The Clinton campaign apparently understands that they need to shore up some African-American support after Bill Clinton's aggressive campaign rhetoric against Barack Obama in South Carolina — Bill is set to go on a tour of black churches in Los Angeles tomorrow, CNN reports.
"They need to go touch the people like they did before. The bickering they got in in South Carolina must be put aside," said an unnamed elected official who will accompany Bill on the trip, and who described it as a "mea culpa tour." "Bill is going to have to come back among those who loved him and he did so much for. He is going to have to do it – I can't do it for him – and face the voters."'
Los Angeles-based La Opinión, the largest Spanish-language newspaper in the country, has endorsed Barack Obama for president — a development that could give him increased credibility among Hispanic voters in the crucial California primary. Key quote:
We need a leader today that can inspire and unite America again around its greatest possibilities. Barack Obama is the right leader for the time. We know that he is not as well known among our community and while he has the support of Maria Elena Durazo, Senator Gil Cedillo and others he comes to the Latino community with less name recognition. Nevertheless, it is Obama who deserves our support.
It's still highly unlikely that Obama would win the Latino vote in California. But if he keeps Hillary Clinton's margin fairly low, he could make up the difference among white and African-American voters.
The paper also endorsed John McCain in the Republican primary, citing his principled support for immigration reform against the base of his own party.
The Hillary campaign gamely keeps working to dilute the power of Ted Kennedy's endorsement of Obama, releasing ads featuring her own Kennedy -- i.e., Bobby Jr...
And here's another ad starring Bobby Jr. along with Cesar Chavez's grandson, who reminds viewers of Bobby Sr.'s role in helping farmworkers. Ted's support for Obama could have potency among Latinos, a constituency that is key to a Hillary victory.
According to Ben Smith, the ads will run in California, Arizona and the northeast.
It's a coup for both in a state where on the Dem side Obama is closing on Hillary and on the GOP side McCain is ahead and racking up major endorsements, such as that of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
An Obama presidency would present, as a distinctly American face, a man of African descent, born in the nation's youngest state, with a childhood spent partly in Asia, among Muslims. No public relations campaign could do more than Obama's mere presence in the White House to defuse anti-American passion around the world, nor could any political experience surpass Obama's life story in preparing a president to understand the American character. His candidacy offers Democrats the best hope of leading America into the future, and gives Californians the opportunity to cast their most exciting and consequential ballot in a generation.
In the language of metaphor, Clinton is an essay, solid and reasoned; Obama is a poem, lyric and filled with possibility. Clinton would be a valuable and competent executive, but Obama matches her in substance and adds something that the nation has been missing far too long -- a sense of aspiration.
Yesterday we brought you a roundup of Super Tuesday polls for the Democratic primaries. Today, we bring you the same for the Republicans.
The bottom line: John McCain has it made.
He leads in nearly every state, with Romney only having clear advantages in Massachusetts, Colorado and of course Utah. Huckabee runs well in some Southern states, but even then he'll probably lose a bunch to McCain. Compounding the trend for McCain, Rudy's former support will probably go almost entirely to him.
A complication: Republican primaries don't use uniform rules of delegate apportionment, like the Democrats do. Quite a few contests are winner-take-all, but many others are not. They do not use a proportional system, but instead distribute delegates by district (usually the same as House districts) and then accord all the district's delegates to the plurality winner.
What does that mean for the race? The Northeast — where McCain is strongest — is mostly winner-take-all. And where Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee do manage some strength, it's often in states that distribute delegates either by district or even proportionally, meaning that the map alone gives McCain a big advantage.
In short, expect McCain to rack up a lot of delegates on Tuesday. He won't clinch the nomination outright, but he may build up an advantage so large that his nomination becomes a foregone conclusion.
Check out our poll chart and further analysis after the jump.
Josh Green of The Atlantic has gotten folks in political circles talking with this fun piece suggesting that if Al Gore wants any presidential endorsement to have maximum impact, he'll have to do it before Feb. 5th:
Ted Kennedy’s endorsement Monday had the feel of history about it. Even conservatives swooned. Only one endorsement could be bigger -- and if Al Gore is going to pull the trigger, you have to think he’ll do so in the next 72 hours...an announcement would be earthshaking and guaranteed to dominate the airwaves until the February 5 primaries.
I checked in with a source close to Gore for a response to the piece. Asked if there was any shot at a pre-Feb. 5th endorsement, the source said: "He has no plans to endorse in the near term."
Not a flat-out denial, but it's probably not going to happen.
Today's Gallup tracking poll shows that the national race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is tighter than ever before. Here are the numbers for today, compared to yesterday's:
It's worth noting that in recent days Barack Obama has been subtly broadening his case that his opposition to the war and his background are political and foreign policy attributes in various ways.
The other day, for instance, he placed it in the context of an electability argument, saying that his early war opposition enabled him to provide a clearer contrast with John McCain in a general election. Yesterday at the debate he said he wanted to change the "mindset" that led us into war in the first place.
And at a presser today, Obama said that his war opposition, combined with his time growing up in a Muslim country, would give him a unique level of credibility with Muslim leaders. Take a look...
Move On has just announced that its membership voted to endorse Obama -- giving him a good deal of organizational heft on the left and a bit of a bulwark against criticism of his conciliatory, centrist-sounding rhetoric.
What's interesting, though, are the numbers of the vote: Obama trounced Hillary among MoveOn members, 70%-29%.
Even more interesting, a MoveOn spokesperson tells me that roughly 300,000 members voted in the last 24 hours. In 2004, when the group did a similar vote, it took three days to reach that number. And keep in mind that Howard Dean was in the mix that year.
Paul Krugman takes another whack at Obama on health care. He points out that this new mailer dropped by the Obama campaign, which hits Hillary on health care, is subtly playing on "Harry and Louise" imagery, meaning it's reminiscent of the infamous ads attacking Hillarycare. If so, the suggestion is that the mailer is intended as a reminder of her health care debacle.
Click on the images below to enlarge:
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Barack Obama may have raised $32 million in the month of January, but new FEC reports show that Hillary managed to outdo Obama in fundraising during the last quarter of 2007:
Clinton reported raising nearly $27 million in the last three months of 2007. Obama raised $23.5 million during that period.
Hillary also finished out the year with $18 million on hand to Obama's $13 million. The Hillary camp has not released its January totals or said whether they've come close to matching Obama's haul.
Obama's campaign says they filed their FEC report yesterday, but right now, only Hillary's is available on the FEC site.
Late Update: I should have clarified that the figures for cash on hand refer to money available for use in the primaries.
We're taking a step back from our focus on presidential race coverage to bring this piece of news: For the first time ever, Al Franken is ahead of Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) in an opinion poll.
The survey conducted by the University of Minnesota puts Franken at 43% to Coleman's 40%, hardly a good sign for the incumbent. Previous polls all gave Coleman the lead, initially a wide one when Franken declared, but eventually a much narrower one.
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Just how dire was John McCain's financial situation last year, before he vaulted back to frontrunner status? The Washington Post has some details on the $3 million loan that McCain took out in order to finance the campaign, including a rather macabre detail — because McCain pledged his fundraising list as collateral, and he would need to be alive to give the list its full value, he had to take out a special life insurance policy just in case he failed to survive the campaign.
As it turned out, the gamble appears to have paid off. McCain has won the crucial primaries in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida, and looks like he's on his way to the nomination. As for the debts — he was $500,000 in the hole even before this loan — he should have no problems raising the money now.
Mitt Romney fourth-quarter fundraising numbers are in, and it's not a pretty picture. The official total raised is a seemingly-impressive $27 million — but $18 million of it came from Mitt himself. Romney ended the year with $9 million cash on hand, meaning that he would have been broke if not for his own contribution.
For this whole cycle, Romney has raised a total of about $53 million from other people, and kicked in $35 million himself. An interesting trend in his campaign has been that as the campaign has gone on longer, the proportion of money raised from others has gone steadily down, while Mitt has come to rely more and more on Tagg's inheritance.
A new Rasmussen poll shows the Democratic race to be tightening somewhat in New Jersey, though Hillary Clinton still has a good-sized lead. Here are the numbers, compared to Rasmussen's own poll from two weeks ago:
Clinton 49% (+4) Obama 37% (+10)
While it is virtually impossible that Hillary Clinton could ever lose this state's primary, being a heavily suburban state right next door to New York, a potentially weak majority would rob her of what was hoped to be a huge delegate advantage.
Hillary is asked the inevitable question about Bill's recent escapades on the campaign trail, and answers:
Both Barack and I have very passionate spouses who promote and defend us at every turn. But the fact is, I'm running for president and this is my campaign...
At the end of the day, it's a lonely job in the White House, and it is the president of the United States who has to make the decisions. And that is what I'm asking to be entrusted to do.
One interesting side-note: Wolf asked Hillary and Obama if they would be open to a joint ticket, and there was a palpable release of tension, both from the candidates and from the audience, which reflects exhaustion with the acrimony in this campaign and a desire for this thing to be over already. Both candidates, mindful of this exhaustion among Dems, murmured positive noises about this possibility. But it would be surprising indeed if it happens.
Obama has been frequently challenged to draw a connection between his early opposition to the war and his current candidacy, and he hasn't always delivered a solid answer. But he certainly boiled it down into one pithy line tonight:
"I don't want to just end the war, but I want to end the mindset that got us into war in the first place."
One thing that the Obama campaign has successfully done in recent days -- with an assist from the Clintons -- is cast his candidacy as the historic one, and Hillary's as the hidebound, reactionary one.
Hillary pushes back on that argument during the debate, telling listeners:
"I think having a woman president would be a huge change for America and the world."
It's an argument that's gotten lost -- again, partly because of the Clintons' missteps in recent days.
Hillary is asked directly by Wolf Blitzer: What exactly is that experience you keep claiming, anyway? It's the question many have been asking. Her full answer, for posterity, is after the jump.
An interesting moment: Hillary seeks to turn her health care loss to the GOP to her advantage -- and simultaneously draw a sharp distinction with Obama -- by saying that if we don't articulate the goal as "universal health care" at the outset, Dems will be ceding crucial turf to the GOP:
I think we as Democrats have to be willing to fight for universal healthcare. And what I concluded, when I was looking at this — because I got the same kind of advice, which was, "It's controversial, you'll run into all of this buzzsaw." And I said, "Been there, done that." But if you don't start by saying you're going to achieve universal healthcare, you will be nibbled to death.
And I think it's imperative that as we move forward in this debate and into the campaign, that we recognize what both John Edwards and I did: That you have to bite this bullet — you have to say, "Yes, we are gonna try to get to universal healthcare."
Obama's response, in keeping with his message, is two-fold: No one will go un-insured under his plan, and, more important, the candidate who can best unite Dems, Republicans and independents behind a common goal is the one who will ultimately resolve the health care crisis.
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It needs to be said that Barack Obama went out of his way to assuage the worries of Edwards supporters -- that is, the fear that his voice will disappear from the conversation now that he's no longer in the race.
"First of all, I want to acknowledge a candidate who left the race this week, John Edwards, who did such an outstanding job elevating the issue of poverty," Obama said, adding that his will be "a voice for this party and for this country for many years to come."
Hillary didn't come anywhere near this level of tribute, saying that she and Edwards had the same ideas about health care.
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The debate in Los Angeles is underway. It's the first head to head showdown between these two just days before Super Tuesday -- meaning the stakes couldn't be higher -- and it opens with both candidates taking steps to rise above the recent political skirmishing with each other, and both praising John Edwards, whose endorsement is now the most coveted in the race.
Obama seeks to cast the recent acrimony as a sign of just how much is at stake: "We are running a competitive race, but it's because we both love this country, and we believe deeply in the issues that are stake. I believe we're in a defining moment in our history. Our nation is at war, our planet is in peril."
Meanwhile, Hillary gave a nod towards Edwards by saying that her health care plan covers everyone, just as, she pointed out, Edwards' plan did.
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The Obama campaign is already thinking ahead to the post-Super Tuesday environment. Chances are that the race for the Democratic nomination won't be over Tuesday, and it will then be followed by races that weekend in Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington State and Maine. And before we're even done analyzing those, there will be primaries in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia that Tuesday.
The Obama campaign has bought TV time in all of those states, with ads set to start airing tomorrow. Whether he romps home this Tuesday, loses badly or fights to a standstill with Hillary Clinton, the campaign will go on.
This ad will run in Washington State, Nebraska, Maine, the District of Columbia and Virginia:
The new SurveyUSA poll in Massachusetts gives Hillary Clinton a more than healthy lead in the state, despite Ted Kennedy's endorsement of Barack Obama. Here are the numbers, compared to their previous poll from last week:
Clinton 57% (-2) Obama 33% (+11)
The two are tied among men at 44% each, but Hillary has a 65%-26% lead among women.
A Rasmussen poll released last night gave Hillary only a six-point lead.
Here it is: A handy guide to what all the most recent polls are saying in nearly all of the 22 states holding Democratic primaries and caucuses on Feb. 5th.
Taken together, all these polls — which we've assembled for you in chart form for your convenience — offer a clear snapshot of the Super Tuesday showdown as it is shaping up right now.
The overall picture these polls provide: The race is tightening up in practically all the key Feb. 5th states — mirroring what the national polls are showing.
It's true that of the states where polls are available, Hillary Clinton leads in all but three of them. And even in Colorado and Georgia, where Obama is ahead, his advantage is a narrow one. In short, the polls would seem to show that Hillary Clinton goes into Super Tuesday with a clear advantage.
Nonetheless, the chart shows that in recent weeks, and especially in the last few days, Obama has seriously narrowed the gaps in such key states as California, Massachusetts and Connecticut, with more polls coming in everyday. Furthermore, the withdrawal of John Edwards has thrown the race into yet more chaos — the combined Edwards/undecided number is around 20% across the board. If Obama can keep the momentum going by consolidating the undecideds and taking a majority of former Edwards supporters, this could get very close indeed.
If Hillary posts a strong showing on Super Tuesday, dominating across the board, then she'll likely stop Obama's momentum and seal the nomination soon afterwards. But if Obama cuts it close or even overtakes her in the day's delegate count, this race continues onward.
You might have expected that this would have happened quicker, but here, at any rate, is the inevitable spot from Hillary touting her New York Times endorsement...
The campaign hasn't announced yet where exactly it's running, but one assumes it will be running in many big Feb. 5th states. (Via Ben Smith.)
The Obama campaign confirms that it raised an astonishing $32 million -- in the month of January alone.
Clearly, the Iowa win on January 3 provided a huge burst of fundraising momentum right on through the South Carolina victory.
To put this number in perspective: In one month, Obama raised more than half the $51 million Howard Dean raised during his entire campaign in 2004, and roughly one-fourth the full sum of $125 million George Bush raised to take the presidency in 2000.
Late Update: A commenter below raises a good point: There's no way of proving that this was actually given to Drudge beyond his claim that it was his "exclusive." So I've removed the reference. Apologies for jumping to conclusions, though in fairness all I did was ask whether this had been leaked to him.
Late Late Update: In another sign of how protracted this race may end up being, it looks as if the Obama campaign is already preparing to advertise on states beyond Feb. 5th.
Obama will reportedly go on the air in all the states with primaries on February 9th, 10th, and 12th. Sizable amounts of money have already been plunked down for ads in just about every Feb. 5th state.
The McCain campaign filed their year-end fundraising report with the Federal Election Commission yesterday — and it shows just what dire straits he was in before he proceeded to win New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida.
McCain took in just under $10 million for the fourth quarter of 2007, but spent slightly more than that in the same quarter. McCain ended the year with only $2.95 million cash on hand, and $4.52 million in debts. In short, it appears that McCain is on the verge of clinching the nomination despite the fact that he was broke just before voting began.
He's probably raised a lot of money since his primary wins, and he'll certainly raise more should he win the nomination, but it just goes to show how important those early victories were. Without them, he simply would not have had the money to go on.
Hillary Clinton's new ad, running in various Super Tuesday states, is definitely memorable. It depicts the economy in "freefall" through the scary metaphor of a skydiver plummeting to the ground — with the implication that Hillary Clinton will help us open the parachute for a safe landing:
Her other ad is a lot more of a feel-good spot, with Hillary talking about how there's no problem Americans can't solve — plus the gentle warning that "the stakes have never been higher":
With five days to go until Super Tuesday, Mitt Romney's spokesperson is confirming that the Romney campaign has bought exactly zero TV ad time in any of the states that vote on Feb. 5.
"We currently haven't purchased any ad time yet," Romney spokesperson Kevin Madden confirmed to Election Central, when asked about Feb. 5th states.
The Associated Press, relying on anonymous officials, reported the lack of any ad buying on the Romney campaign's part. The Politico also confirmed this late yesterday evening.
Even more interesting, Madden also refused to say whether the campaign would be buying any ad time in any Feb. 5th state. Asked if Romney would buy any time, Madden said: "We don't telegraph strategic decisions like ad buying ahead of time."
This suggests the possibility that the campaign won't be buying any time in advance of the multi-state showdown that is likely to decide the race. At the least, this is a big boost for John McCain. At the most, it could amount to a possible admission that the Romney camp thinks the race is pretty much over.
Late Update: A Romney campaign official tells me that the campaign will be purchasing ad time today, though the official declined to specify how much and where.
Late Late Update: The Romney buy is in California, the crucial big state where McCain picked up the endorsement of Arnold Schwarzenegger today.
Another Rasmussen poll shows Barack Obama making up serious ground in a major Super Tuesday state. In California, Hillary Clinton has a bare lead of 43%, followed Obama at 40% and John Edwards with 9%.
If Obama were to pull off a win in the largest state in the country, it would completely change the dynamics of the campaign. And if Hillary were to come out on top, it could give her a large number of delegates to fend off Obama's advantages elsewhere.
A new Rasmussen poll in Massachusetts shows that Hillary Clinton is now barely ahead of Barack Obama, in the wake of the Ted Kennedy endorsement. Hillary leads with 43%, followed by Obama at 37% and the now-departed John Edwards with 11%.
Rasmussen did not have a previous poll of the Massachusetts primary. However, a SurveyUSA poll from last week, before Obama's political adoption by the Kennedy family, had Hillary ahead by a whopping 37 points. It looks like Massachusetts is officially a race now.
As expected, Rudy Giuliani just held a press conference with John McCain at the Reagan Library, in which Rudy dropped out of the race and endorsed McCain.
Rudy said that his decision to back McCain wasn't difficult, after he'd said last year that he would have supported McCain if he hadn't been running himself. "If I'd endorsed anyone else, you would say I was flip-flopping," Rudy joked.
It's looking like John McCain will get another huge endorsement in a major Super Tuesday state. Newsweek reports that Arnold Schwarzenegger will likely endorse McCain soon after tonight's debate at the Reagan Library.
CNN also has the news, reporting that the endorsement will officially come within the next 48 hours.
Late Update: It's confirmed. Arnold will endorse McCain tomorrow.
After a morning dominated by the John Edwards news, the Dem primary jolted back into action today when Obama unleashed a lacerating attack on Hillary at an event in Denver:
"Democrats will win in November and build a majority in Congress not by nominating a candidate who will unite the other party against us, but by choosing one who can unite this country around a movement for change," Obama said...
"It is time for new leadership that understands the way to win a debate with John McCain or any Republican who is nominated is not by nominating someone who agreed with him on voting for the war in Iraq or who agreed with him in voting to give George Bush the benefit of the doubt on Iran, who agrees with him in embracing the Bush-Cheney policy of not talking to leaders we don't like, who actually differed with him by arguing for exceptions for torture before changing positions when the politics of the moment changed," Obama said.
"We need to offer the American people a clear contrast on national security, and when I am the nominee of the Democratic Party, that is exactly what I will do," he said.
Hillary spokesperson Phil Singer swiftly hit back, emailing over the following response:
Today’s speech was a greatest hits collection of all of the attacks Senator Obama has advanced against Senator Clinton throughout the campaign.
Senator Obama doesn’t sound like he’s ready to practice the new politics he so often talks about. In fact, Senator Obama’s remarks suggest that his talk about bringing the country together is just that -- talk.
Obama's broadside suggests that he was moving quickly to gain the upper-hand as the race abruptly shifts into a genuine two-person contest. A more extensive rebuttal from the Hillary campaign is here.
A new poll from Public Policy Polling (D) shows that Barack Obama might be sneaking up on Hillary Clinton in her home state of New York. Hillary leads with 45% of the vote, followed by Obama at 33% and John Edwards with 10%. In the demographic breakdown, Hillary leads 44%-29% among whites, Obama 44%-32% among African-Americans, and Hillary 64%-31% among Hispanics.
Bear in mind that all Democratic primaries use a form of proportional representation — so Obama could walk away with a decent chunk of delegates if he simply posts a respectable showing for an out-of-state challenger.
On the Republican side, it looks like John McCain will coast to a win in this winner-take-all contest. He leads with 34%, followed by the now-departed Rudy Giuliani at 20%, Mitt Romney with 19%, and Mike Huckabee with 10%.
This one is interesting, because it cuts against the idea that there is some sort of tacit alliance between Rupert Murdoch and the Clintons: Another of Hillary's hometown papers, the Murdoch-owned New York Post, has thrown its endorsement to Barack Obama.
Of course, not a lot of New York Democrats take their cues from the Post, but it's still noteworthy.
Now that John Edwards has dropped out, we've prepared a video retrospective of all the attacks that Elizabeth and John waged against leading right-wing media figures like Ann Coulter, something that was one of the more fun subplots of Campaign 2008.
John Edwards just gave his dropout speech in New Orleans, which is where it all began, and he told his audience that he'd spoken to both Hillary and Obama and squeezed a promise from them.
"They have both pledged to me, and more importantly, through me to the American people, that they will make ending poverty central to their campaigns for the presidency," Edwards said, adding that they'd vowed to make poverty central to their presidencies, too.
"Today I am suspending my campaign for the Democratic nomination of the presidency," Edwards also said. "This son of a millworker is going to be just fine. Our job right now is to make sure that everyone in America is fine."
Edwards also pleaded with his listeners to not forget about his issues: "Do not give up on the causes we have fought for," he said. "It's time for all of us together to make the two Americas one."
As is well documented by now, the Edwards campaign had a salutary effect on the presidential campaign's ongoing conversation in multiple ways. The question now is whether Edwards, as a former candidate, will still be able to exert the same pull on the debate and keep his issues alive in the public consciousness.
It's a question that, judging by Edwards' exhortations, remains an open one, though he did secure a pledge from the two leading Dems that they would help him do just that.
