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On a conference call just now, Clinton adviser Harold Ickes articulated the campaign’s position on Michigan’s "uncommitted" delegates: Obama shouldn’t get them. Over at Politico, Avi Zenilman points out how this would hinder Obama’s attempts to win the pledged-delegate count.
But it also affects the popular-vote tally. Namely, it justifies Clinton’s declaration that she’s "winning the popular vote," since she counts her own votes in Michigan but not "uncommitted."
At a breakfast with reporters earlier this month, Clinton strategist Howard Wolfson reportedly suggested that they’d be willing to give Obama the "uncommitted" delegates. Yesterday we wondered why, if they were willing to give him the delegates, they were unwilling to give him the popular votes.
But today, Ickes took a harder stance: "It is presumptuous to assume that each and every one of those delegates is an Obama supporter," he said. He described a different scenario: Rather than going to Obama, the "uncommitted" delegates would attend the August convention as just that—"uncommitted." The campaign would then make their case to the delegates at the convention.
It’s still a stretch to say you’re winning the popular vote while counting a state where your opponent wasn’t on the ballot. But now at least the logic is internally consistent—"uncommitted" delegates shouldn’t go to Obama, nor should "uncommitted" votes.
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Something we didn’t mention in our assessments of Hillary Clinton’s claim that she’s winning the popular vote: the Texas caucuses.
We and many other outlets have taken to using the Real Clear Politics popular vote count. The problem is, RCP factors in the Texas primary but not its caucuses. As a result, we end up underestimating Barack Obama’s popular vote tally. But by how much?
One way to estimate is to look at the results from the evening of March 4. Texas uses a “voluntary” reporting system, so only 41 percent of precincts ended up reporting their results on election night. Those numbers showed Obama winning the caucus by about 10 points. We can also look at the results of Texas’ county and state district conventions in late March, in which Obama won 58 percent of the vote to Clinton’s 42 percent. Again, that’s rough, but it’s the best we’ve got until the state convention in early June.
Based on those numbers, it looks like Obama won by anywhere from 10 to 20 points. (There are no official figures.) The Texas Democratic party estimates that turnout was roughly a million, which means that Obama probably netted anywhere from 100,000 to 200,000 votes—enough to cancel out Clinton’s 100,000-vote victory in the state’s primary.
You can see why outlets like NBC choose to ignore Texas entirely when counting votes. “We’re just all screwed up,” laughs Texas Democratic spokesman Hector Nieto. “We’re the only state with stripes on CNN.” There are other caveats: The March 4 caucuses were chaotic, with overflowing caucus sites and accusations of voter fraud. Also, Texas voters could vote in both the primary and the caucuses, and there’s no way to figure out exactly how many votes got counted twice. (Update 8:14 p.m.: Actually, there is: All of them got counted twice, since you had to vote in the primary in order to attend the caucus.)
But if you factor in this rough estimate of the Texas caucus results, Clinton is decidedly not winning the popular vote. RCP puts her ahead by 64,000 votes if you count Florida and Michigan and all the caucus states. But 100,000 votes from the Texas caucus would swing the advantage back to Obama.
Update 6:16 p.m.: Clinton's task is even harder if you factor in the enigmatic Texas caucuses. Check out the revised analysis here.
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Now that we’ve laid out Hillary Clinton’s logic for how she’s winning the popular vote, it’s worth examining whether and how she can turn this from a tenuous argument into a compelling case.
Right now, superdelegates aren’t buying it, most likely because no one thinks Michigan should be counted toward the popular vote, especially if you’re not counting the "uncommitted" votes for Obama. So if she’s going to persuade them, she needs a lead that doesn’t rely on counting Michigan’s dubious vote in order to put her ahead.
The upcoming votes in Montana and South Dakota won’t help her much. South Dakota currently has 194,000 active registered Democrats. Even if turnout is as high as 50 percent and she wins with a 60-40 split, she’ll only net around 20,000 votes. Turnout in Montana is expected to be in the mid-100,000 range, which likewise won’t net Clinton more than a few thousand votes. And those are optimistic scenarios.
Puerto Rico looks like her best shot. The island has 2.3 million registered voters, all of whom are eligible to vote in the Democratic primary. (Puerto Rico’s parties don’t align with U.S. parties.) I’ve seen turnout estimates of 80 percent. That seems high, but say it’s true and 1.84 million people vote. If Clinton wins a 60-40 split, that would net her about 370,000 votes.
So it’s possible that in the next three contests, Clinton could net as many as 400,000 votes. Obama currently leads by 257,000 votes, counting Florida and all caucus states but not Michigan. Which means Clinton could still come out ahead by more than 100,000 votes. That sort of margin isn’t Florida-proof—it relies on counting Florida’s popular vote in order to hold. But counting Florida could become standard practice if the DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee decides to seat the state's delegation on May 31. If all that happens, Clinton could make a reasonable case to superdelegates that more people voted for her than for Obama.
Update 6:16 p.m.: Clinton's task is even harder if you factor in the enigmatic Texas caucuses. Check out the revised analysis here.
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Last night, Clinton announced that she’s "winning the popular vote." It’s a claim she’s been making since Pennsylvania, but now that Obama has won a majority of pledged delegates, it’s really her last plausible argument for the nomination.
As this blog has noted before, the popular vote is a flawed metric because the number of people who participate in caucuses is much smaller than the number of people who vote in primaries. But let’s set that objection aside. What’s the logic undergirding Clinton’s claim?
1) If you count the vote in all primaries and caucuses sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee, Obama leads by about 552,000 votes, according to an estimate by Real Clear Politics.
2) If you add in Florida, whose primary was not DNC-sanctioned, and where the candidates agreed not to campaign, Obama’s lead drops to 257,000.
3) If you further add in Michigan, whose primary was not DNC-sanctioned, where candidates agreed not to campaign, and where Obama’s name did not appear on the ballot, then Clinton leads by 71,000.
But:
4) In Michigan, "uncommitted" received 40 percent of the vote, which seems kind of high. If we count Michigan’s 238,000 uncommitteds for Obama, then he leads by 167,000. Presumably the Clinton campaign isn’t making this final calculation. In the past, though, her camp has explained away the embarrassingly large proportion of Michigan uncommitteds—remember, Clinton was the only major candidate on the ballot— by pointing out that Obama’s Michigan supporters urged primary voters to pull the lever for "uncommitted." Indeed, on May 10 Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said Clinton would be willing to give Obama all the Michigan uncommitteds, provided Obama dropped his opposition to seating Michigan and Florida.
Hendrik Hertzberg of the New Yorker, a strong proponent of the popular-vote metric, has argued that if you’re going to count Michigan, you have to take this last step. (Incidentally, Hertzberg later discovered that his own calculations understated Obama’s support.)
5) An additional variable is whether you count all the caucuses. Four caucus states—Iowa, Nevada, Maine, and Washington—never reported their popular votes. So the calculations above are based on estimates. If you don’t count these estimates, Clinton’s 71,000 lead rises to 181,000 votes.
6) But isn’t it inconsistent to argue for enfranchising Florida and Michigan while simultaneously disenfranchising Iowa, Nevada, Maine, and Washington? Yes, that’s inconsistent. So let’s disenfranchise Florida and Michigan in addition to the four caucus states. That gives the popular vote lead back to Obama by 442,000.
7) OK, now let’s put Florida and Michigan back in but give Obama the Michigan uncommitteds, per Hertzberg’s recommendation and Wolfson’s May 10 comment. That also gives the popular vote lead back to Obama, this time by about 57,000.
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Results from the last several Republican primaries force one to occasionally stop for a fact-check: Mike Huckebee did drop out of the race, right? Like, almost three months ago?
Or more to the point: Is anyone in the McCain camp worried that an opponent who called it off on March 4 is still winning 10 percent of the vote? Or that their guy is only winning about three-quarters of the vote, largely against defunct candidates?
With 100 percent of precincts reporting in Kentucky, McCain won 72.3 percent of the vote. Huckabee raked in 8.2 percent, and Ron Paul, who’s actually still in the race, won 6.8 percent. All told, non-McCain candidates won nearly 28 percent of the vote in the Republican contest. By contrast, Barack Obama won 30 percent in the Democratic contest.
Two weeks ago, Huckabee won 10 percent in Indiana and 12.1 percent in North Carolina.
To be fair, the presumptive nominee doesn’t always receive overwhelming margins of the vote after the contest is functionally over. In May of 2004, John Edwards won 13.4 percent in West Virginia and 11.2 percent in Indiana, well after John Kerry had it wrapped up. Perhaps this is the voters’ way of notching their choice for a running mate?
And look how well that turned out for those two.
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With Tuesday's contests in Kentucky and Oregon, Barack Obama seizes
a majority of pledged delegates. April fundraising numbers show Obama
still leads in the money race. And key figures ditch Hillary. Obama now
needs about 70 delegates to attain the "magic number" of 2025, so we're
dropping Clinton's chances drop to 0.9 points to 0.7 percent. For every 10 delegates Obama wins, Clinton will drop another 0.1 until … let's just say she'll need a snorkel.
Obama
did not declare victory Tuesday night, but he came about as close as
one can get. "You have put us within reach of the Democratic nomination
for president of the United States," he told a Des Moines, Iowa, crowd.
He needed only 17 pledged delegates to secure a majority. In Kentucky,
it looks like he won about 14; in Oregon, about 30. ...
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
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It’s one thing to damn with faint praise. It’s another to
kill with enthusiastc praise. And that seemed to be Barack Obama’s partial goal
in his speech in Des Moines
tonight.
At times, Obama sounded like a Clinton surrogate. He called her “one of the
most formidable candidates to ever run for this office.” He complimented “her
courage, her commitment and her perseverance.” He even borrowed a line straight
out of Clinton’s
talking points: “In her thirty-five
years of public service, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has never given up
on her fight for the American people,” he said. [E.A.] I half expected him to say Clinton is "ready to lead on Day One."
It’s no surprise that Obama has softened on Clinton. The reverse is true, too. Clinton
insisted tonight that Democrats will unite behind the nominee—she practically
ordered them to, which may be necessary given that nearly half of Kentucy Dems
said they would not support Obama in a general election against John McCain.
But as Obama complements her, he’s paving the way for her
exit. It’s like the euphoria they say comes over you just before death. “No
matter how this primary ends,” Obama said, “Senator Clinton has shattered myths
and broken barriers and changed the America in which my daughters and
yours will come of age.”
This will no doubt get the “dream ticket” fans clucking
again. Look, they’re healing! But
really, it shows just how easy it is to be generous when you’ve won.
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Hillary Clinton’s speech tonight in Louisville was two speeches in one. On the one hand, she seemed more determined than ever to campaign through June 3, seat Florida and Michigan, and reach the “2,210” delegates necessary to win the nomination. But she was simultaneously conciliatory, repeating how she would do everything she can to help a Democrat win in November. She tempered that a bit by saying she’d “support the Democratic nominee, whoever she may be.” But even so, it’s not a pledge you make if you think you’re going to win the race.
How can she have it both ways? Easy. She’s still challenging Obama, but only on process—not on issues. She announced that she is “winning the popular vote,” but no one truly believes that’s an untainted number if you count Florida and Michigan. (Even if you don’t, it’s sketchy.) She dropped the 2,210 figure as the number of delegates needed to win the nomination, but again, she’s the only one counting that way. She still says she’s “ready, willing and able to lead,” but no longer says she’s the only such candidate.
Given this double-speak, Clinton’s goal seems to be shifting. Plan A is still to win the nomination. But Plan B is to preserve her reputation as a fighter. That means campaigning hard in the remaining states, heading to Florida tomorrow to renew calls to seat the delegation, and arguing that she’s most capable of winning the presidency. None of that will hurt Obama—and that’s exactly why it’s OK for her to continue. There’s almost a tacit agreement that Obama will focus on John McCain while Clinton maintains her “fighter” status. As long as she can achieve Plan B without permanently damaging the person she knows to be the all-but-inevitable nominee, there’s no reason to drop out. She’s been in this dozens of weeks; what’s another two?
She’s still fighting, but it’s fighting for fighting’s sake.
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Despite Hillary Clinton’s dominating win in Kentucky this evening, Barack Obama is still going to win enough pledged delegates to own the majority in that metric. He who holds the pledged-delegate majority holds the key to the kingdom, we’re told. But that doesn’t mean Clinton’s win will be for naught. Her queen-size victory may be enough to fortify her superdelegate friends who are still wary of flooding to Obama … for another week or two.
There's no way to be sure of the exact numbers quite yet, but according to Slate’s Delegate Calculator, Obama stands to gain somewhere around 15 to 18 pledged delegates from the Bluegrass State. That opportunity, combined with a likely win in Oregon, should net him between 40 and 50 pledged delegates this evening. Coming into these primaries, DemConWatch had him 108 away from the 2,025 needed for the nomination. If he grabs 40 to 50, that means he’ll need 70 more superdelegates at most.
(Note: We’re using 2,025 as the majority of delegates necessary. This does not include Michigan and Florida. Obama would only need a handful of extra superdelegates to achieve a majority with the two naughty states included.)
Seventy is a lot of superdelegates to get immediately following a win in Oregon, but it’s not a totally unrealistic scenario. Plenty of superdelegates (Pelosi, Carter, and Reid included) have said they will vote for whoever wins the most pledged delegates, and Barack Obama will own that title after tonight. But that doesn’t mean they’re going to come out and publicly back Obama, especially with such an embarrassing loss in Kentucky. Clinton won more than 70 percent of the white vote, and more than 30 percent of voters say they’d rather vote for McCain than Obama in November. Those aren’t the prettiest numbers to endorse.
So, instead, we’re likely to see the same steady superdelegate stream to Obama that we’ve seen over the last few weeks. But that still means Clinton is going to be mathematically defeated sooner rather than later. At that point, the chorus chanting for her withdrawal will be deafening. Just ask Mike Huckabee.
UPDATE 9:29 p.m: Hawk-eyed reader Titbug reminds us that Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Clinton supporter, has said she'll back the pledged delegate and popular vote leader. A list of superdelegates using pledged-delegate tallies as the deciding factor is available here.
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Another election night, another parsing of the exit polls. As usual, these numbers come from CNN and will probably evolve as the night goes on and the networks receive more waves of exit polls. The gist: As in West Virginia, it’s a sweep, no matter the demographic.
- Nearly the same proportion of men (62 percent) voted for Hillary Clinton as voted for Barack Obama (67 percent).
- Sixty-two percent of voters think Clinton is more likely to win in November. Thirty-five percent of voters say Obama is more likely to win, 17 percent of whom voted for Clinton anyway.
- Forty-two percent of voters say Obama should not pick Clinton as his running mate, 50 percent of whom were Clinton supporters. Twenty-one percent of those who say he should pick Clinton are Obama supporters.
- Thirty-nine percent of college graduates supported Obama; 25 percent of non-college-educated voters supported him.
- Sixty-four percent of voters say Clinton is honest and trustworthy. That’s higher than her honesty numbers nationally. More people believe Obama is untrustworthy than think he’s honest.
- Thirty-three percent of voters say they’ll vote for McCain over Obama in November. Eighty-three percent of them are Clinton supporters.
- Seventy-two percent of white voters supported Clinton. Nineteen percent of white voters say race was important in their vote—88 percent of whom voted for Clinton.
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Another quirk of Oregon’s mail-in voting system is the way exit polls are being conducted. Normally, polling firms set up stations at polling places across the state and selectively interview voters as they emerge. The difference in Oregon is that polling firms are calling voters at home.
It’s hard to pinpoint what difference this makes in the numbers, especially since exit polls are unreliable to begin with. But consider these factors:
Young people are less likely to own a home phone, which means they could be underrepresented in polls. Few people actually fill out the contact information section of their mail-in ballots. Normal exit polls are self-selective to an extent, since you’re going to get people who are less shy or hurried; your average voter is more likely to pick up the phone than talk to a stranger in person. Normal exit polls catch voters fresh out of the voting booth; phone surveys rely on many voters who cast their ballots weeks before.
Oregon relied on phone surveys in 2004 and the results weren’t disputed. But they were also less scrutinized, since John Kerry had the nomination locked up by then. When looking at tonight’s demographic breakdowns, it’s worth keeping methodology in mind.
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Story lines in this election have been determined as often by timing as by actual events. Two weeks ago, networks called Barack Obama’s win in North Carolina hours before they called Clinton’s Indiana win, producing wishy-washy headlines like NBC’s "CLINTON THE 'APPARENT' WINNER IN INDIANA." Or remember how people referred to Clintons’ "double-digit" Pennsylvania win, only to discover the next day that she’d actually won by 9.2 points. Or in Nevada, where we learned late in the game that Obama had somehow won more delegates than Clinton.
Tonight’s timing is especially favorable to Clinton. Kentucky results start coming in at 7 p.m. ET, while Oregon results don’t appear until 11 p.m. ET. That leaves four hours for what’s expected to be a Clinton thumping to sink in.
If Oregon came first, the narrative would be, Obama racks up another slew of pledged delegates—can Clinton make a last stand in Kentucky? But since it’s the other way around, it will be, Clinton trounces Obama once again among white working-class voters—has Obama improved at all since West Virginia? Clinton's speech in Louisville, Ky., will have a victory to back it up, whereas Obama won't have decisive results until after he's done speechifying in Des Moines.
That’s not to say the order of the primaries will determine the outcome of the nomination. In the grand scheme, Obama’s weakness among blue-collar voters isn’t as drastic as Clinton’s current weakness among elected delegates. But thanks to the international-time-zone system, Clinton gets to set the tone for the night.
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On normal election nights, results start trickling in when polls close, but it sometimes takes hours for enough precincts to report that you can declare a winner. You end up waiting for areas like Gary, Ind., to get their act together and report. As a result, the early returns often skew toward one candidate or another, only to reverse later in the night.
But tonight, we’re told, things will be different. Oregon conducts its primary using entirely mail-in ballots, which means more than half of the results should be in by the time polls close at 11 p.m. ET. So even though the time difference will keep East Coasters up late, it probably won’t take long to announce a winner.
That doesn’t mean early results won’t be skewed early on. It just means the bias won’t be geographic. (In Indiana, Gary was a known Obama stronghold, which meant that networks couldn’t call the state for Clinton until that city had reported.) Rather, the last votes will come from people who turned in their ballots in person Monday or Tuesday instead of mailing them in soon after May 1, when they were sent out. In other words, the procrastinators.
Procrastinators, needless to say, tend to be younger than their early-mailing counterparts, which suggests that last-minute voters will likely skew slightly toward Obama. “If [the margin] comes out Obama in the first flush, I think it will grow,” says Phil Keisling, former Oregon secretary of state and a strong advocate of mail-in voting.
Some counties are more likely to procrastinate than others. Multnomah County, the state’s largest county, happens to include Portland, the state’s slacker capital. (Eugene, Ore., comes in a close second.) “They take longer to get their ballots in,” says Scott Moore, a spokesman for the Oregon secretary of state.
But when it comes to voting, procrastination can be a good
thing. “It’s a smart procrastinator vote,” Keisling said. In 2004, there were
eight Democratic races on the Oregon ballot (PDF), plus a couple dozen non-partisan offices. The mail-in system lets voters take their time learning about
the various races, rather than hastily circling names they see for the first
time on election day.
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Oregon Democrat Steve Novick has become a media darling in recent weeks. Yes, he’s the scrappy underdog in his state’s senatorial primary. Yes, he has an exceptional background, having earned a law degree from Harvard at age 21. But let’s be honest. You know about him because of his hook hand.
Novick has made his hook the centerpiece of his campaign. His smart political spots don’t try to avoid the prosthesis. They show it off. In the best-known ad, he cracks open a beer with the hook.
This would make Novick part of a long tradition of congressmen with deformed hands. You’ve got Montana Sen. Jon Tester, who lost three fingers on his left hand in a meat grinding accident. There’s Rahm Emanuel, who in high school sliced his finger in an Arby’s machine then went for a swim in Lake Michigan. Surgery left him with a stub for a middle finger. He still uses the stub regularly.
Former senators with manual problems include Bob Dole, who carried a pen in his paralyzed right hand to signal that he couldn’t shake hands properly, and Max Cleland, who lost two legs and an arm in Vietnam after bending down to pick up a grenade.
Others?
Update 1:35 p.m.: Arizona Rep. Jeff Flake lost the tip of his right index finger in an alfalfa field when he was 5.
Update 3:31 p.m.: Sen. Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii lost his arm in Italy in 1945 after a grenade exploded at close range.
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For a while earlier today, Yahoo! News had this photo illustrating an article about alleged White House plans to attack Iran -- a piece that had nothing to do with John McCain.
The photo's fixed now. Maybe Obama's attempts to tie McCain to Bush are paying off.
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For a candidate trying to combat portrayals of himself as a fey elitist, Obama could be choosing his speaking venues more carefully.
A headline in today’s Des Moines Register announces that Obama “returns to D.M. today for east-side rally.” The city’s east side is home to many of the sort of white, working-class voters Obama has struggled to win over; you’d think he was trying to reach out. But read further down, and you see that it’s actually the “East Village” where he’s speaking.
Trailhead reader and Obama supporter Doug Cutchins describes his disappointment: “[T]he East Village is a wholly different entity – it’s the gentrified, buy-warehouses-and-turn-them-into-condos-with-an-art-gallery neighborhood of Des Moines. Yuppie latte central. So instead of reaching out, he’s playing to his base (and stereotypes).”
Obama might as well be holding his rally in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Here’s how Adam Nagourney described the area in the New York Times back in December: “The East Village streets, spread out under the State Capitol, were aglow with lights — lavender, icy blue and, of course, red and green — strung out for Christmas. They were bustling with boutiques, bookstores, coffee shops, culinary stores and Smash, an edgy T-shirt shop where the proprietors were listening to Band of Horses while making slightly off-color T-shirts celebrating the Iowa caucuses.”
You can’t blame Obama for wanting to return to the site of his first major victory, and the rally is just blocks from Iowa campaign headquarters. But Clinton’s Kentucky win will be yet another reminder of Obama’s weakness among blue-collar whites. In the past week, Clinton has dropped her argument that Obama can’t win this group, presumably because of the negative reaction to her comment about “hard-working white Americans.” But with venue selection like this, Obama is practically making it for her.
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Barack Obama stepped up his anti-lobbyist rhetoric yesterday after a fifth McCain staffer, former Texas Rep. Tom Loeffler, resigned due to lobbying ties. Obama took the opportunity to reiterate his stance on lobbyists: “We're not gonna take money from PACs, we're not gonna take money from federally registered lobbyists, because we want to be accountable to the American people.”
But it’s almost impossible to get elected without relying to some degree on lobbyists, and the Obama campaign is no exception. Candidates need to know the best-connected people in Washington; and the best-connected people in Washington tend to lobby. So, naturally, any candidate needs to make some exceptions. Here’s a rundown of the campaign’s lobbying loopholes, from smallest to largest:
State and local lobbyists are OK. In January, former South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges became Obama’s national co-chair, despite having founded the state-based lobbying firm Hodges Consulting Group in 2003. Likewise, his New Hampshire co-chair is a state lobbyist for the pharmaceutical and financial services industries. Taking money and services from state lobbyists is fair game, Obama says, because he doesn’t have any influence on the state level. But that didn’t stop him from criticizing John Edwards in January when it was revealed that a contributor of his was a state lobbyist. So when you hear the candidates talk about rejecting “Washington lobbyists,” remember that “Washington” is a qualifier.
Employers of lobbyists are OK. Obama has taken $15 million from lawyers/law firms, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, and many of those firms employ lobbyists. Clinton has taken slightly more from this group ($15.4 million) while McCain has taken less ($4.2 million).
Employees of firms that lobby are OK. Take Tom Daschle. The former senator was an early and avid Obama supporter and is now a national campaign co-chair. Daschle is not himself a federally registered lobbyist, but he works at Alston & Bird, a firm that employs federally registered lobbyists and raked in $2.6 million in lobbying fees in 2004.
Advice is OK. Obama does not ban even current lobbyists from lending advice to the campaign—which could be considered an “in kind” contribution. Moses Mercado, a former adviser to Dick Gephardt and a lobbyist for Ogilvy Government Relations, volunteers his advice and time for the campaign but declined to be on payroll.
Spouses and family members are OK. Even if being a lobbyist makes you an untouchable scumbag, that doesn’t mean your spouse is. Back in December, The Hill reported that an Obama fundraiser had encouraged a lobbyist to have his wife contribute. “I was quite taken aback,” the lobbyist said. There’s currently no database of spouse contributions.
Former and future lobbyists are OK. The Obama campaign restricts current lobbyists from joining the campaign. But a bunch of former lobbyists have helped out—including deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand, Teal Baker, and Emmett Beliveau—who could easily slip back onto K Street once the campaign is over. Obama now has 14 bundlers who are also federally registered lobbyists, but they are currently inactive, according to Public Citizen. (Clinton has 22 lobbyist bundlers; McCain has 70.) However, campaign-finance reformers point out that no campaign has ever taken the step of banning current and former lobbyists. “It’s hard to come up with any stronger of a firewall,” says Craig Holman of Public Citizen.
That’s not to say there isn’t a distinction between Obama and McCain. “The McCain campaign, you can’t spit without hitting another lobbyist there,” says David Donnelly, director of the Public Campaign Action Fund.
Likewise, Obama has kept lobbyists at arm's length all along, while McCain’s campaign only instituted its ethics policy last week after two embarrassing departures. (Regional campaign manager Doug Davenport and Republican convention chief Doug Goodyear had both represented the military government in Burma.) “I believe he now understands that it is going to hurt him,” says Holman. “That’s why he’s taken this new ethics pledge. He recognizes Obama has gained the high road.”
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Obama won't declare victory after Tuesday, but only because the
media will do it for him. Clinton's chances sag another 0.1 point to 1.6 percent.
Despite
reports that Barack Obama would declare victory after May 20, when he's
expected to secure a majority of pledged delegates, he's now expected to keep mum.
The reason: Better to let Clinton exit with dignity than to appear to
be forcing her out of the race. This logic reflects the Obama camp's
supreme confidence that the nomination is in the bag.
Media outlets seem to agree. Just look at today's top New York Times headlines. "McCain To Rely on Party Money Against Obama" doesn't even pretend not to know who the nominee will be. Another piece examines
what a Clinton loss means for women: It's either "a historic if
incomplete triumph or a depressing reminder of why few pursue high
office in the first place." Look for more postmortems after Tuesday's
race, barring a Clinton sweep.
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
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While national security issues have gobbled up most news space over the past week, a couple of harsh analyses of John McCain’s economic plan have sailed under the radar.
The Center for American Progress Action Fund* released a study yesterday concluding that McCain’s plan would create a cumulative debt of $12.7 trillion by 2017—the highest debt since 1951. Corporate tax cuts, a repeal of the Alternative Minimum Tax, and an extension of the Bush tax cuts—all staples of the McCain plan—would cost significantly more than the senator’s proposed earmarks cuts and discretionary spending freeze would provide, the study argues. (PDF here.)
Also this week, FactCheck.org calls McCain’s suggestion that he can balance the budget while extending Bush’s tax cuts “dubious at best.” The main problem: Getting rid of earmarks doesn’t mean the money won’t get spent. It just means it doesn’t happen in the form of earmarks. As the writers phrase it, “earmarks often simply tell agencies how to spend money that they are already getting.” And when it comes to discretionary spending, McCain hasn’t detailed what areas he would cut. He says he would exempt military spending, so that’s out. And because the nondefense budget is only $540 billion, he would still have to convince Congress to “slash 18.5 percent of the funding for everything else in the discretionary budget—things like veterans' health benefits, highway construction, elementary and secondary education, and immigration services.”
McCain’s economic plan has its defenders. But neither they nor the McCain campaign has produced numbers to back up the budget-balancing claims. (At least not that I’ve seen.) The argument seems to be that cutting taxes raises revenues, but even McCain’s own senior policy adviser has rejected that claim in the past. Spokesman Brian Rogers dismissed the CAP study as coming from “a left-wing Democratic front group” but did not provide alternative figures. “The fact that they falsely criticize Sen. McCain’s policy proposals is unfortunate, but it’s hardly surprising,” he wrote in an e-mail.
*Clarification: We originally credited the Center for American Progress. In fact, it's the Action Fund, the center's 501(c)(4) sister affiliate, that published the report.
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The John Edwards endorsement spawns imitators, and Republicans set
their sights on Obama. Clinton's chances wane another 0.1 points to 1.7 percent.
Obama
nabbed a slew of endorsements yesterday on the heels of Edwards'
announcement, including California duo Reps. Henry Waxman and Howard
Berman. Waxman's backing doesn't carry the weight of a Pelosi or a
Reid, but as chair of the House oversight committee, he's considered
one of the most powerful congressmen around. (His may be the most feared mustache
in Washington.) Berman chairs the chamber's foreign-affairs committee,
lending Obama another bit of global-policy cred. Today, fellow
California Rep. Pete Stark followed suit.
That puts Obama 127.5 delegates away from the nomination (or 121.5 if
you count seven pledged delegates who previously supported Edwards).
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.