Friday, April 18, 2008 - Posts
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John McCain’s released
two years of tax returns today to little fanfare. We learn that he earned $405,000
in 2007. We learn that he’s giving his ex-wife $17,000 a year in alimony. What
we don’t learn, though, is how much he’s getting from his current wife. That’s
because the returns don’t include the assets of Cindy McCain, whose beer
fortune is estimated
at more than $100 million—a reminder that McCain would be the first
president to have signed a prenuptial agreement.
The decision not to combine their assets has had pros and
cons. On the one hand, McCain was able to distance himself from her money when
conflict-of-interest issues arose
during his first House campaign in 1982. (He took a salary from Hensley,
Cindy’s father’s company, for public relations work.) But these days, there’s a
major downside: He can’t spend her money on the campaign trail. Normally a
candidate can spend up to half of the assets from a joint account, if the
spouse agrees. Had the McCains decided to fully merge their assets three
decades ago, he would probably be having much less trouble on the
financial end.
Then there’s the moral aspect. In a race that has feature
the thrice-married Rudy Giuliani, McCain’s marital situation doesn’t seem particularly
controversial. But some Americans might look askance at a prenup, commonly
considered leaving the door open for divorce. McCain is already on rocky
footing with so-called values voters, given his stance on issues like embryonic
stem cell research. (James Dobson in particular is famously
displeased.) His marital arrangement isn’t likely to endear him either.
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As we've noted here before, Hillary Clinton must convince
voters—well, superdelegates actually—of two things: not only that she's
the best candidate, but that she's so the best candidate that
it's worth dragging this election out at least until June 3, the day of
the last primary. That's why the endorsement of Obama by Robert Reich,
a longtime Clinton family friend and labor secretary in Bill's
administration, is pretty bad news for her. Even if most people don't
give a damn who Reich personally favors for president, this kind of Bill Richardson-style betrayal reminds us that the establishment is slouching toward Obama. That, along with reports that superdelegates are unmoved by her attacks, forces us to dock Clinton 0.8 points, bringing her to 9.9 percent going into the weekend.
Clinton still knows how to slap on a smile, though. Her cameo on The Colbert Report
last night went over well, as she pretended to help Stephen fix the
video system. ("Try toggling the input.") The senator was outshined,
however, by a scene-stealing John Edwards, whose six-minute delivery of "the EdWORDs" almost made you wish he was still in the race.
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
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Let’s stop pretending it’s about the voters. Hillary Clinton’s strategy right now rests on whether or not she can sway superdelegates, and it’s clear to anyone who can count that the strategy is not going well—Obama has narrowed Clinton’s superdelegate lead from 97 to 22 since Feb. 5. To make up Obama’s pledged-delegate lead, Clinton will need to win at least 70 percent of remaining uncommitted superdelegates.
That’s why the “bitter” comment was such a potential lifesaver. It gave Clinton one last chance to convince superdelegates that Obama is a walking crapshoot who just can’t win in the general. So she spent the past week pushing that argument. But a New York Times piece today suggests that superdelegates don’t really care. Which apparently makes them a lot like voters.
It’s hard to say whether Clinton missed an opportunity to exploit the “cling” thing, or whether no such opportunity existed in the first place. Obama formulated his words poorly, but the outrage felt manufactured from the start. Clinton’s “good people of Pennsylvania” ad came off as contrived and cynical. If anything, Clinton’s righteous response to the “bitter” comments may have hastened Obama’s recovery.
But the larger question is what Clinton can do now. Here’s the problem, per the Times piece:
Clinton advisers acknowledged that they had not seen short-term evidence that their attacks on Mr. Obama were winning over many superdelegates, and they acknowledged that he had picked up more in recent weeks—though she maintained a narrowing overall lead in them. They predicted, however, that the mounting scrutiny of Mr. Obama would lead superdelegates to cool to his candidacy and come to see her as more of a known quantity, battle tested, and shrewd about the best ways to beat the presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain, in the fall.
This strategy made sense two months ago, when Clinton still had a shot at 1) getting Florida and Michigan to count, 2) winning the popular vote, and 3) exploiting some unforgivable revelation about Obama. It doesn’t make any sense now. Obama has weathered Wright, Goolsbee, Power, “bitter,” and, for now, Bill Ayers. (Although watch for half of these to return in the general.) He also appears to have survived one of his worst debate performances ever. Consider Robert Reich, Sam Nunn, and David Boren exhibits A, B, and C. Now Howard Dean has re-emerged from the woodwork to reiterate his call for superdelegates to take sides.
This isn’t to say that Pennsylvania and Indiana and North Carolina don’t matter. Only that everything needs to go right for Clinton if she’s going to stay in the race. She needs to win so overwhelmingly that superdelegates will move her way in huge numbers—something that none of Obama’s supposedly damaging gaffes have been able to accomplish. With superdelegates unmoved by Obama's missteps over the past week, the idea that “mounting scrutiny” of Obama will save Clinton has expired.
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While watching the shoulder-brushing video we mentioned yesterday, some people had a different reaction. The Los Angeles Times’ Andrew Malcolm cites a “one-fingered gesture” Obama made while criticizing Clinton’s debate tactics and suggests it was a subtle way of flipping her off: “The presidential candidate raises his right hand to seemingly scratch his cheek. He doesn't use his whole hand though. Just one finger. Briefly. A couple of strokes.” Malcolm notes the “buzz” in the audience as evidence that “the crowd sure sees something.”
It’s almost too silly to mention, except that the suggestion seems to be getting some traction on YouTube and the blogs.
I’m gonna say no. If you look at the full video, you can see the audience was already pretty jazzed at that point, and Obama had just delivered the line that Clinton was “in her element” during Wednesday’s debate. The “mischievous smile” doesn’t come until his “twist the knife” line, and at that point hardly seems like a throwback to the questionable scratch. Plus, think about it: Flipping your opponent off, however subtly, is pretty freaking unwise. He may be young and inexperienced, but he’s not politically suicidal.
What we need is a video montage of how Obama scratches his face. Is the one-finger an anomaly or his standard scratching method? This is why God invented crowd-sourcing.
Update 3:08 p.m.: Alternate angles cast yet more doubt on the finger theory.
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