Mandates, wonks and nasty campaigning

I have to agree with John Cole at Balloon Juice that today's Krugman column is wrong in the fundamental analysis that the Demcoratic primary is particulary nasty or underhanded.

Has this really been that bitter of a nomination fight, because I sure do not see it that way. Sure, the Obama groupies are irritating as all hell. And yes, the diehard Hillary or Bust crowd will call you a misogynist and a Clinton hater at the drop of a hat....

I just don’t see this as a particularly ugly race. I think there has been some appliation of the clinton rules- people keep claiming Bill is injecting race and what not, and the only thing I saw that was remotely suspicious was the Jackson remark following South Carolina. Other than that and the Mark Penn bilge, this has ben a pretty clean race, I think.

Right now the major area of differentiation is on health care policy and the question of mandates. I know among hardcore wonks, mandates can be fighting words, but there are not that many hardcore wonks and the two campaigns both agree that health insurance, financing and accessibility need to be dramatically improved. There have been a couple of dog whistles, but not many, and then a significant amount of bluster and noise about marginal differences. Since McCain has become the presumptive Republican nominee, there has been some electability salvos, but this is a legitimate area of dispute.

This has been a relatively clean campaign. We have not seen any anti-Obama or anti-Clinton 527 cash dumps like the ones aimed at Howard Dean in 2003 right before Iowa in the Gephardt murder-suicide action.

In its third ad in the past two weeks, the secretive 527 group Americans for Jobs, Healthcare & Progressive Values (AJHPV) brings out its harshest attacks to date against Howard Dean.

The ad's sole visual is a slowly moving shot of a Time Magazine cover featuring Osama bin Laden. As the picture zooms in on a close-up of bin Laden’s eyes, the announcer intones, "Howard Dean just cannot compete with George Bush on foreign policy." The ad concludes by asking Democrats – presumably those who currently support Dean - to "think about that … and think about it now."

The ad began airing in New Hampshire and South Carolina on Saturday, before the capture of Saddam Hussein. Two other AJHPV anti-Dean ads have aired in Iowa, both ending with a domestic variation of the Osama warning: "If you thought Howard Dean had a progressive record … check the facts … and think again." Overall, AJHPV has pledged to spend $400,000 on advertising in Iowa.....

it appears that the group has more than a passing connection with one of Dean's opponents, Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt. The group's new president, former Rep. Ed Feighan, has contributed $2,000 to the Gephardt presidential campaign, and former Gephardt fund-raiser David Jones is the group's treasurer. The Washington Post reported that the Gephardt-endorsing Machinists Union has made a "substantial contribution" to AJHPV. Leo Hindery, Gephardt's national finance co-chair, is also a "backer of AJHPV."

Maybe I'm strange in liking both candidates and having a real, but marginal preference for one over the other, but the other candidate is more than acceptable in my mind. The same calculas applies, I think, to most Democrats and Democratic elites. However in 2003/4 Democratic donors and opinion leaders were highly polarized on their opinion about the Dean campaign. You either loved him, his campaign and his supporters (of which I was one) or you hated him and muttered McGovern/Mondale under your breath. That polarization and an extraordinarily split field in which a five point swing was extraordinarily valuable gave a strong incentive to go negative and nasty early and often. Internal party polarization that produced this incentive set in 2004 is not present this time around and therefore the incentives have changed dramatically.

GOBAMA!

by shamanic

CNN has him leading now, with Clinton trailing Edwards very closely for third. Hope it holds. I can't see how he loses New Hampshire if he wins Iowa.

Actually, CNN is now officially projecting Obama as the winner. FANTASTIC!

(I guess I owe some folks some liquor. Watch me not cry.)

No bias at CNN for the Establishment

I'm watching the CNN feed right now, and just after they declared Huckabee the winner of the Iowa caucus and I saw the interesting pie graph below on both the website and the television about the initial GOP results -- I apologize for the small size:



Huckabee is the pale pink, Romney is the maroon, Thompson is the dark burgunday wine, and McCain is the bright red as the labelled candidates. The hatched marks are every other Republican candidates. I know the GOP has a crowded field and television is a visual medium with limited communications capacity for complex graphs, but I went online and saw the initial results:



Note that McCain is beating Paul by a total of 213 votes from the data cut that was used to build the same pie graph, and then the next candidate down is Guiliani who has about a third of the support that either McCain or Paul has. It is almost like CNN is trying to marginalize an anti-Establishment candidate while fluffing up an Establishment favorite. Nah, that is pure crazy :)

Come on in, the water's fine at the Candidate Death Pool

The candidate death pool has far fewer participants than I thought it would have by this point. Right now the only Democrat in it is Gov. Vilsack while Tom Tancredo has his white swim vest on, Duncan Hunter has long been relaxing with a mojito in the deep end, and Sam Brownback has modeled his modest swimwear for a while now.

Who will be doing a drunken cannonball into the shallow end of the campaign death pool by Friday night? Fred Thompson is rumored to be willing to drop out if he places 4th or worse in Iowa... who else? Or will the one week sprint to New Hampshire provide enough (false) hope for everyone to stay in for one last college try?

Happy Caucus Day!

by shamanic

I've got to pop out to give my housemate a lift to work, but Today is The Day. Here in Atlanta, I'll be watching whatever returns are available with the Drinking Liberally group that meets at Thinking Man's Tavern in Decatur. If you come out, say hi. I'm the white girl with dreadlocks whose ends are blue. What are the odds that there will be another?

The Newshoggers Whiskey Caucus bets are here if you want to review our handicapping or throw in your own (we won't hold you to the booze standard though). Some of us will have egg on our faces tomorrow, and given my proud heritage of political handicapping, I've got soap at the ready.

2 last minute Iowa thoughts

1) I am very glad that I do not have to vote/caucus/shuffle intently tonight. Right now I still do not know who I would be voting for. My wife and I were talking politics over dinner last night and we both agreed that most of the Democratic candidates meet our minimal comfort level for a vote, and beyond that it is a matter of last minute perceptions. I am pretty sure that Obama would not be my initial choice, but beyond that I don't know as I have worries about Clinton and Edwards, and I know Dodd's group would be deemed non-viable.

2) Anyone in Iowa who is not caucusing should just stay off the roads is my advice as a former GOTV team driver... via Political Wire on the Clinton campaign ---

Vilmain also claimed she has lined up 4,900 drivers to bring people to the caucuses -- compared to perhaps 500 for Sen. John Kerry four years ago -- and has another 5,000 people willing to offer rides and more than 600 shuttles.

Drivers under intense time pressure, who are highly charged, on way too much stale coffee, and not quite sure where they are going will be dominating the highways tonight. Be safe.

Edwards looking for Richardson's non-viable groups?

When I saw the report that John Edwards supports a rather swift and rather complete pull-out of US forces from Iraq, two things came to mind. First this is another differentiation policy proposal as both Obama and Clinton have supported maintaining large 'training' contigents and anti-coup forces in Iraq for the long haul despite the fact that the problem with the Iraqi government's armed forces are not training per se (as the militia members who are also government soldiers have done well in achieving their objectives) but a matter of loyalty and willingness to sacrifice for a national government. I think this is good policy.

The other thought is pure horse race and it is a quest by Edwards to gain a disproportionate share of Gov. Richardson's supporters as Gov. Richardson has made no residual forces a central piece of his campaign. With Kucinich urging his non-viable supporters to Obama, and Biden supporters seeking 'experience' that may lean towards Clinton, Richardson's supporters are the biggest in play group right now, and I think Edwards is making a strong pitch for their second choices.

Iowa polls drive me crazy

by shamanic

I hope you had a fantastic NYE and were able to kiss someone important at the stroke of midnight. I kissed no one last night, which was a fitting end for what I've come to think of as my year of living celibately. Mike Huckabee is so proud of me right now! Anyway, there's some news this morning.

While I find Andrew Sullivan's "Know hope" tag line for stuff he likes pretty much insufferable, I really do hope that the poll he cites here is showing something real. It puts Obama ahead in Iowa, which would be fantastically good news for us furiously Bush deranged Dems who want a principled and sincere leader for our country who will govern through a process of inclusion. We haters are a crusty bunch who are only out to destroy America, after all.

Iowa polling is so confusing and the caucus process, especially on the Dem side, so odd that it's hard to tell if any of these polls reflect anything at all. We'll know in two days. In the meantime: Know confusion.

Then again, if the poll is right it means I have to buy liquor for at least some of my colleagues. Ouch.