Clinton's internet ignorance

By Libby

Frank Rich looks at the Bosnia debacle and ruminates on how the Clinton campaign shot themselves in the foot by ignoring the reality of the intertubes age.

That Mrs. Clinton’s campaign kept insisting her Bosnia tale was the truth two days after The Post exposed it as utter fiction also shows the political perils of 20th-century analog arrogance in a digital age. Incredible as it seems, the professionals around Mrs. Clinton — though surely knowing her story was false — thought she could tough it out. They ignored the likelihood that a television network would broadcast the inevitable press pool video of a first lady’s foreign trip — as the CBS Evening News did on Monday night — and that this smoking gun would then become an unstoppable assault weapon once harnessed to the Web.

I've been thinking about this myself for a while now. The campaign has done an incredibly poor job of employing the internet to further their narrative and seems to fail to recognize its power. I don't get why. As far as I know, Peter Daou is still their internet guru and surely he's one of the best. A really savvy player who understands the rules of the game well. Their internet outreach should be stellar. It's not.

All I can think is that Clinton and Penn and the rest of the 'leading' advisors of the campaign are ignoring his advice. There's really no other explanation.

Political home building --- politics of structure

I think the most powerful explanation of Hillary Clinton's actions is that she is engaged in a winner take all competition with a thin but plausible hope of victory and is working towards that goal. I reject the hypothesis that she is setting herself up for a 2012 run against President McCain after sabotaging Obama's chances. The internal political logic is too convoluted as her base is demographically maxed out in providing her net margins and it will worsen over time for her.

If each campaign was a home construction firm, most campaigns would have built houses suitable for Dennis Kucinich on Jupiter, very low floors of initial bedrock support and fairly low ceilings. The home would be good for gnomes. John Edwards built a home good for the Artic circle with strong walls and a steep slope roof to allow the snow and support to rapidly fall off. Barrack Obama's campaign has built a home suitable for Manute Bol or Yao Ming --- low floors and very high ceilings.

The Clinton campaign has built a very different house as her structural advantages and disadvantages going into the campaign were very different. She had very high floors, but fairly low ceilings, she it was built for dwarfs in a low gravity environment. She knew that she had a solid 30% to 40% of the Democratic primary electorate attached to her hip, but gaining the remaining ten to twenty points to assemble either a majority or a sufficient plurality would be very difficult. She has had little room to grow, as this chart depicting the non-Gore opinion polling trends from Pollster.com shows.



Over eighteen months of campaigning she has added roughly 20% of her initial support to her coalition. And she has not picked up too many supporters from her opponents who dropped out. Obama on the other hand has more than doubled his initial support levels. This dynamic played out as Clinton was running as a quasi-incumbent with significant institutional, name recognition and organizational support. She did a good job of consolidating that support into a real and viable coalition unlike Joe Lieberman in 2004, but she has not been able to grow her base significantly.

In the counterfactual of an Obama nomination and an Obama loss in the general election, even if it is seen that Hillary Clinton was an excellent surrogate and supporter for Obama, she is weaker in June 2010 than she was in June 2006 as the Clinton nostalgia is a bit weaker, the demographics of the Democratic primary electorate are less favorable, the activists will be looking for something different and her fundamental problem remains. She can attract a significant coalition within the Democratic Party but that coalition will almost certainly be matched by an equal or greater anti-Clinton coalition. She knew that going into this cycle that would be the case, and her counter-plan to it was to run against multiple anti-Clintons, have them split the vote, win Iowa and New Hampshire to set up an information cascade in her favor and close out on Super Tuesday against one or more weakened opponents. Not a bad plan but reality intervened.

2012 is an absurd theory when the structure of the Democratic primary universe is less favorable than 2008 for Hillary Clinton.

I was not planning to write more on this subject, but 3,000 hits later, it is evident that people wanted to read some more.

Murtha's Mind

By Cernig

I see John Murtha has endorsed Clinton (via CFLF). It's being played as a valuable endorsement - "bringing his clout as a 17-term member of the House and a prominent anti-war Democrat to bear with more than a month until the primary here in his home state".

But I have to tell you I entertain a heresy - I don't trust Big John. It's a heresy I've come to slowly after previously supporting a couple of his amendments on Iraq-related bills. I've noticed that, for all his anti-war talk, often when there's a Democratic bil or resolution that would use the power of the purse or Congressional legislation to curb Bush's wanton spending of American blood and treasure to protect a bunch of Iran's closest pals in Iraq's Green Zone, Murtha steps in with a competing amendment. One that lets the Republicans attack both Murtha's version and the original as defeatist and then both his and the original go down in flames because Bush Dogs get scared of being called softies. It's just the timing I question. That and the way Murtha is anti-war but gets more funding from, and sends more pork to, defense contractors than any other politician. Always follow the money.

Mad Mullahs To The Right, Mad Mullahs To The Left

By Cernig

John McCain has a Mad Mullah problem. He's got John "Get the Jews To Israel so we can have Armaggedon" Hagee and now Ohio televangelist Rev. Rod Parsley who McCain has called his "spiritual guide". Parsley thinks Mohammed was a demon and that America was founded to destroy Islam.

Barrack Obama has a Mad Mullah problem too. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s pastor for the last 20 years and someone Obama has described as his "mentor" (in religious terms, that's like a spiritual guide, right?) thinks blacks should sing "God Damn America".

And Hillary Clinton's a member of a secretive Christian group comprising mostly conservative Evangelists who want to bring Jesus back into Washington - which sounds awfully Dominionist to me and accords perfectly with her Republican Christian college days.

You gotta watch those Mad Mullahs. You think it’s a religion of peace and then next thing you know, whoops Apocalypse! (/snark)

Dems Call For Fallon Testimony, Investigation

By Cernig

The White House continues to deny that Admiral Fallon's resignation was because he was a roadblock in the path to war with Iran, with Dana Perino claiming against all evidence that Bush "welcomes robust and healthy debate". But Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and others are calling for investigative hearings over Fallon's departure.

Today, Hillary Clinton called on the armed services committee to investigate whether Fallon had been pushed out for opposing military action against Iran.

"I am asking that the Senate armed services committee hold hearings into the circumstances surrounding his departure."

The committee did not respond to queries about Clinton's request. But former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has echoed her views, and two senior members of Congress had pressed the Pentagon to allow Fallon to testify on the Iraq war before his resignation.

"I am profoundly concerned that Admiral Fallon has decided to take this measure, and I'm hoping that we can hear from him in a more specific way in the future," Democratic senator James Webb said today.

I suppose this is her way of atoning for backing the atrocious Kyl-Lieberman amendment that made Bush's declaring war on Iran so much easier. Nor do I expect the White House to allow Fallon to testify. But at least Clinton and others are paying attention now.

One thing they should be paying attention to is the way in which the U.S. media have acted as stenographers for the White House narrative on Iran's nuclear program. Eric Umansky has a great piece for the Columbia Journalism Review today looking at that process and noting that several experts seemed to have been sidelined in the media precisely because they questioned that narrative. Like George Perkovich, a nonproliferation analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace:

In May 2005, Perkovich wrote a paper speculating that Iran’s leaders weren’t actually bent on making the bomb but rather wanted to keep their options open. In that scenario, he wrote, “as Iranian elites began to pay attention to nuclear issues,” they realized their best bet was an above-board civilian nuclear program. Such a path would still allow Iran to “gradually acquire” the know-how and technology to “produce nuclear weapons some day should a dire strategic threat arise”—all the while abiding by international law.

Perkovich wasn’t the only one to guess that Iran wasn’t bent on building the bomb. “I would see intelligence analysts over the last few years and ask, ‘Where’s the evidence of what Iran’s doing now?’” remembers Paul Kerr, formerly an analyst with the Arms Control Association, now with the Congressional Research Service. “And the answers I would get back were just really thin.” Kerr believed the evidence pointed in the other direction. In November 2006, he said so in a piece for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:

The very fact that Iran has previously offered several concessions, as well as curtailed some nuclear activities, should signal to the international community that Tehran has not necessarily committed itself to building nuclear weapons—and that there are those within the regime who are reluctant to risk political and economic isolation.

Perkovich, Kerr, and others had been questioning the administration’s many assumptions about Iran: about why Tehran might have an interest in a weapons system in the first place, about whether it had a program to build one, and, if it did, about whether it was willing to do a deal to halt it. The analysts didn’t have exact answers, of course; they were just raising basic questions. What’s striking is how rarely such questions were asked by members of the press.

...Even now, after the NIE changed the landscape, “There is an enormous selective amnesia regarding Iran in U.S. coverage,” says Ali Ansari, a historian at Scotland’s University of St. Andrews, who specializes in Iran-U.S. relations and has long criticized journalists for relying on “worn-out narratives” regarding Iran. “There’s this assumption that the U.S. has always been innocent partner in the relationship. But the two have been equally guilty of mismanaging the relationships and missing opportunities.”

Go read the whole thing. Mrs Clinton certainly should - as Umansky notes - after claiming in January 2006, that “Iran is seeking nuclear weapons” and arguing that the White House actually “chose to downplay the threats.” Just another part of what Fareed Zakaria meant when he wrote “The American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality.”

Obama likely winner in Wyoming

By Libby

I'm bored senseless with all the bickering over electability and whose demographics are better but Jeralyn reports on the early returns coming out Wyoming, where it's effectively a closed contest in spite of CNN listing it as an open primary.

Huge turnouts in Wyoming. Registration ended Feb. 22, so those turned away today are not those who decided to vote this weekend, but those who didn't arrive in time. Everyone was told to come an hour early because you had to be in line at 9:00 am.

If Hillary's latest kitchen sink strategy was working, and she is indeed the clear choice of Democrats, one might expect she would be swinging that state like a carnival ride. When I checked CNN's numbers earlier, with 48% reporting, Obama was winning by 23 points. Blogger glitched out for a few hours here though, so in the interim, with 78% now reporting, Clinton whittled that down to a 19 point deficit. I'd venture a guess that Obama will still win with a hefty margin.

I leave you to draw your own conclusions about what that means for the candidates or the party.

Clinton primary coattails

I've been tracking the PA-18 Democratic primary for a while now as I think the incumbent Republican, Congressman Tim Murphy (R-Upper St. Clair) is vulnerable to an aggressive challenge, as he has not had that since he took the R+2 district immediately after it was redistricted to favor him in 2002. I think Beth Hafer (D-Mt. Lebanon) is a pretty good Democratic challenger who has a decent range of party/institutional/good ole boys support, as well as progressive activist support. She fits the district, and she has a good political last name, as her mother, Barbara Hafer has been a fixture in moderate politics in SW PA for a while.

I just received a fundraising e-mail from the Hafer campaign (the first one I have received in months), and it has a couple of strong points in it. The one I liked was the attempt to focus most of her energies against the incumbent, and not her two Democratic primary challengers. She is framing Murphy as corrupt and out of control, which if she can make it stick, is a powerful frame. There is enough supporting evidence circulating that enough people have heard/seen that this charge should stick if aggressively pursued.

Another aspect that is interesting in her e-mail is the assumption that the energized Democratic Presidential Primary vote will help her campaign. I think this is very likely as I am projecting PA-18 will go heavily for Hillary Clinton on April 22nd, and one of Clinton's strongest groups of support are older female voters. Hafer should get a significant boost from down ballot waterfall voting, and in a three way primary, that will be a decisive factor. I wonder if there are other districts that will see Democratic Primary Clinton coattails?

However there is one thing that I really don't like the e-mail and it is who she is using for her polling/strategy:

We have raised the most money of any Democratic challenger. And have put that money to good use. Our campaign team includes nationally renowned firms Penn, Schoen & Berland, Adelstein Liston media services, and JMG 360 direct mail. Moreover, our new campaign manager comes from Joe Sestak’s 2006 Congressional campaign and is familiar with unseating a corrupt Republican incumbent. [emphasis mine]

Bragging about Penn is never a good idea among Democrats. It is a statement with no real value add to it unless the message is being aimed at high money, DLC/Emmanual aligned donors, but this e-mail is targeted at small and medium size donors ($50 to $250 is probably the quartile range that they want to get from this segment of the donor base). Even the people who think what he does is valuable don't like him. The Clinton campaign team, for whom he works for, has buried several battle axes into his back already this month. Most of the activist base of the party thinks that he is a net negative at best. Just don't brag about bringing in the microtrending, school uniform, anti-video game violence, myopic Penn.

Rezko and Obama - much ado about nothing

By Libby

I didn't pay much attention to this story. It struck me as one of those overblown media feeding frenzies from the beginning. In terms of any misconduct by Obama, as the 'story' unfolds, it's clear that there's simply no 'there' there. However, I ran across this item this morning that suggests the case as a whole may end up tarring everybody in sight, including Clinton.

Since the name of Chicago defendant Antoin ‘Tony’ Rezko has come up in national debate, it seems fair to look at donations from other defendants in Chicago’s “Operation Board Games.”

Of the other five defendants, three have donated to the Clintons or to Clinton supporters, three have donated mostly to Republicans, and at least two have donated to Obama’s political opponents. None have donated to Obama.

This is the famed Chicago political machine folks. They wrote the book on dirty politics in that city. Plenty of grist for the rumor mill for all, on both sides of the fence. Before this is over, I have a feeling both parties are going to wish that they never heard the name Rezko.

The bottom line is there is not a shred of evidence of misconduct on Obama's part. This is just another empty narrative built on rumor and innuendo, as Glenn points out, eerily reminiscent of Whitewater. You would think that Hillary, having lived through that would have restrained herself from making Rezko a central part of her smear campaign. It's rather disappointing that she didn't.

NAFTAgate lands on Hillary's doorstep

By Libby

There's been reams of analysis on how Hillary managed to swing her victories this past Tuesday. My take is the 3:00am ad probably didn't do much but the kitchen sink attacks probably helped her in that the media magnified them. However the biggest reason was the NAFTA controversy she ginned up. Today's news brings a new wrinkle in that story that suggests she threw that bomb to win the short term battle but that now looks likely to blow up in her face.

The Canadian press is reporting that the original leak came straight from PM Harper's right hand man, Ian Brodie and more importantly, it was the Clinton campaign that contacted them with the "wink-wink."

"Quite a few people heard it," said one source in the room.

"He said someone from (Hillary) Clinton's campaign is telling the embassy to take it with a grain of salt. . . That someone called us and told us not to worry."

Government officials did not deny the conversation took place.

If you haven't been following this, Steve Benen has the backstory and rightly notes that accusing Obama for something her own campaign did will likely backfire if the press now does its job and takes the story back to her doorstep. It's also useful to remember that Harper's administration is more than cozy with Bush.

I have two immediate reactions to this news. First is that the Clinton campaign strategy shows an alarming resemblence to Rove's tactics and second, it seems increasingly clear the wingnuts have decided that Clinton is their preferred candidate and are willing to do anything they can to help her win.

Meanwhile, there are now at least four documented instances of Hillary effectively saying that John McCain would make a better president than Obama. This will only lend fuel to the current theory making the rounds that Clinton is willing to sabotage Obama, and the party, in order to preserve her chances at another try in 2012 should she fail to snag the nomination this time around.

Vetted Interests - Updated

By Libby

In arguing for Hillary's electability, her supporters often maintain that she has been under attack by the right wing smear machine for so long that she is completely vetted. But is that really true? Is there really nothing at all left unearthed that could come back to bite her in the general? Obama comes out today and asks a question that raises a doubt. Why won't she reveal her tax returns, as he has already done?

Interestingly, I just ran across this graph that shows the Clinton's net worth. I don't how reliable this site is, but it cites public sources for the data. If this is true then I'm certainly curious to know how it is that the Clintons' personal wealth skyrocketed from just under $3 mill to almost $35 mil in the last three years.

Perhaps, it's something as simple as wise investments in Chelsea's hedge fund, but if the Clinton camp wants to demand that Obama account for his dealings with this Rezko person, then I would think it's only fair they disclose the source of their own financial gains. Anything less looks a little hypocritical to me.

Update: To be clear, I'm not implying the Clintons have done anything untoward. The point is all the candidates, including Mr. McCain, should be held to the same standard of full disclosure.

Primary vs. General Elections

Al Gore won the 2000 New Hampshire Democratic Primary. George W. Bush lost the 2000 New Hampshire Republican Primary. One would assume that if primaries are good predictors of general election results that Al Gore would have won New Hampshire in the 2000 General Election. That is not the case.

Primaries are a non-random subsample of the entire electorate and making an argument that they are good predictors of future strength in a general election campaign is a very weak argument. However Jerome Armstrong is making that argument about Ohio and Obama:

Obama has a huge electability problem in the state. He took a total of 5 counties, and lost in 82 counties. Even though he's able to rack up a large number of urban black voters he did terrible among white voters, winning just 34 percent....

You don't win a general election in Ohio if you can only win in 5 counties.

There are a couple of problems with this argument.

The first is that most Democrats will vote for a Democrat in the general election over any Republican (and vice versa) so most Clinton voters in the Democratic Primary will vote for Obama in the general, and most Obama voters in the Democratic Primary will vote for Clinton in the general election.

Secondly, the universe of voters is much larger and more diverse in the general election. Independent and non-aligned voters who are less invested in the Democratic Party are more likely to vote in the general election, and they are a bit more unpredictable than independent but functionally Democrats in voting behavior independents who are more likely to vote in an open primary.

The third problem is a strategic decision making problem. The goal of the Democratic Primary process is to achieve as many delegates as possible. We know that the delegate allocation rules gives more weight to a vote in Cleveland than a vote in Cadiz. Winning as many votes as possible is one strategy maximize delegate counts as an 85/15 split will give the winner 100% of the delegates, but it is not an optimal strategy when there are two viable candidates. Each candidate has a delegate gathering strategy, and they interact with each other in a non-cooperative manner. And these strategies are not necessarily vote maximizing strategies for the primary.

However the goal of a general election is to achieve a plurality of all votes cast within an electoral college voting group. A vote in Tuscarawas County, OH is now just as valuable as a vote in Cleveland. Furthermore, McCain's base coalition is a very different base coalition than the one to be expected by either Democratic candidate in the general election and very different than the base coalition that either candidate assembled last night. In a primary between two popular figures, there is a decent chance of stealing significant elements of the other's base coalition (Clinton seems to have done this with the service unions last night) while there is a minimal chance of Clinton/Obama stealing significant support from McCain in the 'bomb everyone to the stone age' crowd. Two very different objectives with two very different sets of initial moves and therefore countering moves.

Now if you want to argue based on a combination of demographics, policy, persona and organization, generic issue trends etc... that Clinton has a higher probability of beating John McCain in Ohio than Barack Obama, then that is a legitimate and interesting argument. But a linear extrapolation from a primary to the general election is an extraordinarily weak argument.

Pennsylvania Democratic Politics Overview

Barring anything shocking happening, Pennsylvania will matter quite a bit this cycle. Shocking!

As Chris Bowers notes, with Wyoming and Misssissippi being highly probable net delegate wins for Obama, the pledged delegate math by the Ides of March is back to where it was Monday morning --- Obama up by a significant margin but with far fewer delegates left to contest. Pennsylvania right now is the only chance Clinton has a blow-out win that has enough delegates to matter. So let's take a quick look at the Pennsylvania Democrats.

1) Pennsylvania is a closed primary state, and it is a hard closure. Non-affiliated/unaligned/independent and registered Republicans voters do not vote in the Democratic Primary.
2) Pennsylvania Democrats are on the whole ideologically about the median national Democrat, at least measured by our House delegation.
3) 'Pittsburgh on end end, Philadelphia on the other, and Alabama in the middle' or Pennsyltucky are two quick and simple ways of describing the state politically as a whole. The rural/mountain regions tend to vote conservative to very conservative while the cities vote liberal and come out in large numbers.
4) Delegate allocation rules can be found at the Greenpapers.
5) Delegate allocation rules significantly favor Obama --- very plausible for him to lose the state by eight to ten points and win the delegate fight.
6) GOTV operations are not that good in SW Pa. The machine Democrats have been fighting a long and slowly losing battle in Allegheny County (Pittsburgh's home county) with the reformer Democrats as the reformers are able to out-hustle the GOTV on lower value races. Endorsements have not been delivering the same type of punch as they used to.
7) In 2006, most regional GOTV was provided by outside organizations; the Casey-Rendell coordinated campaign just sought to flush the Dem supermajority precincts and call it a day.

Initial thoughts

1. Clinton got at least one blow-out win that she needs and one solid victory (which could maintain itself as a blow-out), and a decent delegate count pick-up in Ohio.
   
2. Quite a few of my friends and acquaintances will be getting called in the next two or three days to see if they want to do paid GOTV.
3. Clinton closed the past three days hard
4. The most interesting thing to me in the exit polls about Ohio is the tiny gap that Obama had in Republican voters. Normally he'll win that group 65-30 against Clinton, the CNN exit polls are indicating that he won this group 54:46, so instead of being up a net of 3 points ina group that is 9% of the electorate, he is up a net of less than 1 point. I wonder how much is tactical voting by Republican partisans, how much is 'The Dem Race is interesting and I could vote for her" by Republicans and how much was general economic uncertainty.
5. Cleveland coming in as a break even city was surprising
6. NAFTA killed Obama in the last three days --- unlikely to happen again
7. Clinton looks like she overperformed tonight by not getting crushed in Vermont, and doing well in Ohio
8. Obama's early voting operation will probably give him a breakeven to tiny win in Texas
9. The delegate math still sucks for Clinton
   

Clinton's latest trick

By Libby

I really don't want to be forced into Clinton bashing, but for the love of all that is holy, how much more Rovian can you get than this?

The Clinton campaign's latest tactic in Ohio is, apparently, a radio ad that tries to make listeners think it's a news report until the very end. Here's the script:

"This is an election news update with a major news story reported by the AP. While Senator Obama has crisscrossed Ohio giving speeches attacking NAFTA, his top economic advisor was telling the Canadians that was all just political maneuvering. A newly released document from the Canadian government shows that Obama’s senior economic advisor met with the Canadian Consul General and made clear that Obama’s attack on NAFTA were just, quote, “political maneuvering,” not policy. Political maneuvering, not policy. In fact, the document shows that Obama’s advisor also assured the Canadians that these attacks against NAFTA would not continue. Obama would not want to be, quote, “fundamentally changing the agreement.” As Senator Obama was telling one story to Ohio, his campaign was telling a very different story to Canada. How will Ohioans decide whether they can believe Senator Obama’s words? We’ll find that out on election day. Paid for by Hillary Clinton for President."

Remind you of the current administration much? I'm sorry, but if Hillary's solution for America is to outsleaze the GOP, I'm not buying the snake oil. It seems to me if you have to resort to such smarmy trickery to acheive victory, you don't really deserve to win.

Blogging in the boy's room...

By Libby

While we're waiting for the tallies to begin, here's an amusing item that may be the funniest campaign story of the season. Apparently pressed for space, the traveling press corps assigned to the Clinton campaign were housed in a men's room in Texas where they were served dinner in immediate proximity to the stalls and urinals. [Supply your own Larry Craig joke here.]

No gender bias involved, as Karen Tumulty reports, along with some priceless photos. I only wish she had been able to capture the expression on the unsuspecting civilian's face when he innocently entered the men's room expecting to use the facilities.

I wonder if Emily Post has a rule of etiquette that covers this situation?

Triple Clinton blow-outs needed to avoid Obama Clinch

Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings is running some numbers and the basic conclusion is that Clinton needs blow-out delegate wins in Ohio (plausible), Rhode Island (probable) and Texas (implausible) to have a reasonable chance of winning the pledged delegate battle with Obama.

Average: Obama 1180, Clinton 1031.125. Difference between the two: 148.875 delegates.

There are 981 pledged delegates yet to be assigned. Of these, by my count, Clinton must win 565, or just under 58%, in order to be tied in the pledged delegate count coming into the convention.

What all this means is that I don't see how Clinton can manage to win the nomination absent either truly astonishing wins in the delegate counts, or some sort of massive Obama flameout. That being the case, I think that while Clinton obviously has the right to stay in the race as long as she wants, if she doesn't pick up over, say, 40 delegates tonight, she should consider withdrawing. 40 delegates would still raise, not lower, the percentage of the remaining pledged delegates that she needs in order to tie Obama before the convention. Anything less would leave the odds of her winning the nomination very, very small.

Hillary Clinton needs blow outs in a campaign season that has seen her win no blow-outs in heavily contested states. The only significant blow-outs have been in caucuses where she did not deign to compete, or the Wisconsin and Potomac primaries. And those blow-outs went to Obama. I can understand 'suspending' her campaign if she thinks Obama will flame out but if she does not net 60+ delegates, the math requires a massive flame-out to work.

BJ at Northman's Fury is understandable getting frustrated that unless Clinton wins massively tonight, we'll be shooting ourselves in the foot:

If Hillary doesn’t win both contests, and by significant margins, the chances of her catching up to Obama in delegates are very slim indeed. At that point, the only thing her staying in the race does is diminish the chances of a Democrat winning in November....

Whatever else, I don’t want to see the Democrats wasting their resources beating each other down for the next several months, because I really, really don’t want to listen to failed Beach Boy President McCain tell us all how great his “bomb, bomb Iran” strategy really is.

IF Hillary Clinton comes out of tonight (actually sometime this weekend with the Texas caucuses reporting late) with sixty or more net pledge delegates, then I welcome a sustained and on-going primary. I am a bit worried about seeing more yellow and red cardable attacks that validate right wing frames, but I think the Democratic Party has two very popular, widely accepted candidates who have strong but different bases of support. If both candidates still have plausible pathways to the nomination, then a continued contest is beneficial. However if one candidate has a plausible pathway and the other is looking for a heart attack or the Samson Option, all institutional means should be used to preserve the party's core strength.

Tonight should be interesting.

Prediction: Obama Will Win In Texas

By Cernig

I think Obama's going to win the Texas primary, for no other reason than that his campaign has worked harder.

This is all anecdotal, I know, but in the last couple of weeks I've seen one Clinton ad on TV and we've had no calls from the Clinton campaign. In the same period I've seen Obama ads a half dozen times and our household has recieved almost a score of phone calls from his campaign. Not just robocalls, but on three occassions actual volunteers. I had a great converstaion with one guy who wasn't at all a part of some Obama cult - he was just very aware that for all Obama's flaws it's a choice between him, Clinton's dirty campaigning, and McCain's Bush redux act.

Clinton seems to have relied on her husband's historic support among Hispanic voters down here in the SouthWest of the state - but they've noticed the disparity in campaign activity too. I've spoken to several Hispanics who aren't too happy about being "taken for granted" by the Clintons.

There's no doubt in my mind that Clinton's smear campaign doesn't speak well to how she might act on a world stage from the White House. But, I think that taking for granted and neglecting her base support also speaks volumes about the kind of President Hillary Clinton might be. Sitting in the Oval Office has never magically transformed anyone into a paragon of virtue.

Clinton Doesn't Back Blackwater

By Cernig

Remember I wrote that I was troubled by Obama's plan to keep mercenary outfits like Blackwater in Iraq as replacements for withdrawing US troops? At the time i said the Clinton campaign had so far been silent on the issue. Well, like a shark smelling blood in the water, Clinton's been quick to take a big bite:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton announced today that she has cosponsored legislation to ban the use of Blackwater and other private mercenary firms in Iraq.

"From this war's very beginning, this administration has permitted thousands of heavily-armed military contractors to march through Iraq without any law or court to rein them in or hold them accountable. These private security contractors have been reckless and have compromised our mission in Iraq. The time to show these contractors the door is long past due. We need to stop filling the coffers of contractors in Iraq, and make sure that armed personnel in Iraq are fully accountable to the U.S. government and follow the chain of command," said Senator Clinton.

The legislation requires that all personnel at any U.S. diplomatic or consular mission in Iraq be provided security services only by Federal Government Personnel. It also includes a whistleblower clause to protect contract personnel who uncover contract violations, criminal actions, or human rights abuses.

But it's quite possible that the Clinton campaign put that blood in the water themselves. Danger Room notes:

The timing of the announcement is particularly curious. It comes less than a day after the investigative journalist and Blackwater critic Jeremy Scahill published a piece in The Nation reporting that, if elected, "Obama will not 'rule out' using private security companies like Blackwater Worldwide in Iraq." The campaign also informed Scahill that Obama would not be signing on to legislation banning the use of contractors in war zones by 2009.

...I spoke with Scahill about the coincidental timing. "For over a week I tried to get Hillary Clinton's campaign and Senate staff to issue a policy statement reflecting her position on her potential future use of PMCs in Iraq if she won the presidency. Silence. Then, the day after my story comes out revealing that Obama will not "rule out" using them, all of a sudden Hillary Clinton becomes the most important political figure in the US to call for a "ban" on Blackwater et al." Scahill said. "Where was her call for a ban after [Blackwater's controversial shooting of civilians at] Nisour Square?"

Far more at Danger Room too, including a mention that Peter Singer of the Brookings Institute - an Obama staffer - thinks the timing sniffs a great deal.

At the end of the day, it’s only a five sentence statement of intent, coming after her being 8 years on the Armed Services Committee, a full year after Obama issues his bill on contracting, 7 months after the Blackwater shootings, and 6 months after Obama’s bill becomes the core of much of the latest round of reforms in the Defense Authorization act. Maybe she’s trying to get some pop by doing this 5 days before the OH and TX primaries. But, if a back and forth happens on the topic of private military contracting, it is going to be very hard for her to argue any depth on the issue and, even more so, avoid the political timing label. Obama just has to point to his track record on the issue and say, “Why did you just suddenly discover this issue now 5 days before the votes, and, more importantly, where have you been for the last years?”

So, would the Clinton campaign be so nasty as to sign on to a stricter bill just to be in a position to attack Obama? Ask the daisies.

Once she was inevitable

By Libby

Shaun Mullen has a good post today on the apparent implosion of Hillary Clinton's campaign. It should be read in full but he brings up a point that's been lost in the recent acrimony around the internets and is worth repeating.

...I believe Clinton to be a decent person who did a lousy job of doing her homework.

Hillary Clinton is an amazing woman who probably would have been a good president. I'm not so sure the problem is she didn't do her homework. I believe she's worked hard on the trail. I think it's more that she got her assignments from the wrong teachers. If she had relied less on out of touch consultants and trusted her own gut instinct instead, I doubt we would have been having this conversation today.

Barack Blair Obama

By Cernig

I've been waxing vocal about Hillary's dirty tricks campaign this past couple of days, with the thesis that it actually hurts her more than it hurts Obama with voters who are pig-sick of such nonsense. So I really should note that the Obama campaign's recent grade-A nonsense about Hillary's mandate system for universal insurance meaning "they'll be coming after your wages". Criticisms of this attack on the grounds that it is simply regurgitating Republican talking points seem fair to me.

I've news for the Obama campaign - news that explains why every other Western nation has true universal healthcare and a universal mandate to contribute to that service via taxes or some other contribution format that amounts to the same thing. A truly universal healthcare system starts from the ethical premise that "from each according to their means, to each according to their needs". It's a basic plank of liberal thinking and I would say a basic plank of civilisation, a demand that those who wish membership in society put into it what they are able as well as get from it from they need to remain a functioning contributor. If you don't want to contribute to the general social wellbeing to the limits of your ability as determined by that society, don't bother calling 911 or sending the military to do your ideological grunt-work. You have another option which is perfectly acceptable - opt out. Build a compound somewhere in the backwoods and don't come running to the rest of us if things don't work out in your libertarian utopia. If not, then of course they'll be coming after your wages! Just pick the method you prefer - and remember that a tax may well mean you end up paying less for more than you already do by the insurance premiums that you already pay.

This kind of fancy footwork on such basic issues from the Obama campaign is why I've described him as the American Tony Blair - an astute political machinator carefully re-framing as "bi-partisan" whatever stance he thinks will win him most votes, whether or not it agrees with what should be the core beliefs of his policymaking. He's trying to be all things to as many of the people as possible all of the time. It's a successful strategy for a politician who wants to win a national election but it gives no confidence that once in office he will have any ethical touchstones whatsoever. As we Brits discovered too late with Blair, he just wanted power.

But if the Clinton campaign want to attack Obama, they have to do so on specifics - as in the case with their defense of his attack on her healthcare plan. The Clinton's already have a reputation for dirty campaigning and to avoid being dragged down by that repuation Clinton will have to be cleaner than the rest - some thing she has failed to do so far.

I'll help with another case in point.

Yesterday diarist Helenann at Daily Kos responded to general smears about Obama's alleged lack of legislative experience by listing the 570 bills Obama had sponsored or co-sponsored, of which 15 had become law.

Fair enough as far as it goes but she didn't give any details on what kinds of policy prescriptions were contained in those bills. So I picked one I thought might be informative - a bill signed into law to amend the Patriot Act - and looked. I found that S. 2167 was a bill to "amend the USA PATRIOT ACT to extend the sunset of certain provisions of that Act and the lone wolf provision of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 to July 1, 2006." It was sponsored by Sen. John Sununu [R-NH] and had 31 co-sponsors including Obama. The summary of the bill says:

Amends the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT ACT) Act of 2001 to extend from December 31, 2005, to February 3, 2006, provisions of that Act and the "lone wolf" provision of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. (The lone wolf provision redefined "agent of a foreign power" to permit issuance of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) orders targeting terrorists without a showing that they are members of a terrorist group or agents of such a group or of any other foreign power.)

Now, if I'm reading that "Lone Wolf" provision correctly it says that the administration doesn't have to prove someone is a terrorist, it just says they are and everyone agrees to believe them. Which makes a mockery of probable cause when asking for FISA warrants since warrants to tap terrorists' phones are always going to be granted but the administration doesn't have to prove the person named is a terrorist if he might be a "lone wolf".

One wonders why Obama and a whole slew of Dem Senators including Dodd fell over themselves to co-sponsor a bill to extend such a provision for even a measly three months, given their later stance on the importance of FISA warrants and the rule of law. Clinton was also a co-sponsor of the bill but she could argue that her position is internally consistent over time and legislation - even if it isn't all that liberal. Obama's clearly is not.