who are blocking reform. Better yet, they should brush aside all the nonsense about “socialized medicine” and get a national conversation going about a single-payer system.

Cross-posted from my blog.

So now that the North Carolina and Indiana primaries are over — ending in split decision wins — who are the winners and losers in Tuesday’s primaries? Is it just Senator Barack Obama (who won North Carolina) or Senator Hillary Clinton (who narrowly won Indiana)?

Is it that clearcut? Here’s our take:

WINNERS:

Senator Barack Obama for winning a victory in North Carolina that went beyond the conventional media wisdom that was building — that he could lose there.

Senator Hillary Clinton for surviving by winning Indiana and keeping her candidacy alive, although some insist it is now on life support..and the batteries are almost dead.

Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh for his reprehensible “Operation Chaos” campaign to convince voters to use their precious right to vote to sandbag another party that appears to have worked in Indiana. Data suggests it had an impact.

Zogby polling for its final poll on North Carolina. Matt Drudge who yes indeed did call it earlier in the day (and we had our doubts about that report…).

LOSERS:

Senator Barack Obama for not being able to end Clinton’s candidacy with two solid wins (this could change if the final Indiana vote changes).

Senator Hillary Clinton for not just losing to Obama in North Carolina while aides talked about her gathering momentum, but for starting out Campaign 2008 with a good chunk of black voter support and ending the night with shockingly low black voter support (remember that at the beginning of the campaign Obama had a problem getting African Americans to vote for him and against a Clinton).

The Limbaugh “dittoheads” who felt the precious vote for which so many have died should be tossed away to sabotage another political party, as if democracy in a time of national crisis were some cutesy game (and we add in this category any Democrats who also played the same game crossing over in Republican primaries).

THE BIGGEST LOSERS:

The Superdelegates who will either have to act soon…