Check out my rundown of the 2010 Senate races here

Monday, April 28, 2008

The Return of Wright

Here we go again. Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's former pastor, who was strangely quiet when the media was calling him a crazy person about a month ago, is finally defending his controversial comments.

Of course, Obama thought that he had buried this issue with his historic speech on race relations last month. But much to his chagrin, Wright is speaking out and causing the delicate issue to resurface.

Obama has struggled to regain his footing after a rough March and April culminating in a 10-point loss in Pennsylvania. After Wright's sermon, his "bitter" comments, and his ties to the Weather Underground surfaced in the weeks before the Pennsylvania primary, he thought that he might be scandal-free for a few weeks.

But boy was he wrong.

Wright has made three public appearances in the last four days, most notably at the National Press Club in Washington earlier today.

At the National Press Club, Wright defended his racially controversial remarks, especially his infamous "God damn America" sermon. He also blasted the media for distorting his sermons and for their ignorance of black religious traditions. Basically he's just trying to get some of his honor back and present his side of the story.

But in the process, he has re-opened an old wound that is now likely to resurface later in this primary season and in the general election--should he receive the nomination.

Wright's re-emergence gives Hillary Clinton more fuel for her argument that Obama is not electable and that he still has skeletons in his closet, and it gives McCain and the Republican attack machine fuel for the general election regarding Obama's faith and patriotism.

Now, will this make a huge difference in the primaries to come? I don't think so. Most Democratic voters have already formed their opinions of Obama. They are not likely to change drastically from hearing Wright babble on again about black people and God. I think that this will have more of a long-term than a short-term effect on Obama.

The longer this lingers, the worse it is for the Obama camp. Last time it took a historical and highly anticipated speech to end the Wright controversy. Who knows what it will take this time.

Sunday, April 27, 2008

The Forgotten Primary

With all of the buzz around the Pennsylvania Democratic primary, everyone seemed to forget about the fact that there was a Pennsylvania Republican primary on April 22nd as well.

Even though John McCain has clinched the GOP nomination, a large number of Pennsylvania Republicans voted against him on Tuesday.

About 27% of Republican voters cast their votes for Mike Huckabee, or more numerously, Ron Paul. And since this was a closed primary--registered independents could not vote in either primary--all of those voters were Republicans.

After all of the fuss about how the Democrats are going to be divided in November, what about the Republicans? If 27% of Pennsylvania Republicans are going to vote against their presumptive nominee, what does that mean for McCain's chances?

Will Paul's supporters cast their vote for the likely Libertarian Party candidate, Bob Barr, or maybe even the Democratic nominee? Will Huckabee's evangelical voters--a group McCain has always struggled with-- stay home?

But as long as Hillary and Barack are duking it out, who cares right? Wrong. These two, while mindlessly bickering, are getting all of their baggage out now so it will be old news by the Fall.

Meanwhile, McCain is free and clear to run a relaxed campaign until he has a single opponent, but is getting no media attention. By a getting a free ride right now, McCain will be more vulnerable and untested in the general election.

So anyway, the point I'm trying to make about the Pennsylvania GOP primary results is that McCain still has a lot of uniting within his own party to do before he goes after moderates and independents. McCain will not win a single state this November if 27% of the Republican party stays home or casts their votes against him.

While the Democrats are duking it out, he should take the time to win over those 27% in Pennsylvania, and all across the country.

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Clinton Takes Pennsylvania

On Tuesday, Hillary Clinton won a big victory in the Pennsylvania primary that was eerily similar to her victory in Ohio about six weeks earlier. Her final margin of victory was about 9.2% over Barack Obama.

Obama won in the area around Philadelphia and in Centre County, the home of Penn State University. But she beat him up pretty bad everywhere else, including in Pittsburgh, where Obama had hoped to do well.

She received about 200,000 votes more than him, closing the gap in the national popular vote. But after millions of dollars spent, thousands of nasty ads aired, and dozens of scandals and gaffes, Clinton only won a net gain of 11 delegates. 11 delegates. That's it.

But this victory has helped her with fundraising, as she has raised more than she has raised in any single 3-day period. And she's taking advantage of all of the media attention, and is now saying that she is winning in the national popular vote, because she is including the votes from Michigan and Florida.

Okay, I understand if she counts Florida. They were both on the ballot and it seemed to be pretty even turf because they both didn't campaign there. But Michigan? Really Hillary? He wasn't even on the ballot. That's just not fair.

Anyway, she still wants to work out a deal with Florida and Michigan to either use the existing votes or have a re-vote there, but neither seems likely at this point.

But I can understand why she's pushing for this so hard. She behind by about 156 pledged delegates, that will not likely diminish much before voting ends on June 3rd. She needs all of the pledged delegates that she can muster to make her case to the superdelegates.

But now, everyone is looking ahead to the North Carolina and Indiana primaries on May 6th.

Obama is expected to very well in North Carolina because traditionally about a third of Democratic voters in that state are African Americans--a group he does quite well with.

Right now he is ahead by about 15 points in the polls. Clinton has significantly lowered expectations there, but is going to make a great effort to do well in the state, as reflected by her new choices of staff in the state.

Indiana should be more of a battleground because the west side of the state is basically suburbs of Chicago (they get Chicago radio and TV stations), which is Obama's home turf. But the middle and east side of the state is more like Ohio and Pennsylvania, with a rural rust belt tint to it, which will favor Clinton. Right now the polls are about even.

Clinton needs to at least keep Obama's margin of victory in North Carolina to single digits and needs a strong victory in Indiana to at least come out of that day with the same deficit of pledged delegates that she came in with.

More on these races to come over the next ten days.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Snipergate vs. Bittergate

Now, I know that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been campaigning for over a year now, and have probably given close to 10,000 speeches each since they started campaigning.

But today, I would like to examine the most recent gaffes that the two have made over the past two weeks and determine what effect they might have on the Pennsylvania primary.

So, just to recap, Clinton said that she was under sniper fire with Chelsea while visiting a war-torn Bosnia in the '90s. It turned out that that never happened, and it was a flat-out lie.

Her campaign has said she was tired when she said, and that she remembered that trip incorrectly, and yada yada yada. But the underlying issue surrounding this gaffe was her trustworthiness, which has come into question a few times before.

A new ABC poll has found that 6 out of 10 Pennsylvanians don't believe that she is a "trustworthy" candidate. This could potentially hurt her with undecided voters who want someone they can trust and rely on.

On the flip side, Obama made one his biggest mistakes of the campaign season by saying "it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations" when referring to blue collar working-class Pennsylvanians and their financial woes.

The Clinton and McCain campaigns immediately launched attacks soon after he said this, calling the remarks "elitist," "out of touch," etc. This obviously could hurt Obama even further among working-class voters, which comprise many of the undecided voters that Clinton and Obama are targeting.

So which one will have a longer-lasting impression on Pennsylvania Democrats? I think the answer is clearly Obama's "Bittergate." What he said (although not entirely untrue), offended a lot of rural, blue collar Pennsylvanians who thought he was being condescending, elitist, and not "one of them."

In the end, I don't think that voters will care whether or not Clinton was under sniper fire in Bosnia. But they will remember being insulted by Obama, and that just might influence enough votes to give Clinton a 10-point victory in the state.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Clinton's Road Ahead

Pennsylvania could not come any sooner for Hillary Clinton. She desperately needs the country to hibernate for the next two weeks and wake up when PA votes. Here's why.

It has almost become a mathematical impossibility for her to capture the nomination. She needs to win by a 60-40 margin over Barack Obama in the remaining nine contests, but you and I know that's not going to happen.

Sure, she has the clear-cut advantage in states like Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky because poor whites adore her.

But Obama's clear advantages in states like North Carolina, Oregon, South Dakota, and Montana could easily cancel out any delegate gains she makes. And she desperately needs to close the gap in the pledged delegate count.

RealClearPolitics.com has Obama up by 164 pledged delegates, and has Clinton up by 28 super delegates. Her lead in that category was as large as 100 at the zenith of her campaign.

But these are hardly good times for the Clinton campaign. Mark Penn--Clinton's campaign advisor and long-time friend--stepped down from his position for his affiliation with the very Nafta policies that Clinton (supposedly) opposes.

And she recently had to defend her statement that Obama could not win in November. Since the Rev. Wright thing has died down, the Clinton campaign has not been in such good shape.

But back to my earlier point. The math. She just can't overtake his lead in pledged delegates. She just can't. And I can't remember the last time that Clinton gained the endorsement of a super delegate--influential or otherwise--and it seems like Obama gets about one per day.

She is also behind by about 850,000 votes in the national popular vote, and has won fewer states that Obama. Her strongest arguments to super delegates are "Hey look, we won more virtual electoral votes than him!" or "Don't endorse him yet, pretty please!" No wonder she's losing.

At this point, Clinton needs to take baby steps--deal one primary at a time. She is certainly not out of this race, but she's dangerously close to the point of no return.

She needs to once again prove her resilience to the super delegates with a 15 or 20 point win in Pennsylvania to slow or stop the flow of super delegates to Obama until voting ends on June 3rd.

That will begin the process of closing Obama's pledged delegate lead. From there, she can look ahead to North Carolina to try and pull even there, and to Indiana, where she has a good shot of winning.

She needs to play her cards exactly right to overtake Obama in either the pledged delegate total, the popular vote, or the number of states won to have a legitimate argument to make to superdelegates come June.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Barr: The New Perot?

Former Congressman Bob Barr, a by-the-book conservative who helped to impeach Bill Clinton back in the 90s, will likely announce a bid for the presidency this weekend.

Barr is a former Republican, and is now a member of the Libertarian Party, and will likely win that party's nomination, should he decide to run.

This is bad news for the McCain campaign, because a number of conservatives in the party have not been convinced that McCain is a true conservative. And these conservatives might see Barr as their conservative savior, and as a candidate that they're comfortable voting for.

If he announces his candidacy this weekend at the Heartland Libertarian Conference in Kansas City, then it can be nothing but bad news for McCain. At the very least, his support will cancel out Ralph Nader's support on the left. But it might be worse than that.

Remember Ross Perot? That conservative 3rd party candidate who split the conservative vote with then-President George Bush (daddy) and handed over the presidency to Billy Clinton back in '92?

Well, Barr might do just the same thing. Okay, maybe it will be to a lesser extent, but you get my point.

Thus far, McCain has received lukewarm (at best) support from the right, and conservatives in the party might shop elsewhere just so they can sleep at night. And in this difficult election year, McCain needs all the help he can get. And this can only hurt him.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

DNC Plans to Seat Florida Delegates

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said today that he plans to seat--in some way, shape, or form--the delegates from Florida at the party's convention in August. But here's the tricky part: both Hillary and Barack both have to agree to it.

Dean announced this after he had met with Florida Democratic officials, but neither the representatives from Clinton or Obama campaigns were present at this meeting.

This is surely an attempt by the DNC to put the primary season behind them and look forward to starting to campaign in this incredibly important battleground state in the fall. No hard feelings, right Florida?

Dean expects to meet with lawmakers and officials in Michigan soon to try and reach a compromise there as well.

There have been many proposals and suggestions as to how these delegates should be seated at the convention so both candidates will be satisfied. The best one I've heard so far is from Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), who happens to be a Clinton supporter.

He suggested that the DNC seat the delegates already selected, but give them each half of a vote. That way, Clinton's net gain of pledged delegates will be 20 instead of 38, but all the delegates will still go the convention, and everything will be just peachy.

It will be interesting to see how Clinton and Obama react to Dean's offer and to the many suggestions that have already been made to end this fiasco.