Presidential Primaries

There are some fascinating things going down on the boards tonight. Basically, throughout this election cycle the Obama partisans have conglomerated on the Huffingtonpost and DailyKos; the Hillary partisans on MyDD. Which I always thought was somewhat apt: when I hear the name MyDD I always. . . well think of womenly things, and the contingent there would probably trend female. Many of the posts begin with "You go girl!" and such.

The big story on yesterday was that twenty or so of Clinton's biggest donors sent an open letter to Pelosi threatening her to change her stance on superdelegates, arguing that they should not be tied to the popular vote. One name on the list that that you may recognize is Bob Johnson, president of BET and the Bobcats. The backlash on the echo chambers of the internet and the more aggressive media outlets has been as expected: this was Hillary Clinton supporters providing a concrete example that they valued her candidacy above all, and were willing to sacrifice the party, and everything else, to see that she reached victory. The internet response has been unmitigated: the DailyKos posters biographied all the people who had signed the list, falling into the class warfare shit that they love. Previously committed Clinton superdelegates started dropping quotes in the press that they were ready to reconsider. If it's all about money, and I have argued it is: the open letter was more divisive than any political ploy her camp has previously tried; this includes trying to keep the Wright story alive.

Well, today the main writers on MyDD came out and basically called the race for Obama and called for unity in a series of posts: see The Consequences of the Kitchen Sink, and the main story, Over Before it began. This may not seem like an important story, but this represents the end of Hillary's last internet grassroots group calling it quits. Her last outpost, and fiercest supporters and donor base.

Moreover, Hillary came out today and felt the need to talk down her base from jumping to McCain. Again, this is a harsh contrast to what her modus-operandi has been since Super Tuesday. I'm not stupid enough to believe she did a 180 (or an Eddy Curry 360) on her own. She's be threatened by some Supers. I'm still looking for this to end after NC/IN but, as I have said before, I wouldn't be completely shocked if this ends before Pennsylvania.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (BG7 Lavigne @ Mar 27 2008, 11:04 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>I don't see how she is going to win the next three primaries.

In Indiana, Obama led her in the only poll 40 to 25.

In North Carolina he's leading her 55 to 34.

Her numbers won't hold up in Pennsylvania (she is currently getting like 76% of the Catholic vote...that won't hold up, and Barack's black numbers will improve about 10%.).</div>

Yeah, that's what I'm seeing. I think he'll lose by between 10 and 15 in Pennsylvania. She has the political machine behind her in that state: that's worth 7-10 points in itself. Obama has control of the machines in IN and NC, so they should go his way.

 

Sen. Bob Casey of PA endorsed Obama today, flip-flopping on his previous statement that he would endorse nobody before the primary. I guess he feels the heat from the politburo.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Denny Crane @ Mar 28 2008, 09:33 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>Sen. Bob Casey of PA endorsed Obama today, flip-flopping on his previous statement that he would endorse nobody before the primary. I guess he feels the heat from the politburo.</div>

I'm not getting my panties in a bunch over the Casey endorsement. He carries almost no sway, with Governor Rendell and mayor's from both Philly and Pittsburgh leaning towards Hillary. The only way Obama wins Pennsylvania is if the media, and in turn the voters, start taking apart the math and seeing how over this race is.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (such sweet thunder @ Mar 28 2008, 02:00 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Denny Crane @ Mar 28 2008, 09:33 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>Sen. Bob Casey of PA endorsed Obama today, flip-flopping on his previous statement that he would endorse nobody before the primary. I guess he feels the heat from the politburo.</div>

I'm not getting my panties in a bunch over the Casey endorsement. He carries almost no sway, with Governor Rendell and mayor's from both Philly and Pittsburgh leaning towards Hillary. The only way Obama wins Pennsylvania is if the media, and in turn the voters, start taking apart the math and seeing how over this race is.
</div>

I just see it as an indication he's feeling the heat from the party machine. And I expected he'd have endorsed Hillary after the primary, if he was allowed to exercise his own free will.

 

<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/efN3yzVEgCo&hl=en"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/efN3yzVEgCo&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>

Riddle me this: why do I get so much perverse joy out of this story?

Oh that's right . . .

<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/LHFREDHB-nQ&hl=en"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/LHFREDHB-nQ&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>

 

Oh, I have to post this one too:

<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/uHVEDq6RVXc&hl=en"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/uHVEDq6RVXc&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1206920545...p_us_whats_news

Sen. Clinton rejects that view. Over the weekend, she reiterated her intent to stay in the race beyond the last contest in early June -- and all the way to the party's convention in Denver, if necessary.

"There are some folks saying we ought to stop these elections," she said Saturday in Indiana, which also has a May 6 primary. "I didn't think we believed that in America. I thought we of all people knew how important it was to give everyone a chance to have their voices heard and their votes counted."

Sen. Obama told reporters, "My attitude is that Sen. Clinton can run as long as she wants."

In earlier eras, the standoff between the two candidates might have been resolved by party elders acting behind the scenes. But no Democrat today has the power to knock heads and resolve the mess. Party Chairman Howard Dean says he was "dumbfounded" at the suggestion by Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy Friday that Sen. Clinton should pull out.

"Having run for president myself, nobody tells you when to get in, and nobody tells you when to get out," Mr. Dean said. "That's about the most personal decision you can make after all the time and effort you put into it."

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNew...=22&sp=true

Democrats face summer of bitter infighting

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Supporters of Barack Obama backed away on Sunday from calls for Hillary Clinton to drop out of the presidential race as Democrats faced a long summer of bitter fighting to win the party's White House nomination.

In an interview published in The Washington Post, Clinton said she would fight all the way to the late August nominating convention, where a candidate will be chosen to face presumptive Republican nominee John McCain in the November election.

"I think the race should continue," said New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a former Democratic presidential candidate who supports Obama. "She has every right to stay in the race. She's run a very good campaign."

Some Obama backers have called on New York Sen. Clinton to give up, citing the Illinois senator's leads in the popular vote, states won and delegates to the convention to choose the nominee.

But Clinton has used those calls to rally her supporters, saying Washington insiders are trying to force her out before all Democrats have voted. She also stressed the need for new votes in Florida and Michigan, whose earlier primary votes were rejected because they violated party rules.

"I have no intention of stopping until we finish what we started and until we see what happens in the next 10 contests and until we resolve Florida and Michigan," Clinton said in the Post interview. "And if we don't resolve it, we'll resolve it at the convention."

CAMPUS RALLY

With the next big contest coming in Pennsylvania on April 22, Clinton and McCain took much of the day off.

In their absence, Obama took the opportunity to attack McCain's stance on the war in Iraq, a war he said had failed to make the United States safer while costing billions of dollars in part because of Bush's tax cuts.

"When you ask John McCain how it has made us safer you get - err," Obama told a raucus crowd of 2,000 at Harrisburg town hall in Pennsylvania. "He will argue that the surge has been the right thing to do but ... the question is why did we go in there in the first place."

Earlier, Obama campaigned at Pennsylvania State University. where some 22,000 people came to listen to him speak at an open air rally in what aides said was one of the biggest events of the Democratic campaign.

College students have been some of Obama's most active supporters and in Pennsylvania he must score big among them if he is to do well against Clinton.

Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign's Texas Chairman Garry Mauro said she had gained at least two delegates to the national convention and could pick up two more as result of the state Democratic Party's county conventions this weekend.

Clinton and Obama are vying for 67 delegates that will remain up for grabs until their party's state convention in Austin on June 6-7.

And Obama supporters hit the Sunday morning television talk shows to play down talk Clinton should quit -- at least before the final nomination contests on June 3.

 

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0308/9259.html

Cash-strapped Clinton fails to pay bills

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s cash-strapped presidential campaign has been putting off paying hundreds of bills for months — freeing up cash for critical media buys but also earning the campaign a reputation as something of a deadbeat in some small-business circles.

A pair of Ohio companies owed more than $25,000 by Clinton for staging events for her campaign are warning others in the tight-knit event production community — and anyone else who will listen — to get their cash upfront when doing business with her. Her campaign, say representatives of the two companies, has stopped returning phone calls and e-mails seeking payment of outstanding invoices. One even got no response from a certified letter.

Their cautionary tales, combined with published reports about similar difficulties faced by a New Hampshire landlord, an Iowa office cleaner and a New York caterer, highlight a less-obvious impact of Clinton’s inability to keep up with the staggering fundraising pace set by her opponent for the Democratic presidential nomination, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.

Clinton's campaign did not respond to recent, specific questions about its transactions with vendors. But Clinton spokesman Jay Carson pointed on Saturday to an earlier statement the campaign issued to Politico, asserting: "The campaign pays its bills regularly and in the normal course of business, and pays all of its bills."

Just like with other businesses, it’s common for campaigns to carry unpaid bills from month to month, but in Clinton’s case, it also could serve a strategic purpose.

The New York senator’s presidential campaign ended February with $33 million in the bank, according to a report filed last week with the Federal Election Commission, but only $11 million of that can be spent on her battle with Obama.

The rest can be spent only in the general election, if she makes it that far, and must be returned if she doesn’t. If she had paid off the $8.7 million in unpaid bills she reported as debt and had not loaned her campaign $5 million, she would have been nearly $3 million in the red at the end of February.

By contrast, if you subtract Obama’s $625,000 in debts and his general-election-only money from his total cash on hand at the end of last month, he’d still be left with $31 million.

The presidential campaign of presumptive Republican nominee Arizona Sen. John McCain reported $4.3 million in debt at the end of February, but only $1.3 million of that was in the form of unpaid bills to a dozen vendors. The rest was a bank loan, which the campaign says it paid off last week.

It’s not just the size of Clinton’s debts that’s noteworthy. It’s also that her unpaid bills extend beyond the realm of high-priced consultants who typically let bills slide as part of the cost of doing business with powerful clientele whose success is linked to their own.

Some of Clinton’s biggest debts are to pollster and chief strategist Mark Penn, who’s owed $2.5 million; direct mail company MSHC Partners, which is owed $807,000; phone-banking firm Spoken Hub, which is waiting for $771,000; and ad maker Mandy Grunwald, who’s owed $467,000.

Clinton also reported debts more than one month old to a slew of apolitical businesses and organizations, large and small, in the states through which this historically expensive Democratic primary campaign has raged.

She owed Iowa’s Sioux City Art Center Board of Trustees $3,500 for catering and venue costs, New Hampshire’s Winnacunnet Cooperative School District $4,400 in event costs, Qwest $24,000 for phone service, various branches of the Iowa-based supermarket chain Hy-Vee $15,000 for food, beverages and catering, and $7,700 to Ohio and Massachusetts branches of the theatrical stage employees’ union, for equipment costs.

In fact, about a third of the nearly 700 individual debts Clinton reported at the end of February were for various types of “event expenses,” including $319,000 for catering and venue costs, $420,000 for equipment, $11,000 for photography and $9,000 for security.

Event production is important to big-time presidential campaigns. It shapes how candidates look and sound, not just to the thousands of people who turn out to campaign speeches and rallies but also to the millions who catch snippets of them on television.

And word is getting around that Clinton’s campaign does not promptly pay those who labor to make her events look good, said an employee of the event production company Forty Two of Youngstown, Ohio.

“I feel insulted by the way that the campaign treated this company and treated us personally,” said the employee, who did not want to be named talking about a client.

The Clinton campaign paid the company $16,500 to set up a stage, press riser, sound system and backdrops at a Youngstown high school last month for a raucous union rally, where an aggressive Clinton stump speech drew thunderous applause. But the Clinton campaign has yet to pay Forty Two for two other February events, and the employee said the campaign has stopped returning phone calls, e-mails and didn’t respond to a certified letter.

“We worked very hard to put together these events on a moment’s notice and do absolutely everything to a ‘t’ to make it look perfect on television for her and for her campaign,” said the employee. “Sen. Clinton talks about helping working families, people in unions and small businesses. But when it comes down to actually doing something that shows that she can back up her words with action, she fails.”

Forty Two also has done events for Obama’s campaign, which has paid its bills promptly, according to the employee. FEC records show Obama’s campaign paid the company $18,500.

Show Tyme Exhibits, another Youngstown event production company, has produced political events for years and had never had problems getting paid before Clinton, according to owner Jim Phillips.

He said he’s still waiting for a payment for setting up the sound system and stage for Clinton’s February tour of a General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio.

“It was only $607, but I’m a small guy; I could use that,” said Phillips, adding, “Everyone I can tell, I do tell about it. You tell somebody something bad about somebody, they tell 10 other people.”

Both Phillips and the Forty Two employee said they voted for Clinton in Ohio’s March 4 primary, which she won handily, but regret their votes and are reluctant to work for her campaign again.

Their sentiments aren’t universal in the event production world, though.

At the end of January, Clinton owed $38,000 to ACS Sound and Lighting of Columbia, S.C. But the company was paid in full last month and is planning to do events for Clinton in other states, according to manager Troy Gwin.

“We don’t have any problem with them,” he said. “I’d continue to do business after the primaries if she is the nominee. I would love to.”

And Tony Galarza, director of the Missoula, Mont., branch of a national event production company, remained committed to staging an April 6 Clinton fundraising brunch at a local hotel even after a colleague in his company e-mailed a list of Clinton’s campaign debts.

Galarza said he’s confident Clinton will pay his company but admitted he was surprised to see so many event production companies among the campaign’s creditors.

“Once I looked at those numbers, I realized how important to our economy nationally these elections are,” he said. “Just the sheer numbers listed there were immense.”

 

https://donate.barackobama.com/page/smartpr...ar08_lp/graphic

Tomorrow is going to be an interesting news cycle. The link (above) is still kicking, but they cut it off at two million donors on March 23. By this time tomorrow we should know if it's a computer glitch or if Obama has achieved some fundraising feets that are far and above anyone could have possibly imagined before this election. I'm guessing the former; hoping for the latter.

 

The next Obama fire to be put out:

http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uui...0CC7D33B6E8E59E

Obama had greater role on liberal survey
By: Kenneth P. Vogel
March 31, 2008 10:37 AM EST

During his first run for elected office, Barack Obama played a greater role than his aides now acknowledge in crafting liberal stands on gun control, the death penalty and abortion — positions that appear at odds with the more moderate image he has projected during his presidential campaign.

The evidence comes from an amended version of an Illinois voter group’s detailed questionnaire, filed under his name during his 1996 bid for a state Senate seat.

Late last year, in response to a Politico story about Obama’s answers to the original questionnaire, his aides said he “never saw or approved” the questionnaire.

They asserted the responses were filled out by a campaign aide who “unintentionally mischaracterize[d] his position.”

But a Politico examination determined that Obama was actually interviewed about the issues on the questionnaire by the liberal Chicago nonprofit group that issued it. And it found that Obama — the day after sitting for the interview — filed an amended version of the questionnaire, which appears to contain Obama’s own handwritten notes added to one answer.

The two questionnaires, provided to Politico with assistance from political sources opposed to Obama’s presidential campaign, were later supplied directly by the group, Independent Voters of Illinois — Independent Precinct Organization. Obama and his then-campaign manager, who Obama’s campaign asserts filled out the questionnaires, were familiar with the group, its members and its positions, since both were active in it before Obama's 1996 state Senate run.

Through an aide, Obama, who won the group’s endorsement as well as the statehouse seat, did not dispute that the handwriting was his. But he contended it doesn’t prove he completed, approved — or even read — the latter questionnaire.

“Sen. Obama didn’t fill out these state Senate questionnaires — a staffer did — and there are several answers that didn't reflect his views then or now,” Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for Obama’s campaign, said in an e-mailed statement. “He may have jotted some notes on the front page of the questionnaire at the meeting, but that doesn't change the fact that some answers didn't reflect his views. His 11 years in public office do.”

But the questionnaires provide fodder to question Obama’s ideological consistency and electability. Those questions are central to efforts by Obama’s presidential rival Hillary Clinton to woo the superdelegates whose votes represent her best chance to wrest the Democratic nomination from Obama.

Taken together — and combined with later policy pronouncements — the two 1996 questionnaires paint a picture of an inexperienced Obama still trying to feel his way around major political issues and less constrained by the nuance that now frames his positions on sensitive issues.

Consider the question of whether minors should be required to get parental consent — or at least notify their parents — before having abortion.

The first version of Obama’s questionnaire responds with a simple “No.”

The amended version, though, answers less stridently: “Depends on how young — possibly for extremely young teens, i.e., 12- or 13-year-olds.”

By 2004, when his campaign filled out a similar questionnaire for the IVI-IPO during his campaign for U.S. Senate, the answer to a similar question contained still more nuance, but also more precision. “I would oppose any legislation that does not include a bypass provision for minors who have been victims of, or have reason to fear, physical or sexual abuse,” he wrote.

The evolution continued at least through late last year, when his campaign filled out a questionnaire for a nonpartisan reproductive health group that answered a similar question with even more nuance.

“As a parent, Obama believes that young women, if they become pregnant, should talk to their parents before considering an abortion. But he realizes not all girls can turn to their mother or father in times of trouble, and in those instances, we should want these girls to seek the advice of trusted adults — an aunt, a grandmother, a pastor,” his campaign wrote to RH Reality Check.



“Unfortunately, instead of encouraging pregnant teens to seek the advice of adults, most parental consent bills that come before Congress or state legislatures criminalize adults who attempt to help a young woman in need and lack judicial bypass and other provisions that would permit exceptions in compelling cases.”

Both versions of the 1996 questionnaires provide answers his presidential campaign disavows to questions about whether Obama supports capital punishment and state legislation to “ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns.”

He responded simply “No” and “Yes,” respectively, to those questions on both questionnaires.

But a fact sheet provided by his campaign flatly denies Obama ever held those views, asserting he “consistently supported the death penalty for certain crimes but backed a moratorium until problems were fixed.” And it points out that as a state senator, he led an effort to reform Illinois’ death penalty laws.

On guns, the fact sheet says he “has consistently supported common-sense gun control, as well as the rights of law-abiding gun owners.”

After Politico’s story on the first questionnaire, Clinton aides seized on the handgun-ban answer in particular, which a campaign press release asserted called into question Obama’s electability.

That was a curious argument to make in a Democratic primary. But Republicans will certainly seek to make it in the general election if Obama is the Democratic standard-bearer against the presumptive GOP nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain.

It could also provide ammunition for a line of attack quietly peddled for some time by Republicans. They allege Obama has a penchant for blaming his staff for gaffes ranging from missing a union event in New Hampshire to circulating opposition research highlighting the Clintons’ ties to India and Indian-Americans to underestimating the amount of cash bundled for his campaigns by his former fundraiser, indicted businessman Antoin “Tony” Rezko.

And the questionnaires play into storylines pushed by both Republicans and Clinton suggesting Obama has altered his views to appeal to differing audiences.

That suggestion is galling to many members of IVI-IPO, some of whom have relationships with Obama that date back nearly 15 years. The group had endorsed Obama in every race he’d run — including his failed long-shot 2000 primary challenge to U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) — until now.

The group’s 37-member board of directors, meeting last year soon after Obama distanced himself from the first questionnaire, stalemated in its vote over an endorsement in the Democratic presidential primary. Forty percent supported Obama, 40 percent sided with Clinton and 20 percent voted for other candidates or not to endorse.

“One big issue was: Does he or does he not believe the stuff he told us in 1996?” said Aviva Patt, who has been involved with the IVI-IPO since 1990 and is now the group’s treasurer. She volunteered for Obama’s 2004 Senate campaign, but voted to endorse the since-aborted presidential campaign of Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio) and professed disappointment over Obama’s retreat from ownership of the questionnaire.

“I always believed those to be his views,” she said, adding some members of the board argued that Obama’s 1996 answers were “what he really believes in, and he’s tailoring it now to make himself more palatable as a nationwide candidate.”

It’s more benign than that, contended fellow board member Lois Dobry, who voted to endorse Obama last year and hosted the 1996 interview session at her home.

That “was a long time ago,” she said. “And anybody who hasn’t refined their ideas over that period of time ... is not anybody I’m interested in,” she said. Dobry asserted Obama’s views have evolved mostly at the margins and that he’s still the same person she met in the 1990s.

“He always was right from the start very, very clear on where he was coming from on most issues,” she said, “and he certainly wasn’t letting anybody else decide that for him.”

Dobry, Patt and current IVI-IPO state chairman David K. Igasaki, a Clinton supporter, agreed Obama likely didn’t write every word of his campaign’s 1996 answers. But they all dismissed as unbelievable his presidential campaign’s assertion that Obama never saw or signed off on the state Senate questionnaires.

Campaigns are routinely bombarded with all manner of questionnaires from advocacy groups of every stripe, so it’s not uncommon to have staffers fill them out in candidates’ names. But usually there’s some process by which the answers are vetted to insure consistency with the candidates’ views.

And there were plenty of reasons to believe that occurred in the case of Obama’s 1996 IVI-IPO questionnaire.

The group was very influential in Obama’s South Side district. It also was a leader on government reform issues, which Obama has made a centerpiece of his political persona.

He and his campaign manager, Carol Harwell, were both active with the IVI-IPO prior to his candidacy, and they had once helped interview candidates seeking the group’s endorsement, according to Igasaki.

Dobry called Harwell “an extremely experienced person, also someone highly familiar with IVI. And she would know perfectly well that the candidate would have to answer questions based on these answers and to suddenly have the candidate discover that somebody else had written answers that they were in no way in agreement with would be pretty embarrassing, right?”

Harwell, a veteran Democratic operative who got her start working for the late Chicago Mayor Harold Washington in the 1980s and who now works for Cook County Clerk David Orr, last year told Politico she filled out the first questionnaire.

But she did not return several telephone messages asking about the second questionnaire and the handwritten notes on it.

They appear under a question asking candidates to “list all endorsements you have received so far.” In typed text that matches that of the rest of the answers, both of Obama’s questionnaires list four local Democratic organizations and two aldermen. But the latter questionnaire adds to that with handwritten notes listing another 10 endorsements, including an Illinois seniors group, AFSCME, AFL-CIO, Sierra Club, IBEW and unions representing nurses and firefighters.

Igasaki said Obama was shoo-in for the IVI-IPO endorsement, but that it was important to have a strong showing because “our chapter basically was his field operation. ... Those people were already working for him, and it was important for him to identify with us.”

Patt, though, conceded the inevitability of the group’s endorsement could have led Harwell to be “less than 100 percent careful” in filling out the questionnaire, “because it probably didn’t matter that much at the time. It’s only in the context that it’s now found that has much greater importance than anyone could have imagined it would back in 1996.”

 

That's a really interesting story, isn't it? Politico does a good job of reporting on tough topics -- teaching while they go.

I think the only question that could provide Obama trouble down the line is the answer on handguns. Attacking him for the statement on capital punishment only brings up the fact that in 1996 some ridiculous amount of death-row inmates were exonerated. It was a good time, due to the structural defects in Illinois at the time, to be against the system

I don't really think his answer on parental consent is different. The answer is still no, just with more explanation. Gun control is a little different, though he still supports allowing the DC ban, so it's not really anything that is that different from his current platform in substance -- of course, structure is much different.

I think, if anything, what the forms show are the growth in Obama's ability to frame his issues . . . which is interesting in and of itself.