Ask someone who works for either Barack Obama (Ill.) or John McCain (Ariz.) about the search for a vice presidential nominee and, to a person, the response you get goes something like this: “It’s way too early to even be thinking about specific names.”
Bring up potential VP’s with people outside the direct orbit of the campaigns, however, and you get a panoply of names, discussions of running mate strategy, and handicapping of strengths and weaknesses.
Welcome to the veepstakes — where those who know the most are saying the least and, unfortunately, vice versa.
The Fix, as always, navigates these tricky waters for the good of our readers. Conversations with a variety of operatives who are in a position to have a general sense of the veepstakes have produced the lists you will find below. When it comes to picking a vice presidential candidate, we acknowledge it is something of a moving target — so if your preferred guy (or gal) didn’t make the list never fear, they could show up next time.
Also, since McCain and Obama appear to have the nominations locked up, we are, for the first time, ranking the five most likely veep picks. The number one slot on the Line is the candidate with the best chance — right now — of being picked.
Agree or disagree? Have a favorite of your own? Or even a full list? The comments section awaits.
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.”
–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?
In The Conservative Revival David Brooks explores the lessons the GOP could learn from their conservative colleagues in the UK.
“The British conservative renovation begins with this insight: The central political debate of the 20th century was over the role of government. The right stood for individual freedom while the left stood for extending the role of the state. But the central debate of the 21st century is over quality of life. In this new debate, it is necessary but insufficient to talk about individual freedom. Political leaders have to also talk about, as one Tory politician put it, “the whole way we live our lives.”
That means, first, moving beyond the Thatcherite tendency to put economics first. As Oliver Letwin, one of the leading Tory strategists put it: “Politics, once econo-centric, must now become socio-centric.” David Cameron, the Conservative Party leader, makes it clear that his primary focus is sociological. Last year he declared: “The great challenge of the 1970s and 1980s was economic revival. The great challenge in this decade and the next is social revival.” In another speech, he argued: “We used to stand for the individual. We still do. But individual freedoms count for little if society is disintegrating. Now we stand for the family, for the neighborhood — in a word, for society.”
This could be as significant as the replacement of communism with capitalism and their realization that “If you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em”. What this means to me is that one model of the conservative movement may be evolving from “survival of the fittest” to accepting the aims of liberalism and focusing on the wellbeing of the unfortunate. Party distinctions may become more about tactics: big government solutions or small government solutions rather than about the class war of haves and have nots.
This would be stunningly important political progress to add to abolition of slavery, suffrage, the GI bill, Marshall Plan, Social Security, Medicare…
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.
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 »
Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh has urged his Republican listeners to vote for Senator Hillary Clinton in today’s Indiana primary, pointing to what he said is a double standard when it comes to cross-over voters, the Boston Globe reports — and another newspaper reports signs of “hardcore” Republicans voting Democratic.
Indiana’s primary is open to Republicans and independents, as well as Democrats. Limbaugh is urging Republicans to cross over and vote for Clinton to extend the Democratic nomination fight and, he hopes, further damage the eventual nominee.
Exit polls suggest that Limbaugh’s soldiers could have made a difference March 4 in Texas, where Clinton pulled out a narrow win in the primary, though Obama won the simultaneous caucuses.
Limbaugh told listeners on Monday that Democratic Party officials in Indiana are trying to intimidate Republican voters with monitors at the polls. So he issued these orders: “Flood these precincts. Vote for Mrs. Clinton as an act of defiance against these police-state tactics as a form of protest.” Read the rest of this entry »
He observes the dropping confidence of the public in the GOP and suggests policy initiatives that might connect with enough voters to head off some election loses. Part of his alarm may be that once the Democrats get control of government and implement improvements to Health Care, Energy, Immigration, etc it may solidify middle class loyalty for a very long time.
I agree with the intention of some of his proposals and I hope that a Democratically controlled Congress moves most of them forward.
Democratic party activists and Democrats in general often say their party has two great candidates, no matter who gets the nomination — unless they’re Barack Obama supporters saying they’d never vote for Hillary Clinton if she gets the nomination or Clinton supporters saying they’d never vote for Obama if he gets the nomination.
When Democrats put aside their anger, they often describe the candidates as to topflight choices. But MSNBC’s First Thoughts looks at Clinton and Obama and proclaims “Enough Baggage To Fill A Plane”:
There’s also plenty baggage going into tomorrow…
Clinton can’t name a single economist to back up her gas-tax plan. While it’s easy to dismiss the idea that economists are heartless folks, isn’t one of the chief criticisms of Bush is that he doesn’t listen to experts? Also, Clinton defended her “obliterate” Iran comment on Sunday, but refused to reuse the word (doesn’t that suggest she DOES regret the choice of words?)
Meanwhile, Obama may have to explain at some point his quid pro quo with the Teamsters; how does one who is promising a new transparency in politics promise something that the general public has to find out about via reporters asking tough questions? And then there’s Wright, Wright, Wright. When Obama can get through a TV interview without the name Rev. Wright coming up, that’s when he’ll know he’s out of the woods. So far, he’s not out of the woods.
And, indeed, both of these candidates have negative aspects that the GOPers will most assuredly exploit come November. Indeed: viewed in this context, the idea of a “dream ticket” of Obama-Clinton or Clinton-Obama could be seen as a boon to the Democrats but a,lso as a kind of Disneyland for Republicans in terms of targets and rallying their party’s base. (I still predict the “Dream Ticket” is more of an “In Your Dreams” ticket due to seeming irreperable anger between the two camps and how each side demonizes the other).
And McCain?
McCain has a host of vulnerabilities (his positions today versus what they were when he ran against Bush in 2000, his ties to his own divisive religious figures, the frequent corrections he has to make after speeches or comments in terms of accuracy, and — most critically — whether he is truly independent or a McCain administration in terms of staffing and ideas will really be Bush III) that have not been addressed by Democrats who are too busy beating each other up and raising each others’ negatives.
So perhaps First Thought’s analysis should be revised:
Both parties now have likely candidates who are carrying so much much baggage that TSA will have to inspect them.
Yesterday we ran a post about a CBS/New York Times poll that said Democratic Senator Barack Obama has rebounded after denouncing his former pastor — but a new Gallup poll reaches a different conclusion: it concludes Obama has been wounded among independent voters and Democrats.
It also finds that Clinton’s husband former President Bill Clinton is also a highly divisive factor among many voters.
Meanwhile, Obama’s rival for the Democratic nomination Senator Hillary Clinton has now pulled into the lead among both Democrats and independents:
Barack Obama’s national standing has been significantly damaged by the controversy over his former pastor, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, raising questions for some voters about the Illinois senator’s values, credibility and electability.
The erosion of support among Democrats and independents raises the stakes in Tuesday’s Indiana and North Carolina primaries, which represent a chance for Obama to reassert his claim to a Democratic nomination that seems nearly in his grasp. A defeat in Indiana and a close finish in North Carolina, where he’s favored, could fuel unease about his ability to win in November. Such results also could help propel Hillary Rodham Clinton’s uphill campaign all the way to the Democratic convention in August.
In the USA TODAY survey, taken Thursday through Saturday, Clinton leads Obama among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents by 7 percentage points, the first time in three months she has been ahead. Two weeks ago, before the controversy over comments by Jeremiah Wright reignited, Obama led by 10 points.
And now it moves to media center stage: the trend of Republicans crossing over to vote in Democratic primaries. But the New York Times reports that many GOPers aren’t doing this because they’re “dittoheads” obeying the wishes of mega-partisan talk show host Rush Limbaugh, but disgruntled Republicans who feel their party has left — or is leaving — them:
INDIANAPOLIS - Until now, Shirley Morgan had always been the kind of voter the Republican Party thought it could count on. She comes from a family of staunch Republicans, has a son in the military and has supported Republican presidential candidates ever since she cast her first ballot, for Richard M. Nixon in 1972.
But this year Mrs. Morgan exemplifies a different breed: the Republican crossing over to vote in the Democratic primary. Not only will she mark her ballot for Senator Barack Obama in the May 6 primary here, but she has also been canvassing for him in the heavily Republican suburbs of Hamilton County, just north of Indianapolis — the first time she has ever actively campaigned for a candidate.
“I used to like John McCain, but he’s aligning himself too closely with what Bush did, and that’s just not what I want for this country,” Mrs. Morgan, who is 56, said when asked to explain her rejection of the presumptive Republican nominee.
This should be a warning flag to John McCain. As I’ve predicted many times on this site, there is a large segment of voters that aren’t going to look at political party at all this year — but want to take a big broom and sweep away the people who are in charge who have brought the United States a war seemingly without end (even if X voter originally supported the war), a decimated economy, a sagging dollar, an epidemic of home foreclosures and plummeting local property values, and an economy peppered by massive corporate cutbacks or failures and employment ills.
Seen from this perspective, the decisions of Democratic rivals Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to ignore Democratic progressives’ demand to boycott Fox News, makes political sense: Republican voters are in play in these primaries and they all can’t be dismissed as participating in Limbaugh’s call to basically sabotage the Democratic primaries.
This suggests that indicates that the potency of the Democratic party’s most progressive wing, is now being offset in some primaries by more conservative and centrist voters who are cross-over Republicans who feel their party has failed them. And they’re shopping around.
The Times confirms this:
Since the start of the primary and caucus season in January, Republican voters have been crossing over in increasing numbers to vote in Democratic contests — supplying up to 10 percent of the vote in states that allow such crossover voting — and they are expected to play a pivotal role in the fiercely contested primary here. What is less clear, however, is the motivation for their behavior: are they genuinely attracted by the two Democratic candidates? Or are they mischief-making spoilers, looking to prolong a divisive Democratic fight or support a candidate Mr. McCain can beat in November?
Local Republican Party leaders in Indiana concede the attraction of the Democratic candidates to some of their party members. And interviews with roughly a dozen Republican voters in central Indiana suggest that they are driven mainly by concerns about the economy, with discontent over Bush administration policies driving their involvement in the Democratic race.
What’s now happening between Obama and Clinton is competition for some of these Republicans — Republicans probably dismissed as “well-they-must-be-Rinos” by lockstep Republican partisans who will adjust their positions or jettison previous principles according to the latest pronouncements from the White House or EIB Radio Network. The Times again: Read the rest of this entry »
Give Hillary Clinton credit. She has shown toughness, stamina, and persistence in one of the longest presidential campaigns in American history. She has fought hard and come back time and again in the 2008 primary season, defying the pundits who insisted on writing her political obituary prematurely. She has held the charismatic phenomenon named Barack Obama almost to a draw in the fight for votes and delegates in the Democratic Party’s nominating battle.
As some of Obama’s weaknesses become more apparent — and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright continues to bask in the spotlight — her arguments are drawing new attention, and Democratic leaders are considering them. It’s easy to see why. Imagine if John F. Kennedy’s priest or bishop had proven divisive and taken the public stage in 1960, claiming the campaign had become an attack on the Catholic Church, just as Rev. Wright has insisted that the controversy over his sermons are an assault on the “black church”. There would have been no JFK presidency.
All that being true, the odds remain long that she will overcome Obama’s lead. With just seven states (plus Puerto Rico and Guam) remaining on the primary schedule, Obama is ahead by close to 160 elected “pledged” delegates and, overall, by about 130 delegates, once the superdelegates are included. This may not sound like many in a convention that will host more than 4,000 delegates, but the party’s strict proportional allotment regimen makes it difficult to gain a sizeable number of delegates quickly. (Incredibly, a candidate can win a big state and net a mere handful of delegates. The Democrats have developed a system so fair that it is unfair.) Despite their name, pledged delegates are not truly bound to back their candidate, but they have been carefully chosen by the campaigns and are highly unlikely to shift allegiance.
Discussions of the current political situation and comparisons between the 2008 election and earlier contests frequently overlook a crucial fact. As a result of changes in American society, today’s electorate is very different from the electorate of twenty, thirty, or forty years ago. Three long-term trends have been especially significant in this regard: increasing racial diversity, declining rates of marriage, and changes in religious beliefs. As a result of these trends, today’s voters are less likely to be white, less likely to be married, and less likely to consider themselves Christians than voters of just a few decades ago.
The combined impact of these trends on the composition of the electorate has been dramatic. Married white Christians now make up less than half of all voters in the United States and less than one fifth of voters under the age of 30. The declining proportion of married white Christians in the electorate has important political implications because in recent years married white Christians have been among the most loyal supporters of the Republican Party. In American politics today, whether you are a married white Christian is a much stronger predictor of your political preferences than your gender or your class — the two demographic characteristics that dominate much of the debate on contemporary American politics.
The latest Gallup Daily Tracking Poll provides the most vivid red flag warning yet for Democratic Senator Barack Obama in his battle with Senator Hillary Clinton for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination: presumptive GOP nominee Senator John McCain now enjoys a six point lead over Obama and only a one point lead over Clinton.
This will be a welcome piece of data for the Clinton campaign that has had as its strategy Obama not being electable (and many analysts say to make Obama that way):
John McCain has moved to a six percentage point, 48% to 42%, lead over Barack Obama in Gallup Poll Daily tracking of the general election, while he edges out Hillary Clinton by only one point, 46% to 45%.
The ongoing turmoil in the Democratic race — with neither candidate able to sustain a winning streak in the primaries and animosity seemingly mounting between them — seems to be benefiting McCain and hurting both Democrats. Last week McCain had fallen three points behind Clinton in the preferences of registered voters for the general election, and only tied Obama.
Although both Clinton and Obama have lost ground to McCain over the past week, the current results may be particularly troubling for Obama in trying to combat Clinton’s assertion to superdelegates that she would be the more electable of the two candidates in November.
This is McCain’s largest lead in a tracking poll:
The current six-point margin for McCain over Obama is the largest lead McCain has had over either candidate since Gallup began tracking general election preferences in early March. The gap between Obama and Clinton’s percentage of the vote when both are pitted against McCain is also the largest since the general election tracking began.
The bottom line: the contest is not benefiting the Democratic party, as some have claimed — and Obama has lost a host of support since his former pastor decided to extend his 15 minutes of fame into several long public appearances.
The question: can Obama stabilize his campaign in time for the important upcoming North Carolina and Indiana primaries?
Yesterday we ran a post about polls out of North Carolina hinting at what could be a possible upset — a win by Senator Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Presidential primary there. But now a new poll by Zogby — a pollster that did well in predicting the Pennsylvania vote — puts Obama way ahead in North Carolina and locked in a tie with Clinton in Indiana:
Five days before the important Democratic presidential primaries in North Carolina and Indiana, Barack Obama of Illinois enjoys a substantial lead in one state and remains tied with Hillary Clinton of New York in the other, a new Zogby daily tracking poll shows.
Obama leads by a 50% to 34% margin over Clinton in North Carolina, while the two are tied at 42% support each in Indiana.
The telephone surveys, conducted over two days, began on April 30 and were completed May 1. They comprise the first of Zogby’s daily tracking surveys that will continue until Tuesday. In North Carolina, 668 likely Democratic primary election voters were polled. The survey carries a margin of error of +/- 3.9 percentage points. In Indiana, 680 likely voting Democratic primary voters were surveyed. That poll carries a margin of error of +/- 3.8 percentage points.
Zogby finds Obama leads in all age groups there except 70 year and older (where it is tied).
And it’s clear that although white voters are split, with a larger number going to Clinton, Clinton has essentially lost the African-American vote:
Clinton leads by 10 points among white voters in North Carolina—47% to 37% - but Obama dominates among African American voters, 73% to 10% for Clinton. Among men, Obama leads, 57% to 30%, and he leads among women voters as well—winning 44% support to Clinton’s 37% backing.
Asked if the statements of controversial Obama pastor Jeremiah Wright made voters more or less likely to support Obama, 15% of North Carolina voters said they were less likely to support him, while 4% said the comments made them more likely to support Obama.
In Indiana, Zogby finds a tie: 42 percent for Clinton and Obama:
The demographic breakdowns in Indiana mirror what we have seen in earlier voting states, with Obama leading among younger voters and Clinton leading among older voters. A key middle-age demographic—those age 35 to 54—now favors Obama by a 48% to 41% margin in Indiana, but this demo turned out to be a key battleground in Pennsylvania, which has a somewhat similar population make-up.
Obama leads in northern Indiana, a large section of which is influenced by Obama’s hometown Chicago media market. In the southern half of the state, which features a population much like that of Ohio next door, Clinton enjoys a double-digit lead. Obama enjoys an 11-point lead among Indiana men, while Clinton leads by seven points among women.
After getting clobbered among Catholics in Pennsylvania nearly two weeks ago, Obama wins 41% support from Indiana Catholics, compared to 40% who support Clinton. Conversely, Clinton leads among Protestants by six points after having lost among them in Pennsylvania.
It’s ironic, but now the “Big Mo” influencing state could be North Carolina.
Obama has long been favored to win there by a big margin. If he loses or barely wins it would be widely seen as a sign of major erosion in his support and Clinton would seize on it accordingly. If it wouldn’t quite change the numbers in the Presidential race, it would change perceptions — and perception often equals reality in politics.
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.
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.
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%
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:
April 30th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
This Guest Voice post is by watchingamerica.com translator Dorian de Wind, who is also a retired U.S. Air Force officer. Guest Voice posts do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of TMV and its writers.
John McCain’s One Hundred Years in Iraq
by Dorian de Wind
Presidential candidate John McCain during a recent town-hall meeting said that it “would be fine with” him if the U.S. military stayed in Iraq for “a hundred years.”
He qualified such a breathtaking level of comfort with the war in Iraq by adding that it would be fine with him as long as Americans are not killed or injured.
A few days later in an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” with Tim Russert, McCain added: “So what I believe we can achieve is a reduction in casualties to the point where the Iraqis are doing the fighting and dying, we‘re supporting them…”
But, John McCain has consistently refused to give the American people any indication as to when this war may be over, or may be “won.” When he expects that it will be only the Iraqis that “are doing the fighting and dying.” When he believes that our troops will no longer be killed, maimed or injured. When he thinks that we will be in Iraq just “supporting them.”
During a season when most all readings of tea leaves and chicken entrails have spoken of gloom and doom for the Republican party (none of which explain how John McCain seems to be doing so well) yet another factoid is being dumped on the log jam of bad news. There seems to be a generation gap in younger, up and coming voters which shows them skewing heavily toward the Democratic party.
the gap between Dem and GOP party identification is greater today than at any point since the vanguard of the Reagan revolution, when Republicans held a double-digit advantage. Researchers at Pew have put a decade’s worth of data through their analytical minds and come to the conclusion that the leading edge of the Democratic edge is among young voters.
Among voters ages 18 to 29, in 1992 the split was 47 to 46 in favor of the Republicans. Today, Pew Research is showing that same demographic as breaking 58 to 33 in favor of the Democrats. Conventional “wisdom” tells us, though, that younger people tend to be more liberal but as they age, they grow more conservative and drift to the GOP. How do the figures fit in with that theory?
A potential objection: that old canard, that young people are liberal and become more conservative? The historical data doesn’t support it. When Bill Clinton was elected, a plurality of people under 30 identified themselves as Republicans. Same thing when Ronald Reagan was elected.
Well, this isn’t the first time that something “everybody knows” has come into question. But the future is always in flux, and I know that my attitudes and opinins have changed over the years. Will any of this result in significant advantages for the Democrats? Only time will tell, but the Dems have, in the past, shown a remarkable ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Politically, today’s cohort of 18-to-29 year olds came of age during the Bush presidency. It has turned them into Democrats.
April 29th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
Past political campaigns have had their share of people associated with candidates who are placed on the defensive — but seldom has one in any year had one as proactively insistent on keeping himself alive and injected into an excruciatingly close race as the political albatross now dangling around Democratic Senator Barack Obama named Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Aside from the eager nodding of heads and the unspoken “Keep it up!” you can almost feel coming from the campaign of rival Democratic Presidential wannabe Senator Hillary Clinton, conservative Republicans are ecstatic. Jonah Goldberg, writing in The Los Angeles Times:
God bless the Rev. Jeremiah Wright!
After Barack Obama gave his big race speech in mid-March, many critics noted that the Illinois senator had thrown his own grandmother under the bus to defend his controversial pastor. Well, Wright proved over the last few days that he would not be outdone. He not only threw Obama under the bus, he chucked much of the liberal and mainstream media under there with him. If this keeps up, to paraphrase Roy Scheider in “Jaws,” he’s gonna need a bigger bus.
For six weeks, Obama’s biggest supporters have diligently argued that to so much as mention Wright is in effect racist. When Hillary Rodham Clinton said that Wright wouldn’t have been her pastor, Andrew Sullivan gasped on his Atlantic blog that this was “a new low” in the election. When Lanny J. Davis, Clinton’s consummate spinner, defended her on CNN by describing what Wright actually said, CNN’s Anderson Cooper lambasted Davis for daring to even repeat Wright’s comments. Newsweek’s Joe Klein chimed in, “You’re spreading the poison right now.”
What Wright has done the past few days by (over)exposure is to leave himself in the eyes of many indefensible in terms of the center — and converted himself into an unrelenting albatross also chained to a 1,000 lb. anchor dangling around Obama’s neck:
Obama and his defenders have repeatedly insisted that the bits from Wright’s sermons that got wide circulation last month had been taken “out of context.” His infamous sound bites were grounded in concrete theological or factual foundations, they claim. He was quoting other people. He’s done good things. Nothing to see here, folks.
And so God bless Wright because he’s left all of these folks holding a giant, steaming bag of … well, let’s just call it a bag of “context.”
His positions and the context of his remarks, some could argue, are still explainable, but the problem is that those making that argument right now veer into a nuanced area of nuance — the kind of argument that usually does not work in elections where candidates oversimplify, generalize and try to link up their opponents with broad-brush imagery of stances, events or individuals that will be seen unfavorably by key chunks of an attention-span-challenged electorate.
All this comes at a time when Obama’s campaign is reportedly battening down the hatches for what is expected to be a brutal campaign lasting well into the summer, the New York Times reports:
Mr. Obama’s aides said that they remained confident he would win the nomination. “We feel very good about the position that we are in,” said David Axelrod, his chief strategist. “But we have gotten to the position we are in by taking every week and every contest seriously.”
Still, they said they were no longer as hopeful as they once were that the contest could be resolved before June 3, the day of the last primaries. As a result, they were girding for six weeks of attacks by Mrs. Clinton and potential election defeats that could raise further questions among superdelegates — the elected Democrats and party leaders who will ultimately determine the nominee — about Mr. Obama’s strength as a general election candidate.
And Wright’s double-whammy of appearances came at a time of introspection and private disappointment:
In discussions with donors and supporters last week, Mr. Obama’s advisers played down the loss in Pennsylvania, noting that both sides had expected Mrs. Clinton to win there.
Still, the message belied private frustration and disappointment that Mr. Obama shared with a few associates and advisers, particularly over the hardening narrative that he could not appeal to working-class voters, and a personal frustration for comments he made about some small-town voters being “bitter” at their economic conditions. (Mrs. Clinton seized on those remarks, which have shadowed his campaign.)
“Everyone’s got a real calmness about where we are,” said David Plouffe, who is Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, “but a real sense of urgency that we have eight contests coming up in pretty rapid succession.”
But now it’s clear from the amount of space Wright has gotten on blogs, on serious cable talk shows, on screaming head cable and radio talk shows and in the opinion columns:
Wright is proactively making it tough for Obama to right his campaign.
Will he have to make a statement to distance himself even more from him? And what if Wright’s love affair with national media coverage continues? In essence, Wright himself has been putting the muscle, meat and flesh on the skeletal stereotypical imagery critics have tried to sculpt about Obama. And he won’t stay out of the spotlight to let the issue defuse itself.
Candidates’ associates have seldom totally sank a national political campaign.
But perhaps we are about to see an example of what happens when an association does.
