In the first three months of the year, Hillary Clinton paid off $3.7 million in bills left over from her failed presidential campaign, according to a report her campaign filed Wednesday afternoon with the Federal Election Commission.
The report shows that Clinton has only one vendor left to pay off: pollster Mark Penn. Her campaign paid his firm $3 million in the first quarter, but still owes it $2.3 million.
But I did have to blink a bit at this claim:
Though Clinton had $2.6 million in the bank at the end of March, she couldn't use that to pay off the remainder of the Penn debt because her campaign operation still has overhead costs it needs to pay.
For instance, in the first quarter, the campaign paid $9,400 in salary to staffers in New York and Washington, plus $2,300 in phone services, $7,000 for website maintenance and $30,000 in travel costs.
That's about $50,000 in the first quarter. Let's be generous and multiply that by 4, even though the expenses for things like salary and travel have to be going down now at Hillary for President, right? So that's $200,000. It sure sounds like she has plenty to pay off Penn.
74% of West Virginia Democrats Vote Against Presumptive Nominee
The media have been having fun reporting that something like 25% of Republicans in recent states have been voting against McCain; let's see them do the same for Obama. Nope, it's going to be "You inbred corn cousins, the only way you could vote against the Obamessiah is if thought he was a Muslim." Note, as usual, that it is white Democrats who think this.
What's even more interesting is that no Democrat has won the White House without carrying Minnesota since 1912 (it went for Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose party) so given that Obama won Minnesota and Clinton won West Virginia, McCain is guaranteed to win the general election unless the eventual nominee can somehow completely replicate the social and political conditions prevailing in pre-WWI America. The outlook, in short, is very grim.
Sorry, Matt. The issue is not whether you carry Minnesota in the caucuses (not even a primary). The issue is whether you can carry it in the general election. Hillary has a chance in Minnesota; Obama has no chance in West Virginia. It's true that Obama can cobble together an electoral map without WV, but when you say that PA and FL are out too, well, McCain's looking at winning easily.
What is amazing is how many people are putting down West Virginia. Check out the (Not-So) Moderate Voice:
Because, of course, that is exactly what Hillary is pitching to the Democratic primary voters of West Virginia (and presumably Pennsylvania, Ohio, and soon Kentucky) is that like the “White God-fearing citizens of Rock Ridge,” it is perfectly cool… no, it is laudatory, that they should not wish to live under the governance of a Black man– any Black man. Simple as that. She said it. This is why she should be the choice of the super-delegates, because, despite Obama’s significant lead in delegates and votes, (1) he’s still a Black man and hence cannot win a general election, and (2) his big lead is as a result of overwhelming support among Black voters, who, since they are not the target demographic, should be discounted accordingly.
One thing is certainly consistent. The Hillary voters slag Obama and the Obama voters slag the Hillary voters.
Aravosis admits what everybody's known for years: the media are in the bag for the Democrats:
Why is the media even covering her? The only stories that should be written about Hillary Clinton is how much damage she's causing our party. How she's hurting fundraising at the DNC - they even admitted it, they're not raising the money they need to fight John McCain because of this woman.
Clinton was at Bronko’s Restaurant having a beer when the bartender asked, “You want a shot with that Hillary?” After some deliberation, Clinton settled on a shot of Crown Royal, a Canadian whiskey.
She's a ma'am of the people!
Update: How did I miss that pick? Crown Royal? Could Hillary possibly have chosen a less elitist-sounding whiskey?
The continuing contest for the Democratic presidential nomination has become a frenzy of debates and proclamations about democracy. Sen. Barack Obama's campaign has been particularly vociferous in claiming that its candidate stands for a transformative, participatory new politics. It has vaunted Obama's narrow lead in the overall popular vote in the primaries to date, as well as in the count of elected delegates, as the definitive will of the party's rank and file. If, while heeding the party's rules, the Democratic superdelegates overturn those majorities, Obama's supporters claim, they will have displayed a cynical contempt for democracy that would tear the party apart.
Wilentz goes on to point out that if the delegates were apportioned on a winner-take-all basis, Hillary would have a comfortable lead. Note that although Wilentz clearly thinks this would be a good idea, what he's really angling at is to counter the notion discussed above, that Obama's lead in pledged delegates and votes constitutes the will of the people. And there I agree with him. He also points out quite neatly that even in individual states, Obama's team doesn't hew to that rule; it's well-noted that Obama won the most delegates in Texas even though he did not get the most votes in that state, due to their convoluted half-primary, half-caucus setup.
Meanwhile, Kos checks in with a laughable article in Newsweek about Hillary's "coup" attempt:
No matter how you define victory, Barack Obama holds an insurmountable lead in the race to earn the Democratic nomination.
I define victory as the nomination. And Obama's lead in that race is not insurmountable; it is insurmountable without the superdelegates. But the superdelegates are part of the rules.
Hilariously, Kos goes on to claim that Hillary's "coup" attempt is good for the Democrats. Good, one presumes, only if Hillary fails. While likely, that is not yet a given.
See if you can spot the flaw in this argument by Josh Marshall:
I don't know where it was. It think it may have been a reader blog at TPMCafe. Wherever it was it was a post that ran down something like ten different ways of counting the popular vote, all to the end of showing that Barack's popular vote lead wasn't nearly so great and may not exist at all. There was the count with and without Michigan and Florida, with one but not the other, including caucuses and not including caucuses. There were other options that seemed to go even further down the rabbit hole. But it did lead me to have a kind of epiphany about just where the Clinton side is at this point -- gaming out different retroactive rule changes to see who would have won the popular vote if the nomination process were operating under a different set of rules. I imagine playing poker around a table with friends. Player A has a Straight Flush; Player B has four of a kind. Then B says well, sure, if you're counting straights, but if we were adding up the numbers rather than going by straights winning, I'd have won.
How well would that go over? I remember, when I was a little kid playing chess with my dad (who unlike some Dad's never saw the point of throwing games in my favor) and sometimes when I lost I'd toss out some version of ... well, but if my rook could move diagonally, then ... You get the idea.
It's pretty doggone obvious to me. On the one hand you have poker and chess where there are specific rules as to who wins. And on the other, you have the Democratic nomination where the only rule is get a majority of the delegates to support you. It is universally agreed that neither Hillary nor Obama can get the nomination via pledged delegates.
So what does Marshall suggest? Exactly what his father opposed: a new rule that had not been agreed upon before the game. In case neither party wins the majority of pledged delegates, the superdelegates agree to nominate whoever wins the popular vote. And not the popular vote including Florida and Michigan.
In fairness, he does recognize what he's doing later. It's not a rule, you see, it's just his opinion as to what the superdelegates will do:
The Clinton campaign is entitled to do whatever it wants to get superdelegates to come over to her side to even out the pledged delegate deficit. My take is that whatever the arguments, the superdelegates aren't going to go against a clear pledged delegate leader. And I think they'd be extremely ill-advised to do so. But the superdelegates do have this power under the rules. But these constant efforts to say the rules aren't fair are just silly, and truth be told I think they're more undermining of the Clinton campaign than they realize.
Some 50 delegates were reportedly poised to unite behind Barack Obama if he had won by even 1 point in Texas. He lost the popular vote by 100,000 ballots, and now we learn that 100,000 Republicans voted for Hillary Clinton, probably not because of some change in party allegiance but because they thought she would be the easier candidate to beat.
Gee, Obama lost Texas by 100,000, Hillary got 100,000 votes from Republicans, so if we exclude Republicans, Obama would have won? Congratulate yourselves if you weren't duped by the little sleight of hand there. In fact, Obama got more votes from Republicans than Hillary did, according to the exit poll:
In fact, working the numbers out reveals that Hillary got about 116,000 votes from Republicans in Texas, while Obama got about 134,000, so if Republicans had been excluded, Hillary would have won by 18,000 more votes. Of course, you can probably figure out whom Clift is supporting. Note that she assumes Republicans only voted for Hillary because she's the weaker candidate. Why did Republicans vote for Obama? It can only be because he's good and noble and wants to bring us change and hope.
She doesn't mention Rush Limbaugh's exhortation to his Texas listeners to vote for Hillary. Why? Because it doesn't fit her argument. Rush specifically urged them to vote for Hillary not because she was the weaker candidate, but because it would keep the race going.
Clinton of New York leads Obama of Illinois by 16 percentage points -- 51 percent to 35 percent -- according to the Franklin & Marshall Poll conducted for the Tribune-Review, WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh and other news outlets. Nearly one in seven likely Democratic voters -- 13 percent -- are undecided.
The first Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of the race shows that Clinton attracts 55% of the Likely Democratic Primary Voters while Obama is supported by 27%. Eighteen percent (18%) are not sure.
And in a national poll, he trails Hillary by seven points.
The March 14-18 national survey of 1,209 Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters gave Clinton, a New York senator, a 49 percent to 42 percent edge over Obama, an Illinois senator. The poll has an error margin of 3 percentage points.
And there are signs of desperation as well. His surrogates are trying to prevent a revote in Florida and Michigan.
The Democratic National Committee said it would accept a proposal for a new round of balloting in Michigan, but the bill has been bottled up in part because Obama's campaign has raised objections to it.
Among those objections is that the legislation says that if an individual voted in the Jan. 15 Republican primary, he or she would be disqualified from voting in the do-over primary in June. Robert F. Bauer, an attorney for the Illinois senator's campaign, raised other potential problems with the latest Michigan proposal for a revote, saying it would be "unprecedented in conception and proposed structure," as no other state has ever "re-run an election in circumstances like these." While all sides had hoped they could avoid the controversy, the nomination standoff has made the results in Michigan and Florida potentially scale-tipping.
Remember, Obama got his start by similar skullduggery, challenging the signatures on his opponents' nominating petitions and getting the other contenders thrown off the ballot. He's no stranger to hardball tactics.
A lot of people have bought the meme that Hillary can't catch Obama. That's true in terms of the pledged delegates (barring a miracle), but it ignores the obvious; if Obama's sinking the superdelegates won't stay with him.
Mark Steyn covers the historical grievance competition that is the Democratic race:
As Ali Gallagher, a white female (sorry, this identity-politics labeling is contagious) from Texas, told the Washington Post: "A friend of mine, a black man, said to me, 'My ancestors came to this country in chains; I'm voting for Barack.' I told him, 'Well, my sisters came here in chains and on their periods; I'm voting for Hillary.'"
When everybody's a victim, nobody's a victim. Poor Ms. Gallagher can't appreciate the distinction between purely metaphorical chains and real ones, or even how offensive it might be to assume blithely that there's no difference whatsoever.
On the other hand, Barack's ancestors didn't come here in chains, either: His mother was a white Kansan, so was presumably undergoing menstrual hell with the Gallagher gals, and his dad was a black man a long way away in colonial Kenya. Indeed, Obama would be the first son of a British subject to serve as president since those slaveholding types elected in the early days of the republic. As some aggrieved black activist sniffed snootily on TV, Barack isn't really an "African American" – unless by "African American," you mean somebody whose parentage is half-American and half-African, and let's face it, no one would come up with so cockamamie a definition as that.
The word on the street is that the Obama campaign and New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg have already met and devised an incredible plan if Clinton wins the nominee. Mayor Bloomberg would give nearly $1 billion to Obama's campaign after which Obama would bolt from the Democratic Party and run as an Independent candidate with king-maker Bloomberg as his running mate. The Obama campaign realizes that Obama is too new at this game and doesn't have the political weight of the Clintons to bring in the true heavy-hitters of the party's hierarchy. So, according to sources it was Bloomberg himself who suggested this cunning strategy. It's mind boggling that the Clintons are willing to destroy the entire Democratic Party, and potentially in the process lose the White House and seats in Congress, for their own selfish thirst for power and glory.
I'm not the biggest fan of the Clintons by any means, but who is willing to destroy the party here? And the whole story doesn't hold together very well; why would Bloomberg dig deep into his pockets to finance Barack? Is it even legal? We all know of the millionaire's exception, but does it apply to running mates?
Hillary is determined to win the nomination one way or another. It is amusing to see the scales falling from the eyes of so many liberals. Ezra Klein:
Put another way: If Hillary Clinton does not win delegates out of a majority of contested primaries and caucuses, her aides are willing to rip the party apart to secure the nomination, to cheat in a way that will rend the Democratic coalition and probably destroy Clinton's chances in the general election. Imagine the fury in the African-American community if Barack Obama leads in delegates but is denied the nomination because the Clinton campaign is able to change the rules to seat delegates from Michigan, where no other candidates were even on the ballot, and from Florida, where no one campaigned. Imagine the anger among the young voters Obama brought into the process, and was making into Democratic voters. Imagine the feeling of betrayal among his supporters more generally, and the disgust among independents watching the battle take place on the convention floor. Imagine how statesmanlike John McCain will look in comparison, how orderly and focused the Republican convention will appear.
Meanwhile, the Hillary supporters are griping that the rules are not being enforced evenly:
Iowa held their caucuses on January 3rd. That's more than 22 days before the first Tuesday in February. New Hampshire held their primary on January 8th. That's more than 17 days before the first Tuesday in February. And South Carolina held their primary on January 26th. That's more than 7 days before the first Tuesday in February.
Moo-On is complaining that the Super Delegates are not democratic, and that they should obey the will of the people:
"The superdelegates are under lots of pressure right now to come out for one candidate or the other," reads the petition from MoveOn, which has endorsed Obama. "We urgently need to encourage them to let the voters decide between Clinton and Obama -- and then to support the will of the people."
Somebody needs to tell these jokers that ignoring the will of the people is the reason for having super delegates; that these grandees of the party are there to make sure that the rabble don't nominate somebody who can't get elected. I don't know if that applies to Obama; he seems awfully green.
Will The Contest Be Dramatically Different If Obama's the Nominee Rather Than Hillary?
That's a question I plan to ask Senator McCain at the next blogger conference call. It comes to mind because of an AP poll result that seems very interesting:
In a finding that underscores both McCain's cross-party appeal and the bitterness of the fight for the Democratic nomination, about one-third of Obama's supporters picked McCain when asked their preference in a Clinton-McCain general election matchup. Nearly three in 10 Clinton backers said they would vote for McCain over Obama.
Sounds very much like the race will be dramatically different depending on the opponent, possibly putting different states into the "battleground" category. As has often been observed, Obama polls poorly among Hispanics, a category in which McCain should do quite well. McCain also polls well among older white women, another area in which Obama has had trouble.
Jerome Armstrong notes that the Obama campaign has not been specific about its plans for electoral college victory, as compared to the Hillary machine:
I'm not talking about the national polls either, but how does Barack Obama put together a winning electoral advantage over John McCain?
I have heard Clinton's many times, and its been played out in the Democratic nomination battle. She'll take an unprecedented high level of women and Latino majorities into winning all (or nearly all) the states that John Kerry (and/or Al Gore) won, and add in: Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and Florida. Maybe there are some other states, but if we just add those 42 electoral votes to the Democratic column, Clinton would win.
I doubt Arizona is really available for Clinton given McCain's favorite son status. But at least Hillary has a plan; Obama has "hope".
I always have to caution myself when analyzing events on the other side of the aisle. We all know how hopelessly badly the liberals tend to understand Republicans; I am humble enough to recognize that in all probability I'm as lousy at handicapping their entries.
Chris Bowers at Open Left says he will leave the Democrats if something happens or doesn't happen, involving the Super Delegates. See if you can figure it out:
This is not a negotiable position. If the Democratic Party does not nominate the candidate for POTUS that the majority (or plurality) of its participants in primaries and caucuses want it to nominate, then I will quit the Democratic Party. If you think this is somehow rejecting the rules and bylaws of the Democratic Party, you are wrong. The fact is that there is nothing in the bylaws of the Democratic Party that dictate how super delegates should vote at the Democratic national convention. In the absence of any legal dictation of how they should vote, I will hold them to the principles that make me a Democrat: as the democratic institution through which internal disputes of the American center-left are resolved. If the Democratic Party fails to respect those principles, and their "super" delegates nominate someone for POTUS other than the person who received the most support during Democratic primaries and caucuses, then I fail to see any reason to continue participating in the Democratic Party. If the Democratic Party is not a democratic institution, then to hell with the Democratic Party.
A champion of Democracy? Errr, no. Obviously this leaves an unsettled question as to quite what Bowers means by "most support during the Democratic primaries and caucuses", as a commenter points out. Chris responds:
A 1% lead or more in pledged delegates from all 50 states and every territory. If it falls in between the plus or minus 1% range, I'll cut some lack. Otherwise, none.
Well, let's go over to the RCP delegates page to see who that means currently.
Hillary leads in total delegates, 1079 to 1017. However, that includes the Super Delegates. If those are excluded, Obama leads barely, by 880-868. It is well-established that in the next few states, Obama will probably do well, so he will widen that lead, but may or may not catch Hillary in the real total.
In the real world, I don't know what the total vote count is so far, but I strongly suspect that Hillary has won more popular votes than Obama, with his big wins in the South and Illinois matched by her victories in the Mid-Atlantic states and California. This site indicates that Hillary has outpolled Obama so far by 8.9 million to 8.4 million. Where's Bowers' pledge to leave the party if it does not abide by the popular vote?
DNC Skullduggery The DNC has stripped Joe Lieberman of his SuperDelegate status, apparently not due to his leaving the party (he has been an independent since the netkooks drove him out in support of Neddy Lamont), but due to his endorsement of Senator John McCain.
I can't blame them, much as we appreciate Joe's support, and I gotta wonder if he even wanted to go to the DNC; he hasn't been popular with the nutty activist base of the party since 2004 or so.
Meanwhile, Howard Dean (remember him?) is pledging to step in and broker a deal the Hillary delegates and the Obama delegates.
"The idea that we can afford to have a big fight at the convention and then win the race in the next eight weeks, I think, is not a good scenario,” he said.
If there is no nominee selected by his predicted mid-spring date, or by Puerto Rico's June vote – the last presidential primary on the Democratic calendar – Dean said the party would likely bring both sides together to work out a deal.
Hoo-boy, I would not want to be in that room unless they cleared it of ashtrays. This virtually guarantees that the losers will end up hurt and angry; not a good thing for the party of emotion.
The problem arises because the Democrats' desire for "fairness" has put them in a bind that was terribly obvious years ago. By awarding delegates proportionally, as compared to winner-take-all, the Democrats have set up a situation where two strong candidates will almost certainly end up unable to reach the magic number, particularly if a third candidate manages to win some delegates along the way.
Suppose the Democrats had winner-take-all in the states the Republicans did on Super Tuesday. Then Hillary would be cruising to her coronation. She won New York, New Jersey, and Arizona, just as John McCain did. Instead of winning all the delegates, she lost 93 in New York, 59 in New Jersey, and 25 in Arizona; that's a total of 177 delegates that should be in her column (and not for Obama). Take away the 22 she won in Connecticut, 6 in Delaware and 36 in Missouri, which Obama won, and she'd still be at a plus 113 compared to where she is now, or at a total of 1169, while Obama would be at 866.
Obama has been running extremely well, much better than I initially expected, frankly. For him to give up all his aspirations to be President is pretty well unthinkable. For Clinton, she believes that job is hers, almost as a birthright. I can't see her giving that up, either. So [we] have a virtually unsolvable problem there.
Oh, the irony. A group that was formed to save Bill Clinton from impeachment (and failed) is now trying to knockout Hillary Clinton (and will fail).
Today Barack Obama earned the endorsement of MoveOn, one of the largest grassroots membership organizations in the United States, after clobbering Hillary Clinton by 40 percent in Internet balloting. Obama led the final tally 70.4% to 29.6%, clearing the supermajority required for the endorsement. MoveOn, which has never endorsed a presidential candidate before, boasts that it has 1.7 million members in Super Tuesday states. The group has over half a million members in California alone – roughly one out of ten primary voters in Tuesday's largest state.
Ooooh, they have a big email list, and lots of members. And I'm going to make a rough guess that 70.4% of their members have already signed up with the Obama Campaign. So whom does it help?
That's not too hard to figure out. It helps Hillary, who dodges being smeared by association with the group that financed the infamous "Betray Us Petraeus" ad:
And if Obama somehow manages to defeat Hillary, then obviously it helps Senator John McCain, just as Ann Coulter's endorsement of Clinton helped McCain.
Sometimes we get caught up in the drama surrounding our candidates that we don't pay attention to what's happening in Left Blogistan. I didn't pay much attention to the drop-out of John Edwards, having long since discounted his chances. But the liberal bloggers were apparently on board with giving that poor girl a coat. Check out this poll at Kos:
As you can see, as late as a week ago, John Edwards still held the hearts and minds of the Kossacks, despite the rather obvious fact that he was hanging on by a thread. Yet another loss for the Progressosphere!
It looks like the Kos crowd has now decided to give their kiss of death to Barack. Over at the HuffnPuff, Bob Cesca declares it is time for the big libs to get off the fence. Let's see if you can figure out whom he wants them to support:
Last night's non-victory victory rally in Florida underscored everything that's awful and ridiculous about the Clinton-Clinton '08 style. They pledged not to campaign in Florida, yet they campaigned there anyway. The primary was unofficial and no delegates were counted, yet they celebrated with a televised victory rally anyway -- ostensibly to trick some casual viewers and supporters into thinking it was a meaningful win.
Meanwhile the cows at Moo-On are debating endorsing a candidate as well. But they're looking at an unrealistic hurdle:
MoveOn has never endorsed a candidate for President. Last cycle, it required a 50 percent threshold for its presidential endorsement, and Howard Dean fell 6 points short. But now MoveOn has raised the bar to 66 percent-- a supermajority that will be hard for either candidate to meet. MoveOn members were largely split between Obama, Edwards, Kucinich and Clinton during its three virtual town halls about public policy last year.
I suspect that the 66% requirement is a way of getting out of endorsing anybody. If you think the infighting among Republicans this cycle is bitter, you should see what's going on with the Donks. The Clintonistas are absolutely furious at Obama, while the Obama Mamas are irate at Hillary (and Bill).
Thanks Bubba! Bill Clinton 'fesses up that Hillary wants to slow down the economy to fight global warming.
In a long, and interesting speech, he characterized what the U.S. and other industrialized nations need to do to combat global warming this way: "We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren."
At a time that the nation is worried about a recession is that really the characterization his wife would want him making? "Slow down our economy"?
I've moderated my views on the topic of global warming. It certainly does not hurt to do what we can to reduce emissions. But I want to do the cheap stuff (replacing incandescent light bulbs, for example, before we start slowing down the economy, which would be very expensive.
Okay, it's almost time to turn our attention away from the primary elections and focus on the general. And just in time, Rasmussen Reports has a very encouraging poll result:
The latest Rasmussen Reports survey of Election 2008 shows Republican frontrunner Senator John McCain with single-digit leads over Democratic Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. McCain now leads Clinton 48% to 40%. He leads Barack Obama 47% to 41%.
Update: For all those conspiracy theorists in the Republican Party who think the NY Times endorsement of McCain was part of some plot (while Bill Clinton was just being honest when he said that Hillary and McCain are good buds), check out uber-lib blogger Chris Bower's take:
I had been cheering for Romney, largely because McCain is tied with Clinton and Obama, while right now Romney loses to Obama by 17.0% , and Clinton by 12.4%.
Well, you know, he was tied with Hillary and Obama; now he's ahead.
