This was quite a week — and not just because of the North Carolina and Indiana primaries. It was a week when there were two TV moments when you could seemingly watch and hear the Democratic party starting to split.

First, brace yourself for Clinton supporter and strategist Paul Begala clashing with uncommitted superdelegate and former Al Gore campaign manager Donna Brazile. In her devastating recent Wall Street Journal column on Hillary Clinton titled Damsel of Distress, Peggy Noonan wrote of this piece of video:

The Democratic Party can’t celebrate the triumph of Barack Obama because the Democratic Party is busy having a breakdown. You could call it a breakdown over the issues of race and gender, but its real source is simply Hillary Clinton. Whose entire campaign at this point is about exploiting race and gender.

Here’s the first place an outsider could see the tensions that have taken hold: on CNN Tuesday night, in the famous Brazile-Begala smackdown. Paul Begala wore the smile of the 1990s, the one in which there is no connection between the shape of the mouth and what the mouth says. All is mask. Donna Brazile was having none of it.

Watch it for yourself, and see if you agree:

Next, there was Clinton backer (and occasional Huffington Post contributor) Lanny Davis, who felt he was treated shabbily by a CNN panel that he felt was stacked with people who favored Obama (you’ll see Brazile again). Details about his side of the behind-the-scenes story are HERE.

But you could again hear the riiiiiiiiiip. Watch this TPM montage and judge for yourself:

My take on it? I think Noonan’s piece, which contains some original reporting, sounds right on the dime.

She explains a lot of what is going on, and what is NOT going on and why. What seems clear from this is that the same attitude George Bush has shown in trying to impose his will on the legislative and executive branches, is what the Clinton campaign is now showing in its attitude towards the Democratic party and its long range goals — not just of winning an election but of burnishing its Big Tent, keeping that Big Tent stable, and opening it up, so more more people can pour in.

Davis? He tried making his case and clearly felt outnumbered.

And Begala? He talked about inclusion at the end, but his words meshed with the controversy later in the week centering on Clinton’s comments about her getting more white votes.

Begala was old-school divide and rule politics delivered with a pasted-on smile.

Just like Noonan said.

Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant

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.

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 »

You know, I believe I have a certain familiarity with Hillary Clinton’s personality insofar as she is 15 years older than I, to the day… we Scorpios are often maniacally loyal (think about why she stays with Bill) and maniacally driven (I’ve completed 18 marathons, despite a complete lack of physical talent, and I continue to write my blog, week in, week out, six and a half years on, despite a lack of particular literary talent or tremendous popularity among blog-readers, while Sen. Clinton continues to run for President, despite an obvious lack of political talent or popularity among voters).

There: I said it. She doesn’t GET that her husband has more talent in his one little wagging finger than she has in her whole body (and Mark Penn’s too). She became my fair state’s junior senator solely on the strength of her famous husband. She somehow thought that being an otherwise underachieving back-bench senator and Bill’s wife qualified her not only to run for President, but to win her party’s nomination by acclamation. This led her to run a cynical and vapid campaign that just assumed that the nation’s Democratic voters would be as forgiving and fawning over she and her famous husband’s as New York voters were (in her decisive victories over political heavyweights Rick Lazio and John Spencer). Like George W. Bush, a man also in his current job because of a famous relative, Hillary actually believed that this nomination was hers, without having to earn it with actual voters. Which is why, presumably, she may well be living in a bubble where she actually believes that the battle for the Democratic nomination isn’t over.
Read the rest of this entry »

Ultimately stunning.

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

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

In today’s last-big primaries left (187 pledged delegates up for grabs of the 404 remaining) day, Sen. Barack Obama scored a decisive victory (around 15 points or more) in North Carolina and Sen. Hillary Clinton holds around a 4 point lead in Indiana with around 85% of precincts in, as of 23:00 “fast time” (EDT). Insofar as North Carolina is significantly bigger than Indiana, and insofar as Sen. Obama’s margin of victory there will be greater than Sen. Clinton’s margin in Indiana, assuming she even wins it at all, Obama will improve on his around 150 pledged delegate (and 135 or so overall delegate) lead, with only 217 pledged delegates left for grabs, in contests in Kentucky, West Virginia and Puerto Rico (likely for Clinton), and in Montana, South Dakota and Oregon (likely for Obama)… i.e., they’ll all net out or come pretty close to doing so, and Obama’s lead will hold… and superdelegates will start breaking in droves… for Obama.

The game is called “delegates;” telling us that if you count Florida and Michigan, (and only count White people at that) that Hillary “actually won” the “real” popular vote… or that some poll tells us Clinton will do better against McCain in selected counties in Florida and Ohio… really tells us nothing. If Clinton supporters want to make the case that the Rev. Wright has rendered Sen. Obama unelectable, apparently, the voters in both North Carolina and Indiana don’t seem to be accepting that, given the respective margins tonight, which, as noted above, will give Obama a net delegate pick-up, despite “Hillary’s momentum” and wall to wall Rev. Wright coverage on broadcast media (and of course, the shameless pandering on the gasoline tax).

If we accept polls that show that raw racism is something that Democrats should respect (i.e., evidently, a significantly higher number of Clinton voters say they would not vote for Obama than vice versa, and, as their policies are pretty much indistinguishable, I think we know why they would say this), then the Democratic Party may as well start selling the furniture at DNC headquarters, because it will no longer have a reason to be, nor would it ever again be assured of its only reliable base (hint: it’s neither unions, nor working class White people).

So… while this election may be too important for Democrats to lose, if it involves “winning” by elevating the candidate in distant second place in delegates, “winning” may well be a Pyrrhic victory: the end of the Democratic Party in any meaningful sense. Not that Sen. Clinton (and certainly Pres. Clinton) seem to care a jot about this. If the argument that Obama– a man who was a state legislator just three and a half years ago, is unelectable, then the answer to that problem might well be “Al Gore” (Gore-Obama?), but it is surely not the candidate with every conceivable advantage of name recognition, organization and fund-raising prowess and a popular husband ex-President to boot who still couldn’t beat the man who was a state legislator three years ago (because she ran one of the stupidest campaigns in the history of the world).

Does Sen. Clinton have every right to soldier on? Yessirree, and frankly, if I were her, I might well myself, because this may well be her last opportunity to run, and certainly, she may never be this close again. Of course, it’s quite possible that her campaign is broke (again). And superdelegates are now going to start committing in droves, insofar as, while there are nominally 5 or 6 more contests, they are, combined, barely more than tonight’s total, which included an Indiana that had many demographic similarities to Clinton-strongholds Ohio and Pennsylvania, and yet, it might well only be Rush Limbaugh’s operation chaos that pushes her over the top there.

Is primary season and the race for the Democratically nomination technically or mathematically over? Not by a long-shot. Is it over? Yes, boys and girls, I’m afraid that it’s over.

Hey, who knows? If Sen. Obama can wrap this up in the next few days, he might even have time to come to our Columbia ‘83 class reunion in three weeks time. No… crazy talk on my part. But unless Sen. Obama is videotaped on a boat called Monkey Business, or shows up on the client list of the Emperors Club, or some other outrageous scandal that involves sex, any doubt that he will be the Democratic nominee has by and large just been removed.

(Cross-posted at the talking dog blog)

UPDATE: Here is Obama’s North Carolina victory speech tonight. (We embed…you watch and decide!). If the video doesn’t show all of it, please go to THIS LINK to view it:

CBS News has projected that Senator Hillary Clinton will win the Indiana Democratic Presidential primary — a result that means the evening of the North Carolina and Indiana primaries ended in a split decision for what increasingly appears to be a split political party:

Clinton pulled off an Indiana win in what was a virtual must-win Midwestern state. With 50 percent of the votes being reported in the state, she was leading Obama 55 percent to 45 percent.

Obama’s win mirrored earlier triumphs in Southern states with large black populations: Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and South Carolina among them. With 14 percent of the votes in North Carolina being reported, Obama was leading Clinton 63 percent to 35 percent.

CBS News exit poll results show that most voters in both states made up their minds a while ago. Only 17 percent in Indiana and 14 percent in North Carolina decided in the last three days. Twenty-four percent in Indiana and 18 percent in North Carolina decided in the last week.

Late deciders backed Clinton in Indiana by a margin of 62 percent to 38 percent for Obama. In North Carolina, Obama won late deciders by a much smaller margin of 49 percent to 48 percent.

And the important issues?

As it has been throughout the Democratic primaries, the economy was the most important issue in both states with 65 percent of voters in Indiana describing it as such and 60 percent in North Carolina. In Indiana, 50 percent of voters said Clinton would be more likely to improve the economy and 46 percent said that Obama would. In North Carolina, 52 percent said that Obama would be more likely to improve the economy and 42 percent said that Clinton would.

Nearly half of voters in both states said the situation with Obama’s former pastor Reverend Wright was important in their vote, while half said that it was not. In Indiana, 48 percent said that it was important and 49 percent said that it was not, while in North Carolina, 48 percent said the Wright situation was important in their vote and 50 percent said that it was not.

What happens next?

The Obama camp will point to his big North Carolina win and the rocky patch he has endured the past few weeks and suggest it shows he can handle anything. That spin is already going out.

Expect to the Clinton side to discount North Carolina without flatly coming out and saying Obama won in a state with a large black vote. Expect to hear the words “demographics” and fill in the vague word yourself.

Also, expect the Clinton campaign to signal ASAP that it intends to play hardball since Clinton did not get a double win tonight.

Is this the first salvo? Via The Page:

Clinton delegate honcho [Harold Ickes] tells The Page that his camp believes 2,209 — not 2,025 — is the magic number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination because they’re counting Michigan and Florida.

“I know the Obama people like to use the smaller amount. We don’t even like the implication of it, much less the amount. It implies he doesn’t recognize Florida and Michigan. We don’t see how he can do that politically…So our target is 2,209 and we think Hillary is in a good position to get there.”

This is called changing the goal posts. AND:

Also repeats his calling card to supers: “We don’t know enough about Senator Obama yet. We don’t need an October Surprise. And (the chance of) an October Surprise with Hillary is remote.”

So it could boil down to whether Superdelegates will allow the up-until-now conventional wisdom on the delegate count to be changed and to tilt to a candidate because the other side suggests there could be an October surprise.

FOOTNOTE: The total picture will be far more clear once the votes are completely tallied.

The question of whether the Democrats are shooting themselves in the foot with the race issue is being hotly debated on both sides of the Atlantic.

Antoine Maurice writes for Switzerland’s Tribune De Geneve:

“Why is it such a struggle for Obama to get elected? The question of Blacks in the United States is the best kept secret in the American family. Forty years after President Johnson’s great campaign for civil rights, much about race relations has changed, but not the essence: the semi-condescending, semi-frightened, mostly disguised fear of African Americans by the White majority.”

In summing up what’s at stake in the Democratic primary race, Maurice writes:

“The outbreak of race in the debate lends itself to a rational argument about the fragility of the Black candidate. In the mind, these unspeakable racial divisions secretly lurk, and mark the campaign with a strong emotional impact. The debate constitutes a profound test for both Democratic candidates.”

By Antoine Maurice

Translated By Sandrine Ageorges

May 3, 2008

Tribune de Geneve - Switzerland - Original Article (French)

Why is it such a struggle for Obama to get elected? The question of Blacks in the United States is the best kept secret in the American family. Forty years after President Johnson’s great campaign for civil rights, much about race relations has changed, but not the essence: the semi-condescending, semi-frightened, mostly disguised fear of African Americans by the White majority.

The Black community has been shaped largely by a series of dramatic episodes, and it will soon commemorate the 50th anniversary of some of these events: The death of Martin Luther King, last great advocate for Black integration [40 years ago]; the assassination of two Kennedys [John and Robert - 40 years ago], the dawn of the campaign for civil rights, the birth of a Black middle class, the growth of inter-racial marriage, the advent of minority studies (Black history) in academia and minority participation in the arts.

In short, African Americans, who have built their unity based mostly on the way others view them, have experienced unprecedented economic and civic progress.

Barack Obama serves as an indicator of this spectacular progress, while at the same time he is confronting - despite himself - its incompleteness. His strategy thus far has been not to play the race card, but to present himself as the promoter of change in America, more committed to redressing income inequalities than the burden of racial inequity.

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

I came across a Sarah Posner interview with Black religion expert Jonathan Walton in Salon the other day and it has stuck with me since. In it Walton explains how King used direct nonviolent confrontation as a means to reconciliation:

King believed in nonviolent, direct confrontation. And thus when we come marching through the town, we are trying to expose inequality and expose violence. And if you practice nonviolent confrontation, you morally shame your opponent toward moral suasion. And when you shame them toward moral suasion, it’s not to defeat your opponent, but to reunite with your opponent… [Rev. Jeremiah] Wright sees himself in that tradition. King was very much in the tradition of the African-American jeremiad. And that is where he would call out the sins of the nation so the nation would live up to its ideals and its promises… On April 4, 1967, King stood in front of the Riverside Church and said that if America does not change its ways, America, if you continue to be so prideful, God will tear down this nation, and rise up another nation that doesn’t even know my name… It was his God damn America moment. And the Sunday after King was assassinated, do you know what King was scheduled to preach that Sunday morning? His sermon title was “Why America May Go to Hell.”

It puts the Rev. Jeremiah Wright in such a different context. In King’s day we were fighting for freedom and justice and liberty for all. Now we’ve moved to a far more narrower notion of “tolerance” and with that move comes the right to be intolerant of anyone who does not meet our high standard of tolerance. Wright’s “anger” prevents him from meeting that high standard so we are free to pile on. And pile on we all do!

Much of the commentary on Wright’s various speeches has cast them either in terms of the Oedipal relationship with the candidate or the tactical impact on the campaign. And so we do not have to address Wright’s essential concern: the legacy of racial inequality in America.

Oh. Right. Obama’s promise is post-racial. And, Sully says, post-boomer. He’s transformational. He’s rebranding America. He transcends race.

Wright’s ruined the script! Read the rest of this entry »

A new poll indicates Democratic Senator Barack Obama is rebounding after denouncing his former pastor — and it shows a majority of voters polled approve of how Obama handled the political crisis involving his pastor.

But this does NOT mean Obama isn’t damaged by the controversy.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama appears to be rebounding from sliding poll numbers in the wake the controversy over his former pastor, according to a CBS News/New York Times poll released on Sunday.

Among Democratic primary voters, the Illinois senator now leads opponent Hillary Clinton by 12 points — 50 percent to 38 percent — the poll found. Obama led the New York senator by 8 points in a CBS/New York Times poll released just a few days ago.

The latest poll was taken after Obama’s comments last week repudiating Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who repeated statements that the September 11 attacks were retribution for U.S. foreign policy and that the U.S. government had a hand in spreading AIDS to harm blacks.

The poll found 60 precent of the voters approved of how Obama handled the Wright controversy, versus 23 percent who disapproved. In addition the poll shows both Obama and Clinton could defeate Republican presumptive Presidential nominee Senator John McCain: Obama by 11 percent and Clinton by 12.

Does this mean Obama has escaped political damage on the issue.

Hardly.
The New York Times adds:

But nearly half of the voters surveyed, and a substantial part of the Democrats, said Mr. Obama had acted mainly because he thought it would help him politically, rather than because he had serious disagreements with his former pastor. The broader effect of the controversy on Mr. Obama’s candidacy among Democratic primary voters was less clear in the poll, but enough of them expressed qualms about Mr. Obama’s relationship with Mr. Wright to suggest it could sway a relatively small but potentially important group of voters in the remaining primaries.

The relatively small number of Democrats surveyed limits the conclusions that can be drawn about the poll’s findings regarding sentiment in the party. Moreover, as a national poll, it does not necessarily reflect the thoughts of voters in Indiana and North Carolina.

Questions involving racially charged episodes have historically proved difficult to poll, particularly when it comes to asking white voters about black candidates.

Still, the survey suggested that Mr. Obama, of Illinois, had lost much or all of the once-commanding lead he had held over Mrs. Clinton, of New York, among Democratic voters on the question of which of them would be the strongest candidate against Mr. McCain, of Arizona.

So the poll suggests Obama is rebounding. The questions are: whether he will be rebounding enough, whether evidence of that will be seen on Tuesday in the Indiana and North Carolina primary, and whether the Wright controversy has altered the long-term dynamics of the Presidential nomination battle…and the general election.

All along, below the radar of contesting Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama has been matched up with her husband in a battle of both substance and style that reflects generational differences.

Now, at the end of Jeremiah Wright Week, as Obama is out there doing TV interviews to stop his slide in the polls, the contrasts with Bill Clinton are coming into sharper focus.

In his speech on race in Philadelphia, Obama tried to put the Wright YouTube clips into context–an admirable trait in a president but treacherous for a candidate, as it soon proved to be.

Contrast this with Bill Clinton’s Sister Souljah moment in 1992. Granted, Clinton had no previous connection with her, but, after her inflammatory rhetoric about white people after the Los Angeles riots, he didn’t hesitate to make political points by condemning her for black racism at a meeting of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition.

That’s what politicians do. But Obama, by trying to address the issue of race seriously before Wright’s antics forced his hand, has been politically wounded by not throwing his pastor to the media wolves as soon as the issue surfaced.

Read the rest of this entry.

“Hello, this is Lamont Williams. In the next few days, you will receive a voter registration packet in the mail. All you need to do is sign it, date it and return your application. Then you will be able to vote and make your voice heard. Please return the voter registration form when it arrives. Thank you.”

That is a transcript of the robocalls that voters in predominately black districts, which is to say Barack Obama-leaning areas, received in a ham-handed voter suppression effort by Women’s Voices Women’s Vote that was clearly intended to try to help Hillary Clinton in the run-up to the May 6 primary in North Carolina.

WVWV president Page Gardner has apologized for any “confusion” caused by her group.

But it is obvious that Gardner is playing the news media and others for suckers because the more we learn about the high-tech suppression effort the more obvious it becomes that it was black North Carolinians whom the women’s advocacy group was trying to confuse in the service of getting one of their own elected — a proclaimed feminist who like them has mastered the manly art of dirty politics.

It is minorly ironic that Jeff Fecke over at Shakesville has been one of the bloggers to depants Gardner in providing details of WVWV’s jackbooted approach to electoral politics. Ironic because certain Shakesville contributors expend considerable bandwidth pushing back against the perceived enemies of feminism, often in locker room language.

Anyhow, Fecke details the insidiousness of the WVWV effort, which is now under criminal investigation by North Carolina authorities:

Read the rest of this entry »

For months it has been a “given” that Senator Barack Obama was way ahead in North Carolina — in some cases by double-digits in the polls — and that rival Senator Hillary Clinton didn’t have much of a chance to win the state’s Democratic Presidential primary, and create eleventh hour “Big Mo” in their battle for the Democratic presidential nomination. New polls suggest it may now be time to retire that “given.”

What’s going on among the Democrats now clearly is on two levels: the votes and the primaries on one level and the appeal to decision-solidifying Superdelegates on another. The political context is changing rapidly for Obama and not to his advantage.

Obama has a big problem: the latest Rasmussen Poll gives Clinton a two point lead — but indicates a TEN POINT DROP in Obama’s polling since Obama’s former Pastor, Jeremiah Wright’s press conference.

In the race for the Democratic Presidential Nomination, the Wright impact is especially evident. Clinton now has a statistically insignificant two-point edge over Obama, 46% to 44%. However, that represents a ten-point swing since Wright’s press conference. Before Pastor Wright appeared at the National Press Club, Obama led Clinton by eight points.

In Indiana, Clinton leads Obama by five points. In North Carolina Obama leads. Rasmussen Markets data shows Obama continues to be the favorite for the Democratic nomination, but expectations have slipped significantly in recent days. Currently, the frontrunner is given a 74.4% chance of winning.

Obama’s problem is now this: a slew of polls show a Clinton surge, the Boston Globe reports:

A bevy of new national polls, plus surveys in Indiana and North Carolina — which hold key primaries on Tuesday — suggest that Hillary Clinton is closing the gap since her campaign-saving victory in Pennsylvania last week, and that the controversies dogging Barack Obama are having an impact.

In a national Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll, Clinton leads Obama 44 percent to 41 percent. The Illinois senator is viewed unfavorably by 42 percent of all voters, up 9 percentage points since February. Clinton’s unfavorable rating is still slightly higher than Obama’s, but it has dropped slightly. And by 10 percentage points, Democrats now view Clinton as likelier than Obama to beat presumptive Republican nominee John McCain. Democrats gave Obama a 4-point edge last month.

The Clinton campaign’s strategy to raise doubts about Obama’s electability is clearly succeeding, but not only due to the two Clintons’ at-times-Rovian-style negative campaigning. Three other contributing factors are Obama’s political bungles, his former Pastor’s insistence on a controversial high profile that sucks the air out of Obama’s daily media coverage, and Clinton’s increasing enthusiasm as a campaigner (which many analysts are noting). The Globe continues:

In a national NBC/Wall Street Journal survey, Obama’s lead has narrowed to 46 percent to 43 percent, and his unfavorable ratings have also risen. In March, 51 percent of voters viewed him positively and 28 percent saw him negatively, but in the new poll 46 percent view him favorably, but 37 percent negatively.

In a national New York Times/CBS poll, Obama leads 46 percent to 38 percent among Democrats, but 51 percent say they believe he will be the eventual nominee, down from 69 percent a month ago. And 48 percent of Democratic primary voters said they believe he would be the strongest candidate against McCain, down from 56 percent a month ago.

And in a Quinnipiac University poll, Clinton runs stronger than Obama in match-ups against McCain in the general election swing states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida. Clinton would get 49 percent to McCain’s 41 percent in Florida, leads 48 percent to 38 percent in Ohio, and 51 percent to 37 percent in Pennsylvania.

It’s clear that Obama knows he has a problem.

This morning he went on the Today Show (VIDEO HERE) with his wife Michelle — a husband-wife damage control appearance that was reminiscent of when then-Governor Bill Clinton went on 60 Minutes with Hillary Clinton in 1992 to be grilled by Steve Kroft amid allegations of (pre-Oval office) infidelity.

Last night Michelle Obama went on CNN. And on Sunday Obama will enter the Lion’s Den and be on “Meet The Press” with gotcha! journalist Tim Russert.

But Obama’s immediate concern is likely North Carolina. The vibes coming from polls aren’t good ones. And, if he loses there, the ugly and divisive Democratic party race will likely get uglier and more divisive as Clinton moves in for the political kill and Obama pulls out all stops to stabilize his campaign.

Once again — as in all polling — polls are contradictory but this one should be of intense concern to the Obama campaign:

A survey of 571 registered likely voters in North Carolina’s May 6 Democratic primary shows Sen. Hillary Clinton having moved from a double digit deficit in an InsiderAdvantage poll taken in mid-April to a two point lead over Sen. Barack Obama in this telephone survey, conducted April 29. The survey was weighted for age, race, gender, and political affiliation. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8%

The results were:

Hillary Clinton: 44%
Barack Obama: 42%
Undecided: 14%

Prior to his appearance on Fox News Network’s “Hannity & Colmes,” on which the poll was released, InsiderAdvantage’s Matt Towery noted: “The shift has come almost entirely from white voters age 45 and over. There was a small drift of African-Americans back towards Clinton, but not so significant as to establish any trend.

“I believe when all is said and done, Obama will likely carry North Carolina; or if he loses the race, it will be by just a few points.

“Our polling generally does not indicate the eventual compression of black voters that Obama usually enjoys just before Election Day. If that happens, my guess is that he will pull this out. However, this poll is clearly an indication of reaction to the latest statements by his former pastor; and it forces Sen. Obama to split resources between Indiana and North Carolina.”

Even with the pollster’s hedge, the bottom line is that this is awful news for the Obama campaign. Narrowing polls are one thing in NC; Clinton pulling ahead is another. Perception helps sculpt reality. And news stories down the line show an Obama campaign that is on the defensive and a Clinton campaign that is taking advantage of it…and the polls show some results.
A WRAL news poll doesn’t show Clinton ahead — but, once again, the TRENDING in the polls is clear:

A WRAL news poll released Wednesday shows Barack Obama’s double-digit lead over Hillary Clinton among Tar heel Democrats is eroding.

Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. surveyed 400 likely Democratic voters Monday and Tuesday. The results show Obama with a 7 point lead over Clinton, with 9 percent undecided. The poll has a margin of error of 5 percentage points.

“Right or wrong, it’s the Wright phenomenon for Obama,” said David McLennan, a political science professor at Peace College.

McLennan said Obama’s former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is dragging down the Illinois senator. Wright has made comments such as suggesting that the AIDS virus was invented by the government to destroy “people of color.”

“It is a media-driven story. Wright is very controversial. He makes controversial statements. He gets people fired up, but it’s not one of the top issues in the polls,” McLennan said.

Note again that polls are all over the place — and for confirmation of this, GO HERE to Pollster.com and see the graph of various polls. Obama partisans will say “Well, those polls are flawed because others show him well ahead!” Clinton partisans will pooh-pooh polls showing Obama in the lead, say they don’t count and point to the one showing Clinton ahead. But it is the trending of recent polls that needs to be watched — even though the graph that charts various polls shows Obama ahead.

THE BOTTOM LINE FACT: Both campaigns will have to pull-out-all-stops for the political ground war. An Obama win in NC would give him a cushion against his broken momentum and Clinton’s likely win in Indiana. A Clinton win in North Carolina would be considered an upset and ensure a tooth-and-nail battle right up to the convention and bolster Clinton’s argument that Obama has some electability problems, even though she has some of her own.

In reality, both Democratic candidates increasingly seem to be damaged political goods, but McCain is burdened with his anchor-like tie to President George W. Bush — a tie that could become increasingly toxic once the Democrats stop politically disemboweling each other and turn their focus instead on the Republican candidate. McCain’s Bush ties are a bigger sticking point with voters than Obama’s relationship with his pastor.

HERE’S A CROSS SECTION OF WEBLOG OPINION ON THE POLLS:

Read the rest of this entry »

Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com

Sandy Huffaker, Cagle Cartoons

The politician was doing what he had to do, but Barack Obama’s personal pain yesterday was palpable as he cut his ties to Jeremiah Wright.

“Whatever relationship I had with Reverend Wright has changed as a consequence of this,” Obama said. “I don’t think that he showed much concern for me.”

Behind the politician’s voice was the anger and disappointment of a man who barely knew his own father but wrote a book about him, bearing a title inspired by a paternal figure who had now betrayed him.

Searching for substitute fathers has been common for a long time now in an era of mobility, psychological desertion and divorce. Throughout his life, Obama has found more than one, not only Wright and the disreputable Tony Rezko but, among others, two figures from the Kennedy era, Abner Mikva and Newt Minow, who helped and advised him along the way.

The Wright psychodrama, and how Obama handles it, will almost certainly be a turning point in this campaign and beyond. Yesterday he seemed dazed and hurt in making the break.

“The fact that Reverend Wright would think that somehow it was appropriate to command the stage for three or four consecutive days in the midst of this major debate is something that not only makes me angry, but also saddens me,” he said in dealing with his pain publicly.

The coming days will be a test of his capacity for recovery and renewal.

Cross-posted from my blog.

Mike Keefe, The Denver Post

Mike Lester, The Rome News-Tribune