First thoughts: Do or die for GOPers

Posted: Thursday, January 10, 2008 9:23 AM by Mark Murray
Filed Under: First Thoughts

From Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, and Domenico Montanaro
*** Do or die: Want more evidence of how just up for grabs the GOP contest is? The top four Republican candidates all have do-or-die contests coming up. For Romney, it’s Michigan. For Huckabee, it’s South Carolina. For McCain, it’s one of Michigan or South Carolina. And for Rudy, it’s Florida. It's now just like the NFL playoffs: win or go home.

*** Hunting for delegates: We found this comment from Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson fascinating. “For the first time since 1988, this is a delegate race,” he said. “This is about more than any one state.” Of course, the comment is confirmation that there is no front-runner. And until there is one, you'll hear the campaign that believes they might be behind talk about delegates. Why? Even though Clinton won New Hampshire, she and Obama earned the same number of delegates out of the state. The way the Democrats award delegates, losing 52%-47% can get the losing candidate nearly the same number of delegates as being on the winning side. That said, winning primaries is how one keeps superdelegates (those unpledged folks who can bounce around even after they supposed commit to one candidate) in the fold. Clinton has the superdelegate lead, thanks to establishment Clinton ties. But a good number are still undecided and they'll go with the national front-runner.

*** Retool sheds: Clinton and Romney have been the most public about their message and campaign retooling efforts. But should they be the only campaigns retooling? What about Obama? His campaign seems to have trouble connecting to women. How will they fix that? Oprah was the answer in early December. What about now? Will we see more Michelle? Will we see more of the campaign leadership diversified? It's been easy to pick on Clinton's campaign for its lack of message discipline over the last six months, but that doesn't mean all is perfect in Obama Land, either. Will they evolve their message a bit? Or will they stick to what they believe has been successful so far?

*** And how is this the media’s fault? Not surprisingly, there are plenty of articles out today about how the media and pollsters working for them got the New Hampshire Democratic race wrong. But why blame the media when the campaigns were seeing the same polling data in their own tracking surveys? Indeed, Clinton was shaking up her staff on the very day the New Hampshire primary was taking place. Is that a sign of a camp that thinks they are going to win? New Hampshire was a shock to everyone -- the media, pollsters, the public, and campaign operatives. There are plenty of reasons to get mad at the media. But this isn’t one of them. In fact, the press did its job pretty well on Election Day. There were no blown calls; the media didn't rely on just public polling -- they dug in and found out what the campaigns were seeing, you know, checking in with pollsters who, if they aren't right, get fired. Not the case with media pollsters.

*** Richardson bows out: Today, Richardson is expected to announce that he’s ending his presidential campaign, after finishing fourth in New Hampshire with just about 5% of the vote. His withdrawal could impact the upcoming contest in Nevada. Hispanics are now up for grabs, which could be good news for Clinton. But supporters of Richardson -- who campaigned on a very anti-war platform -- seemed to flock to Obama in Iowa. Did Richardson succeed in making himself a plausible vice presidential candidate? To the public, yes. To the candidates (and many members of the media), probably not. Too many gaffes.

VIDEO: NBC Political Director Chuck Todd offers his first read on the implications of Bill Richardson dropping out of the presidential race.

*** Third GOP debate in six days! Giuliani, Huckabee, McCain, Paul, Romney and Thompson are in Myrtle Beach, SC, where they participate in a FOX debate. It begins at 9:00 pm ET and ends at 10:30 pm ET.

*** On the trail: Elsewhere, Clinton stumps in Las Vegas; Edwards is in South Carolina; Hunter attends a Lincoln Day dinner in Michigan; Kucinich holds a Q&A in Troy, MI; Obama has a rally in Charleston, SC.

Countdown to Michigan: 5 days
Countdown to Nevada and SC GOP primary: 9 days
Countdown to SC Dem primary: 16 days
Countdown to Florida: 19 days
Countdown to Tsunami Tuesday: 26 days
Countdown to Election Day 2008: 299 days
Countdown to Inauguration Day 2009: 376 days

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Comments

Young people simply do not vote. Most if not all are registred to vote at their offcial residency, which is often their home not their college dorm room. It is simply a waste of time to get out the vote on election day when it comes to Universities and College areas because 1) Are not registered 2) You can't get them out to vote 3) In this case some of the colleges and dorms were out on vacation. There was too much of weighted vote to young voters in the polling. In addition, many of the polls did a form of push polling by asking if they were voting for "change." They then assumed that having an African-American as President is change but did not see that having a woman as President or a Mormon as change. So a lot of people said yes I'm voting for change. They then took a huge share of those votes and calculated them with advantage toward Obama. The whole thing was farce. Polls are a waste of time. They are terribly destructive to the democratic process. They should only be used internally for indications of momentum and trends. The media got this all wrong. They over hyped the whole Obama thing too the point of being sexist and negative against women voters. Zogby was trying to blame Clinton's win on a last second surge, which would have been a surge of 11 percentage points. His methodlogy was clearly wrong. Most of the other polls though had it much closer, although they had Obama winning. Also, there were too many polls in the first place. It seems everybody and his mother has a poll out. Someone did analysis that in New Hampshire that three times as people were polled than actually voted. This is insane.

Don Cooper, Syracuse, N.Y. (Sent Thursday, January 10, 2008 1:04 PM)

SUPERDELEGATES
http://demconwatch.blogspot.com/2008/01/superdelegates-who-havent-endorsed.html

Marbw (Sent Thursday, January 10, 2008 1:04 PM)

Wow, amazing what cold, heartless people and just plain wack jobs there are out there. If anyone thinks that Hillary's reaction to an impromptu question when she got misty-eyed was staged, you are beyond help because of your hatred. George Bush senior cried tears on more than one occasion and was not ashamed to admit it, And Hillary bused in out-of-state voters to win NH? Sheesh, hilarious how far gone folks are. These are the same ignorant people who proclaim that Obama is Muslim. As far as folks who will vote for whomever clutches the bible to their chest the tightest, we already have a president who thinks God talks to him and approves of his holy war, no thanks.

George Basham, OH (Sent Thursday, January 10, 2008 1:07 PM)

Barabara Bostic, it's not the fact that she cried, it's the fact that the odds that said tears were fabricated is nearly unquestionable. Her camp "defended" her crying as saying sometimes she gets emotional about issues she cares about .... So that would mean what? She hasn't cared about any issues for the last 16 years? Seems to me she didn't get emotional until there was news she might lose, so if they were sincere tears, they certainly weren't for the issues' sakes.

Joe (Sent Thursday, January 10, 2008 1:09 PM)

Boo hoo, the media got it wrong. Let's all cry into our pillows while planning ways to talk up Obama and sabotage Hillary.

Janine, MA (Sent Thursday, January 10, 2008 6:56 PM)

I'm leaning heavily toward Mitt Romney. I have read his account about what happened to change his mind about abortion, and it is very compelling. And personally, I want a candidate who's not afraid to make compare/contrast ads when it comes to the general elections.

BTW, all you 'mormons are a cult' posters - you're making me consider him MORE because of your posts instead of less. I would hate to associate myself with a candidate that such hateful people endorse. The mormons I know are, for the most part, very nice, civic minded, christ-like, caring people. You bashing them only highlights the contrast between what I know personally and the obvious hate you're spewing. Save your hate for your pulpit (shivers).

Anyone but Huckabee, Los Angeles, CA (Sent Thursday, January 10, 2008 8:45 PM)

Give me a break you guys! The reason why the national media got the NH primary wrong is because it failed to do some good old fashioned reporting. I covered the primary for various local outlets and was mystified why everyone was making so much of the Obama wave of momentum. If anyone bothered to interview real voters (like I did) you would have found there were a number of people leaving those huge Obama rallies unsure if he was the one. Campaign staffers and insiders certainly showed the chinks in Clinton's armor and the Obama camp was energized in a very inspiring way, but voters in NH had the same problem with Obama going into the polls as they did all along: they doubted he had enough experience and wondered if he is a better candidate than Clinton.

I think the national media should admit they were caught in an echo chamber and either failed to do real reporting or neglected to pay attention to the evidence showing their compelling political narrative might not be the truth.

Beth LaMontagne, Portsmouth, NH (Sent Friday, January 11, 2008 10:03 AM)

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