April 2008 - Posts
From NBC/NJ’s Carrie Dann HOPE MILLS, N.C. -- Jackals, no. But maybe spies.
In the first time Bill Clinton has ever publicly acknowledged the existence of his small and battle-hardened traveling press corps, President Bill Clinton noted today that his treks through rural America have expanded the horizons of the intrepid reporters who follow him.
"Some of the people that are embedded with me -- that's what you call the press that hafta follow you around," explained the former president, as your NBC reporter and her ABC colleague snapped to disbelieving attention from their seats on the distant press riser.
"The embeds," he repeated to the audience with a giggle. "Sounds kinda like a spy, doesn't it?"
"Spy" may be more flattering than the terms used behind closed Escalade doors about the reporters who track him. The phrase "media jackals" has recently been bandied about in a recent report about how the one-time president feels about the press members in question.
"Anyway," he continued in the inaugural shoutout to the campaign reporters who record his every move. "They see more of small-town America than they ever dreamed they would."
From Hope Mills, N.C. (population: 11,237). I have to say that, for once, he's absolutely right.
From NBC/NJ’s Adam Aigner-Treworgy ALLENTOWN, Pa. -- After admitting that his gas tax holiday was not a “panacea,” saying that it will not address America’s reliance on foreign oil and calling it a “a nice little break for Americans,”
McCain once again hit
Obama for not supporting his proposal.
“I noticed again that Sen. Obama refuses to endorse a tax-- gas tax holiday for Americans despite the fact that he voted for it several times when the price of gasoline was about a dollar and a half per gallon,” McCain said. “All we need to do is cut out hundreds of millions and billions of dollars of pork barrel projects that have been funded by the pork barrel bills, the transportation and highway bills that have gone through the Congress of the United States.”
After pushing his message of the day, McCain also responded to the recent ads released referencing his comments on a lengthy American presence in Iraq, quickly blaming Obama for misrepresenting his statements.
“It’s a little distressing to me when Sen. Obama says that he wants to run a very great campaign that is above politics and above the mundane aspects of political campaigns and then keeps turning around and saying and totally falsifying my statement, which is clear in saying that after we win we may have a presence in Iraq the way we do in south Korea,” McCain said.
CONTINUED >>
From NBC/NJ’s Mike Memoli PORTAGE, Ind. -- The
Clinton camp has worked hard of late to portray Hillary Clinton as the fighter in the race, someone with the determination to see her plans through no matter what the obstacles. Yesterday in North Carolina, Gov. Mike
Easley (D) raised some eyebrows when he said Clinton was so determined she made “Rocky Balboa look like a pansy.”
Well this afternoon, a local labor leader introducing Clinton pushed the envelope further, saying the nation needed a leader “that has testicular fortitude.”
Clinton, standing behind Gipson, smiled sheepishly before breaking into a nervous laugh. Gipson continued by slamming unnamed “Gucci-wearing, latte-drinking, self-centered, egotistical people that have damaged our lifestyle,” before endorsing and introducing Clinton.
CONTINUED >>
From NBC's Kristin Wilson
He suggested that giving Americans a break should include canceling the “Bridge to Nowhere” pork project in Alaska "and the $2.3 billion dollars in pork barrel projects that Sen. Clinton has asked for... that have contributed nothing to America's transportation system."
McCain said these earmarks have gone to unnecessary and unwanted projects that should have gone to repair the bridge in Minneapolis that collapsed last summer.
"The bridge in Minneapolis didn't collapse, because there wasn't enough money," he said. "The bridge in Minneapolis collapsed because so much money was spent on wasteful, unnecessary pork barrel projects."
A long-time opponent of pork barrel spending, McCain fired buck shot at his fellow legislators who earmark billions of dollars per year for projects in their home districts.
"It should surprise no one, when we look at the lists of projects that we are funding that have everything to do with power and the influence of the individual congressman or senator, and it has nothing to do with the actual transportation needs of the United States," he said. "Need I say more?"
From NBC/NJ’s Mike Memoli SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- Hillary
Clinton portrayed herself as a modern-day Teddy
Roosevelt this morning, saying she’d build the political will to take on oil companies as president.
“At the turn of the last century, Teddy Roosevelt took on the oil companies,” she said at the Deluxe Sheet Metal factory this morning. “We need a president who will take on the oil companies again, and I will do that. I will take away their tax subsidies. They don’t need them to make these outrageous profits.”
All week, Clinton has been beating the drum on her plan for a gas tax holiday. Today she used some different language on the issue, not calling it a tax holiday but saying she wanted “the oil companies to pay the federal gas tax this summer.”
She also criticized McCain when asked about his statement that he’d use treasury funds to replace revenues the tax provides for the highway trust fund.
“I think that’s a typical Republican response: don’t pay for anything,” she said of McCain’s plan. “We haven’t paid for the war in Iraq; we haven’t paid for the tax cuts for the wealthy, so now we’re not going to pay to replenish the Highway Trust Fund. … He is just driving us deeper and deeper into deficit and debt.”
CONTINUED >>
From NBC/NJ’s Athena Jones The
Obama camp held a conference call Wednesday morning to publicize a 64-page complaint it has filed with the Federal Election Commission against the American Leadership Project, which is running an anti-Obama ad in Indiana and which Obama's lawyer called Swift Boat wannabes.
Obama's Chief Counsel Bob Bauer said the complaint alleged the group was violating the law by failing to register with the FEC as a political committee in order to collect money from anyone and in whatever amount without having to disclose that information.
Bauer said this type of group had been made famous by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which targeted Sen. John Kerry in 2004, and said the FEC complaint aimed to curtail the actions of such groups, calling it the first shot in the continuing "Swift Boat saga."
He said ALP was violating the law in exactly the same way as the Swift Boaters' group and that he hoped the FEC would enforce the law "to send the ultimate message" to other organizations that this kind of action wouldn't be tolerated.
Bauer said any legal defense of the organization would require a great deal of creativity and said there was nothing in the record to show the group's purpose was not to raise money for pro-Clinton efforts. He suggested the group was leaving a "documentary trail" to show this was its purpose.
CONTINUED >>
From NBC's Mike Viqueira WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A small but very fired up group of Floridians rallied in the street outside the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters here today, demanding that their primary votes be counted and threatening to literally block the doors of the Democratic Convention if they aren't.
"We will shut down the convention!" exclaimed Rep. Corrine Brown. "If we are not seated, then nobody is going to be seated!"
Brown, a superdelegate pledged to Clinton, addressed a crowd of about 150 who had been bused up to D.C. from Florida this week under the auspices of LULAC, an Hispanic advocacy group. Though Brown and another super who spoke -- Rep. Hilda Solis -- are in the Clinton camp, organizers went out of their way to remove any hint that they favored one or the other Democrat in the race. Many in the crowd wore T-shirts with the name of each Democratic candidate, from Kucinich to Dodd to Richardson to Obama, printed across the back in the shape of a rainbow. There was but one Hillary '08 shirt or button to be seen.
"We're not supposed to talk about that," confided Harriet Meltzer, 83, a member in good standing of the Del Ray Democratic Club, though she allowed that she was, in fact, a Clinton supporter. "What's he going to do when he goes to the Middle East?" she asked of Obama, who she deems to be lacking in experience. "Charm them?"
CONTINUED >>
From NBC's Domenico Montanaro The Clinton and Obama campaigns announced one more superdelegate each.
CA Rep. Lois Capps endorsed Obama, and Puerto Rico superdelegate Luisette Cabanas endorsed Clinton. (Chelsea Clinton is stumping in Puerto Rico today.)
Today, Obama has three superdelegates to Clinton's two.
To recap:
SUPERDELEGATE TOTAL: (280 uncommitted)
PLEDGED: Obama 1,490-1,334
From NBC/NJ’s Carrie Dann SANFORD, N.C. -- As his wife was spending the morning with an Indiana driver to publicize her plan to fix suffocatingly high gas prices, her husband was in North Carolina, fiercely defending her support of a gas tax holiday.
"She has been criticized by her opponent and by others, who say, 'Oh, it is just pandering to people to offer them gasoline relief,'" he said, standing atop a long flatbed truck at an early polling rally. "Well, let me tell you something folks -- when people are choosing every week between whether they got enough money to go to work and enough money to put food on the tables for their kids -- it is not pandering to try and help them get through the next six months."
Clinton has concentrated on the oil issue during his two-day swing through North Carolina. His wife's proposal to eliminate the gas tax during the summer months has been criticized by rivals who point out that the short-term benefit for many Americans would register at a savings of less than $50.
Other critics say that the summer solution fails to encourage the responsible seeking of long-term solutions to the energy crisis. The former president took special exception to that claim in Apex this morning.
"Hillary has got a long record as an environmentalist," he said. "But to say that giving people a little slack on these gas prices is going to discourage us from switching to higher mileage cars is just factually wrong. We're dealing with people here that cannot pay their bills."
From NBC's Ron Allen SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- Sen.
Clinton just went along on the morning commute with Jason Allen Wilfing of South Bend, who works at a sheet metal plant. They stopped for gas in his white pickup truck at a Marathon station where the price for regular is $3.75 a gallon. Clinton and Wilfing are now "commuting," to his job, in a motorcade, a motorcade that incidentally included eight low-gas mileage SUVs.
It was all quite contrived, like many campaign events, with Secret Service in the back seat of the truck and a swarm of media at the station. However, this one seemed a bit more "unnatural," shall we say, than most. And Sen. Clinton admitted because of her "special circumstance," she hasn't bought gas in a long while. But it’s an example of how determined Clinton is to win over working-class voters by showing her concern and understanding of "kitchen table" issues.
While the gas dial was rolling up to $63.67, Clinton and Wilfing "chatted" about the high price of groceries and how rising fuel costs are affecting many aspects of family life.
Clinton also made a pitch, when asked about it by reporters, for her "gas tax holiday," which would suspend fuel taxes for the summer months. While Sen. Barack Obama and others have called the proposal a "gimmick" that only would save most families about $28 over the summer, Clinton says small businesses, trucking firms, farmers and families driving off for vacations would save much more. Clinton seems determined to make this a defining issue over the remaining days of the campaign.
CONTINUED >>
From NBC's Domenico Montanaro Braley (IA) in First Thoughts for Obama . In addition, Obama picked up the endorsement of congressman Baron Hill . Clinton also picked up one -- Pennsylvania AFL-CIO president Bill George.
Hill represents Indiana's hotly contested ninth congressional district. Hill is a former Indiana high school basketball star who is in the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame, alongside NBA legend Larry Bird.
Here's how the numbers shake out:
OBAMA (9): Rep. Baron Hill (IN), Rep. Bruce Braley (IA), Rep. Ben Chandler (KY), Richard Machacek (IA), Sen. Jeff Bingaman (NM), Charlene Fernandez (AZ DNC), Rep. David Wu (OR), Audra Ostergard (NE DNC), Gov. Brad Henry (OK).
From Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, and Domenico Montanaro Dumping Wright: A day ago, we asked if yesterday would be the day Jeremiah Wright would go away, at least in the context of the Obama-Clinton primary race. Well, not quite. Obama made sure the story would last one more day by holding a press conference in which he unequivocally denounced Wright. That denunciation -- just like his speech on race more than a month ago -- has received universal praise. It made him look strong, and it might have even helped him a bit if he wins the nomination (after all, denouncing him now is MUCH better than doing so in October). But the criticisms still to be leveled against Obama are twofold: 1) it was late and 2) he did this only after Wright personally attacked him; Obama didn't get angry over the OTHER things Wright said, but only when Wright made it personal. One thing still hanging in the air: will Wright respond; he did a sort-of response through a blind quote in the New York Post but considering how upset black church leaders seem to be with Wright, he may end up keeping quiet. Clearly, superdelegates were the most important audience yesterday. They may be relieved Obama finally showed an ability to deal with a baggage crisis head-on, but they still will want to know if Wright will continue to dog him. Obama's back was against the wall and he delievered. But like every other time, it feels a little late, the question is, was it TOO late.
VIDEO: NBC Political Director Chuck Todd discusses Obama's fallout with his former pastor. ***
The odd good news for Obama: The Wright Story Volume 2, which began on Thursday when PBS released excerpts of the reverend’s interview with Bill Moyers, has now lasted six days -- which, by the way, is the same amount of time between now and Tuesday’s elections in Indiana and North Carolina. And unlike right before the past contests in Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylvania, it is Clinton -- not Obama -- who seems to have all the momentum. The perception is that Obama is bleeding. But this COULD be a good thing for Obama, relatively speaking, of course. Clinton won the expectations game in those past three contests, primarily because it seemed like Obama had all the Mo’. But now that Mo’ is on Clinton’s side. What happens if Obama is still able to defeat Clinton by double digits in North Carolina and essentially split the delegates in Indiana? Of course, the bigger question for his campaign might be: What if he doesn’t? And what if those exit poll cross-tabs in North Carolina and Indiana show white voters abandoning Obama in greater numbers than in Ohio and Pennsylvania?
*** Hillary, working 9 to 5: Per NBC’s Ron Allen, Clinton begins her day today with an interesting "event." A typical Indiana resident -- Jason Allen Wilfing, who has worked at Deluxe Sheet Metal for 15 years -- will just happen to stop by the hotel where Clinton is staying, and she will join him on his typical commute to work. And what's more, they will have to stop for gas. (The tank just happens to be running dry while Clinton's along for the ride.) Clinton will then help Wilfing pump gas. And then he will complete the typical trip to work. Of course, we all wonder when was the last time Clinton drove a car? Or pumped gas? Or even, after that $109 million, had to worry about the cost of gas? Politicians do all kinds of things to attract votes, but this has the potential to be memorable. Indeed.
*** Pander alert: The Clinton gas event is yet another sign that Clinton is trying to harken back to the '90s and hammer home the "I feel your pain" aspect of the Clinton years that voters responded to so well back then. But the debate over the gas-tax holiday is an interesting one -- and it's a test of just how closely voters are following the campaign. Will voters respond simply on the pocketbook front and demand this gas tax holiday, despite all the downsides that many experts have outlined about the idea? It's the old "if it feels good, do it" (that Clinton and McCain have seen succeed for so long during times that pocketbook politics have dominated the debate) versus the intellectual argument Obama is trying to have (that usually is praised by, well, intellectuals but dismissed by rank-and-file voters who want their tax cut or gas prices cut). Clinton is trying to own this issue big time -- even running TV ads about it and constantly criticizing Obama for not supporting the gas-tax holiday.Obama's criticism of McCain's plan and Clinton's are accurate. The only problem is it leaves voters saying, "Ok, it's a gimmick; so what's your proposal? This feels like Clinton v. Tsongas '92. But the electorate acts as if its more informed than it was 16 years ago, and also could be a bit more distrustful of government handouts than in the past. Regardless, one could argue that the Clinton-Obama debate over this issue sums up their candidacies and potential presidencies. In this environment, which do voters prefer?
*** How low can you go; how high can you fly? Yesterday, we released some early numbers from the latest NBC/WSJ poll, which comes out tonight. The numbers? Only 21% approve of President Bush's job in handling the economy -- his lowest number ever as president on that question. Also, a whopping 81% believe the US is currently in a recession. Interested in the latest numbers in the Obama-Clinton race? Want to know how both stack up against McCain? Or curious about which party -- Democratic or Republican -- holds the advantage heading into November? And want to know which relationship is worse: Bush or Wright? Tune into Nightly News, or click onto MSNBC.com, at 6:30 pm ET.
*** One more plug: Obama will be on Meet the Press for the full hour this Sunday. Tim Russert will travel to Indianapolis to sit down with the Democratic front-runner for the live interview, taking place on the even of what could be the most significant primaries of the campaign season. Set your TiVOs now if for some reason you haven't yet clicked "season pass" for Meet the Press.
*** Closer to the magic number: Obama picked up another superdelegate just this morning, Rep. Bruce Braley (IA), who was a strong supporter of Edwards. Yesterday , Obama picked up two more superdelegates: Kentucky congressman Ben Chandler and Iowa DNC member Richard Machacek. Clinton also picked up one: Missouri Rep. Ike Skelton. Skelton cited Clinton’s “support in rural America” as a reason for backing her. Since the Pennsylvania primary, Obama has gotten eight superdelegates to Clinton’s four. Here’s where the counts stand: SUPERDELEGATES: Clinton 266-245; PLEDGED: Obama 1,490-1,334; OVERALL: Obama 1,735-1,600.
*** On the trail: Clinton spends her day in Indiana, stumping in South Bend, Portage, Lafayette, and Kokomo; McCain raises money in Florida and then holds another health-care event in Allentown, PA; and Obama, in Indiana, has events in Indianapolis and then holds a rally at Indiana University in Bloomington. Also, Bill Clinton has a whopping seven events in North Carolina, and Michelle Obama is in Indiana.
Countdown to North Carolina, Indiana: 6 daysClick here to sign up for First Read emails.
The New York Times’ lead : "Obama broke forcefully on Tuesday with his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., in an effort to curtail a drama of race, values, patriotism and betrayal that has enveloped his presidential candidacy at a critical juncture." More: "At a minimum, the spectacle of Mr. Wright’s multiday media tour and Mr. Obama’s rolling response grabbed the attention of the most important constituency in politics now: the uncommitted superdelegates - party officials and elected Democrats - who hold the balance of power in the nominating battle."
VIDEO: NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports on Sen. Barack Obama calling remarks by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, "destructive". “Eileen Macoll, a Democratic county chairman from Washington State who has not chosen a candidate, said she was stunned at the extent of national attention the episode has drawn, and she said she believed it would give superdelegates pause. ‘I’m a little surprised at how much traction it is getting, and I do believe it is beginning to reflect negatively on Senator Obama’s campaign,’ Ms. Macoll said. ‘I think he’s handling it very well, but I think it’s almost impossible to make people feel comfortable about this.’”
The Los Angeles Times writes, "Some black leaders said Tuesday that they were frustrated at Wright for undertaking a publicity tour in recent days that may have harmed the chance to elect the first black president. And a number of African American church leaders expressed alarm that Wright, whose views on social issues are far to the left of most black clergy, claimed on Monday to speak for all black churches. ‘I wish that Jeremiah, my friend, had kept his eye on the prize,’ said the Rev. Frank Madison Reid III, pastor of a large African Methodist Episcopal congregation in Baltimore who studied with Wright and has invited him regularly to preach at his church. ‘And the prize here for America, for all Americans, is that we can elect the first black man for the presidency.’”
The Washington Post : “At a meeting of black religious leaders at the Howard University School of Divinity on Tuesday, Wright declined to address the firestorm that his remarks had ignited. ‘You heard what I said [Monday] morning,’ he told a reporter. ‘I just wish that the media would focus on more of what they are saying in there, because they are trying to make this about me and Barack.’”
The New York Post : “After 20 years of loving Barack like he was a member of his own family, for Jeremiah to see Barack saying over and over that he didn't know about Jeremiah's views during those years, that he wasn't familiar with what Jeremiah had said, that he may have missed church on this day or that and didn't hear what Jeremiah said, this is seen by Jeremiah as nonsense and betrayal," said the source, who has deep roots in Wright's Chicago community and is familiar with his thinking on the matter. 'Jeremiah is trying to defend his congregation and the work of his ministry by saying what he is saying now," the source added. "Jeremiah doesn't care if he derails Obama's candidacy or not . . . He knows what he's doing. Obviously, he's not a dumb man. He knows he's not helping.'"
The Boston Globe : “The condemnation was a dramatic shift for Obama, who had tried to navigate a personal and political minefield: maintaining a relationship with the minister who brought him to Christianity, performed his wedding, and baptized his two daughters, while distancing himself from Wright's most incendiary sermons and trying to quell a controversy that threatened to undermine Obama's campaign's focus on racial unity.”
The Washington Post’s editorial page mostly praises Obama denouncing Wright yesterday. “Did Mr. Obama climb out of that hole yesterday? It seems to us that the whole sorry episode raises legitimate questions about his judgment… But Mr. Obama is right when he says that his entire career is antithetical to the divisiveness of the Rev. Wright's comments. We've found things to cheer and things to criticize about Mr. Obama during this long campaign, but we don't see how anyone could question his commitment to transcending old racial battles and finding common ground. The Rev. Wright doesn't speak for the candidate, and we hope the pastor doesn't become a continuing excuse for political ads built on racial fears.”
CONTINUED >>
More polling evidence that Clinton and Obama supporters are starting to hate the other candidate more than John McCain.
Politico reports, “Capitol Hill insiders say the battle for congressional superdelegates is over, and one Senate supporter of Barack Obama is hinting strongly that he has prevailed over Hillary Rodham Clinton. While more than 80 Democrats in the House and Senate have yet to state their preferences in the race for the Democratic nomination, sources said Tuesday that most of them have already made up their minds and have told the campaigns where they stand. Asked which way the committed-but-unannounced superdelegates are leaning, McCaskill -- who has endorsed Obama -- said: “James Brown would say, ‘I Feel Good.’” compromise ? “Michigan Democrats working to get the state's delegates seated at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday suggested splitting them 69-59 between presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. Clinton has argued that she should get 73 delegates based on the results of the Jan. 15 primary, which she won -- 18 more than Obama. Obama, who removed his name from the ballot, wants the 128 pledged delegates split evenly, 64-64.
INDIANA: Obama is spending three of the next four days in Indiana. Clinton spends the next two days there.
NORTH CAROLINA: John Edwards, you lost the Dem nomination a few months back and you just can't decide whom to endorse... what are you going to do next!?!?! Edwards: "I'm going to Disney World !"
That's right, "Edwards is vacationing at Walt Disney World in Florida this week, fueling speculation that he's not going to endorse either Democratic presidential candidate before the May 6 primary. But then, another vacation turned out differently. In July 2004, Edwards took his family to Disney World for a vacation, leading many to declare he was not John Kerry's vice presidential pick. As it turned out, Edwards had slipped away, catching a flight to Washington to meet with Kerry."
Mike Easley's endorsement of Clinton focused on her outreach to blue-collar voters. "Easley doesn't have a powerful state organization, nor is he a national political figure. But Easley's endorsement of New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton could help the Democratic presidential candidate in her quest for more traditional rural and small-town blue-collar Democrats in North Carolina's primary Tuesday.”
“Easley's reputation as a sort of ‘Governor Bubba' helped make him the only two-term Democratic governor in the South. Easley was elected to office as a pistol-packing former prosecutor and was re-elected as the governor who crashed a NASCAR race car into the wall during a charity event.”
“‘Easley probably appeals to more conservative Democrats, to the blue-collar voters that Hillary Clinton has been targeting,’ said Steven Greene, an N.C. State University political science professor. ‘He strengthens her efforts among those groups.’ But Greene said he thought Easley's endorsement would have only a modest effect, noting that public opinion polls suggest that Illinois Sen. Barack Obama has a double-digit lead."
CONTINUED >>
The New York Times’ Friedman hits both Clinton and McCain on their gas tax holiday support. "It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country."
Uh, oh. The Wall Street Journal : "Although the major presidential candidates are making record gasoline prices a campaign issue, they are avoiding mention of measures they each support that would indirectly raise prices at the pump. ... Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and Republican John McCain support some type of corporate cap-and-trade system to curb greenhouse gases, which likely would increase fuel prices. In addition, the Democratic contenders have called for a ‘windfall profits’ tax on oil companies, which ultimately could be passed on to consumers."
In an ed board meeting with the Indy Star , Clinton said Dems shouldn't switch sides if their candidate doesn't win the Dem nod. "Clinton also said Tuesday that she thinks the primaries have been ‘energizing’ rather than divisive, resulting in many new voters being brought into the electoral process. She's committed, she said, to keeping those voters in the Democratic column, regardless of whether she or Obama ends up as the nominee."
More: "Clinton wouldn't address whether she'll stay in the race if she doesn't win Indiana, but said her upbringing near Chicago and her message of turning this from the ‘rust belt’ to the ‘opportunity belt’ helps her connect with Hoosier voters. ‘I'm going to try to do as well as I can in Indiana. I never make predictions because who knows,’ she said.”
The Wall Street Journal looks at how Clinton is playing on economic fears of voters to win them over. "By focusing on voter fears about globalization and job losses in troubled industries, Sen. Clinton has cultivated support among factory workers and others worried about U.S. competitiveness that has given her an edge over Barack Obama in several key races, including Pennsylvania and Ohio. ‘She's cultivated a message that focuses on industries that share commonality -- in terms of the pressures they're under and the impact on the working-class population,’ says Chris Lehane, a Democratic political consultant based in California. ‘That means metals in Pennsylvania, tires or rubber in Ohio, coal in West Virginia."
Staying on the econ message, a separate WSJ piece notes how Clinton's focus on the '90s economy also risks reminding voters of the '90s Clinton scandals.
Clinton stressed economic issues last night as she called the Hoosier state “the most important manufacturing state” in the country, NBC/NJ’s Mike Memoli reports. “You’re the people of steel and of autos and of defense and of so much else that really makes America work,” she told nearly 2,000 supporters during a chilly, outdoor rally. “But the economy is not working for hard-working Americans right now. The jobs are not there, the incomes not rising, the cost of everything from filling up your tank to paying the health-care bills to the utility bills is getting way beyond what anybody dreamed. So we’ve gotta start playing both defense and offense again.”
Politico’s Martin looks at Republicans ignoring Clinton: “Clinton, it seems, has been erased from the picture, Soviet-style. Republicans mostly act like she doesn’t exist -- an unusual turn of events considering her run of big-state victories and the fact that not so long ago Republican campaign plans were predicated on the idea of Clinton as the Democratic nominee. Indeed, her recent success has only increased the volume and ferocity of the attacks -- not on her, but on Obama.” appear in a two-part interview on The Fox News Channel's ‘The O'Reilly Factor’ starting Wednesday at 8. Part two will air Thursday at 8 p.m.”
The Washington Post says McCain yesterday “rejected calls by his Democratic opponents for universal health coverage, instead offering a market-based solution with an approach similar to a proposal put forth by President Bush last year… Democratic Sens. Barack Obama (Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) have vowed government action to fulfill what they cast as a moral right for Americans to have health insurance. They favor mandates for coverage; McCain (R-Ariz.) proposes tax incentives. Obama and Clinton would impose new regulations on insurers; McCain's plan is designed to avoid direct regulation. The Democrats would build on the current employer-based system; McCain would shift to a more individual approach.”
The New York Times adds: “His proposal to move away from employer-based coverage was similar to one that President Bush pushed for last year, to little effect. And his call for expanding coverage through market-based competition is in stark contrast to the Democrats’ proposals to move toward universal health care coverage, with government subsidies to help lower-income people afford their premiums."
The Times also looks at what kind of relationship McCain could have with congressional Republicans while in the White House and notes some of the rocky nature they've had. "The McCain campaign and House Republicans, in an effort coordinated by Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the party leader, are engaging in a bit of therapy to strengthen their political marriage. Top McCain officials gathered recently with chiefs of staff to House Republicans to emphasize the idea that it is to their mutual advantage to pull together as the election unfolds.”
“Mr. McCain has reached out more to the House leadership. Republican officials say that Mr. Boehner sought and received assurances from Mr. McCain in a private meeting in February that he would not ignore the interests of his backers in the House when pushing his policy ideas. Mr. Boehner would not comment on those discussions. But he noted that, on major topics like the Iraq war and federal spending, most House Republicans and Mr. McCain are now in sync."
From NBC/NJ's Carrie Dann Bill Clinton was quick today to paint his wife as an underdog -- and as a defensive player.
"Most of what people have said in this campaign is wrong, including who's been more positive and who's been more negative," said Clinton in an address to more than 2,000 at Appalachian State University. "She's talked relentlessly about the solutions. She won in Pennsylvania after being hit with negative ad after negative ad after negative ad, and negative letters. And all she did was respond."
Clinton opened his remarks with a shoutout to the school's football team, which famously defeated the University of Michigan in a stunning upset last fall. "I think it will have special meaning here if I begin with a line I always say today," he said. "Whenever somebody tells you you can't win, it's because they're afraid you will."
From NBC's Mark Murray We are releasing some early numbers from the latest NBC/WSJ poll, which comes out tomorrow night.
The numbers? Only 21% approve of President Bush's job in handling the economy -- his lowest number ever as president on that question.
Also, a whopping 81% believe the US is currently in a recession.
Interested in the latest numbers in the Obama -Clinton race? Want to know how both stack up against McCain ? Or curious about which party -- Democratic or Republican -- holds the advantage heading into November? Tune into Nightly News, or click onto MSNBC.com, at 6:30 pm ET tomorrow.
From NBC/NJ's Athena Jones Obama opened a somber, nearly half-hour press conference this afternoon by saying he was outraged and saddened by Wright's comments to the National Press Club in Washington the previous day and that the Wright who spoke those words was not the man he had met 20 years ago.
Wright has been a particularly thorny issue for Obama, since snippets of his sermons -- which many viewed as divisive and unpatriotic -- aired repeatedly on YouTube and cable television last month in the lead-up to the Pennsylvania primary. The remarks threatened to alienate the white, working-class voters Obama has been attempting to woo away from Clinton in recent contests, with little success.
Obama has framed his candidacy -- or it has been framed for him -- in "post-racial" terms and many of his supporters have been inspired by a campaign that cast itself as one about unifying people across ethnicities, creeds, and political parties. A close association with a man whose message is seen as divisive would damage that over-arching theme, something the senator acknowledged.
Obama said he had given his pastor the benefit of the doubt during his speech on race in Philadelphia and had spoken to him after delivering that speech, though he would not elaborate on their conversation. But the senator said there was no excuse for Wright's comments yesterday linking the US government to the creation of AIDS, praising Louis Farrakhan, and connecting US wartime efforts to terrorism.
"His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the Black Church," he said. "They certainly don’t portray accurately my values and beliefs and if Rev Wright thinks that’s political posturing, as he put it, then he doesn't know me very well and based on his remarks yesterday, well I may not know him as well as I thought either."
Speaking slowly, deliberately and at times sternly, Obama repeatedly said Wright's comments contradicted everything his campaign was about, all that he had worked for throughout his life and his vision for America, while acknowledging his former pastor had a right to make his views known.
CONTINUED >>
From NBC/NJ’s Mike Memoli INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- Hillary Clinton defended her plan for a gas tax holiday, saying it would have a larger impact on the nation’s economy than just the immediate savings for drivers.
CONTINUED >>
From MSNBC’s Norah O'Donnell and Adam Verdugo With the North Carolina Democratic primary a week away, Elizabeth Edwards tells MSNBC she'd be "surprised" if either her or her husband endorsed either Obama or Clinton before the contest. But she quickly left the door open for a change of heart saying, "You never say never" -- given that there are big news events that can impact the race.
From NBC's Domenico Montanaro Skelton endorsed Clinton , per the Clinton campaign.
"It is my intention as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention to vote for Senator Hillary Clinton because of her support in rural America, her commitment to National Security, and her dedication to our men and women in uniform," Skelton said in a statement released by the Clinton campaign.
This brings the superdelegate count to:OBAMA 244
Since Pennsylvania, it's Obama 7, Clinton 4. (285 are uncommitted).
PLEDGED: Obama 1,490-1,334
From NBC/NJ's Athena Jones and NBC's Mark Murray Obama denounced the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, saying that Wright's comments yesterday angered and saddened him -- and are antithetical to what his campaign is about.
"I've known Rev. Wright for almost 20 years. The person that I saw yesterday was not the person I met 20 years ago. His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate, and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church."
"They certainly don't portray accurately my values and beliefs. And if Rev. Wright thinks that that's political posturing, as he put it, then he doesn't know me very well. And based on his remarks yesterday, well I might not know him as well as I thought, either."
More to come...
From NBC's Domenico Montanaro Obama , according to a report by the Des Moines Register , passed along by the Obama campaign. This is Obama's second superdelegate of the day.
"I think it needs to be over, and in good conscience, I can't fly in the face of my precinct, county and district," Machacek told The Des Moines Register. "The raw numbers coming out of the district conventions really sat me down hard."
This makes it 7-3 superdelegate pickups for Obama since the Pennsylvania primary.
SUPERDELEGATES: Clinton 265-244 (286 uncommitted)
OVERALL: Obama 1,734-1,599
*** UPDATE *** OBAMA (7): Brad Henry (OK GOV), Audra Ostergard (NE DNC), David Wu (OR Rep), Charlene Fernandez (AZ DNC), Jeff Bingaman (NM SEN), Ben Chandler (KY Rep), Richard Machacek (IA DNC).
CLINTON (3): John Tanner (TN Rep), Kathy Sullivan (NH add on), Mike Easley (NC GOV).
From NBC/NJ’s Adam Aigner-Treworgy McCain ’s weeklong health-care tour, this morning’s speech at the University of Southern Florida featured only an expansion of the healthcare proposal McCain has been advocating on the stump for months.
Even McCain’s top policy advisor Doug Holtz-Eakin had little to preview during a sit down with reporters last night saying, “Remember, it is April, and the election’s November, so not everything will happen tomorrow or this week.”
When asked what was new, Holtz-Eakin said, “There’s more examples on all fronts of what he thinks of as the personal responsibility and prevention issues, treatment of chronic diseases and insurance market issues.”
The center of McCain’s health-care proposal is the creation of a refundable health-care tax credit of $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families to go toward offsetting the cost of health insurance. The tax credit would be available to everyone, and partial funding would come from eliminating the tax credit currently given only to employees.
“You simply choose the insurance provider that suits you best,” McCain said this morning. “By mail or online, you would then inform the government of your selection. And the money to help pay for your health care would be sent straight to that insurance provider.”
CONTINUED >>
From NBC's Mike Viqueira
On this very day your US House will vote to express its "sense" that "there should be established a National Watermelon Month." Later this afternoon, the people's House will move to consider whether to similarly express themselves over "National Funeral Director and Mortician Recognition Day." And then, in a separate bill, it will weigh in on setting aside a day of recognition for this nation's letter carriers.
So when the president and Republicans say that this Congress isn't doing much this year, they may have ground to stand on. But that isn't necessarily at variance with what usually happens in an election year -- especially a presidential election cycle where, no matter what, there will be a new administration come January.
So far this year, the stimulus package has passed, and that's about it. It has been slow going, no question. Behind the scenes, the Democratic leaders are still wrestling with the question of how to handle the president's latest request for war funding, this time for $108 billion. They are looking at legislation to ease the housing crunch. The farm bill has been on the verge of closure for weeks, if not months. And Democrats are clamoring for a second stimulus package for the economy, this time focused on extending unemployment insurance, infrastructure spending, and other items that they failed to pass in the first version.
But none of this is going to be easy. And on the fundamental job of Congress -- to pass spending bills to keep the government functioning -- it is quite possible, if not likely, that Democrats will simply punt it all into next year, thereby giving the new president, who they obviously hope will be one of their own, a clean slate on which to enact new policies and priorities.
From NBC/NJ's Mike Memoli Mike Easley (D) made his endorsement official this morning, saying that Hillary Clinton “gets it” and is a fighter who he said “makes Rocky Balboa look like a pansy.”
“There’s a lot of ‘yes we can’ and ‘yes we should’ going around,” he said, taking what seemed to be a subtle jab at Obama . “Hillary Clinton is ready to deliver. That’s the difference.”
Clinton said she was honored to have Easley’s endorsement, calling it “politically very meaningful.” But more than that, she said the example Easley had shown in his two terms as governor that he “gets it” as well, and in his administration has shown how state governments “truly are the labs of democracy.”
CONTINUED >>
From NBC's Mark Murray and Domenico Montanaro Chandler , a superdelegate, is endorsing Obama today in Louisville.
With Chandler's endorsement, that brings the superdelegate count to Clinton 265, Obama 243. Overall (including pledged and superdelegates), it's Obama 1,733, Clinton 1,599.
Chandler's endorsement also adds to Obama's lead over Clinton among elected superdelegates (congressman, governors, senators). Clinton leads Obama 3-2 in Kentucky superdelegates. Obama has both congressmen from the state -- Rep. John Yarmuth is the other.
AP: LOUISVILLE -- Democrat Barack Obama's campaign director in Kentucky says Congressman Ben Chandler will endorse Obama for their party's presidential nomination.
Carolyn Tandy told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Chandler will announce his support for Obama at a midday news conference in downtown Louisville. Chandler represents a central Kentucky district and carries one of the most famous names in Kentucky politics.
[EDITOR'S NOTE: Our pledged delegate count inadvertently had 1,491 for Obama; it should be 1,490. We've adjusted the above count.]
From NBC/NJ's Athena Jones and NBC's Mark Murray Obama played basketball in front of TV cameras -- this time with the big boys. Below is the pool report from the New York Times' Jeff Zeleny:
It was shortly after 7:00 am when Sen. Barack Obama arrived at the hallowed ground of college basketball, home of the University of North Carolina Tar Heels. Before heading to the court for a quick morning game, he took a tour of the team’s facility. His guide? Coach Roy Williams.
Mr. Obama and Mr. Williams walked through the basement hallway of the UNC basketball center, passing black and white photographs from seasons gone by. The coach, dressed in a suit, and the senator, dressed in workout clothes, made small talk and smiled throughout the brief tour, which concluded in the locker room. “What a tradition,” Mr. Obama said, his eyes gazing around the room, which was decorated by banners from previous Final Four appearances.
Joined by Wanda Williams, the coach’s wife, the three stood on the plush blue carpet, where a school logo fills the center of the room. This is a zone of respect, where neither players nor coaches are allowed to walk across the logo. (Coach Williams explained the rules to the senator and a local Secret Service agent warned your pool to keep its distance from the mighty UNC.)
The senator made his way to the M.W. “Dyke” Peebles Jr. Practice Facility, where members of the UNC team were already warming up. One by one, the players approached and shook hands with Mr. Obama. From the moment they came into view, it was clear that today’s game would be slightly more rigorous than the one he played last Friday night at a middle school in Kokomo, IN. “These guys are a lot better than me,” Mr. Obama said, running down the full length of the court, trying to keep up with guys half his age, who less than a month ago were playing in the N.C.A.A. Final Four.
Tyler Hansbrough, the national player of the year for 2007-2008, was on hand in his signature blue jersey, No. 50. Mr. Obama drew the good fortune of being on his team. The senator played for several minutes, occasionally lagging behind the bunch. His best chance for a basket came shortly after he made a behind-the-back pass. As the ball was passed back to him, he fired up a jump shot, but it bounced from the backboard and around the rim.
“Thought I had that one,” he said.
CONTINUED >>
From Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, and Domenico Montanaro Is today the day Wright goes away? Maybe -- at least in the context of the Obama-Clinton campaign. As we speculated yesterday, if there was a silver lining to Wright dominating the news, it was that voters were easily able to distinguish between the two men. Reviews of Wright’s performance at the National Press Club were absolutely brutal. The New York Times’ Alessandra Stanley wrote, “Wright revealed himself to be the compelling but slightly wacky uncle who unsettles strangers but really just craves attention… Wright doesn’t hate America, he loves the sound of his own voice.” If yesterday was the end of the Wright story, then the next week may actually be something the Obama camp looks forward to. Bob Herbert perhaps put Obama’s last six weeks the best: "Obama seems more and more like someone buffeted by events, rather than in charge of them.” And that's something that he has to change soon if he hopes to change the subject in time to put Clinton away on May 6. Also, Obama began a stronger pushback on Wright late last night, per NBC’s Andrea Mitchell: "My opponents realize they don't have the better argument so what they're now saying is 'Well, I don't know about Obama. You know, we, we gotta, we gotta know more about him and you know, he doesn't wear a flag pin. His former pastor said something and he's, he's got uh, we don't know what his values are. We don't know if he's patriotic. He's got a funny name, you know, it sounds, sounds Muslim.’ That, that's what's dominated. That is what has dominated political coverage over the last several weeks."
*** The downballot effect : Republicans are certainly linking Obama to Democrats running in two upcoming special congressional elections. In Mississippi, Greg Davis (R) is running an ad using Jeremiah Wright against Travis Childers (D). And in Louisiana, Freedom’s Watch is airing an ad whacking Don Cazayoux (D) by tying him to Obama’s health-care agenda. As our friends at Hotline noted yesterday, these Democrats have been unable to easily swat away these attacks. “Both Dems have succeeded so far by avoiding the liberal tag, and in many cases, the Dem label. But in an interview on XM radio 4/26, Childers avoided discussing the WH race like the plague. In Cazayoux's response ad to GOP attacks, he also ignored the WH contest. Both answers seemed greatly lacking.” But Democrats -- who are thrilled to be playing in these two contests, especially the one in Mississippi -- believe that attacks on Obama could help turn out the sizable African-American populations in both districts. Still, the GOP using Obama in downballot races presents this dilemma to Democrats: Until Obama (or Clinton) wraps up the nomination, it’s hard for the DNC, DCCC, and DSCC to whack back at these kind of attacks on their downballot candidates. And this is why it seems Obama can't beat back these attacks; He's getting hit on three or four fronts, and there are no third-party groups who can help back him up because these groups aren't ready to pick between Clinton and Obama just yet.
VIDEO: NBC Political Director Chuck Todd talks about the aftermath of yesterday's Wright speech, the debate over a Summer gas-tax holiday, and the continued fight for superdelegates. ***
Pump it up : If it hadn’t been for Wright's appearance yesterday, there would have been a substantive policy debate over an issue that would have received a ton of coverage. The issue? A gas-tax holiday. The matter actually has interesting alliances. McCain and Clinton favor a temporary halt to the 18.4-cent federal gas tax (although Clinton calls for a tax on oil company profits to pay for it), while Obama and the White House oppose it. A gas-tax holiday might be good politics -- pander bears anyone? -- but it's viewed by some as lousy policy. In fact, the
New York Times confirms Obama’s argument that such a holiday would save consumers no more than $30, about a half of tank of gas. But pander politics can trump intellectual arguments in the short term.
*** Electability watch : Lots of new information for superdelegates to weigh today: A new AP/Ipsos poll has Clinton doing MUCH better against McCain than Obama does; another poll has Obama beating McCain in Wisconsin, but Clinton losing to the Arizona Republican; elected superdelegates, per the Wall Street Journal, see Obama as being the better candidate for Dem downballot candidates; but NRCC chair Tom Cole adds his two cents: “I think [Obama’s] the weaker candidate.” What do all of these things tell us? Doesn’t look like much has changed, at least for now.
*** McCain’s house call : Last week it was poverty; this week it's health care. For a candidate who has been hit with being a one-trick pony (Iraq and national security), McCain is doing what he can to make sure folks realize he'll have a robust domestic agenda. Beginning yesterday, he has launched a week-long focus on health care this week. His plan, not surprisingly is reliant on the free market, which he hopes will drive down the cost of health care by slowly moving folks away from having to rely on employers for health care. The Washington Post identifies a $5,000 tax credit as the centerpiece of McCain's proposal, which would be used for individuals to search out the best insurance for their needs. McCain will also borrow a page from Mike Huckabee and talk about prevention and nutrition. McCain backs up his launch with a statewide TV buy in Iowa focused on health care. Meanwhile, the SEIU begins a $1 million TV ad campaign in Ohio hitting McCain for his lack of attention on rising health-care costs. The ad features Bush and McCain hugging and even shows Bush kissing McCain (a visual we bet we'll see again and again and again). There will be a similar ad set to run in DC and West Virginia, but the Ohio buy is a big one and dwarfs, for instance, any anti-McCain spot the DNC has aired to date.
*** Slow ride, take it Easley : In Raleigh, NC this morning, Clinton received one of her biggest endorsements in the last couple of months -- from North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley -- who comes from one of the upcoming pivotal states: North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley. Per NBC/NJ’s Carrie Dann, Easley was long suspected of being in the Clinton camp, but many believed that he would stay neutral. One key to Clinton's past victories in Ohio and Pennsylvania were the huge endorsements from the governors in those states. Easley's endorsement comes just one week before the state's primary, so Clinton might not be able to tap into his political network/machine the way she did with Strickland’s and Rendell’s. But Easley's help, no matter how late, certainly doesn’t hurt. That said, while Easley is retiring after this year, Obama has endorsements from North Carolina's two gubernatorial candidates. What does that tell us about the makeup of the primary electorate?
*** Crunching the numbers : While Clinton picked up a superdelegate with Easley’s endorsement, Obama yesterday got his own from New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman. Here are the counts: SUPERDELEGATES: Clinton 265-242 (288 uncommitted); PLEDGED: Obama 1,490-1,334; OVERALL: Obama 1,733-1,599.
*** On the trail : After her event in Raleigh, NC, Clinton makes six stops in the Hoosier State -- Indianapolis, Gary, Hobart, Evansville, Princeton, and South Bend; McCain, still in Florida, speaks at a cancer research center at the University of South Florida in Tampa and then raises money in Tampa and Bonita Springs; and Obama holds town halls in Winston-Salem and Hickory, NC. Also, Bill Clinton stumps for his wife in North Carolina.
Countdown to North Carolina, Indiana: 7 daysClick here to sign up for First Read emails .
The reviews of Wright’s appearance at the National Press Club yesterday were mostly unkind. The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank : “Wright, explaining this morning why he had waited so long before breaking his silence about his incendiary sermons, offered a paraphrase from Proverbs: ‘It is better to be quiet and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.’ Barack Obama's pastor would have been wise to continue to heed that wisdom. More: "Should it become necessary in the months from now to identify the moment that doomed Obama's presidential aspirations, attention is likely to focus on the hour between nine and ten this morning at the National Press Club. It was then that Wright, Obama's longtime pastor, reignited a controversy about race from which Obama had only recently recovered - and added lighter fuel."
The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson : "I'm sorry, but I've had it with Wright. I would never try to diminish the service he performed as pastor of his Chicago megachurch, and it's obvious that he's a man of great charisma and faith. But this media tour he's conducting is doing a disservice that goes beyond any impact it might have on Obama's presidential campaign. The problem is that Wright insists on being seen as something he's not: an archetypal representative of the African American church. In fact, he represents one twig of one branch of a very large tree."
Adds Bob Herbert : "The Rev. Jeremiah Wright went to Washington on Monday not to praise Barack Obama, but to bury him. Smiling, cracking corny jokes, mugging it up for the big-time news media — this reverend is never going away. He’s found himself a national platform, and he’s loving it."
The New York Times’ Alessandra Stanley : "Now it turns out that Mr. Wright doesn’t hate America, he loves the sound of his own voice. He is not out of touch with the American culture, he is the avatar of the American celebrity principle: he grabbed his 30-second spots of infamy and turned them into 15 minutes of fame."
The Washington Post has this interesting nugget: "Obama aides said Wright had rebuffed their recent offers of public relations assistance. They stressed that they had no warning about a media blitz that included an appearance with Bill Moyers on PBS on Friday night, a nationally televised speech to the NAACP in Detroit on Sunday evening and yesterday's appearance at the National Press Club."
CONTINUED >>
The New York Times front-pages, "Clinton lined up with Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, in endorsing a plan to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for the summer travel season. But Senator Barack Obama, Mrs. Clinton’s Democratic rival, spoke out firmly against the proposal, saying it would save consumers little and do nothing to curtail oil consumption and imports.”
“While Mr. Obama’s view is shared by environmentalists and many independent energy analysts, his position allowed Mrs. Clinton to draw a contrast with her opponent in appealing to the hard-hit middle-class families and older Americans who have proven to be the bedrock of her support. She has accused Mr. Obama of being out of touch with ordinary Americans who are struggling to meet their mortgages and gas up their cars and trucks."
The Washington Post’s fact-checker weighs in on the matter. “The advocates of a ‘gas tax holiday’ are exaggerating the benefits to consumers from their proposal. If the Illinois experience is a guide, there is likely to be some reduction in the price of gas, but it would fall well short of the size of the tax reduction. In order to pay for the tax cut, the government would have to cut back on highway construction and maintenance or find some other way of plugging the shortfall in revenues to the Highway Trust Fund.”
Meanwhile, NBC’s John Yang reports that President Bush will hold a news conference today in the Rose Garden at 10:30 am. He will deliver an opening statement (approximately eight minutes long) regarding Americans’ understandable anxiety about issues affecting their pocketbooks. He will also call upon Congress to send him sensible and effective bills that will help Americans weather this difficult period and keep our country moving forward.
INDIANA : The Indy Star looks at how white women could be the key to any Clinton victory in the state.
NORTH CAROLINA : Gov. Mike Easley is a nice get for Clinton. But "Easley does not have the sort of political machine that Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania used to help deliver votes for Clinton in that state. But Easley is popular with rural, white, blue-collar Democrats, the sort of voters that Clinton has successfully targeted in wins in Pennsylvania and Ohio.”
The Clintons have been quietly courting Easley, who is also a Democratic superdelegate, for months. Former President Clinton has had numerous telephone conversations with Easley."
Politico adds: “Easley is a meaningful ally in the culture war she's waging against Senator Barack Obama, as she seeks to cast him as a hopelessly unelectable liberal elitist and to persuade the Democratic Party leaders who will decide the nomination -- the ‘superdelegates’ -- to choose her instead.
The New York Times writes about the still-silent Edwards family in the primary. Of course, the piece also simply assumes if either Edwards endorses it will be for Clinton.
Clinton trotted out her "Day One" talking points in North Carolina and compared the decision for president to the decision they would make if hiring a surgeon to perform an operation -- you hire someone ready to perform the operation on Day 1.
The Wall Street Journal’s Seib wonders if it's time for another race speech, this one by Clinton. "[I]t is Sen. Clinton who now has the greater ability to ease racial tensions within her party. Arguably, she also has the greater need to do so, for her long-term standing. Simply stated, her camp is the one now being accused of, or at least implicated in, using the race card. The most recent assertions came in the form of comments last week by Rep. James Clyburn, a black Democrat from South Carolina, who accused Sen. Clinton and, more pointedly, former President Clinton, of damaging the Democratic Party by using race to political advantage."
Is what Rev. Wright is doing to Obama similar to what Bill Clinton is doing to Hillary? The New York Times : "The question of what exactly Mr. Clinton’s ‘role’ is in his wife’s campaign has been a much-pondered mystery. As has been the case throughout his public life, Mr. Clinton’s motives, agenda and apparent mistakes have been the source of great speculation outside the Clinton world and hand wringing within it. Inside the Clinton campaign, the general view is that Mr. Clinton’s more provocative statements are not calculated as Mr. Clyburn and others have suggested… What is clear, among insiders, is that Mr. Clinton is playing a big — and some say expanding — role within the operation, one that might be sacrificing part of the accumulated prestige of his long public career for the cause of returning his wife (and himself) to the White House.”
“In the early stages of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, Mr. Clinton often felt left out, according to friends. But after a series of staff changes, he has become a more visible and influential presence, associates said, and an advocate of aggressively confronting Mr. Obama. He is especially close to Cheryl Mills, a former aide to him in the White House who has taken on an increasingly influential position in Mrs. Clinton’s campaign headquarters and provides him with a much more direct line into daily campaign deliberations and strategy decisions. Likewise, Mr. Clinton has settled into something of a “bad cop” role for Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. It is not unlike that of a presidential running mate in a general election, the chief surrogate more safely positioned to attack the opposition while the candidate travels a higher road."
CONTINUED >>
The Washington Post's Shear previews McCain's health care speech today. "In Sen. John McCain's perfect health care world, individuals would each seek the ideal health insurance policy in a competitive marketplace that would drive down premiums even as prevention and healthier living reduces the cost of care. That's the vision McCain will outline Tuesday morning as he launches a week-long discussion of health care and his efforts to improve quality and increase access. The vision is not new -- he's been talking about it for months -- but aides promised a few more details as McCain seeks an alternative to the plans being offered by Democrats.”
“The centerpiece of McCain's plan remains a $5,000 tax credit that individuals could use to search out the best insurance for their needs. McCain economic adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin told reporters in a briefing Monday evening that the tax credit would allow some people to leave their employer-sponsored plan and do better on their own."
USA Today has more: "McCain's plan aims at eliminating ‘the bias toward employer-sponsored health insurance’ by offering tax credits for individual plans, according to his campaign website. The credits would be $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families. Those amounts would be subtracted from the final tax bill. Families, the campaign says, should be able to buy nationwide policies that can move from state to state.”
CONTINUED >>
Who needs Harold Ickes and his database when you are the Obama campaign… Bloomberg News notes the list the campaign is building. "Even if the Democratic presidential candidate doesn't succeed in his White House bid, this data will make Obama a power broker in the party for years to come. For the interest groups or Democratic candidates he chooses to sell it to, it would provide a gold mine of information and access to potential donors. Almost 2 million people have entered personal information on Obama pages on social-networking Web sites such as Facebook, MySpace and his campaign's mybarackobama.com, offering home addresses, phone numbers, their views on specific issues and the names of friends. The data have allowed Obama, 46, to raise more than $200 million, fill sports arenas with supporters across the nation and motivate millions more with custom-tailored messages."
There are a lot of folks waiting for Obama's Sister Souljah moment to be on the issue of affirmative action . Hasn't happened yet but...
Clinton has gotten a bump in the polls since Pennsylvania. In the latest AP/Ipsos poll , she leads McCain, 50%-41% (Obama leads him 46%-44%).
Here’s yet another Wisconsin poll that shows Obama besting McCain -- but McCain beating Clinton.
The Wall Street Journal’s Calmes looks at Obama's potential trump card: elected superdelegates who view Clinton's negatives as too high to have at the top of the ticket.
While there's still more GOPers who think Clinton and not Obama is the easier downballot target, NRCC's Cole has been the consistent dissenter on this issue and is betting that Obama and not Clinton will be the bigger drag. Politico : "Republican-leaning districts could be particularly fertile ground for Obama-focused attacks, GOP officials say. ‘I think he’s the weaker candidate, and I’ve thought that for over a year now,’ NRCC Chairman Tom Cole (Okla.) said at a briefing on Monday. ‘He’s very inexperienced. He is by any definition liberal and to the left of Hillary Clinton, and he will give us plenty of ideological divisions to work with.’”
CONTINUED >>
From NBC/NJ's Aswini Anburajan Obama said he was disappointed today in the new Supreme Court decision that has upheld Indiana's voter ID law, calling it "wrong," and emphasizing that the law could suppress turnout among minorities and poorer voters.
"I am disappointed by today's Supreme Court decision upholding Indiana's photo identification law -- one of the most restrictive in the nation," Obama said in a written statement.
He referenced his decision to file an amicus brief when Indiana's voter ID law was first challenged, saying he did it because he believed that "it places an unfair burden on Indiana residents who are poor, elderly, disabled, or members of minority groups."
Obama pledged to ensure that all voters have "unfettered access to the polls" on May 6th, and added that he was "encouraged that the Court has not complete closed the door to future challenges to state voter ID laws that create discriminatory barriers to the right to vote."
In a 6-3 decision today, the Supreme Court said that Indiana's requirement that voters show a form of identification at the polls is not unconstitutional. Opponents of the law argued that the law placed a burden on the right to vote and would depress turnout among poor, elderly, minority and disabled voters at the polls.
Clinton's Indiana state director, Robbie Mook, when asked about the law, avoided any comment on the decision, only saying: "Our top priority is that every vote will be cast and counted." He added that the campaign would act according to the law and was encouraging its supporters to vote absentee and vote early.
From NBC's John Yang Dean told Tim Russert that he hoped his party's nomination fight would "be over by the end of the month of June." That would require most of the 288 uncommitted superdelegates to declare their support for either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama .
So how does that sound to Leila Medley, the political director for the Missouri National Education Association and one of the superdelegates we profiled for "NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams"?
"He hasn't communicated with me," she says of Dean. "So, for now, I'm still doing my thing -- which is being uncommitted to the convention."
After the bruising Pennsylvania primary campaign, Medley, originally a John Edwards supporter, says the race is "more unpredictable now than a month ago." While still leading in pledged delegates, votes and states won, Obama is "sort of losing ground, it seems to me. He hasn't been able to close the deal."
The pressure from the campaigns and other rank-and-file Democrats has eased up a bit, Medley reports. She still gets letters and e-mails daily, but it's nothing like it once was. Nonetheless, it is wearying. "It seems like it ought to be over," she says with a sigh.
And she's been getting calls on behalf of Clinton from a fellow Missourian -- former House Democratic leader Richard Gephardt. Medley twice went to Iowa in support of Gephardt's presidential campaigns.
"Fortunately, I've been out of the office when he's called," she says.
And she hasn't called back.
From NBC's Mark Murray mentioned earlier , Hillary Clinton is calling for a holiday on the 18.4-cent gasoline tax, and she says she'd make up the funding from that (which funds transportation infrastructure) by taxing oil company's "windfall" profits.
But it's worth pointing out that Clinton OPPOSED efforts to cut or repeal gas taxes during her 2000 Senate contest against Rick Lazio . It's also worth pointing out -- as the RNC has for last several days -- that Obama supported a holiday on Illinois' state gas tax when he was in the IL Senate (although as PoliFact later noted that Obama voted against legislation making the reduction permanent).
Here's what Clinton said at her October 8, 2000 debate with Lazio: "[O]ne of my fundamental disagreements during this campaign with my opponent was when he called for the repeal of the gas tax. Now, the gas tax is one of those few taxes that New York actually gets more money from Washington than we send. And we are totally reliant on it to do things like finishing I-86 in the Southern Tier, or the fast- ferry harbor works up in Rochester, as well as the work we need to do here in the city. So you can count on me to support infrastructure."
And here's a June 28, 2000 Newsday clip: "Campaigning in the Hudson Valley, Lazio continued a two-day assault on Clinton's support of maintaining the 18-cent federal gas tax and then used tough rhetoric to declare that 'trust' and 'character' were campaign issues during an evening fundraiser in Manhattan that raised more that $1 million. Clinton, meanwhile, lashed out at Lazio's plan to repeal 4.3 cents of the gas tax, calling it 'a bad deal for New York and a potential bonanza for the oil companies.'"
"During a visit to a shopping mall in the Buffalo suburbs, Clinton said that 'the gas tax is one of the few exceptions where we actually get more money back than we send to Washington.'"
(Hat tip to Political Base .)
*** UPDATE ***
From NBC/NJ's Athena Jones Obama spoke about his controversial former pastor the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Wright is back in the news today after delivering a fierce defense of himself and the ideas he has put forth in which he argued that mainstream America did not understand the black church.
Obama did not address the content of Wright's remarks to the National Press Club in Washington today, instead restating his view that he found some of the pastor's remarks offensive but saying the man whose church he has attended for 20 years had a right to speak his own mind.
"He does not speak for me. He does not speak for the campaign, and so, he may make statements in the future that don’t reflect my values or concerns," the senator told reporters who strained to hear him on the loud tarmac. At one point, he had to pause as a helicopter flew by.
Obama said he would remain focused on the issues voters were asking him about, like how to deal with lost jobs and high gas prices. He said voters had not mentioned Wright to him. He argued, as he did earlier today, that his rivals were trying to distract the American people and make this election about him.
"Obviously, what people like John McCain are now doing is, not being on the strong side of the issues, have decided they're gonna try to make this campaign about me," he said.
He said voters could separate him from his associates.
CONTINUED >>
From NBC/NJ's Mike Memoli, NBC's Mark Murray and Domenico Montanaro Easley , two-term North Carolina governor in his final year, will endorse Hillary Clinton at a rally in Raleigh tomorrow, according to sources in the governor's office and sources close to the Clinton campaign.
Easley is a superdelegate, bringing Clinton's superdelegate lead to 265-242 (288 supers are uncommitted).
PLEDGED: Obama 1,491-1,334
*** UPDATE *** NBC/NJ's Carrie Dann adds the following for context on Easley's endorsement:
Suspicions of his allegiance were all but confirmed earlier this month when Easley publicly criticized Barack Obama for declining CBS's invitation to debate in North Carolina.
Local experts often draw parallels between Easley's early career, which began with a failed run at federal office and a stint as attorney general, and President Bill Clinton's. Easley was heavily recruited as a candidate for the U.S. Senate, and it's widely believed that he could have been a formidable challenger to Elizabeth Dole. But Easley declined to run, famously saying that he wouldn't like a job that entailed "sitting in meetings" all day.
Although he enjoys fairly strong support in the state, Easley tends not to be described as a hard worker. Some politicos in the state quipped that he would stay on the sidelines because following through with an endorsement would be too much work for the laid-back legislator.
He was recently on the hotseat for violations of public records transparency by his press office, which reportedly requested that some e-mail traffic in and out of the governor's office be deleted. The man Easley appointed to oversee the resulting campaign for reform offered the capital press corps a good laugh when he was quoted as admitting that he didn't know how to "cut on a computer."
From NBC/NJ’s Mike Memoli Clinton used her latest proposal on oil prices to portray herself as the fighter in the race, telling a few hundred people at the local train station here that she’d be their champion in the White House.
CONTINUED >>
From NBC/NJ's Athena Jones Obama spent much of his speech at a town hall here on the Carolina coast focusing on economic issues, but he used his first few minutes to urge supporters to hit the polls early -- as early as today, in fact.
"You don’t have to wait until Election Day to vote. You can vote right after you leave this rally. You don’t even have to be registered yet. You can go and register and vote all in one stop and you can do that before Saturday,” he said, going on to give the number for his hotlines and his Web site address for people who want information on where to go.
Polls show the Illinois senator leading Clinton in the Tar Heel State, but exit polling data from the contests he lost in Pennsylvania and Ohio also show he has had problems making inroads with blue-collar voters and those without college degrees, voters who are more concerned about the kind of kitchen-table issues his rival has made a point of emphasizing.
Over the weekend in Indiana, Obama talked extensively about gas prices, lost jobs, health care, and paying for college. Today in North Carolina, before a crowd the campaign estimated at 5,000, he spoke about Americans who were working harder and harder to get by, who were struggling to pay for food and college. He said many people felt like the American dream was slipping away, echoing the kinds of lines Clinton often uses on the stump. He also said that when he talks about the need to change the way politics is done in Washington, he is "being very specific.” It’s another favorite line of his rival's -- one she uses to paint him as more rhetoric than action, a criticism he has increasingly sought to address in his stump speech.
In a bid to connect with voters, Obama talked about his work as a community organizer and ended his remarks with a slice out of his life story, focusing on being raised by a single mother and about his grandfather who was from a small town in Kansas “"right smack dab in the middle of the Midwest.”
Obama hit back at McCain for criticizing him for opposing a gas-tax holiday the Arizona senator has proposed. "He had the gall yesterday to tell me that obviously because I didn’t agree with his plan I must not be sympathetic to poor people,” Obama said. “That’s what he said. This is at the same time that he is proposing hundreds of billion of dollars of more tax breaks for corporate interests, to the wealthiest Americans. And he doesn’t explain how it is that we are going to replace the Highway Trust Fund. That’s where your gasoline tax goes to rebuild roads and bridges and put people to back to work right here in North Carolina. So but, you see, here’s the thing: That’s typical of how Washington works.”
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From NBC's Mark Murray TV ad by the Democratic National Committee whacking McCain on the Iraq war.
The ad -- which the DNC said it will air on MSNBC and CNN -- hits McCain for his past statement that he would be fine with US soldiers remaining in Iraq for "maybe 100" years. McCain did say that, but as the RNC and other fact-checkers have pointed out, it was in the context of talking about a peace-keeping force in Iraq after the violence there had ended.
The RNC also charged that the DNC and the Obama and Clinton were coordinating with each other (by sharing similar pollsters and polling firms and having meetings), and that made this new TV ad illegal.
DNC spokeswoman Stacie Paxton tells First Read that: "1) we used McCain's own words and 2) there has been no coordination. These are just baseless claims -- we obviously struck a nerve." The DNC will elaborate on those arguments in its own conference call later this afternoon.
*** UPDATE ***
"He is completely out of touch with where the American people are on the war," Dean said, later saying: "There is nothing false about this at all... [These are] John McCain's own words... You are going to see a lot of this kind of stuff."
Also on the DNC call, general counsel Joe Sandler said the RNC's claim of coordination between the DNC and the Democratic presidential campaigns is "completely baseless." And he noted that there was no indication from MSNBC and CNN that they would NOT air the ad.
From NBC's Domenico Montanaro Obama just picked up the support of Sen. Jeff Bingaman (NM), the campaign announced. Bingaman chairs the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Obama leads among senators 15-12 among senators, not including those from Michigan and Florida. But factoring in even the support Clinton has from Sens. Debbie Stabenow (MI) and Bill Nelson (FL) -- Carl Levin (MI) is uncommitted -- Bingaman gave Obama the lead, 15-14. Obama has now picked up five superdelegates to Clinton's two since her nearly double-digit win in Pennsylvania.
SUPERDELEGATES: Clinton 264-242 (289 uncommitted)
From NBC's Cherelle Kantey and Abby Livingston WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The man who has been at the center of a political controversy for the past six weeks -- Jeremiah Wright -- spoke today in DC and was unrepentant in his remarks.
His speech here at the packed National Press Club, which kicked off a two-day symposium on the African American religious experience, provided mostly context and a history of the black church. He also offered a vigorous defense of himself and said attacks on him were, in fact, attacks on the black church, an institution he said is misunderstood by many whites.
“Maybe now, as that dialogue begins, the religious tradition that has kept hope alive for a people struggling to survive in countless hopeless situations, maybe that religious tradition will be understood, celebrated and even embraced,” Wright said. With an audience that included those from his alma mater, Howard University, there was mostly agreement.
The tone turned more combative during the question-and-answer session. Wright didn’t miss a chance to throw digs at the press corps seated and standing before him and even above him in the balcony of the press club. Outside the press club, a smattering of protestors both in support and against Wright exchanged taunts.
Wright did not mention “Obama ” until almost 30 minutes into his opening remarks, but he did not shy away from bringing Obama into his comments during the Q&A. Wright’s appearance brought him back to center stage in this presidential race despite Obama’s efforts to explain his former pastor’s experience in a widely lauded speech on race in America.
“We both know that if Sen. Obama did not say what he said, he would never get elected,” Wright said. “Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites based on polls…. Preachers say what they say because they are pastors. They have to have to have a different person to whom they are accountable. As I said, whether he gets elected or not, I'm still going to have to be answerable to God Nov. 5th and Jan. 21st…. I do what pastors do; he does what politicians do.”
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From NBC/NJ’s Adam Aigner-Treworgy McCain ’s health-care roundtable this morning and the impending rollout of his health-care proposal tomorrow. On the call, Elizabeth Edwards responded to the public back-and-forth between her and McCain on whether McCain’s plan would cover people like them -- cancer survivors -- and whether McCain’s Naval health-care coverage has put him out of touch with the trials of the open healthcare market.
On ABC’s “This Week” last Sunday McCain said he would establish a “special Medicaid trust fund set up to help take care for those people who are -- have preexisting conditions.” He then referenced that five chronic diseases account for more than 70 percent of the health-care costs in America, but it was unclear if the special “trust fund” McCain referred to would be intended to address those costs.
If so, Edwards said on the center’s call this afternoon that the costs associated with such a program would be “enormous.”
“If he’s talking about expanding Medicaid to cover chronic conditions…he is talking about the most radical expansion of government health care that has been proposed -- that I know of,” Edwards said.
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From NBC/NJ’s Aswini Anburajan INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- Continuing to beat the drum on the need for a debate in Indiana, Sen. Hillary
Clinton 's Indiana state director, Robbie Mook told reporters on a conference call this afternoon that it was "more productive to discuss plans to create jobs openly and publicly rather than through people's mailboxes through false negative attacks."
Clinton's Indiana team accused the
Obama campaign of distributing "negative attack mailers" that "distort" Clinton's record on jobs. By contrast, they argued, Clinton's upcoming three-day visit to the state will focus on "her positive vision for the country" with a "Standing Up for Jobs; Standing Up for You" theme.
"She will be visiting with Hoosiers where they live and where they work in more intimate settings, to continue listening to the daily struggles they are facing," Mook said.
Clinton will return to Northwest Indiana where a significant portion of the Democratic vote exists, but that poses a challenge for her because it’s located in the Chicago media market. Mook told reporters voters in the area were working class and union members, and despite a familiarity with Obama, they would be open to Clinton's message.
"This campaign is about jobs, jobs, jobs," he said, repeating the line that has become the campaign's rallying cry across the state.
Clinton's visit, including those made by her husband and daughter, will mark the campaign's 70th stop in the state, with 39 cities visited, part of a strategy to have face-to-face interaction in as many communities as possible.
Over the weekend,
Bill Clinton marked his 24th stop in Indiana, winding his way through small, rural towns in Northeastern Indiana, which were at times so remote that nary a ubiquitous Dairy Queen in sight. The former president told partially filled gymnasiums of older voters that it was individuals in communities like these that helped his wife stay in the race.
From NBC/NJ's Mike Memoli Clinton said she regretted that Republicans have “politicized” the matter and criticized McCain for not acting more strongly to put a stop to ads by local Republicans that invoke Obama’s former pastor.
“I believe that if Senator McCain was serious, he would do more than send a letter,” Clinton told reporters this morning. “He is the putative nominee. I think he could very clearly tell the North Carolina party, tell the Mississippi party that he would not tolerate to those kinds of advertisements and I am waiting to see whether he does that.”
Asked later whether new public comments from Wright, particularly those mocking Presidents Kennedy and Johnson , reflected on Obama, Clinton was terse, saying only: “You’ll have to ask him that.”
Clinton also was asked about reports that her husband has seized a larger role in the campaign. “I’m very proud to the role my husband is playing in the campaign,” she said. “I think it’s very helpful to have the only successful two-term Democratic president since Franklin Roosevelt campaign for me.”
But she did not answer -- even in a follow up -- concerns that have been raised by some party leaders, most notably Rep. Jim Clyburn , that some of his public comments are having a detrimental role.
CONTINUED >>
From NBC's Pete Williams
The vote was 6-3, with Justice John Paul Stevens joining the mostly conservative majority.
Democrats had attacked the law, saying it created a burden for poor, minority, and handicapped voters, who would have a harder time getting government-issued IDs. They accused Indiana officials of passing the law to suppress the minority vote.
From Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, and Domenico Montanaro You’re so vain, you probably think this campaign is about you: After addressing the NAACP yesterday in Detroit, Jeremiah Wright travels to the heart of the media beast -- the National Press Club in DC -- where he has been speaking this morning. At this point, no matter one's political inexperience, Wright has to know he's not helping his friend; his decision to go public and defend his reputation at this point in the campaign is doing nothing to help Obama, if anything, it's leading some to believe he's actually trying to sabotage him. He's hurting him and hurting him very badly. Frankly, it’s as selfish of a move as we've seen in some time. Imagine, for example, if Norman Hsu or Vicki Iseman were doing publicity tours right now. Maybe, if there's a silver lining for Obama, he's giving Obama a very easy chance to simply walk away. Remember, Obama didn't toss Wright under the bus, but Wright appears to be doing that to Obama’s candidacy. Still, if Wright Vol. 1, “bitter,” and Pennsylvania didn’t move superdelegates, what will? Nevertheless, Obama seems to be starting off this week in about as bad of shape as we've seen in him in some time.
*** McCain on the offensive: One of the more interesting political developments over the past few days has been McCain’s harsh tone toward Obama -- on Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, and even Hamas (noting that the terrorist organization prefers Obama to win the presidency). A few things seem to be going on here. One, it looks like McCain is using this to define Obama on these matters. Two, the Arizona senator seems to be trying to draw a line in the sand now that he’s going to be tough on Obama -- unlike how Obama’s Democratic rivals treated him early on. (If they set the ground rules this far out, they can draw him into a fight early and potentially hurt him on his greatest strength: that he’s above the fray.) And three, it seems McCain is trying to shore up his base and placate the GOP’s amplifiers on these issues. (check out the 90%+ he's already getting from Republicans in nat'l polls; who woulda thunk he would have 90% of the GOP at all, let alone in late April). The downside to McCain’s tough tone, of course, is that it's very un-McCain. This isn’t the same guy we saw in 2000 or even in the GOP primaries until he began whacking Romney in Florida. Indeed, this tack can turn off folks (especially those coveted independents) as much as it might hurt Obama.
*** Obama’s re-launch: One story the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal all seem to agree on today: Obama’s recasting his stump speech as he talks more about the economy. Obama is trying to address an economic weakness the same way a professional basketball player approaches his craft -- by working on the weak parts of your game. Yet expect the Clinton campaign to jump on something in particular that was in the New York Times, the implication that Obama's "bored" with the primary. We can almost hear the Clinton hit on this now: "So, apparently, my opponent is bored debating the issues with me; he's bored, folks.” Now, the New York Times never quoted Obama as saying he was "bored"; it's a characterization based on interviews with aides. But the comment is one that can easily be used for some stump lines today. Yet let's take this "bored" sentiment a step further -- it's clearly a reflection of a candidate who seems to be struggling with what to say next and how to refine his pitch just enough to finish the job. The campaign seems to be shying away from the big rally approach. Here's our question: Why aren't they simply re-running their Iowa/New Hampshire strategy where he did a little of both, big rallies in small towns?
*** I challenge you to a duel: Clinton has not let a day go by without bringing up her debate challenge. What's been interesting is that Clinton keeps changing the offer; it started with simply accepting another media organized debate; then it shifted to Lincoln-Douglas-style debates (i.e. no moderator) and finally, yesterday, she offered to debate him on a flatbed truck. Maybe tomorrow she'll call for debates in the back of an astro-turf-lined El Camino. Still, the doggedness of the debate challenge may start to get under Obama's skin -- and given Wright's decision to not get out of the news -- maybe a debate will be what Obama wants in order to change the focus of the last week of this campaign.
*** Hillary Strangelove? Because of Jeremiah Wright remaining in the news, not that much attention has been paid to Clinton’s recent comments regarding Iran and the Middle East. But Sunday’s Boston Globe weighed in -- harshly. It dubbed her “Hillary Strangelove,” because of her umbrella Iran-Mideast ally retaliation policy. And the paper called that "Rambo rhetoric" that "plays into the hands of Iranian hard-liners who want to plow ahead with efforts to attain a nuclear weapons capability." More: “[T]here are some red lines that should never be crossed,” it said. “Clinton did so Tuesday morning, the day of the Pennsylvania primary, when she told ABC's ‘Good Morning America’ that, if she were president, she would ‘totally obliterate’ Iran if Iran attacked Israel. This foolish and dangerous threat was muted in domestic media coverage. But it reverberated in headlines around the world.”
*** What say you, superdelegates? By the end of June, Howard Dean says (and said again on Meet the Press ) he wants superdelegates to come out to say which Democratic candidate they are backing. Just asking… After 15 months, do they really need more than two more months? For those keeping score at home, Clinton and Obama each picked up a superdelegate over the weekend. Clinton got the backing of New Hampshire add-on Kathy Sullivan, the state's former party chair. Obama picked up Charlene Fernandez (AZ), who filled a vacancy. Here’s where the counts stand: SUPERDELEGATES: Clinton 264-241 (290 still undecided); PLEDGED: Obama 1,491-1,334; OVERALL: Obama 1,732-1,598.
*** On the trail: Clinton spends her day in North Carolina, stumping in Graham, Salisbury, Concord, and finally with a rally in Charlotte; McCain is in Miami, where he holds a health-care roundtable; and Obama campaigns in North Carolina, hitting Wilmington, Wilson, and ending with a rally in Chapel Hill. Also, Bill and Chelsea Clinton are both in North Carolina.
Countdown to North Carolina, Indiana: 8 daysClick here to sign up for First Read emails.
INDIANA: Could Indiana go blue, really? A poll out this week showed Obama beating McCain and Clinton tied with him there. The Boston Globe looks at the possibility: “Long an afterthought in presidential politics, Indiana Democrats -- who haven't delivered their state in the general election since 1964, and haven't had a meaningful say in picking their party's nominee since 1968 - see the growing excitement over the contest between Clinton and Barack Obama as an opportunity to build up muscle in places where the party's national reach had atrophied.”
NORTH CAROLINA: Some stats for you. First, this one from today's Raleigh News & Observer : "The popularity of early voting can be seen in the numbers. By Friday night, more than 121,500 people statewide had voted at one-stop locations, according to the State Board of Elections, and an additional 10,593 mailed ballots."
And next, check out these stats in Sunday's Los Angeles Times : "As a prelude to North Carolina's May 6 Democratic presidential primary, state voters recently were asked about prejudices. As related by the News & Observer in Raleigh, here's what the poll found: A whopping number -- 91% -- said race would not affect their political decisions, but 54% said they knew someone who would not cast a ballot for a black candidate. A candidate's gender, 79% said, would make no difference to them, but 63% said they knew someone who would not vote for a woman.”
“The survey by Elon University also looked ahead to the fall election, which will feature Republican John McCain trying to become the oldest person elected to a first presidential term. No problem, 66% said; age would not be a factor in their vote. But 44% said they knew someone who would not support someone they viewed as ‘too old.’” Nice to know there are so many open-minded folks in the Tar Heel State. Too bad about so many of their neighbors, though."
Just how badly does the presidential primary hurt the downballot primaries? "In some ways, next week's North Carolina primary is like rock star Bruce Springsteen showing up at a high school battle of the bands. In a very short time, the Democratic presidential duel between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton has taken center stage. And the dozens of Tar Heel races -- from the statehouse to the courthouse -- have been reduced to a political sideshow struggling to draw voters' attention.”
“The presidential candidates are drawing the huge crowds, dominating the TV ads, vacuuming up the news coverage and driving the voter turnout. State candidates, strategists and party leaders -- some of whom have been carefully planning their campaigns for years -- are scrambling to figure out how to maneuver in a changed political landscape."
Bloomberg's Al Hunt sums up what is probably the undeniable fallout of this campaign regardless of who ends up the Dem nominee: "Bill Clinton May Be Biggest Loser of Campaign." More: "Before this campaign, he was an international statesman extraordinaire and the guru for ambitious Democratic politicians. In recent months, he has devalued himself and his future by his conduct. Although he has a decent relationship with John McCain, given the continuing partisan resentment of Bill Clinton, he would remain largely in exile under a Republican president.”
“If Hillary Clinton upsets the odds and wins the presidency, it's likely to prove an unhappy time for her husband. He would be scrutinized, politically and personally; political strains between the president and first spouse would emerge.”
“A President Obama would drive him crazy. If not irrelevant, it would make Clinton a secondary figure within his own country and party. There is little that would make him more frustrated or angrier."
Speaking of Bill, the New Yorker's Lizza has an interesting piece about Bill vs. Barack. "Adjusting to the modern, gaffe-centric media environment has been wrenching. At most of his Pennsylvania stops, the national press was represented mainly by a pair of young TV-network ‘embeds,’ whom Clinton regards not as reporters but as media jackals who record his every utterance yet broadcast only his outbursts, a phenomenon that has helped transform him into a YouTube curiosity and diminished him -- perhaps permanently. ‘It’s like he’s been plucked out of time and thrown into the middle of this entirely new kind of campaign,’ the adviser told me. Jay Carson, a senior Clinton campaign official and Bill’s former spokesman, said, “Because of the way he is covered, the only thing anyone ever sees is fifteen seconds that is deemed by the pundits to be off message.”
About that $10 million in one day from 100,000 donors... Politico's Vogel throws some cold water on the figures: "It made no difference that the details didn’t always add up -- wide variations in the numbers of new donors; a conflicting timeline of when the money was actually raised. It was the eye-popping $10 million figure -- the most ever claimed in a 24-hour period -- that dominated the news cycle."
CONTINUED >>
Here are advanced experts of McCain’s remarks on health care today. “As a nation, we do not uniformly deliver the best possible care. Shortfalls in patient safety and medical errors remain a dangerous reality, and too many Americans do not have health insurance. But most importantly, our health care is too expensive. We spend a staggering amount of money on health care -- over $2 trillion and almost twice as much as any other country per person. Within the decade total health care spending will more than double and consume nearly one out of every five dollars in America.”
More: “We can build a health care system that is more responsive to our needs and is delivered to more people at lower cost. The ‘solution,’ my friends, isn't a one-size-fits-all-big government takeover of health care. It resides where every important social advance has always resided - with the American people themselves… The engine of our prosperity and progress has always been our freedom and the sense of responsibility for and control of our own destiny that freedom requires. The public's trust in government waxes and wanes. But we have always trusted in ourselves to meet any challenge that required only our ingenuity and industry to surmount. Any "solution" that robs us of that essential sense of ourselves is a cure far worse than the affliction it is meant to treat.”
Over the weekend, the New York Times ran this story: “Given Senator John McCain’s signature stance on campaign finance reform, it was not surprising that he backed legislation last year requiring presidential candidates to pay the actual cost of flying on corporate jets. The law, which requires campaigns to pay charter rates when using such jets rather than cheaper first-class fares, was intended to reduce the influence of lobbyists and create a level financial playing field. But over a seven-month period beginning last summer, Mr. McCain’s cash-short campaign gave itself an advantage by using a corporate jet owned by a company headed by his wife, Cindy McCain, according to public records. For five of those months, the plane was used almost exclusively for campaign-related purposes, those records show.”
“Mr. McCain’s campaign paid a total of $241,149 for the use of that plane from last August through February, records show. That amount is approximately the cost of chartering a similar jet for a month or two, according to industry estimates. The senator was able to fly so inexpensively because the law specifically exempts aircraft owned by a candidate or his family or by a privately held company they control. The Federal Election Commission adopted rules in December to close the loophole -- rules that would have required substantial payments by candidates using family-owned planes -- but the agency soon lost the requisite number of commissioners needed to complete the rule making.”
CONTINUED >>
The New York Times front-pages that Obama “is making subtle changes to his campaign style and message in an effort to strengthen his appeal to blue-collar voters and to avoid a defeat in Indiana that aides fear could give Democratic Party leaders further pause about his viability in a general election… Mr. Obama is seeking to absorb the lessons of his defeat in Pennsylvania. The changes reflect concern that he is being portrayed by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as distant and culturally out of touch with many working-class Democrats, a worry underlined by her lopsided victory among many of those voters in that state on Tuesday and last month in Ohio.”
More: “In interviews with several associates and aides, Mr. Obama was described as bored with the campaign against Mrs. Clinton and eager to move into the general election against Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee. So the Obama campaign is undertaking modifications in his approach intended to inject an air of freshness into his style. In strategy sessions last week, advisers concluded that Mr. Obama, of Illinois, needed to do a better job reminding voters of his biography, including his modest upbringing by a single mother and one of his first jobs as a community organizer helping displaced steel mill workers. He also has to sharpen his economic message, they said, to improve his appeal and connection with voters in hope of capitalizing on the sensibilities that served him well in Midwestern states.”
The Washington Post adds, “[I]n a noteworthy shift, the Illinois senator is trying to reach working-class and middle-class voters by arguing more explicitly that the reform ideas driving his campaign can address the economic troubles that threaten their way of life. Supplanting lobbyist influence with citizen activism, uniting the country beyond petty partisan gamesmanship and bringing more candor to government, he argues, are not just abstract goals, but concrete steps that can level the playing field and lead to a more equitable distribution of the nation's wealth… Obama hopes the message, still being refined, will bring a victory in the May 6 primary here and help him close out the battle for the Democratic nomination against New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. But interviews here suggested it is not an easy sell. Obama's faith in the power of numbers has taken hold with young and engaged voters, but it is harder to convince Americans who have grown dissociated from their government that they have a role to play beyond going to the polls every few years.”
WSJ runs a similar story. "Barack Obama recast his call for change by speaking more directly to voters' economic concerns as polls show him in a dead heat with Hillary Clinton in Indiana. The shift comes amid signs that Sen. Obama's lofty appeals for hope and change may not be resonating with financially insecure voters, and may even be driving them away.”
The Washington Post looks at the debate Wright has sparked inside many black churches. "Wright's appearance today at the National Press Club will begin the annual Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference. The conference, named for the noted religious scholar, will bring black religious leaders from across the country to Howard University. And at the center of the discussions will be the powerful and provocative tenets of liberation theology.”
CONTINUED >>
A staggering stat courtesy of today's Washington Post : 1 million new voters have registered for the last seven primaries. "The past seven states to hold primaries registered more than 1 million new Democratic voters; Republican numbers mainly ebbed or stagnated. North Carolina and Indiana, which will hold their presidential primaries on May 6, are reporting a swell of new Democrats that triples the surge in registrations before the 2004 primary."
USA Today takes a closer look at the coalitions each candidate has built in general election matchups. "Republicans lined up more solidly behind McCain than Democrats did behind Obama. Nine of 10 Republicans backed the Arizona senator, compared with eight of 10 Democrats who supported the Illinois senator. Each got equal support, 8%, from members of the other party.
Human Rights Campaign president Joe Solmonese and Democratic strategist Paul Begala hold a media conference call at 10:00 am ET to announce the launch of the HRC’s unprecedented nationwide campaign to mobilize voters for the 2008 election and discuss the state of the national electorate in terms of electing pro-civil rights leaders.
From NBC/NJ’s Adam Aigner-Treworgy McCain spoke with reporters in Miami Sunday afternoon at a press conference that had been hastily arranged late Friday night. The ostensible purpose of the event was to allow the presumptive GOP nominee to continue criticizing
Obama for not supporting his gas tax holiday proposal.
But what was seemingly meant as another chapter in an ongoing series of criticism quickly moved toward the issue of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the North Carorlina Republican Party’s continued commitment to airing an ad referencing Wright’s comments in connection with Obama. Over the course of an 18-minute press conference McCain used Obama’s name an average of once per minute -- many times in response to direct questions but almost every time in a disparaging context.
The highlights include a reference to additional comments by Wright -- that McCain claimed he had just seen yesterday -- in which the pastor compared “the United States Marine Corps with Roman Legionnaires who were responsible for the death of our Savior,” according to McCain.
He also referenced a comment made by Obama this morning on Fox News Sunday in which McCain relayed that his Democratic opponent said that Wright’s comments are “legitimate political issue.”
“I have said that I will not…have any comment on it and that’s because I thought and I believe that Sen. Obama does not share those views” expressed by Wright, McCain said. “But Sen. Obama himself says it’s a legitimate political issue, so I would imagine that many other people will share that view, and it’ll be in the arena.”
On whether he has the ability to stop the NC GOP from running an ad with clips of Wright, McCain once again said that he had done all he can do, although he did admit that he has not personally tried to contact the state party and he does not plan on punishing the party if they go through with plans to place the ad on TV.
The Obama campaign responded in writing this way: "By sinking to a level that he specifically said he'd avoid, John McCain has broken his word to the American people and rendered hollow his promise of a respectful campaign. With each passing day, John McCain acts more and more like someone who's spent twenty-six years learning the divisive, distracting tactics of Washington. That's not the change that the American people are looking for."
From NBC’s Domenico Montanaro This weekend,
Clinton and
Obama each picked up a superdelegate. Clinton got the backing of New Hampshire add-on Kathy Sullivan, the state's former party chair. Obama picked up Charlene Fernandez (AZ), who filled a vacancy.
SUPERDELEGATES: Clinton 264-241 (290 still undecided)
PLEDGED: Obama 1,491-1,334
OVERALL: Obama 1,732-1,598
From NBC/NJ’s Athena Jones INDIANOPLIS, Ind. --
Obama told reporters Sunday that Indiana was important, but declined to call it a "tie-breaker" as he had before.
"I think that Indiana is a very important state," he said during a roughly five-minute impromptu press conference outside a restaurant he visited after attending church. "So is North Carolina. We don’t take that for granted, so I'm going to be going down there on Monday and Tuesday, but there’s no doubt that Indiana is a state where it's close; it's tied statistically in the polls. We feel very strongly that our message of bringing about change in Washington is something that will resonate with the people here in Indiana."
Since his nearly double-digit loss to
Clinton in Pennsylvania Tuesday, Obama has faced more questions from reporters and pundits about why he can't seem to "close the deal" with voters. Many see wins here in the Hoosier State and in North Carolina on May 6 as key to helping him do that. Polls show a tight race in the former and Obama leading in the latter.
The Illinois senator said he didn't believe the Midwestern values that Indiana, his home state of Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri and other states represented were "reflected in the debates in Washington" and talked about the need to end political bickering.
He said a win was a win in Indiana and defined a win as 50 plus 1.
Obama declined to answer questions about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright or what it would mean to lose Indiana. When asked to respond to Clinton's latest challenge to a Lincoln-Douglas style debate without a moderator, he repeated his earlier statement that he would not debate before May 6, because he wanted to focus on meeting as many voters as possible in the nine days remaining. He kept open the possibility of considering "something" after those contests, but did not answer directly whether he thought that particular style of debate would be a good idea.
From NBC/NJ’s Athena Jones In an interview on Fox News Sunday,
Obama acknowledged he may have some work to do to attract blue-collar voters.
"They are less familiar with me than they are with her," he told Chris Wallace. "So we probably have to work a little bit harder. I’ve got to be more present. I’ve got to be knocking on more doors. I’ve got to be hitting more events. We’ve got to work harder, because although it’s flipped a little bit, we’ve always been the underdog in this race."
Obama expressed confidence that his race would not keep him from being elected in the general election, despite exit polls in Pennsylvania that showed votes divided along racial lines. He also argued he was putting unexpected states in play.
"If you look at the general-election polls, we are doing better against John
McCain than Sen.
Clinton is," he said. "And we are putting states in play like Colorado and Virginia that have not been in play for a very long time. Here in Indiana, we just-- you just saw polling by the Indianapolis Star showing me beating John McCain."
He called his association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright a "legitimate political issue" but argued, as he has in the past, that the use of 30-second sound bites had simplified and caricatured his former pastor and said he felt that had been "done in a fairly deliberate way," calling it "unfortunate."
"I also know that I go to church not to worship the pastor, to worship God,” he added. “And that ministry, the church family that's been built there, does outstanding work, has been I think applauded for its outreach to the poor.”
He also discussed his association with 1960s radical William Ayers and issues like charter schools, merit pay for teachers, tort reform and Iraq. The senator said he would not debate Clinton again before the May 6th contests. The interview was taped Saturday, before news that Clinton had challenged Obama to a 90-minute, moderator-free, Lincoln-Douglas-style debate. After the news, Obama's campaign maintained that there had been plenty of debates and that after May 6, they would consider more.
From NBC/NJ's Athena Jones ANDERSON, IN -- As Obama campaigned in Indiana this weekend, he talked about his attempts to avoid the kind of divisive politics that he says have shaped this country over the last 20 years. It's a central part of his "new politics" argument
"If you watched the last few weeks of this campaign, you would think that all politics is about is negative ads and bickering and arguing and gaffes and sideline issues," he complained. "There's no discussion, serious discussion about how we're actually gonna bring back jobs to Anderson. That's not what's been debated. That's not what's being discussed, but that's the politics that we've become used to over the last 20 years. I'm tired of that politics 'cause it doesn't solve problems."
Obama went on to talk about his work across the aisle in the Illinois state house and the US Senate, saying he had tried to resist the old politics. "So one of the things that we've gotta do is bring this country together and stop being distracted by, you know, back-and-forth, tit-and-tat (sic) bickering," he said. "I have been trying to resist this in this campaign and I will continue to resist it when I'm president of the United States of America."
CONTINUED >>
From NBC/NJ's Athena Jones Obama has been known to shoot a few hoops from time to time, but Friday night in central Indiana was the first opportunity the traveling press has had to bear witness to his skills as a baller.
Obama played in a 3-on-3 basketball game after a town hall here. The other participants were Marion High School junior Blake Hancock and Indiana University-Kokomo freshman Kory McKay, both supporters who collected voter registration forms from new voters to qualify for the “3-on-3 "Challenge for Change."
Hancock, who wore a T-shirt with "Blake the Great" on the back, invited two friends to join the game. Also on the court were WNBA Indiana Fever’s Alison Bales -- the tallest player on the court -- and the Fever’s Tamika Catchings, an Olympic gold medalist, who refereed.
Obama came out on the floor to cheers of "Yes we can." He wore long navy sweats, white tennis shoes, and a gray USMC (US Marine Corp) t-shirt, a gift from an agent.
He had a few turnovers and managed several assists, many of them to Bales, who hit quite a few shots herself.
From NBC/NJ's Mike Memoli and Athena Jones SOUTH BEND, IN -- Clinton yesterday threw a curveball in her latest pitch to get Obama to debate her before the May 6 primary here, calling for a Lincoln-Douglas style meeting that would have the two go head-to-head without a moderator.
Standing on a platform above home plate at South Bend’s minor league ballpark, Clinton noted that Obama partisans “complained a little bit about the tough questions” during the April 16 debate in Philadelphia, and also “complained about the moderators.” She also alleged that the Obama camp had “turned down every debate that has been offered.”
“I’m offering Sen. Obama a chance to debate me one-on-one, no moderators,” she said. “Just the two of us, going for 90 minutes, asking an answering questions.”
She said such a meeting would be a throwback to the debates of Lincoln and Douglas in neighboring Illinois 150 years ago, when the two met seven times. She also said Indiana deserved such a forum, having “wandered in the wilderness of American politics for 40 years,” the last time the state mattered in presidential primary politics. “Who knows we might even carry Indiana in the fall if we start with a good debate right here,” she added.
“We’ve had four debates between Sen. Obama and myself -- that’s all we’ve had since this whole campaign has gone on,” she said. “I think that would be good for the Democratic Party, it would be great for democracy, and it would be great for Indiana.”
Just before Clinton made that challenge, however, Obama told Fox News Sunday that he would not take part in any further debates before two-state showdown in North Carolina and Indiana on May 6.
In addition, Obama chief strategist David Axelrod gave NBC/NJ this response to Clinton's challenge. "I think if Lincoln-Douglas had debated 21 times, I don't think there would be much appetite for another Lincoln-Douglas debate."
CONTINUED >>
From NBC's Domenico Montanaro
The RBC has two challenges before it from supporters of seating voting delegations from Michigan (Ferguson) and Florida (Ausman). Those challenges generally dispute that the committee had the authority, in part, to strip those states of their delegates.
Members of the RBC could potentially come to the meeting with an agreed-upon solution that would quash the issue. But if that doesn’t happen -- something that has seemed a near impossibility so far -- the committee would take up the complaints and possibly vote on them. If those challenges are voted down, then any further appeals would have to be made to that Credentials Committee.
From NBC's Mark Murray McCain has taken some critical -- and, some might argue, personal -- shots at Obama . On Sunday, McCain questioned the tenuous association Obama has with the former '60s radical William Ayers. Yesterday, he delivered a jab at Obama's association with Jeremiah Wright. (Responding to questions about the endorsement he received from the controversial pastor John Hagee, the Arizona senator said, "I didn't attend Pastor Hagee's church for 20 years.")
And today, on a call with conservative bloggers , McCain said this: "I think it's very clear who Hamas wants to be the next president of the United States. So apparently has Danny Ortega and several others. I think that people should understand that I will be Hamas's worst nightmare... If Senator Obama is favored by Hamas I think people can make judgments accordingly."
Obama spokesman Hari Sevugan responded to McCain's comment on Obama and Hamas. "We want to take Senator McCain at his word that he wants to run a respectful campaign, but [it] is becoming increasingly difficult when he continually tries to use the politics of association and makes claims he knows not to be true to advance his campaign. This type of politics of division and distraction, not only lead to a campaign not worthy of the American people, but also has failed to help our families for too long."
Sevugan also points to this Obama camp statement that was made after the Hamas adviser made his remarks -- a statement the McCain campaign should have known of. "Senator Obama has repeatedly rejected and denounced the actions of Hamas, a terrorist organization responsible for the deaths of many innocents, that is dedicated to Israel's destruction. As president, Obama will work with Israel to isolate terrorist groups like Hamas, target their resources, and support Israel's right and capability to defend itself from any attack."
*** UPDATE ***
“It is not only responsible to raise these critical issues in this election, but it would be the height of irresponsibility not to have this discussion with the American people.”
From NBC/NJ's Athena Jones and Mike Memoli Obama linked his rivals' Washington experience to the failure to deal effectively with high energy prices -- which sparked a quick response from those rivals.
"The candidates with the Washington experience -- my opponents -- are good people. They mean well," Obama said. "But they’ve been in Washington for a long time, and even with all that experience they talk about, nothing has happened. This country didn’t raise fuel efficiency standards for over 30 years. So what have we got for all that experience? Gas that’s approaching $4 a gallon, because you can fight all you want inside Washington, but until you change the way it works, you won’t be able to make the changes Americans need."
Clinton said Obama's attack rings hollow because of his vote in 2005 on the Bush Administration’s energy bill. “Earlier today, my opponent attacked me on energy issues,” she said from the floor of Indiana University’s basketball court. “But he voted, which I think is always the way to figure out where somebody truly stands... When sit came time to stand up against the oil companies, to stand against Dick Cheney's energy bill, my opponent voted for it, and I voted against it. And that bill had billions of dollars in giveaways to the oil companies. It was the best bill that the energy companies could buy.”
And McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds also jumped into the fray. "Barack Obama rolled out the cameras, and then said nothing about his new opposition to immediate price relief for hardworking Americans who are seeing record prices at the pump. Barack Obama can’t deliver for working people if he supports higher gas taxes when the price of fuel is at a record high, and is likely to get higher by summertime.”
CONTINUED >>
From NBC's Chuck Todd One of the things that both Dem campaigns are always nervous about is defectors. In particular, Clinton is more vulnerable to this problem since she's the candidate that is trailing. Well, NBC News has learned that a major fundraiser for Hillary Clinton, former Amb. to Chile Gabriel Guerra-Mondragon is leaving the campaign to join up Barack Obama's campaign. Officially dubbed a "
Hillraiser ," Guerra-Mondragon raised nearly $500,000 for Clinton's campaign, according to some estimates. He has been informing people inside Clintonworld this week in what's been described as some tough conversations. A formal announcement of a role for Guerra-Mondragon on Obama's national finance committee will be made next week. Guerra-Mondragon was appointed Amb. to Chile by Pres. Clinton in '94 and served until '98.
Among the reasons for Guerra-Mondragon to defect, according to one informed source, was he was uneasy with the tone of the Clinton campaign and was beginning to worry about what this would mean for the general election.
It's unclear if this defection will lead to others; the Clinton camp has been particularly effective at getting folks to keep their powder dry. For Obama, this comes at a time when his campaign is trying to re-convince insiders that the math indicates he has the nomination virtually wrapped up. In addition, Guerra-Mondragon's defection could serve as a tipping point with some key Hispanic Democratic leaders that Obama is ready to start making a bigger effort to court Hispanics.
From NBC's Abby Livingston and NBC/NJ's Athena Jones Obama about Rev. Wright's statement that the Illinois senator acted as a politician in giving his speech on Wright and race in Philadelphia back in March.
Here's Obama's response: "Well, look, I have commented extensively, most prominently in that speech in Pennsylvania on my profound disagreements with some of Rev. Wright's comments. And you know, I understand that he might not agree with me on my assessment of his comments. That's to be expected."
"So you know, he is obviously free to ... express his opinions on these issues. You know, I've expressed mine very clearly. I think that what he said in several instances were objectionable. And I understand why the American people took offense. And you know, as I indicated before, I took offense."
From NBC/NJ's Mike Memoli JACKSONVILLE, NC --
Clinton continued pressing
Obama for a debate here this morning, saying that each state has a unique set of issues that deserve discussion.
Clinton, joined outside a fire house near Camp Lejune by retired military leaders, told several hundred supporters that she was happy the campaign has continued in North Carolina, because there is “no better place to be in the springtime.” She made a pitch for her campaign’s interactive “NC Ask Me” feature, in which people can submit questions online and get an answer -- some of which have been used in television ads.
“It has been great, and we’ve gotten over 14,000 questions,” she said. “We have answered every one of those questions. But the only question I can’t answer is why Sen. Obama won’t debate me in North Carolina. And I’d sure like to give an answer.”
CONTINUED >>
From NBC/NJ's Carrie Dann For those who are counting, the
Obama campaign announced 12 new field offices today in North Carolina, bringing its total to 33. The
Clinton campaign has 18 in the state.
From NBC/NJ's Carrie Dann Thought the NC governor's race couldn't get any uglier? Think again!
Richard
Moore , one of the candidates in the NC gubernatorial race, who is targeted by the GOP's controversial "Extreme" ad, is up with a
new commercial attacking his opponent, Bev
Perdue , for her vote against a hate crimes bill. The 30-second spot slams Perdue for voting against a bill that included a provision for tougher investigation of the KKK.
As with most political ads, there's more to the story -- Perdue has a respectable civil rights record and has always polled well among black voters in the state. The Perdue camp furiously compared Moore's attack to the legendarily dirty ad wars waged by Sen. Jesse Helms .
Perdue is accusing Moore of "race-baiting." And now, the Republican group that's threatening to run the Jeremiah Wright ad is throwing in their two cents, too, citing the "racially-tinged" Democratic back-and-forth as a sign of hypocrisy.
"We have stood firmly against the injection of race into this discussion and have reiterated again and again our focus on the issue of judgment," says NC GOP chairwoman Linda Daves in a statement criticizing her Democratic counterpart. "Clean up your own house before you tell us how to run ours.”
*** UPDATE *** Raleigh News & Observer . It says the ad is accurate, that she voted against the bill, and was only one of two Democrats to do so. But her campaign said she "did not recall the vote" and "given the context of other votes she cast, it must be a 'misvote.' She would have been voting against her party leadership, which would have been unusual for a freshman. Legislators who push the wrong button when voting can, and often do, ask to have their vote corrected afterward." Also, they add, that "other votes at the same time better reflect her record on civil rights, such as voting in favor of making Martin Luther King Day a paid state holiday."
[EDITOR'S NOTE: An earlier version of this post incorrectly noted that a still of Obama was used in the beginning of the ad.]
From Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, and Domenico Montanaro Wright reappears…: Obama had himself a bad day yesterday, and he wasn’t even on the campaign trail. Thanks to the advanced excerpts of a Rev. Jeremiah Wright interview on PBS (which airs tonight at 9:00 pm ET), as well as Wright's dismissal of Obama's criticism of him as just politics, this wasn't something the Obama campaign could have been pleased with. That said, if the Moyers interview -- which will likely only be watched by Obama's PBS-watching base, but will also be picked up by others -- ends up humanizing Wright, it could be helpful in the long term. But short term, his appearance wasn’t helpful in a week the Clinton campaign is ramping up its argument that Obama isn’t electable.
VIDEO: NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports Sen. Barack Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, says controversial statements from his sermons were taken out of context. ***
… And so does Bill: But will Bill Clinton -- and the comments he made earlier this week about Obama playing the race card -- overshadow Wright today? It might happen, thanks to these comments by Rep. Jim Clyburn, the highest-ranking African American in Congress. “In an interview with The
New York Times late Thursday, Mr. Clyburn said Mr. Clinton’s conduct in this campaign had caused what might be an irreparable breach between Mr. Clinton and an African-American constituency that once revered him. ‘When he was going through his impeachment problems, it was the black community that bellied up to the bar,’ Mr. Clyburn said. ‘I think black folks feel strongly that that this is a strange way for President Clinton to show his appreciation.’” More: “Clyburn added that there appeared to be an almost ‘unanimous’ view among African-Americans that Mr. and Mrs. Clinton were ‘committed to doing everything they possibly can to damage Obama to a point that he could never win.’” Clyburn's the first major Dem leader to give voice to the speculation that Clinton is staying in to prepare for 2012. By the way, Clyburn is still officially uncommitted but given the opinions he's expressing, is he really?
*** The CW is now set: Two new Indiana polls are out that show the race there to be as close as we have expected it to be. Per a South Bend Tribune/Research 2000 poll (conducted April 21 to April 24), it’s Obama 48%, Clinton 47%. And an Indy Star/WTHR poll -- conducted (April 20 to April 23) by Ann Selzer, who famously got Iowa right -- has it Obama 41%, Clinton 38%. The biggest surprise in the Selzer survey is Obama's strength against McCain -- he leads him in Indi-freaking-ana! Clinton's basically even with McCain. Is the GOP brand in THAT bad of shape in reliably red Indiana? According to these and other polls, this race doesn’t look like Ohio or Pennsylvania at all, where Clinton had significant leads two weeks out. Rather, it looks like a jump ball. Meanwhile, the Washington Post cements the CW about North Carolina: To change the race, Clinton needs to upset Obama here, or get awfully close to it. "North Carolina, with its large African American population, has long been seen as a firewall for Obama after contests in Ohio, Pennsylvania and elsewhere that favored Clinton. A win here and in Indiana, which also votes May 6, could cement his status as the front-runner.”
VIDEO: Chuck Todd talks about the potential for a general election fight in Indiana and Majority Leader Harry Reid's assertion that he may call on superdelegates to pledge their support, soon. ***
Track the ad spending: What's going on with Clinton's money? According to various sources, here's what we know right now regarding TV ad buys: Obama is up in Indiana, North Carolina, Oregon, and now Kentucky. Clinton is on par with Obama in Indiana and has a little less money on the air than Obama in the Tar Heel State. This will be a good way to find out just how much of Clinton's initial $10 million windfall is useful in the primary. Currently she's not up in any states beyond IN and NC, but $10 million is more than enough for those two states. So watch the buys closely in these two states plus Kentucky, West Virginia, and Oregon to see how deep the Clinton campaign’s resources are.
*** Jumping ship? This piece by Tom Edsall in the Huffington Post is bound to be a topic of discussion today: “In a blink of an eye, the media has jumped ship from the Obama campaign and become a crucial Clinton ally, pressing just the message -- that Obama is a likely loser in the general election -- that Hillary and her allies have been promoting for the past six weeks… For Hillary, the shift is a potential lifesaver as she struggles to keep her head above water; without it, she would, metaphorically, drown.” The media’s constant refrain, Edsall’s piece points out, is that exit polls show Obama faring poorly with working-class voters, and that could doom him in the fall. But as one of us wrote yesterday, has this exit-poll analysis gone a little too far? After all, when McCain was losing evangelicals, weekly church-goers, and Republicans without college degrees -- even after the he became the presumptive GOP nominee -- no one was declaring that he’d have a huge problem with these folks in the fall. Can exit polls in a primary race tell us as much about the general election as the chattering class is claiming when you’re dealing with different candidates and different voters?
*** What are the supers thinking? While the focus after Pennsylvania is all on Obama, Elizabeth Drew has a piece in the Politico reminding us all the flaws that Hillary would bring to the table in a general election -- flaws that the superdelegates aren’t forgetting. Clinton, she writes, still hasn't answered the question marks over her head: Can she be a helpful leader of the Democratic Party? Can she have a better track record at building the party than her husband did? Right now, she doesn't have to answer those questions because she's the challenger; it's Obama's burden. But the undecided superdelegates are remembering the original reasons they didn't rush to her side in the first place. Ultimately, if she's to convince the supers to deny Obama the nomination, she needs to answer the concerns Dems originally had with her.
*** What will it take? Yesterday, Obama picked up Oregon Rep. David Wu, and has rolled out three superdelegates to Clinton’s one despite Clinton’s Pennsylvania primary victory. Clinton very nearly reached that 10-point mark in Pennsylvania, and superdelegates don’t yet appear to be moved. Clinton leads in the superdelegate count 263-240, the closest the count has been. Obama leads overall: 1,731-1,597. In the pledged count, Obama is up 1,491-1,334. There are 292 superdelegates still to be had (229 of those are named; there are 63 vacancies/add-ons).
*** GOP targets Obama: The LA Times runs a piece on the GOP ramping up its attacks -- on TV and radio -- against Obama. Once again, the CW has been overturned: A year ago, the assumption was the Democratic nominee was going to have the time and resources to define the GOP nominee. Well, it appears the Republican Party is getting the head start on defining Obama, thanks to the protracted race. In fact, it couldn't have worked out better -- as Clinton's attacks on Obama are helping to reinforce the GOP attacks. The Republican Party can afford to ignore Clinton for now because 1) they don't believe she'll be the nominee and 2) they've spent 16 years defining her to swing voters.
*** On the trail: Clinton begins her day in Jacksonville, NC and then heads to Indiana, where she stumps in Bloomington, Gary, and East Chicago; McCain is in Little Rock, AR, where he visits and holds a media avail at Arkansas Baptist College and then goes to Oklahoma City; and Obama, in Indiana, holds a rally in Bloomington (about an hour before Clinton’s event there) and a town hall in Kokomo. Also, Bill Clinton is in Oregon, and Chelsea Clinton and Michelle Obama are in Indiana.
Countdown to North Carolina, Indiana: 11 daysClick here to sign up for First Read emails.
Veteran journalist Elizabeth Drew has an interesting reported op-ed in Politico today. "Notwithstanding the plentiful commentary to the effect that the Pennsylvania primary must have shaken superdelegates planning to support Barack Obama, causing them to rethink their position, key Democrats on Capitol Hill are unbudged. ‘I don’t think anyone’s shaken,’ a leading House Democrat told me. The critical mass of Democratic congressmen that has been prepared to endorse Obama when the timing seemed right remains prepared to do so. Their reasons, ones they have held for months, have not changed – and by their very nature are unlikely to.”
“Essentially, they are three:
In his National Journal column, NBC political analyst Charlie Cook writes, “The good news for Hillary Rodham Clinton is that she’s winning a lot of battles. The bad news is that the war is pretty much lost. Sure, she won Pennsylvania’s April 22 primary by a strong 9 points in the face of being outspent on television ads by Barack Obama 2-to-1. She also won Ohio, Rhode Island, and at least the primary part of the bizarre “Texas two-step” primary-and-caucus combination on March 4.
CONTINUED >>
INDIANA (May 6): Going for the knockout blow, Obama is spending the next two days in Indiana; he doesn't head to North Carolina again until Monday.
A couple of new polls are out today in Indiana -- both essentially showing the race a dead heat. An Indianapolis Star poll , conducted by the same pollster who regularly nails it for the Des Moines Register in Iowa (Selzer and Co.) has Obama with a narrow three-point lead, 41%-38%. Interestingly, this poll has Obama actually leading McCain in the general. "Among Hoosiers who said they would vote in the general election -- a statewide sample of voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points -- Obama beat McCain 49 percent to 41 percent. Clinton broke even with McCain, with both backed by 46 percent of those polled. And, by 49 percent to 35 percent, Democratic primary voters said Obama is the candidate best able to win in the general election."
Meanwhile, a new Research 2000 poll conducted for the South Bend Tribune has Obama up 48%-47%. A week ago, this same pollster had Clinton had by three points.
The Los Angeles Times looks at the map. "Clinton is expected to have the upper hand in factory towns like Anderson and Muncie, where blue-collar anger runs deep over the North American Free Trade Agreement and other, pending foreign trade deals. But the powerful United Auto Workers union has held off from an endorsement. Most of the state's top Democratic officials, from Sen. Evan Bayh on down, back Clinton, giving her ‘the Cadillac organization on the Democratic side,’ Howey said. Obama has the support of former Rep. Lee H. Hamilton, who has done a radio ad and is expected to campaign around Evansville, his former congressional base.”
“Clinton's toughest challenge is farther upstate, where new registration has soared among students in college towns like Bloomington, home of Indiana University. Overall, the state's voter totals have grown by 150,000 this year, officials reported. ‘Obama's played Bloomington like a violin,’ said Rob Stone, an emergency room physician. ‘Last summer, his people put out a table at the local farmers market, and they've been showing up every weekend.’”
“Clinton also faces surging first-time registration in black wards in Indianapolis and Gary, where Obama is counting on local leaders' backing."
To the West: Illinois, Obama’s home state. To the East, Ohio, where Clinton scored a double-digit victory. “The result : Neither candidate has a clear advantage as they seek the 72 pledged delegates at stake in Indiana's primary on May 6. Polls are split, making Indiana perhaps the biggest question mark left on the primary calendar.”
NORTH CAROLINA (May 6): The Washington Post looks at how a loss at NC could "shake" Clinton's claims of dominance in so-called "big" states. The CW is laid out: "North Carolina, with its large African American population, has long been seen as a firewall for Obama after contests in Ohio, Pennsylvania and elsewhere that favored Clinton. A win here and in Indiana, which also votes May 6, could cement his status as the front-runner.”
CONTINUED >>
In what appears to be a response to the New York Times’ editorial on Wednesday that accused the Clinton campaign of taking the “low road,” campaign chief strategist Geoff Garin has a Washington Post op-ed defending the campaign's tactics. "Our campaign runs a TV ad Monday saying that the presidency is the toughest job in the world and giving examples of challenges presidents have faced and challenges the next president will face -- including terrorism, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, mounting economic dislocation, and soaring gas prices. The ad makes no reference -- verbal, visual or otherwise -- to our opponent; it simply asks voters to think about who they believe is best able to stand the heat. And we are accused, by some in the media, of running a fear-mongering, negative ad.”
“The day before this ad went on the air, David Axelrod, Barack Obama's chief strategist, appeared with me on ‘Meet the Press.’ He was asked whether Hillary Clinton would bring ‘the changes necessary’ to Washington, and his answer was ‘no.’ This was in keeping with the direct, personal character attacks that the Obama campaign has leveled against Clinton from the beginning of this race -- including mailings in Pennsylvania that describe her as ‘the master of a broken system.’”
“So let me get this straight. On the one hand, it's perfectly decent for Obama to argue that only he has the virtue to bring change to Washington and that Clinton lacks the character and the commitment to do so. On the other hand, we are somehow hitting below the belt when we say that Clinton is the candidate best able to withstand the pressures of the presidency and do what's right for the American people, while leaving the decisions about Obama's preparedness to the voters. Who made up those rules? And who would ever think they are fair?"
More: "The bottom line is that one campaign really has engaged in a mean-spirited, unfair character attack on the other candidate -- but it has been Obama's campaign, not ours. You would be hard-pressed to find significant analogues from our candidate, our senior campaign officials or our advertising to the direct personal statements that the Obama campaign has made about Clinton."
The New York Daily News on Clinton’s $10 million haul: “Maybe now Hillary Clinton can afford to pay her bills.” Speaking of that debt … “Hillary Clinton's campaign debt at the end of March was bigger than it appeared because she didn't list the $5 million she loaned herself, a campaign finance watchdog group” (the Center for Responsive Politics) reported yesterday afternoon. “Clinton, in her filing with the Federal Election Commission, reported that her campaign had $9 million in cash on hand as of March 30, and $10 million in debts.” But, “Including the loan would put her debt as of March 30 at $15.3 million, the nonpartisan group said.”
The AP's Ross writes on Bill Clinton's troubles with black Dems. "He is a figurative black man watching an actual black man soak in all the love that black voters used to save for him. Suddenly, he looks oh so white.”
“The former president's love affair with black America hasn't soured to the point that he'll be chased out of his office in Harlem. But black people might revoke Clinton's honorary brother card if, out of his pain, he keeps hating on Obama. He's treating the Illinois senator like an unworthy heir to his racial legacy. At first, Clinton's slips of the lip about black voting habits and the like could be chalked up to election-year politics."
MCCAIN: Born-again tax-cutter
The Washington Post examines McCain's evolution on tax policy from someone who picked fiscal discipline over tax cuts to a simple tax-cutter now. "To supporters, McCain has simply seen the light and now understands the power that business tax relief has to spur economic growth and innovation. Said J.D. Foster, a former Bush White House and Treasury tax policy expert, now at the Heritage Foundation: ‘It's logical that he wouldn't be repeating the arguments he made then. We all learn from experience.’”
VIDEO: Republican U.S. presidential candidate John McCain talks with TODAY's Meredith Vieira about his trip to New Orleans and his run for president. “To critics, it is political pandering. ‘It's just part of the new John McCain that's taking on the conventional wisdom that in tight races, you have to energize the base and win by 50.000001 percent,’ Chafee said. ‘I was frankly surprised that he's kept it up after securing the nomination. I thought he'd move to the center, and I haven't seen it.’”
CBN's Brody looks at the McCain campaign's efforts at faith outreach. Per RNC deputy chair Frank Donatelli, "We are going to have a very aggressive program to reach out to religious voters whether they are Evangelical, Protestant, Catholic or whatever. That is a staple of our campaign because what we find is that the most religious voters certainly in terms of Church attendance tend to vote Republican more than the general public. There are a lot of voters there for us. The senator’s team has been meeting with these (pro-family) groups. He has conducted some meetings and he’ll continue to have such meetings. I think the test here is what we are saying in terms of issues. The issues that are of concern to religious voters namely winning the war on terror and appointing and supporting judges to the federal bench that will interpret the Constitution and not make social policy, those are bedrock issues as far as Senator McCain is concerned. I believe that as the campaign goes on this will become more and more evident. We’ve got plenty of time here, lots of time for meetings and interaction and I just believe that as we go forward that the groups you’re talking about will become more and more comfortable with our campaign.”
Brody concludes: "When you combine McCain’s lack of appetite to engage on social issues with the fact that he’s the guy who pushed campaign finance reform (reviled by pro-family groups) and is against a federal marriage amendment plus he doesn’t really want to open up about his faith (run on sentence alert), the RNC and the McCain camp would be very wise to be overly aggressive courting the Evangelical base. Of course they can’t pander either or they’ll be slammed by moderates. Tough job. I’m glad I’m just a blogger posting articles in my basement with my pajamas on."
McCain lost more than a quarter of the vote in Pennsylvania. Is it a sign of trouble ? Not necessarily. “The support for other candidates could be seen as a protest vote against McCain, who is trying to unite the Republican Party behind him. But the lack of unanimity is not atypical. In 2000, the last contested Republican presidential race, competitors were still winning sizable shares of the vote well after George W. Bush had secured the nomination and McCain withdrew in March of that year. The next month in Pennsylvania, Bush won 72 percent of the vote to McCain's 22 percent.”
Noting a critical Krugman column on Obama is like alerting folks of another plane landing safely at National. Yet despite the predictability of Krugman criticizing Obama, he makes an important point. "After Barack Obama’s defeat in Pennsylvania, David Axelrod, his campaign manager, brushed it off: ‘Nothing has changed tonight in the basic physics of this race.’ He may well be right -- but what a comedown. A few months ago the Obama campaign was talking about transcendence. Now it’s talking about math. ‘Yes we can’ has become ‘No she can’t.’”
The Los Angeles Times takes a look at the slow trickle of GOP made TV and radio ads that are critical of Obama. "The flurry of attacks underscores how Republicans and their allies are sensing opportunity in the increasingly battered image of Obama, whom many Democrats have viewed as their best hope for appealing across ideological lines and helping their party win in conservative areas. The ads also are playing into a debate among Democratic officials about Obama's electability in November, a discussion that gained urgency after his 9-percentage-point loss to Hillary Rodham Clinton in this week's Pennsylvania primary. That contest provided more evidence that the Illinois senator has had trouble winning over seniors and working-class white voters, who are seen as important to a Democratic victory this fall.”
National Journal’s Victor writes a feature story about whether Obama can take a punch. “‘I don’t think we know yet whether he can take a punch,” observed Ferrel Guillory, director of the Program on Public Life at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill). Guillory, a former reporter who has written extensively about politics, added, ‘I think that is what is making a lot of Democrats nervous.” More: “‘McCain won’t do it, but the Republican satellite groups will put Reverend Wright on television,’ Shrum said. ‘I think it is a lot like the Bill Clinton draft records in 1992. It came out and it hurt him some in the primaries, along with the other stuff, but by the time of the general election … people just dismissed it and said this election is about my job, about health care, and a whole set of other issues.’”
CONTINUED >>
From NBC's Ken Strickland Pete Domenici of New Mexico a "public letter of qualified admonition" for his involvement in the Justice Department's firing of several US Attorneys last year. It was a scandal that helped lead to the resignation of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
In March of 2007, former US Attorney David Iglesias testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that Domenici had called him at home asking about an ongoing investigation of Democrats in the senator's home state of New Mexico. Iglesias said Domenici wanted to know the timing of indictments.
According to the transcript from the hearing, the US Attorney said the senator asked, "'Are these going to be filed before November?' And I said I didn't think so, to which [Domenici] replied, 'I'm very sorry to hear that.'" Iglesias then said, "the line went dead."
Domenici later apologized for the call, but said he did not pressure Iglesias to move on the case. The 75-year-old senator has since announced his retirement saying he was diagnosed with a dementia type brain ailment.
From NBC's Domenico Montanaro WRAL-TV tells the Raleigh News & Observer it has rejected the North Carolina Republican Party's Rev. Jeremiah Wright ad, linking Obama, Wright and, by extension, Democratic gubernatorial candidates Beverly Perdue and Richard Moore, who have endorsed Obama.
"A spokesman for another Triangle station, WTVD, said it had not been asked to air the ad but would have reservations about doing so," the News & Observer writes.
McCain and the Republican National Committee have asked the NC GOP not to air the ad.
From NBC's Shawna Thomas Nancy Pelosi will be on Larry King Live tonight. CNN previewed a clip in which the House Speaker says a so-called Obama -Clinton Dream Ticket is not a good idea.
PELOSI: No
LARRY KING: No?
PELOSI: I don't think it's a good idea.
LARRY KING: Not a good idea?
PELOSI: No I don't think so.
LARRY KING: Because?
PELOSI: I think that first of all the candidate, whoever he or she may be, should choose his or her own vice presidential candidate. I think that's appropriate. That's where you would see the comfort level not only how to run but how to govern the country. And there's plenty of talent to go aroud to draw upon for a good strong ticket. I'm not one of those who thinks that that's a good ticket.
From NBC's Domenico Montanaro Detroit News editorial on the Clinton camp's push for those Michigan delegates:
There is no deal yet to seat the delegation. But the Clinton camp is working overtime to ensure the elected slate is sent. Keep in mind that Clinton won 55 percent to uncommitted's 40 percent since Obama wasn't on the ballot. He has pushed for a 50-50 percent delegate split, but that proposal hasn't gained traction.
It's becoming apparent that Obama should have consented to a revote here. He certainly wouldn't have lost by 15 percentage points or more; polls have pegged the pair in a dead heat. But Obama seemed spooked that Clintonites put forth the plan and the money, so he quashed the do-over last month.
Now Obama is paying the price in delegates, starting with the Michigan Democratic Party's 15 district conventions on Saturday. The Clinton battle plan was flawlessly executed with an eye toward a contested convention. Their delegate roster is crammed with big names like former Gov. Jim Blanchard and Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero. 'We wanted to pick people who would be loyal to Hillary, who would commit to her through multiple ballots,' Blanchard says.
Michiganders for Obama, a ragtag group of new volunteers, triumphed in turnout Saturday but were steamrolled by the Clinton machine. Obama has proved to be a master of organization, but he made a tactical error not to plump up his skeletal apparatus in Michigan.
More: Given her narrow path to the nomination, Clinton and her aides have argued that pledged delegates are fair game to flip. Although they've since backed away from such statements, the Michigan delegate conventions show the Clinton delegate strategy is being set into motion. What this could mean is four very interesting days in Denver. Although the odds still favor Obama -- who leads in delegates, the popular vote and states won -- he has to be a bit rattled over two losses in one week. If Clinton comes out on top in a floor war, we might well look back at the Michigan mêlée as the turning point.
From NBC's Ron Allen We are about to take off for North Carolina after a quiet morning with no events and a lot of sunshine. Several retired "flag officers" are aboard "Hill Force One." One theme of the day is Sen. Clinton 's concern about veteran's families and their economic concerns. And, of course, that she's ready on Day One to be Commander-In-Chief.
North Carolina is, of course, a big military state. Gen. Hugh Shelton, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will appear with Clinton today.
And if you happened to see Clinton around the Senate this morning, she was there to vote on a bill that would extend veteran's benefits to Filipinos who fought with US troops in World War II. Not sure of the bill's fate or the number of survivors affected, (I do wonder how many if anyone knows?) or what Sens. McCain and Obama 's positions are on the bill.
From NBC's Mark Murray Obama has a problem with working-class voters. Clinton fares poorly among African Americans -- younger Democrats, too. And these disadvantages will be big problems for either candidate, if they become the nominee.
Indeed, after 45 Democratic contests, a familiar pattern has emerged from exit polls: Clinton performs well among women, seniors, and low-income whites; Obama wins blacks, higher-income folks, young people, and independents. And pundits, campaign operatives, and superdelegates are now poring over these numbers as if they are a political crystal ball that will tell us the future about the general election.
But has this analysis gotten a bit out of hand? Consider what the exit polls told us about McCain . In South Carolina, Huckabee beat him by wide margins among weekly church-goers and born-again Christians, and Huck even beat him among those without college degrees. In Virginia -- even after McCain became the presumptive GOP nominee -- the Arizona senator once again lost decisively among weekly church-goers, evangelicals, and those without college degrees, and he also lost among those making less than $100,000. What's more, in this week's Pennsylvania GOP contest, more than a quarter of the vote went to Huckabee and Paul , not McCain.
While McCain is unlikely to do as well among evangelicals as Bush did, does anyone think that his performance with this group is a big general-election problem for him? Probably not. Is he doomed among voters without college degrees? Unlikely. Will he be unable to get a quarter of the GOP vote in November? Forget about it.
No doubt that exit polls are useful at analyzing particular races. Without them, we wouldn't have known how well Clinton performed in Pennsylvania among white women and the suburbs, which were important keys to her win.
But extrapolating their findings to tell us something about another election -- with different candidates and different voters -- is a dubious exercise.
From NBC/NJ’s Adam Aigner-Treworgy NEW ORLEANS -- On the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, McCain said, “Never again. Never again will a disaster of this nature be handled in the terrible and disgraceful way that it was handled.”
When he was asked if it was fair to say that the failure of leadership extended all the way to the Oval Office, McCain said yes. But he added that he places "some of those responsibilities on the Congress of the United States, which funded pork barrel projects that were not only not needed and certainly not as important as some of the projects that were needed here."
He also said corporations should be asked to handle more of the response to a future disaster.
McCain then went further in his diatribe against earmarks and wasteful spending.
“I have never voted for a single earmark or pork barrel project,” McCain said. “Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton have voted for hundreds of millions, hundreds of millions of pork barrel projects and earmarks and wasteful spending. They’re part of the problem. I’m part of the answer.”
While it is true that McCain has never sponsored an earmark -- by the strict definition of the word -- he has certainly voted for bills with earmarks, including some of the specific projects he criticizes most vocally on the campaign trail.
CONTINUED >>
From NBC's AnaMaria Arumi In the primaries (not caucuses, and excluding Michigan and Florida) so far this year, Clinton 's lead among White voters with Household Incomes of less than $50,000 was in the middle of the pack of the states where she had an advantage over Obama. There are nine where she bested Obama by a bigger margin than in Pennsylvania and 13 where she won by narrower margins.
She had her greatest advantage in Arkansas (65 percentage points) and her narrowest advantage in New Mexico (2 points).
Obama had an advantage among whites who make less than $50,000 in Wisconsin, Illinois, Utah and Vermont.
WHITES UNDER 50K
CLINTON
OBAMA
VT
36
61
IL
46
51
WI
48
50
UT
38
49
NM
49
47
CT
52
41
TX
58
41
MD
57
40
CA
50
39
NY
61
37
AZ
56
35
MO
60
35
VA
61
35
GA
62
35
MA
63
34
PA
66
33
RI
67
31
NH
47
31
DE
68
30
OH
69
28
LA
60
27
NJ
73
25
MS
68
24
AL
74
23
TN
69
22
SC
40
19
OK
72
19
AR
81
16
From NBC's Chuck Todd and Mark Murray Obama with Rev. Wright -- won't be airing until NEXT WEEK...
To us, this seems to be even more evidence that the ad is -- and has always been -- a publicity stunt to raise money.
From NBC's Christina Jamison Clinton campaign announced today on its press bus it hit its $10 million mark in 24 hours goal. Spokesman Mo Elleithee said they had 100,000 donors, 80,000 of them new, and the average contribution was about $100.
From NBC’s Domenico Montanaro Wu is throwing his support to Obama . Oregon has 12 superdelegates -- four of which are now committed, evenly split 2-2 among Clinton and Obama.
Willamette Week writes: “Wu also kept the window open -- by the smallest of cracks -- to changing his mind, saying in response to a question that he'd obviously think about his decision if Clinton were to win his congressional district by 25 percentage points. ‘But I don't think that's going to happen,’ he said.”
The superdelegate count is now Clinton 263-240.
There are 292 superdelegates still to be had (229 of those are named; there are 63 vacancies/add-ons.)
*** UPDATE ***
From NBC's Lindsey Pritzlaff
Users of CafePress.com have generated tens of thousands of creative election-themed products. And it's not just the bumper stickers and buttons anymore. This year's candidate paraphernalia crosses the entire spectrum -- from beer steins and Hillary baby bibs to a woman’s thong featuring Obama’s face and reading “OHHHH-BAMA!”
McCain even gets some CafePress attention -- “Join the McSurgency! John McCain 2008,” is printed on a white cotton t-shirt.
According to CafePress, of the three candidates, Obama has the highest product approval rating in the CafePress Marketplace with 95% of Obama paraphernalia being pro-Obama and 5% anti-Obama. McCain merchandise runs a close second -- 92% pro-McCain and 8% anti-McCain. And Hillary’s products are 73% pro-Clinton and 27% anti-Clinton.
CafePress reports that in the Thong Primary, Obama leads Clinton 57%-43%. But Clinton dominates the Beer Primary, leading in the sale of Clinton beer steins.
The CafePress Web site, launched in 1999, has added a new feature -- the CafePress Meter , an interactive candidate tracker tool. Any site visitor can use it to see if sales match current momentum in the race.
From NBC's Domenico Montanaro Altmire and Mike Doyle .
Altmire said that despite Clinton ’s win, he’s remaining undecided until after the primaries are finished. “It doesn’t change my thinking,” he told the Beaver County Times . “After the June 3 primaries, I’ll have all the results in front of me and all the information and be informed as to how I will use my superdelegate vote.”
Altmire’s district (CD-4) went overwhelmingly for Clinton, about 66%-34%, the paper finds. And Altmire appeared last weekend with Bill Clinton. But… “I really have tried to be thoughtful and get to know the candidates,” he said. “I really am trying to be evenhanded in the whole thing.”
“On Wednesday, Altmire said he’s ‘willing to give Sen. Clinton the opportunity to finish the next nine primaries’ before giving his support. However, if Obama is still leading in the popular vote and delegate count after the final primary, Altmire said, ‘It’s going to be difficult for me to just go the other way.’”
Doyle echoed that, but said he may make his decision sooner -- after the early primaries in May -- though he’s content to also wait until after all the primaries are over in June as well.
Towns in Doyle’s district, CD-14, (Coraopolis, Kennedy Township and Robinson Township) went for Obama by about 7,000-plus votes. “If Clinton tightens the race in the coming primaries then she deserves to continue, Doyle said. ‘I’m willing to give her the chance to do that as long as she’s making progress,’ he said.” But…“[I]f Clinton falls further behind Obama in the popular vote and delegate count, Doyle said his decision would be easier.
“‘I’m not denying that man the nomination if he’s got the popular vote and the delegate count,’ Doyle said.”
From Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, and Domenico Montanaro All about North Carolina? So which May 6 state is more important to Clinton -- Indiana or North Carolina? Sure, many in the media (and in the Clinton campaign) are pointing to Indiana, because the race is likely to be very close. But isn't North Carolina the opportunity for Clinton to either prove or disprove momentum? The state isn't just a pothole for Clinton in her comeback bid, it's a potential sinkhole. It's a big state, not some small red state. And the gains Clinton made in the popular vote, thanks to Pennsylvania, could be wiped away completely in the Tar Heel State. And because the popular vote is now the most important measuring stick to the Clinton campaign, they have to figure out a way to either pull the upset or make the Obama victory margin so close that it will serve as a wakeup call to the superdelegates. It's been said a bunch of times, but we'll say it again: Obama can't seem to convince Clinton to get out until he beats her in a place that demographically favors her, and she can't convince superdelegates that he's really unelectable unless she beats him in a place that demographically favors him. And since the burden still remains with Clinton to catch up, it may mean North Carolina is actually more make-or-break than Indiana.
VIDEO: NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd discusses the importance of North Carolina to Hillary Clinton and the different ways to calculate the popular vote in the Democratic race. ***
I’ve got friends in high places: After 45 contests, this pattern has emerged in the Clinton-Obama race: The person who has received the best political endorsements in a state has ended up winning that contest. Ed Rendell and Michael Nutter were HUGE for Clinton in Pennsylvania, especially in keeping down Obama’s margins in Philly. So was Ted Strickland for Clinton in Ohio. Meanwhile, Obama got big help from Claire McCaskill in Missouri and Tim Kaine in Virginia. There are a few exceptions, of course -- Clinton lost Maryland (where she had the support from Gov. Martin O’Malley and Sen. Barbara Mikulski), and Obama lost Massachusetts (Ted Kennedy and Deval Patrick) and Arizona (Janet Napolitano). But that’s about it. What does this tell us for the upcoming May 6 contests? It looks like Clinton might have the advantage with supporters like Evan Bayh and former Gov. Joe Kernan, as well as the chairman of the state party. And Obama seems to have the clear advantage in North Carolina, where almost every notable state politico who has endorsed is backing him.
*** In search of a validator : Speaking of endorsements, it seems that Clinton is in need of a endorsement from a top Democrat as evidence that the tide -- as she and her campaign are arguing -- is really turning. She needs the equivalent of what Ted Kennedy and the Kennedy clan did for Obama after South Carolina. Who’s potentially out there? Al Gore. John Edwards. Nancy Pelosi. Jim Webb. Even someone like Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer or Elizabeth Edwards. Murtha was a good get for Clinton a few weeks ago, and now she needs someone else to jump aboard the Clinton Express to suggest to superdelegates and the press that the momentum is on her side. For now, the only "progress" Clinton's made with her recent success is simply slowing the superdelegate trickle to Obama's side. She needs to show the public and the supers that others actually believe she can win -- not just survive until the end of the primary calendar.
*** That front-loaded calendar : Here's a thought that hasn't gotten much play, but might be the single biggest reason why Obama has clinched yet: The frontloading gave Clinton an early safety net. How much better would Obama have performed in many of those Super Tuesday states had the contests been held later? Writes the LA Times’ Skelton : “Californians can be thankful the state held its presidential primary on the earliest day legally possible. And Hillary Rodham Clinton should be especially grateful. Clinton probably wouldn't even be in the race today if California had not rescued her candidacy way back on Super Tuesday, Feb. 5, by delivering a timely victory that helped keep her afloat. The Pennsylvania primary Tuesday likely would have been irrelevant." This is a moot point now -- the calendar is the calendar. But it's a reminder of just how important Feb. 5 was to Clinton and how damaging it was to her when she couldn't clinch it by then. For now, this is simply something for historians to ponder.
*** A Big Easy? McCain’s tour today takes him to New Orleans, where he will make a stop in the Ninth Ward and hold a media avail there. Afterwards, he holds a town hall in the city and then heads to Baton Rouge, where he will raise money and attend a business banquet. As much as Iraq has hurt President Bush’s poll numbers and the GOP’s brand, Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath broke their backs and helped contribute the Democrats’ midterm election sweep. Can McCain’s visit there begin to repair the political damage? Meanwhile, the Louisiana Democratic Party will be holding a news conference in New Orleans, where they will argue that McCain voted against measures to boost reconstruction aid and also remind reporters that McCain endorser John Hagee said that Katrina was God’s punishment to New Orleans sinners. Numbers, numbers, numbers : Obama picked up two superdelegates to Clinton’s one yesterday, bringing Clinton’s advantage to 263-239. A new addition: the uncommitteds. There are 293 superdelegates still to be had (230 of those are named; there are 63 vacancies/add-ons.) Obama leads by 133 delegates overall: 1,729-1,596. He also leads by 157 in the pledged count: 1,490-1,333. The Pennsylvania pledged count (as of 6:15 pm Wednesday) was Clinton 82-73, with three delegates still to be allocated.
*** On the trail : Elsewhere, Clinton campaigns in North Carolina, hitting Jacksonville, Fayetteville, and Asheville; Obama is down in Chicago; and Chelsea Clinton stumps in Indiana.
Countdown to North Carolina, Indiana: 12 daysClick here to sign up for First Read emails .
The Wall Street Journal reports on the Clinton campaign's effort to convince undecided members of Congress that this isn't over. "The Clinton campaign was trying to overturn the sense of Sen. Obama's inevitability. Fifteen Democratic members of Congress assembled at Sen. Clinton's northern Virginia headquarters early Wednesday to strategize with staffers about courting the several hundred uncommitted superdelegates. One adviser said Tennessee Rep. John Tanner, a leader among House Democratic conservatives, had called last week. ‘He said, “If she wins Pennsylvania, I'm with you.”’ Later in the day, Sen. Clinton's campaign announced Rep. Tanner's endorsement.
“The Clinton campaign is renewing its fight to claim disputed votes from Florida and Michigan primaries, but that may anger the very superdelegates the campaign needs."
The LA Times : "Clinton's Pennsylvania win has bought her time -- but not much -- to make her case to the Democratic Party's superdelegates, many of whom expressed a strong desire Wednesday to end the nominating contest once the final votes are cast. Though few seem eager to use their power to call a halt to the presidential race -- and many said they welcomed the continued balloting -- a number of party leaders and other activists sent a clear signal that they want the fight over well before the Democratic convention in August.”
The paper interviewed a bunch of uncommitted supers for this story. This comment from the Idaho Dem Chair sums things up pretty well: “I'm not buying the Clinton argument that Sen. Obama is unelectable, but I certainly intend to continue to watch his performance to make my own determination of just how strong a candidate he will be," said R. Keith Roark, chairman of the Idaho Democratic Party.
CONTINUED >>
INDIANA : The Politico’s Martin writes that Indiana is an even-steven race between Clinton and Obama. “With a demographic landscape that’s well-suited to both Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, Indiana is shaping up to be the most consequential battleground of the remaining states… Obama and Clinton have traded the lead in Indiana polls, but there have been few reliable local surveys to date. One thing seems certain: Unlike Pennsylvania, where Clinton began with a pronounced advantage, Indiana is a state where both begin on an equal footing.”
The Wall Street Journal runs a similar piece. If it wasn't for the fact that Obama came from a neighboring state, Clinton would likely be favored to win by double-digits. But unlike Ohio and Pennsylvania, Obama starts on a more level playing field thanks to the Chicago media market bleed into Northwest Indiana.
Does Indiana shy away from change candidates? The New York Times suggests so. "With all the talk among the Democratic presidential hopefuls about change, they may wish to consider this as they wander Indiana: People here practically revolted a few years ago when their governor, Mitch Daniels, pushed to change to daylight saving time like most of the country. Change, it seems, may not carry quite the same political magic in this state as it has elsewhere.”
CONTINUED >>
The Clinton campaign said it
raised $3.5 million by 10:30 a.m . Wednesday and claimed to be on track to raise $10 million in 24 hours. The campaign called it "our best fundraising night ever."
The LA Times looks at McCain's poverty tour. “McCain (R-Ariz.) tried to position himself somewhere between Johnson and Reagan while campaigning here Wednesday, styling himself as a compassionate conservative but emphasizing his crusade against ‘wasteful’ government spending. ’I wouldn't be back here today if government had fulfilled the promises that Lyndon Johnson made 44 years ago,’ McCain told reporters as his campaign bus rolled through the green hills of eastern Kentucky. ‘The moral of the story is -- government isn't always the answer.’”
More: "A centerpiece of McCain's speech was an economic initiative that would give tax write-offs to companies that offered high-speed Internet access to low-income people. In towns where businesses won't offer that aid, he said, the government would make government-backed loans or low-interest bonds available. Otherwise, the third day of McCain's tour of America's ‘forgotten places’ seemed largely symbolic. When a reporter asked what could be done about healthcare coverage in Appalachia, as well as the high rates of diabetes, obesity and cancer, McCain said his administration would emphasize ‘wellness and fitness.’”
The Washington Post looks at the tour and notes: "McCain is reaching out to voters in these Democratic strongholds to try to build the broad, center-right coalition that aides believe is necessary for him to become president. Advisers do not think Republicans alone can elect McCain, given how many have become disenchanted with President Bush and his policies. McCain's "Time for Action" tour is less about specific proposals; those will come later, advisers said. The important part, they said, is for McCain to lay the groundwork in places such as Inez to credibly claim that he cares about the people who live on the edge of the modern economy. In effect, McCain is launching Version 2.0 of Bush's ‘compassionate conservative’ campaign."
CONTINUED >>
The New York Times’ Nagourney looks at how much Obama's problems have to do with race. "While arguably critical to determining the viability of Mr. Obama’s candidacy, the role of race is difficult to disentangle from the other strands of the political debate surrounding him, encompassing topics like values, elitism, ideology and experience. Although some polling evidence hints at the depth of racial attitudes in this country and the obstacles Mr. Obama faces winning white voters, it has historically proved challenging to measure how racial attitudes factor into voter decisions. (Respondents do not tend to announce to pollsters that they will not vote for a candidate because he or she is black.)”
“It is also hard to discount that Mr. Obama has arrived at this place in his candidacy after winning big victories in very white states. The crowds at his rallies are as white as any at a Clinton rally, and many analysts in both parties believe that racial attitudes in this country are changing at a breakneck pace, particularly among younger voters, making it risky to impose models from even four years ago on this unusual election."
Ex-Virgina Gov. Doug Wilder, an Obama supporter, offers some advice to Obama . Most importantly, be prepared for folks to continue lying to pollsters due to race. That said, Wilder is confident about Obama's chances and thinks if the GOP gets seen by the public as if they were race-baiting, they'll be in trouble.
CONTINUED >>
From NBC's Domenico Montanaro Audra Ostergard, the lone remaining Nebraska superdelegate, publicly endorsed Obama , per a campaign release. Obama now has the backing of all six Nebraska superdelegates. Today, Obama announced two superdelegates (Ostergard and OK Gov. Brad Henry ) and Clinton announced one (TN Rep. John Tanner ).
Clinton now holds a 263-239 superdelegate lead.
The Pennsylvania pledged count (updated 4/23, 6:15 pm ): Clinton 82-73 (three delegates still to be allocated.)
There are 408 delegates up for grabs in the remaining nine contests.
And a new addition, some "fun" with POPULAR VOTE numbers...Without MI/FL:
With FL, but NOT MI:
With MI/FL, including "uncommitted" for Obama: Obama: 15,254,369
With MI/FL, giving Obama 0 in MI and Clinton 328,000-plus (the only metric which gives her a lead): Clinton: 15,150,551
From NBC/NJ's Mike Memoli Bill Clinton fired up a Tar Heel crowd here today by recounting some facts and figures from his wife's victory in Pennsylvania. He said that victory was made possible by "people like you," working-class types that he claimed the Obama camp is now writing off.
"Today her opponent's campaign strategist said, 'Well, we don't really need these working-class people to win, half the time they vote for Republicans anyways,'" he said, while speaking from a flatbed truck on a baseball field. "I will tell you something -- America needs you to win and therefore
Hillary wants your support and I hope you will help her in this primary in North Carolina."
Clinton apparently was referring to comments by Obama strategist David Axelrod, who told NPR today that the "white working class has gone to the Republican nominee for many elections, going back even to the Clinton years," and that the Democratic candidates "haven't solely relied on the demographic"
Clinton told the hundreds on hand, as he told thousands of Pennsylvanians for more than a month, that this was "the biggest state still to vote." And he tweaked the Obama camp for ducking a previously planned debate.
CONTINUED >>
Per NBC/NJ's Carrie Dann Obama to the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
"This is a legitimate question to be asked," said state party spokesman Brent Woodcox, who emphasized that the NC GOP has "a great relationship" with their national leadership. "We are not the only ones asking it."
VIDEO: April 23: MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell talks with North Carolina GOP chair Linda Daves about a controverisal new ad running in the state that calls Barack Obama too extreme. Woodcox says the party plans to air the ad Monday night at 6, but that the buy is "still being finalized." (That means there's still time for the party to balk, rendering the ad a trial balloon or a stunt.)
He said that the urging of party leadership will be "taken into consideration," but that they stand by the ad as of now. "We plan to go ahead with this," he said.
The Republican National Committee was aware of the ad last night, but a formal request for the ad to be aired was not made by the RNC until this morning.
CONTINUED >>
From NBC/NJ's Aswini Anburajan Obama declared that he was winning in the race for the Democratic nomination, dismissing the notion that last night's loss proved that he has problems closing the deal.
"The way we're gonna close the deal is by winning. And right now we're winning," he said. "And you know what we'll do is keep on campaigning in Indiana and North Carolina and Oregon and these other states. And at the conclusion of all these contests, people will go back and take a look and say, 'Who's won?'"
VIDEO: April 23: Sen. Barack Obama talks with reporters in New Albany, Ind. about his ten-point loss in the Pennsylvania primary. Obama claimed that only at the conclusion of all the primaries, could a decision be made on who really deserved the nomination and projected that it would be him.
"We've won more states, we've won more votes, then it'll be ... apparent that we're in the strongest position to win in November," he said.
CONTINUED >>
From MSNBC.com's Andy Merten This afternoon, Obama and Clinton will return to Washington, D.C., to make an appearance at their day jobs for the first time in two weeks. They will be voting on a Senate bill that will make it easier for individuals to sue employers over unequal pay -- a politically contentious measure, which has invoked the threat of veto from the White House.
It’s no secret that the demands of running for the presidency can sometimes interfere with the daily voting duties of congressional members looking to further their careers. Late last year, Obama caught flak for not voting on a non-binding resolution declaring the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, after he sought to use Clinton’s yay-vote to paint her as too hawkish.
As of today, Obama has missed slightly fewer than 40 percent of his Senate votes since the beginning of 2007, while Clinton’s absentee rate is just under 30 percent.
But McCain has topped both candidates, missing a staggering 58 percent of his votes during the 110th Congress, according to the Washington Post’s congressional votes
database .
CONTINUED >>
From NBC's Domenico Montanaro Clinton has picked up her first post-Pennsylvania superdelegate, a Red-stater, Rep. John Tanner (TN). Tanner is the first Red State elected official to back Clinton since Blanche Lincoln (AR) on Feb. 7. Is this the beginning of several to come?
Obama got the backing earlier today of Gov. Brad Henry (OK).
Clinton now holds a 263-238 superdelegate lead.
The Pennsylvania pledged count: Clinton 80-71 (seven delegates still to be allocated.)
*** UPDATE ***
From NBC's John Boxley Clinton campaign today is that more people have now cast votes for Clinton than Obama , when you include MI and FL AND exclude the caucuses which Obama has dominated. (See earlier post on the popular vote logic.)
The campaign also said, fundraising continues to grow, now at $3.5 million since last night and rising with the campaign claiming that 80 percent of these donations are from first-time contributors.
*** UPDATE ***
But, as First Read crunches the numbers, we ask: Is the Clinton campaign giving Obama zero votes in Michigan since his name wasn't on the ballot? Because if Clinton gets the approximately 328,000 in Michigan and Obama were given credit for the 237,000-plus "uncommitted" votes, she still wouldn't have enough votes to overtake his current popular vote lead even with Florida factored in. But if she were to take the state 328,000 to 0 she'd take the popular vote lead.
*** UPDATE 2 *** exactly .
From NBC's Mark Murray and NBC/NJ's Aswini Anburajan Obama campaign manager David Plouffe argued that Clinton's win in Pennsylvania yesterday doesn't change the current trajectory of the race:
VIDEO:
NBC's Andrea Mitchell talks with Obama's national campaign co-chair Bill Daley about the Democratic presidential election. "We don't believe the structure of the race is going to change fundamentally," he said. "She does need to win out here and win by some margin."
Plouffe also touched on electability, noting that the Clinton campaign touts its wins in big battleground states (like Ohio and Pennsylvania). "Well, North Carolina is a big battleground state," he said. "So by their own definition, it would appear that they would need to win North Carolina and win it by a big margin."
CONTINUED >>
From NBC's Domenico Montanaro Clinton now has an 80-71 split with seven delegates still to be allocated.
Keep in mind, however, that when the counting is done, Clinton will likely net more than that.
Obama now leads by 157 in the pledged delegate count: 1,488-1,331
Factoring in the superdelegate count (Clinton 262, Obama 238), Obama leads by 133 overall: 1,726-1,593.
From NBC/NJ's Carrie Dann Update to NC Gop anti-Obama ad that references the Rev. Jeremiah Wright...
Per the RNC, the national leadership of the Republican Party has been in contact this morning with the North Carolina GOP, urging them to refrain from running the "Extreme" ad. The party says that the content of the anti-Obama ad, which references the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is "not appropriate" and "unhelpful."
The NC GOP is an independent organization not bound to the recommendations of the national party. A spokesman from the NC party declined to comment on any conversations between the RNC and the North Carolina team.
*** UPDATE *** McCain
Here's the letter:
Dear Chairman Daves,
This ad does not live up to the very high standards we should hold ourselves to in this campaign. We need to run a campaign that is worthy of the people we seek to serve. There is no doubt that we will draw sharp contrasts with the Democrats on fundamental issues critical to the future course of our country.
But we need not engage in political tactics that only seek to divide the American people.
Once again, it is imperative that you withdraw this offensive advertisement.
John McCain
From NBC's Domenico Montanaro Clinton 's victory last night, the latest out of Clinton camp is that Clinton has pulled ahead of Obama in the popular vote. Of course, as we noted in First Thoughts, this can only be done by including Florida and Michigan, which is what the Clinton campaign has done.
Coming across journalists desks this morning was the following e-mail from Phil Singer at Clinton camp with the subject, "More People Have Voted For Hillary Than Any Other Candidate":
"After last night's decisive victory in Pennsylvania, more people have voted for Hillary than any other candidate, including Sen. Obama. Estimates vary slightly, but according to Real Clear Politics, Hillary has received 15,095,663 votes to Sen. Obama's 14,973,720, a margin of more than 120,000 votes. ABC News reported this morning that 'Clinton has pulled ahead of Obama' in the popular vote. This count includes certified vote totals in Florida and Michigan."
ABC's The Note reported this morning, however, similarly to what we wrote in First Thoughts: "By one (rightly disputed) metric -- the popular vote, including Florida and Michigan -- Clinton has pulled ahead of Obama. But without the rogue states, Obama is still up by 500,000 -- and if you can find another objective measurement by which she's in the lead, let us know."
RealClearPolitics keeps a popular vote tally, which breaks down the totals. It has a line also factoring in Michigan, which has an asterisk. What we wrote : "That new popular vote total (not counting FL or MI) has Obama leading Clinton, 49%-47%. For those keeping score, that's a difference of 483,129. ... So those remaining contests, per this conservative projection, bring Obama’s popular vote lead to 515,629. If you add Florida, that gives Clinton almost another 300,000 more. So you if you include the Sunshine State, Obama will still lead her by about 215,000 popular votes. No wonder Clinton herself decided to start talking about Michigan again, because she can't "win" the popular vote without it. The problem: Even many Clinton supporters believe it’s not a valid measurement."
From Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, and Domenico Montanaro The secret to Hillary’s success: So how did Clinton win so decisively last night? The answer is women, specifically white women. They continue to be as important to her success in these primaries as new voters and African-Americans have been to Obama. Per the exit polls, 47% of the Pennsylvania Democratic electorate last night was made up of white women, higher than any other race/gender subgroup. Clinton ended up winning them by more than 30 points, 66%-34%; in Ohio, she won this group, 67%-31%. The question that everyone seems to be asking now is: Why can’t Obama put Clinton away? The AP’s Ron Fournier takes a stab at answering this, and he points to five reasons (race, working-class voters, friends in trouble, inexperience, and mettle). But to us, women seem to be the bigger reason. They continue to rally to her side; nothing has shaken their confidence in her. If Clinton continues to beat Obama by 30-plus points among white women, how can he knock her out?
VIDEO: NBC Political Director Chuck Todd offers his first read on the questions following the Clinton victory in the Pennsylvania primary. ***
Rocking the suburbs: What’s more, Clinton must have won white women decisively across the state's geographic landscape, because there's no other explanation for her pulling off the upset in the Philly suburbs. To most lay observers, Obama looked to be a lock to win the Philly ‘burbs; the only question was by how much. But he didn’t win them. Overall, Obama carried just seven of the state's 67 counties. In his successful gubernatorial primary win over Bob Casey in 2002, Ed Rendell carried 10 counties -- and the big difference between Rendell's path and Obama's was that Rendell carried Montgomery and Bucks counties, while Obama lost MontCo narrowly and got clobbered in Bucks. This success by Clinton in the suburbs, by the way, might be the best talking point the campaign has going forward because it's the first evidence in weeks that Clinton has finally cut into Obama's coalition. Of course, Pennsylvania could simply be her Wisconsin, where everything that happens in the state, well, stays in the state. Remember Wisconsin? That was Obama's supposed big break through in cutting into Clinton's coalition of white, working-class voters and even white women. Wisconsin didn't take for Obama. Will Pennsylvania take for Clinton?
*** The Tar Heel equalizer? Like it or not, the Obama folks are going to have to deal with the fact that popular vote is going to be a metric for SOME superdelegates. The good news for them is that not every superdelegate thinks this is a fair barometer, but enough do that the Clinton campaign is going to successfully tout this measurement. But this fight for the popular vote could be very short-lived. While the contest for pledged delegates is over, with Obama holding what now appears to be an insurmountable 150+ lead, the fight for the popular vote lives on for another two weeks. But it may be on for ONLY another two weeks. Why? North Carolina. A top-10 population state, Clinton can't afford to lose it at all -- let alone lose it by 10 points or more -- because if she loses the state by 10 points, she'll lose 150,000 of the 200,000 in popular vote she gained yesterday. And if she loses by 15 points, he can wipe out the 200,000-plus she netted completely. After May 6, there's just not enough vote for her to catch up. So while all eyes may be on Indiana as a "tie breaker" (the words of Obama, not us), North Carolina may be a bigger key in two weeks. Because of North Carolina’s size, the Clinton campaign is going to have a harder time dismissing the state's significance than they did Mississippi and some of the smaller states. The Clinton campaign has an effective talking point against Obama on this idea he can't win in certain big states, but the effective talking point Obama has is that he competes in every state. And this is why she can't avoid North Carolina because it's a big state, so it's not something she can avoid. She can keep going if she wins Indiana but she can't win the nomination; if she wins North Carolina, THAT would be a game changer, period.
*** Another Obama-is-Reagan analogy: Now what? The biggest shot in the arm for Clinton appears to be financial. The campaign took pains last night to make sure everyone was updated minute by minute about her online fundraising success last night (some $2.5 million in the three hours following the Pennsylvania election call). Financially, the Clinton camp is living dollar in, dollar out (while the debt piles up). This could mean the significance of Pennsylvania won't fully be known until after May 6. Why? Because if Obama sweeps Indiana and North Carolina, one of the reasons will be his financial advantage. In fact, there's a chance that what Obama did to Clinton in Pennsylvania is akin to what Reagan did to the Soviet Union in the 1980s -- He dragged her into a spending war she couldn't keep up with. Still, as of right now, Obama's looking like someone who is limping to the nomination battered and bruised rather than sailing through smoothly. Bottom line: this is a cold war and the candidate with the deeper pockets is likely to hang on.
*** It’s a bird, it's a plane, it’s another Obama superdelegate: Before the sun even rose, the Obama campaign rolled out the endorsement of Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry, a superdelegate and someone from one of those uncontested red states. Interestingly, Oklahoma is a state Clinton carried on February 5 -- by A LOT. By the way, does Clinton have an interesting superdelegate endorsement or two in her back pocket right now? She just hasn't had a BIG endorsement in weeks. Of the remaining "gets" the one that seems most likely to come to her side (and would serve as a real boost) would be John Edwards, although he’s not a super. Newsweek's Howard Fineman said on MSNBC last night Elizabeth Edwards is likely to show up at a Clinton rally or two, but can she convince the ex-candidate to come over? It's a tough decision for John Edwards since Obama is such a heavy favorite in his home state.
*** Perception vs. reality: Perception always means more than reality. For instance, last night, just how important was it that Clinton's lead got to 10 points rather quickly and stayed there before settling down to 9 points? With 99% of precincts reporting, it was Clinton 54.69%, Obama 45.31%. What if her lead was 6-7 all night, and then ended overnight at 9 points? It's a little thing, but perception for her (and her donors) is everything right now. For those wondering, Clinton won Ohio by more than 10 points, 55.23% vs. 44.77%.
*** Where we stand: Obama leads in pledged delegates per the NBC hard count (1482 to 1326), overall delegates (1720 to 1588), the popular vote (14,447,568 to 13,964,439), and total number of contests won (29 to 15). Note: We’re not including Texas in this last total, given that Clinton won the primary but Obama won the caucus and netted the most delegates. That new popular vote total (not counting FL or MI) has Obama leading Clinton, 49%-47%. For those keeping score, that's a difference of 483,129. Projecting the rest out…
Total votes
Clinton
Obama
Projection
NC
1,500,000
675,000
825,000
45%-55%
IN
900,000
460,000
440,000
51%-49%
WV
400,000
240,000
160,000
60%-40%
KY
500,000
300,000
200,000
60%-40%
OR
600,000
270,000
330,000
45%-55%
SD
100,000
45,000
55,000
45%-55%
MT
125,000
56,250
68,750
45%-55%
TOTAL
2,046,250
2,078,750
So those remaining contests, per this conservative projection, bring Obama’s popular vote lead to 515,629. If you add Florida, that gives Clinton almost another 300,000 more. So you if you include the Sunshine State, Obama will still lead her by about 215,000 popular votes. No wonder Clinton herself decided to start talking about Michigan again, because she can't "win" the popular vote without it. The problem: Even many Clinton supporters believe it’s not a valid measurement.
*** We can stop the delegate math: Turning to the delegate math, if Clinton nets approximately 16 delegates out of Pennsylvania, she'll trail in the pledged battle by 150 delegates. With just 408 pledged delegates remaining, that means she'd need 68% of all pledged delegates left to overtake Obama. Now, if Obama and Clinton simply split the 187 delegates up for grabs on May 6 basically down the middle (which would be a rosy projection in Clinton's favor) and Obama's pledged delegate lead simply stayed at 150 and didn’t grow to 160 (the most likely outcome in two weeks), Clinton would need to win 85% of the then 221 remaining delegates up for grabs. 85%! As we mentioned on air last night, the battle for pledged delegates is over, Obama will win that metric and win it by some 100+ delegates.
*** The GOP goes there…: This morning, NBC/NJ’s Carrie Dann reports, the North Carolina GOP will unveil a 30-second ad that attacks Democratic gubernatorial candidates Beverly Perdue and Richard Moore for their endorsements of Obama. The ad, per the party, will reference "controversial figures from Barack Obama's past" and raise the question of the candidates' "judgment" in supporting him. The ad will be unveiled at an 11:00 am press conference. So far, the Democratic gubernatorial campaigns say that they have not yet seen it and declined to comment before knowing the content. But it's anticipated by Democratic bigs in the state that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright will play a starring role.
*** Back on The Hill: Per NBC’s Ken Strickland, both Clinton and Obama will return to the Senate today to vote on a bill challenging a Supreme Court ruling on equal pay. Last year, the Supreme Court ruled in Ledbetter vs. Goodyear that lawsuits claiming pay discrimination had to follow Equal Employment Opportunity Commission procedures and be filed within 180 days of when the employer first gave Ms. Ledbetter her check. The legislation would allow the 180-day-clock to run each time a paycheck is received. Today’s vote, Strickland adds, is only procedural, requiring 60 votes to advance the bill. It's unlikely supporters will muster that many votes, let alone the 67 needed to overcome the president's veto threat.On the trail: Clinton holds a rally in Indianapolis before returning to DC; McCain -- on the third leg of his tour -- is in Kentucky; and Obama holds a town hall in New Albany, IN before heading to DC. Also, Bill Clinton campaigns for his wife in North Carolina, making five stops there.
Countdown to North Carolina, Indiana: 13 daysClick here to sign up for First Read emails.
Today's spin war... The Obama campaign will make the case the prolonged contest is hurting the party and damaging the nominee; the Clinton campaign will make the case the prolonged contest continues to energize the party and -- at a minimum -- toughens up the eventual nominee for the fall campaign. What do superdelegates believe? They will probably be talked into believing that every state should get their shot at voting simply because it's good for the local Democratic Party economies (that's the good news for Clinton); But these same superdelegates will want the race over on June 4; no prolonged debate about Florida and Michigan (that's the good news for Obama). No doubt Clinton will get a bounce out of her victory. The question is will it just be a boost for her or will we see Obama punctured at all in match-ups with McCain? That seems to be the definition of whether Clinton's bounce is useful or not -- does it not just boost her in the polls in both Indiana and North Carolina, but also boost her in match-ups with McCain compared with Obama?
A dead cat bounce? The Washington Post's Balz lays out the numerical reality facing Clinton. "Clinton's path to the nomination remains extraordinarily treacherous even after the victory in Pennsylvania. Her margin was decisive, but even some of her most loyal supporters privately expressed doubts last night that she can prevail in the long battle against Obama.”
“The senator from Illinois still leads in the number of pledged delegates and the popular vote. He is almost certain to hold the delegate lead and will probably maintain the popular-vote advantage when the primaries end in early June. Perhaps more important, Clinton's campaign is nearly broke, whereas Obama has an enormous amount of money in the bank to throw into the next two contests and beyond. "
The Los Angeles Times' Z. Barabak and Levey concur. "Mathematically, with just nine contests left, it appears virtually impossible for Clinton to overtake Obama in the popular vote and among pledged delegates -- those chosen in primaries and caucuses. Her best hope was to instill enough doubts about Obama to persuade the 300 or so uncommitted superdelegates to rally to her side."
CONTINUED >>
The New York Times editorial page, which endorsed Clinton, yet again criticizes what it sees as the Clinton campaign’s negative tone. “The Pennsylvania campaign, which produced yet another inconclusive result on Tuesday, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it… It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election.”
VIDEO: April 23: Sen. Hillary Clinton talks with TODAY’s Matt Lauer about her victory in Pennsylvania and talks about criticisms that her campaign has become too negative.
NBC’s AnaMaria Arumi analyzed the exit polls from last night to explain Clinton’s victory. Clinton rode to victory in Pennsylvania lifted by support from demographic voter subgroups that have lined up for her in earlier primaries. Clinton won seven in 10 votes from white Catholics in the Keystone State, and six in 10 votes from white women, voters with a high school education or less, and seniors aged 65 and older. WHITE CATHOLICS: The New York senator did much better among white Catholics than she did among white Protestant voters. In several other states with big Catholic populations this year, she also did better among Catholics than Protestants, but these differences were not as large. Here she did 13 points better, but in Wisconsin the difference was just 7 points, same in New York, and 5 points in New Jersey. In Ohio, there was essentially no difference in the vote of white Catholics and white Protestants. RACE: Voters were again asked, as in previous contests, how important the race of the candidate in deciding their vote today. Most voters said it was not important, but some said it was. Among white voters, 16% said race was important; 83% said it was not a factor. This is virtually identical to what we saw in Ohio, where 18% of white voters said race was important. Now, that 16% among white voters was higher among certain groups -- just a little more than one-in-10 white voters in the Philadelphia area said race was important. By contrast, nearly two in 10 among white voters in other parts of the state said it was important. And non-college graduate white voters were about twice as likely as college graduates to said race was important to them. Clinton won a sizeable majority -- 75% of the vote -- among these voters. Clinton also won among white voters who said race was NOT important, but by a smaller margin (58% to 41%).IN TOUCH’ AND HONESTY: Both candidates have had to deal with particular lines of attack from their critics -- changes of dishonesty and lack of trustworthiness in Clinton’s case (Bosnia), elitism in Obama’s case (after his small-town remarks). Obama was seen as more honest and trustworthy (68% said he was, 32% said he’s not) than Clinton (56% said she was, 44% said she’s not.)
The Boston Globe : “Two million Pennsylvania voters played to type yesterday, hewing to the demographic loyalties set forth in earlier contests: Older, Catholic, and working-class white voters stuck with Hillary Clinton, and new, highly educated, and black voters went for Barack Obama. Exit polls and interviews with voters suggested that the disruptions to the race - including controversies over Obama's pastor, his comments about small-town bitterness, Clinton's claims of facing fire in Bosnia, and a high-profile debate that touched on all those subjects - had little influence on the hardened demographic divide within the Democratic Party.”
MCCAIN: Trade isn’t going away, folks…
"The biggest problem is not so much what's happened with free trade, but our inability to adjust to a new world economy," McCain said during a town hall-style meeting at Youngstown State University. "So we want people to be part of that revolution, and we've got to be part of that new economy, rather than try to cling to an old economy."
The
New York Times : “Is Nafta a four-letter word? No, Senator John McCain told an Ohio voter on Tuesday, he did not think so. ‘I am prone on occasion to make a mistake,’ Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, told Jack O’Connell, a retired labor leader, at a town-hall-style meeting at Youngstown State University. Still, he said, ‘last time I checked, Nafta has five letters, not four.’ Mr. McCain was responding to a question from Mr. O’Connell, who called Nafta, or the North American Free Trade Agreement, ‘a bad four letters,’ then asked Mr. McCain what he thought of the deal. Mr. McCain’s answer made the crowd laugh, even if his more substantive response -- the overall result of the trade agreement has been ‘a benefit to our country’ -- was politically unpalatable to many Ohio voters who blame the trade deal for lost American jobs.”
The New York Times writes that Obama appears to be shifting his focus from Clinton to McCain. “A series of endorsements are scheduled to be announced in the coming days, including superdelegates who intend to pledge their support for Mr. Obama. And more campaign workers in the Chicago headquarters will be dedicated to taking on Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee. Mr. Obama only mentioned Mrs. Clinton by name once in his remarks at a rally here late Tuesday night, when he congratulated her on winning the Pennsylvania primary. He referred to Mr. McCain seven times, a pointed reminder to Democrats of the challenge that lies ahead.”
This morning, NBC/NJ’s Carrie Dann reports, the North Carolina GOP will unveil a 30-second ad that attacks Democratic gubernatorial candidates Beverly Perdue and Richard Moore for their endorsements of Obama. The ad, per the party, will reference "controversial figures from Barack Obama's past" and raise the question of the candidates' "judgment" in supporting him.
The ad will be unveiled at an 11:00 am press conference. So far, the Democratic gubernatorial campaigns say that they have not yet seen it and declined to comment before knowing the content. But it's anticipated by Democratic bigs in the state that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright will play a starring role.
It's unclear how extensive the buy will be, because the buy itself has not been made yet. A spokesman says that the party is "still making the decisions" as to where and when the ad will run, but says that a weeklong rotation is planned starting "sometime next week." Of course, releasing it at a press conference tomorrow gives the party time to gauge reaction and pull the plug. But Brent Woodcox, the party's communications director, insists that "the buy is going to be made, because this is a legitimate question."
The ad was not made in coordination with any of Moore and Perdue's Republican rivals. The front-runner for the GOP nomination in the state is Charlotte mayor Pat McCrory, who has a reputation as a pro-business moderate.
As mentioned above, Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry is endorsing Obama.
From NBC's Domenico Montanaro Clinton out of Pennsylvania; 18 delegates are not allocated yet.
With that, Obama now leads by 156 pledged delegates: 1,482-1,326.
Our superdelegate total is Clinton 262, Obama 237.
In all, Obama now leads by 131 overall: 1,719-1,588.
From MSNBC’s Norah O’Donnell and Adam Verdugo With Hillary Clinton winning tonight, we wanted to look ahead to the fall election and gauge how much this contentious Democratic primary race has divided the party.
Overall, 71% say they would be satisfied if Clinton wins the nomination; 64% said they would be satisfied with Obama . These satisfaction levels are very similar to what we saw in Ohio.
Also, as we saw in previous states, Clinton supporters would be more unhappy with Obama as their nominee than Obama supporters would be if Clinton became party's choice. Six out of ten Clinton's voters say they would not be satisfied with him. Only about half the Obama voters would be dissatisfied with her as the nominee.
The poll specifically asked Clinton and Obama voters what they would do if their preferred candidate did not win the nomination. They were faced with the following choice: support the other Democrat, vote for John McCain, or stay home. First, only 53% of Clinton voters say they would vote for Obama. A quarter of her supporters would cross party lines and vote for John McCain and 18% would stay home.
As for Obama voters, 69% say they would vote for Hillary Clinton if she ends up the nominee against McCain; 16% would vote for McCain and 13% would stay home.
And what about those new voters? Remember some 300,000 new voters in Pennsylvania today? Well, 29% said they would not vote for Hillary Clinton in November.
From NBC's Ron Allen
Terry McAuliffe, one of her top advisors just said, "One down, nine to go," referring to the remaining contests to come. Clinton has said she's going to fight all the way to the convention. She seems to thrive on beating the odds, and proving her doubters wrong. Now, the Keystone State has given her more reason to press on.
It’s not just that she won. It’s that Obama lost, she'll say. Lost after outspending her by a three-to-one margin. Why, Clinton has asked, can't he put the nomination away? Why can't he win a big swing state like Pennsylvania that the party will need in November?
One of Clinton's theme songs is playing, "Well, I won't back down; you can stand me up at the gates of hell, but I won't back down."
CONTINUED >>
From NBC/NJ's Matthew Berger
From NBC's Domenico Montanaro Clinton to win Pennsylvania, but if Obama keeps it closer than the margin in Ohio, there are some signs in the exit polling that would show why.
Obama fared better in the largest voting bloc by age, the 50-64 group. In Ohio, that group made up 32% of the electorate, and Clinton won it 60%-37%. This time, the group made up 36% of the electorate, and Clinton won it by a slighter margin, 56%-44%.
The electorate in Pennsylvania is older (second oldest in the country behind Florida). The +65 category was 23% of the vote vs. just 14% in Ohio. But Obama did better with this group in Pennsylvania (63%-37% for Clinton) than in Ohio (72%-26% for Clinton).
Education was another factor. Among those without a college degree, Clinton won 58%-42%, similar to her victory in Ohio, 58%-40%, but more voters in Pennsylvania reported having a college degree (47% vs. 32% in Ohio). And Obama won those voters 51%-49%, a similar margin to Ohio (51%-47%).
Obama also scraped around the margins with every racial demographic, but not enough to pull off the victory. Clinton won white women 66%-34% (47% of the electorate); she won that group 67%-31% in Ohio (44% of the electorate). With the overall white vote, Clinton won it 64%-34% in Ohio and 62%-38% in Pennsylvania. Among white men, Clinton won 58%-39% in Ohio and 56%-44% in Pennsylvania.
Among black voters (13% of the electorate; was 18% in Ohio), Obama won by similar margins in Pennsylvania (89%-11%) as in Ohio (87%-13%).
*** UPDATE ***
Another point, As Marc Ambinder points out, Clinton improved her margins with Catholics, which contributed to her victory. In Ohio, where Catholics were 23% of all voters, she got 63%-36%. In Pennsylvania, where they comprised 37% of the vote, she got a higher percentage, 69%-31%.
NBC News declares
Hillary Clinton the projected winner in Pennsylvania's Democratic primary.
Clinton has taken a lead, according to exit polls, and NBC has now marked Pennsylvania as "too early to call."
NBC News characterizes the Pennsylvania Democratic primary as "too close to call."
From MSNBC’s Norah O’Donnell and Adam Verdugo Obama painted his rival as a compromised Washington insider, while Clinton charged that Obama's new tactics showed he was just another old-style politician. She also unveiled ads calling into question his readiness to deal with threats like Osama bin Laden. So how did all these negative attacks play in Pennsylvania?
The exit polls show that Democratic voters think Clinton went too far. In fact, two-thirds say she attacked unfairly, while only 49% said that about Obama. This is the highest we've seen these negative numbers since South Carolina, when the issue of race first became a flashpoint.
When you take a look at the breakdown by race and gender: 77% percent of black voters think Hillary Clinton attacked her opponent, while only about half as many -- 37% -- feel the same way about Barack Obama. White women voters don't give either candidate a pass: 64% think Clinton crossed the line while 53% think Obama went too far.
And lastly, both candidates took their attacks to the airwaves. How did six full weeks of ads aimed at Pennsylvania voters effect their decisions? Just over half say the ads were either very important or somewhat important. Remember, Obama spent an enormous amount of money on TV in the Keystone State. He outspent Clinton 3 to 1 in the run-up to this primary.
From MSNBC's Norah O’Donnell and Adam Verdugo It's been a full six weeks since the last contest, and we're getting a good look from our NBC News exit polls at which personal qualities Pennsylvania Democratic voters value. Today, voters in the Keystone State say it's the candidate that can bring about “change.” Nearly half said this -- 49% -- followed a quarter that said “experience.” Fifteen percent said that it was important that the candidate "cares about me." While only 8% said electability.
As has been the pattern in previous races, Obama's voters are looking for change -- 73% of his voters said this. Far fewer mentioned anything else: 14% wanted a candidate who cares about people like them, 8% are concerned about electability, and just 3% say it's experience that counts.
Among Clinton voters, it's a very different picture: experience is the quality most valued. Nearly half of Clinton's voters say experience is what they value most. 27% want a candidate who can bring about change, 14% want someone who cares about them, and just 9% say the key for them is electability.
However, when it comes to just who they believe will be the Democratic nominee more voters in this Democratic primary feel it will be Obama: Obama -- 54%, Clinton 43%. But we should note, in this state it's just a small majority, much smaller than in recent national polls. It also appears that about one in five Clinton voters in the state now feel that Obama will be the nominee.
From NBC's Ken Strickland Clinton and Obama will return to the Senate tomorrow to vote on a bill challenging a Supreme Court ruling on equal pay.
Last year, the Supreme Court ruled in Ledbetter vs Goodyear that lawsuits claiming pay discrimination had to follow Equal Employment Opportunity Commission procedures and be filed within 180 days of when the employer first gave Ms. Ledbetter her check. The legislation would allow the 180-day-clock to run each time a paycheck is received.
Tomorrow's vote is only procedural, requiring 60 votes to advance the bill. It's unlikely supporters will muster that many votes, let alone the 67 needed to overcome the president's veto threat.
The timing of the vote is unknown, but hope to have a better sense of things later this afternoon.
From NBC's Ron Allen Clinton just answered questions from reporters outside a polling place in the Philadelphia suburbs. Heading down the stretch in Pennsylvania, it seems Clinton has based her closing argument on a couple of somewhat circular or roundabout arguments, a case that might cancel itself out.
First, with Barack Obama outspending her by as much as three to one, Clinton insists that if he doesn't win Pennsylvania, it shows voters have big doubts. Essentially, she's trying to turn losing into winning and turn winning around into losing. Never mind the fact that Obama can outspend her because he's raised so much more money, from many more supporters, supporters who are responsible for giving him the lead by every viable measure of the race.
What's more, Clinton's case that she's more "electable" than Obama is based, in part, on her ability to win "big states," like Ohio, New York and hopefully, for her sake, Pennsylvania. Those wins, the campaign insists, show she has the support of Democratic voters needed to win in November, while Obama does not. Essentially, she's saying she's more electable, because she can count on the support of the traditional Democratic base while Obama hasn't proven that.
Keep in mind that many in the political pundit class think it’s a stretch to draw conclusions about the fall general election race based on the party primary season. And what's more, when Senator Clinton is asked about the increasingly negative tone of the campaign that concerns some in the party, and polls showing perhaps significant numbers of each Democratic candidate's supporters saying they won't support the other, or will turn to John McCain, Clinton pushes back saying she's sure the party will be unified by November, and rally around the eventual nominee.
If that's true, and it probably is, then what difference does it make who wins the big states during the primary season? Clinton seems to believe the nominee will have the full backing of the party. So, it appears those two Clinton arguments, central to her campaign, do go around in circles, and perhaps end up weakening her case?
From NBC's Gabriel Herman and Jessica Turtletaub McCain and President Bush and calls them “two peas in a political pod.”
Inside an envelope highlighting an image of Bush and McCain shaking hands, the mailing calls on Democrats to contribute money to the DNC to ensure that McCain does not have the opportunity to bring “4 more years of dangerous and destructive Bush policies” to the United States.
The letter, penned by DNC chairman Howard Dean, also stresses the urgency for Democrats to prevent McCain from further establishing himself as “a straight talking maverick who is not afraid to buck the Republican Party line.” The DNC chairman contends that McCain is, in fact, “as conservative as they come,” and his administration would preserve “the radical right’s hateful social agenda.” He adds, “Like President Bush,” McCain follows a “shoot first, ask questions second” foreign policy strategy, supports tax cuts for the wealthy as well as corporations that ship jobs overseas, and promises to appoint “Bush-style” judges who will overturn Roe vs. Wade.
And mocking McCain’s “Straight Talk Express,” the mailer includes a brochure documenting McCain’s “politically motivated double talk,” citing examples of his flip-flopping on the issues of Iraq, the Bush tax cuts, and campaign finance reform.
*** UPDATE ***
From NBC's Mark Murray Obama and Clinton campaigns have released dueling memos to frame today's Pennsylvania primary. The Cliffs Notes version: The Obama folks continue to argue that Clinton was always favored in the state, but that the delegate math is stacked against her. Meanwhile, Team Clinton wonders -- if Obama is the front-runner -- why he shouldn't be expected to win in the Keystone State.
The Obama camp's memo: "Clinton has been leading by large margins in Pennsylvania. In the weeks leading up to the primary, she led by as much as 25 points. They were so confident that their own Pennsylvania spokesman said Clinton would be 'unbeatable' in Pennsylvania—regardless of spending by her opponent... Behind in delegates and sporting a 14-30 primary record (not good enough even to make the playoffs in the NBA Eastern Conference), the Clinton campaign needs a blowout victory in Pennsylvania to get any closer to winning the nomination. Even President Clinton said that only a 'big, big victory' will give her the boost she needs."
More: "Tonight’s outcome is unlikely to change the dynamic of this lengthy primary. Fully three quarters of the remaining delegates will be selected in states other than Pennsylvania. While there are 158 delegates at stake in today’s primary, there are 157 up for grabs in the Indiana and North Carolina primaries two weeks from today. We expect that by tomorrow morning, the overall structure of the race will remain unchanged—except for the fact that there will be 158 delegates off the table."
The Clinton memo: "[A]fter the Obama campaign’s 'go-for-broke' Pennsylvania strategy, after their avalanche of negative ads, negative mailers and negative attacks against Sen. Clinton, after their record-breaking spending in the state, a fundamental question must be asked: Why shouldn't Sen. OBAMA win? Sen. Obama's supporters -- and many pundits -- have argued that the delegate 'math' makes him the prohibitive front-runner. They have argued that Sen. Clinton's chances are slim to none. So if he's already the front-runner, if he's had six weeks of unlimited resources to get his message out, shouldn't he be the one expected to win tonight? If not, why not? As the phrase goes, watch what they do not what they say."
"There's a reason Sen. Obama and his campaign have ratcheted up their year-long assault on Sen. Clinton's character and ended the Pennsylvania campaign with a flurry of harsh negative attacks. It's because they know that a loss in Pennsylvania will raise troubling questions about his candidacy and his ability to take on John McCain in the general election. And it's because they know that the race is neck and neck and tonight's contest is a measure of where the campaign stands."
From NBC/NJ's Aswini Anburajan Obama handicapped the Pennsylvania race and held steady in his criticism of former President Jimmy Carter's visit with Hamas.
He said that a Keystone State win by Clinton would do little to overcome his delegate lead. "What I know is that going into this six weeks ago, the Clinton campaign suggested that they were unbeatable, and I think the strategy they were talking about is they could overcome our delegate lead and our popular vote lead and the number of states that we have won by winning big in Pennsylvania and future contests."
Obama added, "If you take a look at how the delegates play themselves out at the end of the night we should be able to measure, given how many contests are left, whether they can make up that ground."
CONTINUED >>
From NBC's Domenico Montanaro Clinton was asked this morning on Good Morning America to clarify her comments from the debate on Iran and American retaliation. (Iran starts at about 2:30.)
QUESTION: …Does massive retaliation mean you would go into Iran, you would bomb Iran? Is that what that’s supposed to suggest?
CLINTON: Well, the question was, if Iran were to launch a nuclear attack on Israel, what would our response be. And I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran. And I want them to understand that, because it does mean that they have to look very carefully at their society, because at whatever stage of development they might be in their nuclear weapons program, in the next 10 years during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel we would be able to totally obliterate them. That’s a terrible thing to say, but those people who run Iran need to understand that, because that perhaps will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish and tragic.
From NBC/NJ's Matthew E. Berger
"It's just been minor, normal kinds of stuff," she said. "Nothing major, nothing widespread."
She said polling places do not report turnout numbers throughout the day, but that anecdotally she has learned it is high, aided by the nice weather.
From NBC/NJ’s Athena Jones Clinton said she just needed a victory in the Keystone State primary to feel she had done well, since Obama had vastly outspent her.
The former first day is favored to win today's contest, but polls show a wide range of possible victory margins, and it's unclear what impact thousands of newly registered voters will have on the race. Many political observers believe she must win by double-digits here or face pressure to bow out.
"A win is a win especially under the circumstances where my opponent has outspent me probably 3-to-1 maybe 4-to-1 in an enormous effort on his part," Clinton told reporters in a roughly 10-minute press conference outside a polling place in a suburb of Philadelphia.
Later she said maybe she was "old-fashioned" when it came to thinking of a win as a win and repeated a central argument of her campaign in recent days, saying that if Obama can't win here after having such a significant financial advantage, it would show that he's having problems closing the deal.
CONTINUED >>
From NBC/NJ's Mike Memoli and NBC's Mark Murray Bill Clinton took questions from local press after shaking a lot of hands. NBC/NJ asked him about the WHYY radio interview in which he said the Obama camp was playing the race card.
NBC/NJ: “Sir, what did you mean yesterday when you said that the Obama campaign was playing the race card on you?”
CLINTON: “When did I say that, and to whom did I say that?”
NBC/NJ: “On WHYY radio yesterday”
NBC/NJ: “Respectfully sir, though, you did say …”
NBC/NJ: “They asked you if you regretted your comparing Jesse Jackson to Barack Obama on the day after the South Carolina primary.”
CLINTON: “And I pointed out that I did not do that, and that I complimented them both. And that Jesse Jackson took no offense. And I called him myself, I said, ‘Did you find that offensive?’ And he said no.
Again, here is what Clinton told WHYY .
INTERVIEWER (RE: Jackson comment): “Do you think that was a mistake, and would you do that again?"
CLINTON: "No. I think that they played the race card on me. And we now know, from memos from the campaign and everything, that they planned to do it along.
From NBC's Mark Murray Clinton campaign has unveiled a new TV ad in Indiana, which focuses exclusively on jobs and the economy. The question, after Pennsylvania, is whether it will have the money to stay competitive on the airwaves in Indiana, North Carolina, and beyond.
That's why tonight's contest is important. Can it spur a wave of new donations for Clinton?
Here's the script...Hillary Clinton: I think this election, particularly here in Indiana is about jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs.
From NBC/NJ's Aswini Anburajan Obama expressed shock this morning at hearing that former President Bill Clinton asserted that the Obama camp used the race card against him.
"Hold on a second. So former President Clinton dismissed my victory in South Carolina as being similar to Jesse Jackson , and he's suggesting that somehow I had something to do with it?" Obama asked incredulously this morning at Pamela's P&G Diner here.
"OK, well you better ask him what he meant by that," he added. "These were words that came out of his mouth."
Asked a follow-up question on whether there was any planned attempt by Obama's campaign to get Clinton to make a racially questionable comment, Obama dismissed the suggestion out of hand. "Was there something that we had a plan to get him to say that my campaign was like Jesse Jackson's? You know, I don't know what he's referring to, unfortunately," Obama said.
Discussing today's primary, Obama said that he felt like he had "a chance" in Pennsylvania, though his campaign had known that it would always be an "uphill climb."
"We've made significant progress... We've got a great organization. A lot of it's gonna depend on turnout today and it's really had to gauge," he said.
CONTINUED >>
From NBC’s Abby Livingston Obama and Hillary and Bill Clinton impersonators. There were lots of body slams, knee lifts and even some sneaky moves (Bill). "Bill" primarily stayed out of the action, but both "Obama" and "Hillary" got some pretty good licks in on each other. Then an actual wrestler came out and took them both down. The announcers declared it "a draw." The skit ended with Obama and Hillary's bodies strewn across the wrestling ring with Bill scampering away.
From Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, and Domenico Montanaro Contest No. 45: Six weeks, a political eternity given the cycle’s front-loaded calendar, have passed since the last Democratic contest -- the Mississippi primary -- which Obama won, 61%-37%. And as we’ve said before, so much (most of it process) has happened in between: Geraldine Ferraro’s comments, the Wright controversy, Obama’s speech on race, Bosnia sniper fire, the Clintons’ tax records, Mark Penn’s ouster, Bittergate, and the debate over the debate. Well, the wait for another Clinton-Obama contest finally ends today as Pennsylvania voters head to the polls, which opened at 7:00 am ET and close 8:00 pm ET. There are 158 pledged delegates at stake.
*** Keys to the Keystone battle : There seem to be four possible outcomes to tonight’s contest, and two of them will need little spin because the media won't need the "help" to interpret their meaning: 1) a double-digit Clinton victory in which she beats Obama by a greater margin than she beat him in Ohio; and 2) an outright Obama victory. But here are outcomes that will force the campaigns to go into spin overdrive: 3) a Clinton victory by less than five points, which would give Obama an opening to declare "victory" of sorts and create renewed pressure on Clinton on the future of her campaign; and 4) a Clinton victory by more than five but less than 10, which is the most likely result if some of the better polls are to be believed. This would be considered a solid victory, but would it be big enough to fundamentally change the dynamics of the race? Could Clinton claim Obama was losing ground if he performed better in Pennsylvania than he did in Ohio? This is why Axelrod and his team and Wolfson and his team will earn their money today. The Clinton campaign is desperately trying to ratchet back expectations. Early on, Rendell and his folks were predicting an easy victory. Those predictions, however, are what created this expectations-game problem for Clinton today. She's now in a position where only a blowout is going to give her the momentum she needs to make folks believe she still has a shot at the nomination.
*** Where we stand : Obama leads in pledged delegates (1417 to 1251), overall delegates (1655 to 1513), the popular vote (13.4 million to 12.7 million), and total number of contests won (29 to 14). Note: We’re not including Texas in this last total, given that Clinton won the primary but Obama won the caucus and netted the most delegates. Here are some other numbers to chew on: the Quinnipiac poll taken around the time of the Mississippi primary had Clinton up by 12 (53%-41%), the RealClear average has Clinton leading by six points (49%-43.1%), the now-famous Obama memo that Bloomberg News received after Feb. 5 projected Clinton to win the state by five (52%-47%), and assuming a turnout of 2 million, a 55%-45% Clinton victory would cut Obama’s lead in the popular vote from 700,000 to 500,000.
*** The pledged delegate game is essentially over : No matter tonight's popular vote result, the delegate count isn't likely to move in either direction substantially. Why? The disproportionate number of delegates awarded in areas Obama is likely to do well could very well mean that Clinton's percentage point net victory will be greater than the number of delegates she nets. Look no further than Ohio, where she won by 10 points but netted just seven delegates. A similar phenomenon is likely tonight. While neither campaign can get to 2,025 without superdelegates, after tonight, it will be virtually assured that Clinton cannot catch Obama for the pledged delegate lead. In fact, there's a strong case to be made that if Clinton nets fewer than 10 delegates, she may not even be able to get his pledged delegate lead below 100 by June 3.
*** The popularity contest : That brings us to the popular vote... According to our turnout estimates (based on past results and talks with the campaigns and also assuming a bump), it is unlikely that Clinton will completely erase Obama’s lead in the popular vote without factoring in Florida and Michigan. Here's a fairly rosy scenario for Clinton, which assumes big wins in her states and somewhat narrow wins for Obama in his states of the contests that remain.
Total Votes
Clinton
Obama
Projection
PA
2,000,000
1,100,000
900,000
55%-45%
NC
1,500,000
675,000
825,000
45%-55%
IN
900,000
460,000
440,000
51%-49%
WV
400,000
240,000
160,000
60%-40%
KY
500,000
300,000
200,000
60%-40%
OR
600,000
270,000
330,000
45%-55%
SD
100,000
45,000
55,000
45%-55%
MT
125,000
56,250
68,750
45%-55%
TOTAL
3,146,250
2,978,750
So that projection gives Clinton a net gain of 167,500 popular votes for the rest of the remaining primaries -- if everything plays out by the projections above. Obviously, we encourage folks to play around with these numbers themselves. So Team Clinton couldn't get there with also adding Florida; they'd need Michigan, too... and maybe even try and count total Puerto Rico votes -- which, turnout-wise could look like Oregon, but in reverse. So MAYBE she could net another 60,000 votes out of Puerto Rico. Of course, if Clinton gets a big win out of Pennsylvania, she might be able to narrow the gap in places like North Carolina and Oregon and then suddenly her net popular vote take could increase. To have ANY chance of selling legitimacy to this popular vote game, she'll need to cut his lead without the use of Michigan. Maybe, she can include Florida; there are a chunk of superdelegates who would give her that, but most will not give her Michigan. So she needs to more than double the projected popular vote totals we've come up with to even start the popular vote conversation.
*** Some ‘splaining to do? No matter tonight’s result, keep this in mind: Obama spent an enormous amount of money on TV -- and we mean ENORMOUS. He spent so much that he will have a very hard time explaining a double-digit defeat, despite what the campaign might say. Sure, they can claim he started out more than 20 points behind in some polls. But to lose by more than 200,000 votes after all the money he spent would be embarrassing and could rightfully get superdelegates nervous about his durability. Also, this is the first vote since Rev. Wright and the "bitter" comments, and if he simply performs as well or a tad bit better among white voters than he did in Ohio, the campaign can argue to supers that he wasn't damaged with these voters for the long term. But if his numbers are worse than Ohio (he lost by 10 points) then, in the words of Ricky Ricardo... he'll have some 'splainin' to do.
*** When watching tonight’s returns : Keep this in mind: While the Philly region has reported its vote fairly quickly the last two election cycles, before 2004, the vote count has been very slow from the area. If the vote count is slow in this area tonight, then expect a couple of things: 1) the networks and AP will hold off on calling this race too quickly and 2) Clinton could have what appears to be a VERY big lead in early returns since most of Obama's vote is in the Philly media market.
*** Bill is back! And don’t miss Bill’s comments to Philadelphia’s WHYY radio (an NPR affiliate) regarding his South Carolina reference to Jesse Jackson: “I think that they played the race card on me. And we now know, from memos from the campaign and everything that they planned to do it along… I frankly thought the way the Obama campaign reacted was disrespectful to Jesse Jackson. And I called him and asked HIM if he found anything offensive and he just laughed and said, ‘OF COURSE I don’t. We all know what’s going on… You gotta really go some to play the race card with me – MY office is in Harlem.” More on this below…
*** On the trail : Clinton makes a local stop in Philadelphia and holds her election night party in the city of Brotherly Love; McCain makes the second stop on his “Time for Action” tour in Youngstown, OH; and Obama makes stops at polling places in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and then holds a rally in Evansville, IN after polls close in Pennsylvania.
Countdown to North Carolina, Indiana: 14 daysClick here to sign up for First Read emails .
The Philadelphia Inquirer curtain-raises today’s primary: “The Clinton-Obama primary, which begins the final phase of the prolonged nomination fight, will be judged not just on the basis of who wins but also by how much… An Obama victory by any margin in Pennsylvania would be a devastating, perhaps fatal, blow to Clinton's prospects. Even now, many analysts say it is virtually impossible for her to take the lead in delegates or popular vote by the close of the primary season, June 3, regardless of what happens today. And a narrow Obama loss would do little to change the overall dynamic of the race, although the Clinton camp would try to make as much of the result as possible.”
The lead headline in the Boston Globe : “Clinton needs big win today.” “Not only must she score an expected win, she must beat Barack Obama by a large enough margin to convince party leaders that she would be the stronger nominee in the fall.”
The expectations game is going to create some spin war tonight depending on the margin of Clinton's assumed victory. The Los Angeles Times tries to get into the spin-game specifics. "In what may seem like a paradox, the Clinton victory predicted by nearly all public opinion polls might actually turn out to be a loss if she doesn't win by a significant margin. And if Obama keeps the results closer than some surveys suggest, he could be considered victorious -- unless it appears that Clinton's campaign has succeeded in casting doubt on his credentials to be commander in chief or his ability to win support in the fall from white, working-class voters. ‘The margin of the vote is equally as important’ as who posts the highest vote total, said former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer, one of the nearly 800 party activists and leaders whose votes as superdelegates will put the winning nominee over the top at this summer's party convention.’”
CONTINUED >>
The New York Times : “The six-week Pennsylvania primary drew to a contentious finish Monday as Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton invoked images of Pearl Harbor and Osama bin Laden in a television advertisement that questioned Senator Barack Obama’s ability to lead in a crisis. As she sought to spark a comeback in the Democratic nominating contest, Mrs. Clinton warned voters not to ‘take a leap of faith or have any guesswork’ when they cast ballots Tuesday.”
The Obama campaign “quickly responded with an advertisement of its own that asked voters: ‘Who in times of challenge will unite us — not use fear and calculation to divide us?’”
Obama responded to the ad this way, NBC/NJ’s Aswini Anburajan reports. "I know that Sen. Clinton just put out a new ad. She said you wanna make sure whoever's there is ready. Let me ask you a question, there are three candidates left, who do you want answering that 3am phone call?" Obama asked, riffing off Clinton's last attack ad, which also posited the question on who was best ready to lead the country in a crisis.
"The person that got Iraq wrong or the person that got Iraq right? The person who paid attention to the intelligence or the person who didn't? The person who understood the consequences or the people who did not?" he rhetorically asked the boisterous crowd at a town hall in McKeesport, a small, economically depressed town outside of Pittsburgh.
(From the back-and-forth over the last few days, it seems that both campaigns get the sense that this really is it. This is Clinton’s last chance to change the dynamics and the Obama camp knows it. There's something different about how the campaigns are treating today as if they have a feeling that whichever way the race shifts today, it's the last chance to shift it.)
CONTINUED >>
Some legacy fixing? Per NBC/NJ’s Mike Memoli, Bill Clinton appeared on WHYY radio (an NPR affiliate), in which he defended comparing Obama to Jesse Jackson right before the South Carolina contest (“No, I think they played the race card on me”), and in which he misstates some of the facts surrounding his comment. Also, at the end of the interview, Bill doesn’t appear to know he’s still on the air when he hurls an expletive at an aide.
Here’s the transcript: INTERVIEWER (RE: Jackson comment): “Do you think that was a mistake, and would you do that again?"
CLINTON: "No. I think that they played the race card on me. And we now know, from memos from the campaign and everything that they planned to do it along. Jesse Jackson -- I said, if you go back to what I said … First of all, there was a conversation that I engaged in that included two African America members of Congress, who were standing right there, who were having the conversation with me. And I said that Jesse Jackson had won a good campaign with overwhelming African American support and white supporters. And this was started off because people didn’t wanna -- they wanted to act like, for reasons I didn’t understand, that Senator Obama didn’t have this African American support, or they thought his white support was better because Jesse Jackson had blue-collar working people, and most of Senator Obama’s support were upscale, cultural liberals. So it was like beneath them to be compared to Jesse Jackson.
"I respect Jesse Jackson. He’s a friend of mine, even though he endorsed Senator Obama. One of his sons and his wife endorsed Hillary. Their whole family’s divided. But his campaign in 1988 was a seminal campaign in American history. It was the first campaign to ever to openly involve gays. Hillary’s chief delegate counter, Harold Ickes, worked his heart out for Jesse Jackson. I frankly thought the way Obama campaign reacted was disrespectful to Jesse Jackson. And I called him and asked him if he found anything offensive, and he just laughed and he said, ‘Of course I don’t. We all know what’s going on.’”
"I mean this is just, you know… You gotta go something to play the race card on me -- my office is in Harlem. And Harlem voted for Hillary, by the way. And I have 1.4 million people around the world, mostly people of color in Africa, the Caribbean, Asia and elsewhere, on the world’s least expensive AIDS drugs. I appointed more African American, Hispanic and women judges and U.S. Attorneys than all previous presidents put together and had nine African American Cabinet members.
"I was stating a fact. And it is still a fact. You know, I was amazed that we got almost 20% of the African American vote in South Carolina, and I think it was because we had so many local officials who believed in Hillary and stuck their necks out for her, some of which were threatened with their jobs. But I can see that this used against me, but this was a conversation that occurred early in the morning. We didn’t even know what the vote was gonna be at the time. We were all sitting around drinking coffee. We’d just been to breakfast. We were talking about South Carolina political history. And this was used out of context and twisted for political purposes by the Obama campaign to try to breed resentment elsewhere.
"And, you know, do I regret saying it? No. Do I regret that it was used that way? I certainly do. But you really gotta go something to try to portray me as a racist."
INTERVIER: “OK. Well thank you very much, Mr. President.”
CLINTON: “Thank you. I hope everybody will go out to vote tomorrow. Buh-bye… I don’t think I can take any sh#& from anybody on that, do you?”
CONTINUED >>
The New York Times runs this front-page article: “Donald R. Diamond, a wealthy Arizona real estate developer, was racing to snap up a stretch of virgin California coast freed by the closing of an Army base a decade ago when he turned to an old friend, Senator John McCain. When Mr. Diamond wanted to buy land at the base, Fort Ord, Mr. McCain assigned an aide who set up a meeting at the Pentagon and later stepped in again to help speed up the sale, according to people involved and a deposition Mr. Diamond gave for a related lawsuit. When he appealed to a nearby city for the right to develop other property at the former base, Mr. Diamond submitted Mr. McCain’s endorsement as ‘a close personal friend.’”
More: “For Mr. McCain, the Arizona Republican who has staked two presidential campaigns on pledges to avoid even the appearance of dispensing an official favor for a donor, Mr. Diamond is the kind of friend who can pose a test. A longtime political patron, Mr. Diamond is one of the elite fund-raisers Mr. McCain’s current presidential campaign calls Innovators, having raised more than $250,000 so far.”
And: “A spokeswoman for Mr. McCain, Jill Hazelbaker, said the senator, now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, ‘had done nothing for Mr. Diamond that he would not do for any other Arizona citizen.’”
Meanwhile, this is the exact type of lead -- via the LA Times -- the McCain camp is looking for this week. “It was an unlikely setting for Republican presidential hopeful John McCain to campaign in Monday: the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where black protesters were beaten in a 1965 march for voting rights. McCain joined hands later with black women who sang gospel spirituals to him as they rode a ferry across the muddy Alabama River near Gee's Bend, a community famous for its quilts and for its role in the civil rights struggle. ‘Ninety years old and I never thought I'd see this,’ quilt maker Nettie Young said. ‘Republicans don't come to this bend.’”
CONTINUED >>
The New York Times : “Imagine President Barack Obama is preparing his first State of the Union message. Would he want Vice President Hillary Rodham Clinton tut-tutting with edits or suggesting how she could write it better? Would he want to hear Second Spouse Bill Clinton wax on and on about favorite lines from his own speeches?”
More: “All that stands in the way are a few pesky details — like the fact that Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton want to be done with each other, starting now. And that Mr. Clinton bitterly believes that the Obama camp has portrayed him as a brutish, race-baiting campaigner, according to two associates of Mr. Clinton. On top of that, Obama aides assert, Mrs. Clinton’s baggage would damage Mr. Obama’s image in a New York minute. And they also believe that the Clinton camp’s negative tone seems a poor match for Mr. Hope.”
Obama will be in Indiana tonight -- not Pennsylvania -- and with him will be “Small Town” friend John Mellencamp , once a big Edwards backer.
From NBC/NJ's Carrie Dann and Adam Aigner-Treworgy McCain was hoping to find Sweet Home Alabama on his first day of his "Time for Action" tour, the tiny city of Thomasville sure as heck wanted to be it.
Traveling off the traditional campaign path in rural Alabama today, McCain has visited sites that are a far cry from the typical battlegrounds of Republican politics. After speaking in front of the famed Edmund Pettus Bridge, he traveled to Gee's Bend, a brutally poor community long scarred by racial tensions. The Bend, isolated for decades by the spidery twists of the Alabama River, finally became more accessible with the institution of a reliable ferry -- which the senator rode today in recognition of its significance in healing the area's strife. He was accompanied by the Gee's Bend Quilters, a service organization of elderly black women who provided McCain with a constant soundtrack of soulful gospel vocals for most of his morning.
It's no secret that McCain's chances of building major bases of support in places like Selma and Gee's Bend are small; the senator acknowledged today that he is "aware that there will be many people who will not vote for me." Wilcox County, home to the famed river crossing, supported John Kerry in 2004 by a margin of almost 30 points. Although McCain was warmly embraced -- literally -- by the Gee's Bend Quilters, he looked a bit more comfortable during his stint piloting the ferry than he did clapping along with the women's knee-slapping hymnals.
But if Alabama didn't quite feel like home, McCain's reception in Thomasville -- population 4,569 -- might have offered the senator some southern comfort. Thomasville, located in the dramatically more Republican bastion of Clark County, AL, offered the GOP candidate a hero's welcome. When he rolled into the driveway of the town's elementary school, he was greeted by a zig-zagging line of 600 flag-waving, uniform-clad, gleefully cheering schoolchildren. The senator dutifully made the rounds to meet each child, as some warbled chants of McCain's name and "U-S-A!" At the neighboring high school, McCain was greeted by a massive American flag hoisted far above the school's entrance by two of Thomasville's fire trucks. The mayor of Thomasville, accompanied by a posse of other town notables, even made the drive to Selma last night to intercept the traveling press corps, bearing gifts of Thomasville schwag.
CONTINUED >>
From NBC's Mark Murray
The script:ANNOUNCER: Who has what it takes to really bring change? To finally take on the special interests - not take their money. Who made the right judgment about opposing the war and had the courage and character to speak honestly about it. And who in times of challenge will unite us - not use fear and calculation to divide us.
From NBC/NJ’s Mike Memoli ARNOLD, Pa. --
Bill Clinton is making a simple case for his wife on the eve of tomorrow's Pennsylvania primary: Ignore the hoopla, and vote for the candidate "who's in it for you."
"This election … is too big to be small," he told a crowd from the front porch of a supporter's home here. "Hillary can be nominated and be elected if Pennsylvania sends a loud message tomorrow, that we don't care about how much money was spent; we saw the debate; we heard the speeches; we've watched this woman for years; we want a leader we can count on."
Earlier, Clinton gave a hurried speech at a high school in Greensburg, where many of the students on hand seemed more interested in talking to each other than listening to the former president of the United States. Still, Clinton talked about how the support of people in small towns has sustained his wife's bid.
"They thought they had her after Super Tuesday, because even though she won most of the states, she was flat broke," he said. "So we had a whole February where she lost these caucuses, one after the other. And then people like you figured out she didn't have any money, and over 300,000 Americans sent her $30 million dollars. … They said, 'Nope, she's our girl; we don't want her to quit; we want her to stay in there; we will help her.'"
Note, however, that after Feb. 5, there were five primaries Obama won -- Louisiana, DC, Maryland, Virginia and Wisconsin; and four caucuses -- Nebraska, Washington, Maine and Hawaii. Obama also won the beauty contest primary in Washington state and the territorial conventions in the Virgin Islands (essentially caucuses) and the vote by Democrats Abroad.
CONTINUED >>
From NBC/NJ's Aswini Anburajan SCRANTON, PA -- Chomping down on sausage and waffles at Glider's Diner in Scranton today, with his Pennsylvania BFF (Sen.
Bob Casey ) at his side,
Obama avoided commenting on former President
Jimmy Carter's meeting with Hamas.
Asked by a reporter if he had heard that Carter reported a positive outcome from the meeting, Obama looked sternly at the reporter in question and said, "Why can't I just eat my waffle?"
Asked again by the reporter, Obama bit -- not at the question but into a butter covered bite of Glider's specialty over-size Belgian waffles. With a wink this time he said, "Just let me eat my waffle."
VIDEO: Sen. Barack Obama refuses to answer a question about former President Jimmy Carter's meeting with Hamas. Since Carter announced he was meeting with Hamas, Obama has criticized him for meeting with a terrorist organization. He has also been attacked by
McCain for not condemning Carter's visit more sternly.
CONTINUED >>
From NBC's Adam Aigner-Treworgy and Carrie Dann McCain's "Time For Action" tour is just beginning, but he's already facing tough questions about how effectively the presumptive Republican nominee hopes to win over black voters in some of the nation's most economically depressed regions.
McCain appeared this morning in front of the historic Edmund Pettus bridge, where civil rights leader John Lewis led the famous March from Selma in 1965. Praising his herosim, the Arizona senator linked Lewis' struggle to the ongoing effort for economic equality in America. But in a city that is 70% black, only a handful of African Americans dotted the crowd.
Asked by the press if the relatively homogenous crowd demonstrates the difficulty he may face in carving inroads to the black community, the senator responded that his own ears -- and not just those of his audiences -- will be fertile ground.
"I'm aware of the challenges and I'm aware of the fact that there will be many people who will not vote for me, but I'm going to be the president of all the people," he said. "I will work for all the people and I will listen to all people, whether they decide to vote for me or not, because this is the kind of opportunity where people have not only to hear from me but for me to listen to them, and that's the important part."
CONTINUED >>
From NBC’s Domenico Montanaro Clinton campaign tried to set expectations and pushed back against the conventional wisdom that Clinton needs a decisive victory in Pennsylvania tomorrow.
Pennsylvania is not about finishing close, Communications Director Howard Wolfson said. “It’s about winning.”
Wolfson added that Obama is doing everything he can to win the race, outspending Clinton three to one (overall: $11.2 million to $4.8 million).
“He has gone sharply negative, and he is doing this to knock us out of the race,” Wolfson said. “And if he does not win it will again raise very serious questions among voters and superdelegates … that he can win big swing states like Pennsylvania.” He added, “If Sen. Obama can’t win a big swing state with that enormous spending advantage, just what will it take for him to win a large swing state?”
On some analysts having said Clinton needs as much as a 20-point victory and that if Obama finishes within five or six points, there will be no appreciable difference among superdelegates, top aide Geoff Garin went further.
“Those numbers are ridiculous,” Garin said. “Sen. Obama made a conscious decision to try and change the stakes here. They’re not spending this money simply to try and improve the Pennsylvania economy.” They “put their brand at stake to try and deliver this knock out blow.”
‘Entirely positive’ Aides posited that Clinton’s closing Pennsylvania ad , “Kitchen,” is “entirely positive,” certainly more positive than Obama’s most recent ads, they said -- even though the ad echoes the language Clinton used over the weekend to knock Obama for complaining about taking tough questions.
CONTINUED >>
From NBC's Mark Murray
The script:It’s the toughest job in the world.
*** UPDATE *** Obama campaign weighs in with this quote from Bill Clinton in 2004: “Now one of Clinton’s Laws of Politics is this: If one candidate's trying to scare you and the other one's trying to get you to think; if one candidate's appealing to your fears and the other one's appealing to your hopes, you better vote for the person who wants you to think and hope. That's the best.”
From NBC/NJ's Athena Jones SCRANTON, PA -- After a long weekend of campaigning, marked by a bitter back-and-forth between the candidates,
Clinton left the negativity behind as she kicked off the last full day of the primary race with a fourth stop in the northeast Pennsylvania town where she has deep roots.
The New York senator made her closing argument in the small, packed ballroom of a cultural center, entering to the now common strains of John Mellencamp's anthem "Small Town" and speaking in front of a banner that read "Scranton's behind you Hillary." She was accompanied by her mother Dorothy Rodham and her brothers Tony and Hugh Rodham, and the crowd interrupted her frequently with cheers and shouts.
"I wanted to come back the day before the primary to be with all of you and to thank you. We started this Pennsylvania campaign here in Scranton at the new high school, and we're going to bring it to victory," she said. "We need to really bear down. The last day is here and the entire world is watching. I appreciate your having my back and here's what I want you to know -- as your president, I'll have your back."
CONTINUED >>
From NBC’s Domenico Montanaro Obama campaign announced that it got the support of superdelegate/Ohio DNC member Enid Goubeaux.
The superdelegate count now is: Clinton 262, Obama 238 .
Since Super Tuesday, Feb. 5, Obama is +68, Clinton is +2.
From NBC's Adam Aigner-Treworgy For the first time as a presidential candidate this cycle,
McCain is traveling with Secret Service. He is not covered by a full detail on his "Time for Action" tour through the Black Belt and Appalacia, but there are a few members of the senator's eventual detail who will be traveling with him for an indefinite amount of time before the full detail begins.
From Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, and Domenico Montanaro *** Hillary’s race to lose: A new MSNBC/McClatchy/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette poll suggests things are staying fairly competitive in Pennsylvania. This survey of 625 likely Dem primary voters was conducted Thursday and Friday, and it shows Clinton leading Obama by five points, 48%-43%. So what happens on Tuesday? Looking inside the poll's demographics, the highest undecided totals are in the more rural parts of the state -- and that's not good news for Obama. In the so-called "T" region of the state (almost everything between Philly and Pittsburgh), Clinton leads 51%-37% with 11% undecided; this is one of the few demographic groups sporting double-digit undecided. Two other interesting crosstabs with high undecideds also signal the potential that the undecided vote will break for Clinton. Among bowlers (24% of the electorate) and gun owners (38% of the electorate), Clinton leads big among these cultural conservatives: She's up 54%-33% among bowlers and 53%-28% among gun owners. So while the poll shows Clinton with a narrow -- and arguably narrowing -- lead, the clues inside the numbers indicate this is her race to lose and that her lead could expand.
*** Will it be five points or more? Should tomorrow’s primary end up as close as this poll suggests (i.e., five points or less), then this means many of these undecided potential Clinton voters decided to stay home. If they come to the polls, she could see her lead climb to more than five points. And this seems to be why Obama has gone negative in the past couple of days: to keep these undecideds away. He might have also sharpened his tone a bit to beat back the growing post-debate perception that he was looking weak. After all, the undecided voter in Pennsylvania looks to be the type of voter that wants to see a strong walkin' and talkin' candidate. So here’s the game on Tuesday -- it’s not if Clinton will win, but how big will her victory be. She'd like to net more than 200,000 in the popular vote, which she would only get with both a large turnout (approximately 2 million total) and a 10-point-plus victory.
*** Practice makes perfect: For all the recycled Clinton-Obama bickering this past weekend -- over health care, who’s being more negative, and who’s saying nice things about Republicans or using GOP talking points -- Democrats should be encouraged by what they're seeing in terms of the general election, at least when it comes to the blocking and tackling of politics. Their rapid response teams of both these campaigns are well oiled and battle tested. And as Newsweek reported, Team Obama is expanding its rapid response squad for the general. But the same can’t be said for team McCain, which isn’t quite sure whether its opponent will be Obama or Clinton and which hasn’t engaged in all-out political fight since Florida back in January.
*** Biting the hand that feeds you? The McCain campaign is known for its love of the media, but there may be no more vicious campaign to deal with when it thinks its media lovers have scorned them. Just check out McCain adviser Mark Salter’s reaction to yesterday’s Washington Post piece looking at McCain’s temper. “In sum, this is one of the more shoddy examples of journalism I've ever encountered,” he said. “But for the infamous NYT story, I'd say it was the worst smear job on McCain I'd ever seen." This is the McCain campaign’s plan to combat what is going to be a much more hostile press than they ever imagined. The question is whether the campaign will grow thicker skin or whether the relationship between McCain and the media will simply deteriorate. One other thing: The pushback on the story was bizarre for another reason. It may have been a story that was somewhat ignored in the runup to Pennsylvania and, frankly, the premise wasn't all that new. In fact, McCain has become very adept at answering this question. But the Salter response was so brutal, it almost dares folks to find stories on McCain's temper -- something we're guessing most of the press corps wasn't all that interested in pursuing.
*** Another week, another McCain tour: Speaking of McCain, he begins his Time for Action Tour from Selma, AL, where he gives a speech this morning at the Edmund Pettus Bridge -- one of the landmarks of the civil-rights movement -- and then he will visit other parts of the state. “The beaten and dispersed army on Edmund Pettus Bridge had conquered something after all - the indifference of too many Americans to their courageous struggle for the basic rights of American citizenship,” McCain will say, according to excerpts released by his campaign. “In America all things are possible, even a civilization as great as the one envisioned by Dr. King and John Lewis. But we are practical people, and most of us are honest, and we know we have a ways to go. This week, I will be traveling to places in America that aren't enjoying the prosperity many other parts of America enjoy, but where people are walking a long, hard road to make sure that their children will know the opportunities that other American children possess.” Those places include Youngstown, OH (where he will be Tuesday), Prestonsburg, KY (Wednesday), and New Orleans (Thursday). By the way, McCain’s tour this week is a good counter program to whoever loses Pennsylvania -- meaning he'll be talking to either white working-class voters that Obama will need or poor blacks that Clinton will need.
*** The woman in red? The official March fundraising numbers are out. They are basically meaningless numbers -- since much of the money has already been spent -- but going into April, Obama had more than $40 million in cash to spend in the primary, after raising approx. $41 million. As for Clinton, her March fundraising report has just gone online, but we don't yet know the primary/general split of the $20 million she raised or the primary/general split of the $31 million in cash on hand. Yet at least $22 million of that $31 million is designated for the general, leaving Clinton less than $10 million to spend at the end of March. By the way, when you factor in Clinton's $10 million+ debt, she was technically operating in the red at the end of March.
*** The delegate count: Over the weekend, Clinton picked up the backing of Ohio congressman Tim Ryan, and Obama got the support of the Nebraska Democratic Party chairman. In keeping in contact with the campaigns, we also adjusted Obama's number up one more, as another DNC member is backing him. The superdelegate count now is: Clinton 262, Obama 237. Obama leads by 141 in the overall count: 1,654-1,513. He also leads by 166 in the pledged delegate count: 1,417-1,251.
*** On the trail: The day before the Pennsylvania primary, Clinton holds rallies in Scranton, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, and Philadelphia; Obama attends a town hall in McKeesport, holds a rally in Pittsburgh, and makes a pre-taped appearance on Comedy Central’s Daily Show; and Cindy McCain co-hosts the View. Also, Bill Clinton joins his wife during her stops in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and Michelle Obama joins her husband in McKeesport and Pittsburgh.
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In addition to the MSNBC/McClatchy/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette poll , which has Clinton up by five over Obama (48%-43%), there are two other surveys out. Quinnipiac has Clinton leading by seven points (51%-44%), and Suffolk University has her up by 10 points (52%-42%).
The New York Times : "Obama sharpened his tone against Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton on Sunday as the six-week Pennsylvania primary contest raced to a close, with the rivals marshaling extensive resources in a battle for undecided voters and delegates that could determine whether the Democratic nominating fight carries on." More: "The intensity of Mr. Obama’s campaign and his willingness to air negative attacks in recent days suggest he harbored hope of ending the Clinton campaign here or avoiding a major loss that would keep the race alive."
And attention 2008 history book writers: "Neil Oxman, a media consultant here, estimated that by the end of the six-week campaign, Mr. Obama will have spent more than $9 million on television and Mrs. Clinton will have spent almost $4 million.
The Washington Post has similar piece: "The volleying in the final hours reflected the high stakes in Tuesday's contest. Clinton is favored to win, but the senator from New York may still face renewed pressure to end her candidacy unless she rolls up a sizable margin in the popular vote and significant gains in the overall delegate count. As the candidates jostled with one another, their advisers mounted a final effort to shape expectations for what will constitute victory on Tuesday. The Pennsylvania race has forced Obama to rewrite his script from earlier contests, with the result being a more aggressive tone and style in the final hours of this campaign than had been the case in previous states. Far more than at any other time in the campaign, Obama has applied pressure to Clinton, both on the stump and in his increasingly negative advertising.
CONTINUED >>
The Wall Street Journal reports that Obama may have a secret weapon. "[S]ome party leaders are quietly planning to try to end the clash, said people familiar with the matter. After the primaries end in June, these influential Democrats -- led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- plan to push the last uncommitted party leaders to endorse a candidate, in hopes of preventing a fight at the August presidential convention, party insiders say. These ‘superdelegates’ -- governors, members of Congress and others who can vote for any candidate at the convention -- would likely tip the balance to Sen. Obama, who holds a sizable and likely insurmountable delegate lead. Sen. Clinton is hoping that a win in Pennsylvania, where she is favored, would lift her campaign and give party officials pause about Sen. Obama as the nominee."
The AP runs quotes from undecided superdelegates.
Tonight, the New York Democratic group DL21C hosts a forum featuring two undecided superdelegates: Ralph Dawson of New York and Andrew Tobias of Florida. NBC’s Chuck Todd moderates the forum.
McCain’s fundraising picked up in March but still trailed Obama dramatically. He held steady with Clinton.
The Los Angeles Times : "McCain's money situation came into sharp focus Sunday when he filed a campaign finance report that showed he had raised only $15.4 million in March, the first full month after he became the presumptive GOP nominee. By comparison, Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts raised almost three times that much in the month after he locked up the Democratic nomination four years ago. McCain ended March with a modest $11.6 million in the bank, despite having few expenses."
The New York Times does an examination of McCain's bundlers and finds a good chunk of lobbyists. But will voters care? "The sizable number of lobbyists, who are outnumbered on the list only by those working in the financial services industry, offers another example of the balancing act that Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, is having to strike as he campaigns for the presidency and seeks to maintain his reputation as a reformer." Washington Post looks at the difficulty Republicans are having to fund their outside groups this year. "This year, allies of President Bush such as Rove, billionaire T. Boone Pickens, New York financier Paul Singer and Florida developer Mel Sembler, who helped harness and direct millions of dollars to the 2004 campaign, are working to rekindle those efforts. But they are finding the 2008 landscape to be more challenging, according to Republican sources familiar with the ongoing talks. Some donors have shied away from involving themselves in efforts to aid McCain, a persistent critic of back-channel campaign funds. Others have succumbed to the broader malaise among Republicans. Still others are skittish about heightened scrutiny from regulators who have vowed to crack down on outside efforts to influence this year's campaign. "
Salon's Walter Shapiro has a great piece about how the Clinton campaign uses Bill Clinton. "Ever since Bill Clinton's red-faced off-the-cuff comments in South Carolina and his refusal to let his wife abandon the state even in the face of an impending rout, the former president has turned into something of a stealth surrogate, often less visible to the national press than his daughter, Chelsea. In Pennsylvania, in particular, Clinton has been exiled to places like Moon Township, Connelsville and Somerset, part of his Friday can-you-find-it-on-the-map itinerary. But there is far more of a coherent strategy here than simply enrolling Clinton in the Witness Protection Program. ‘You have to remember that Pennsylvania really only has six media markets – and you can't keep sending people to the same places every other day,’ said Nick Clemons, who is running Pennsylvania for the Clinton campaign. ‘So we're sending Bill Clinton to the kind of places which have never seen a president or a former president before. And it is making a difference.’”
Bill Clinton again criticized Obama's TV ads yesterday, borrowing a familiar line in saying his wife's rival is throwing "the kitchen sink" at her, NBC/NJ’s Mike Memoli reports. "It's been a crazy campaign, and it started off in Pennsylvania with Hillary being typically outspent 5-to-1," he said on the front porch of a supporter in the northeast corner of the state. "Now there is a truly hilarious ad coming up saying that she's gonna force people even who can't afford it to buy health care. I don't know if you've seen it but it is a total hoot." Clinton said the argument is a familiar one that has already been "roundly discredited." "They used to be so ashamed of that argument that they only sent it out in the mail," he said.
But he said voters could still give her "a big victory," even "after all the blizzard of money and all these ads and the kitchen sink's been thrown at her."
"I doubt if there is any man who’s ever run for president who can put up with the kind of heat she has and keep going," he said. But with a big win, Clinton said, "You will be shocked what the world looks like Wednesday morning."
The Daily News’ analysis on whether or not Clinton will get out of the Democratic race. “Hillary Clinton quit? You'd have a better chance getting Bill Clinton to shut up.”
“A top expert on China has resigned as an informal adviser to Hillary Clinton's campaign, citing ‘grossly misguided accusations’ the candidate has made about China. Richard Baum, a political science professor at the Center for Chinese Studies at UCLA, said in an e-mail to Politico.com, ‘As a life-long Democrat, it saddens me that Senator Clinton has chosen to take the low road in her effort to gain our party's presidential nomination.’”
“Senator John McCain commands one of the strongest brands in American politics: maverick Republican, reformer, willing to challenge the party hierarchy,” the Boston Globe writes. “But that image, cemented during his failed first run for the White House eight years ago, has been scuffed on his way to becoming the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. To woo the GOP's conservative base, McCain has repositioned himself to align with the party mainstream on some key issues and downplayed others that once defined his independence.”
As we mentioned yesterday, the DNC is up with a new TV ad hitting McCain on the economy. The ad begins running on national cable tomorrow.
AP fact-checks the DNC’s ad. “The video of McCain's response is edited to exclude the remainder of his answer, where he acknowledged that ‘things are tough right now.’ This type of selective quoting has become commonplace. Obama, in criticizing McCain on the economy last week, used only a portion of a McCain answer to Bloomberg Television.
The Los Angeles Times reports on a small setback for neocon supporters of McCain. The candidate is backing off a bit on his promise to promote a UN alternative that would essentially be a league of democracies. "Now, however, McCain says the group would not use military force, and would be an informal organization in which democratic nations come together in different groupings, depending on their concerns. ‘It does not envision military action,’ McCain told reporters in Dallas on April 11. He said it would ‘not be a formal organization; it would be a coalition of nations that shifts sometimes depending on what their priorities are.’”
“A senior campaign advisor, Steve Schmidt, said in an interview last week that the candidate's concept had not changed. But some outside analysts see an evolution. James M. Lindsay, director of the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas, said McCain's recent description of his idea represented ‘a sharp departure from what Sen. McCain said previously.’”
So Michael Moore is for Obama. From Moore on his
Web site : "[O]ver the past two months, the actions and words of Hillary Clinton have gone from being merely disappointing to downright disgusting. I guess the debate last week was the final straw. I've watched Senator Clinton and her husband play this game of appealing to the worst side of white people, but last Wednesday, when she hurled the name ‘Farrakhan’ out of nowhere, well that's when the silly season came to an early end for me. She said the ‘F’ word to scare white people, pure and simple. Of course, Obama has no connection to Farrakhan. But, according to Senator Clinton, Obama's pastor does -- AND the ‘church bulletin’ once included a Los Angeles Times op-ed from some guy with Hamas! No, not the church bulletin! This sleazy attempt to smear Obama was brilliantly explained the following night by Stephen Colbert. He pointed out that if Obama is supported by Ted Kennedy, who is Catholic, and the Catholic Church is led by a Pope who was in the Hitler Youth, that can mean only one thing: OBAMA LOVES HITLER!"
From NBC's Frank Thorp It's what appears to be a common theme coming from the
Clinton camp. After Sen. Clinton herself pointed out yesterday what she saw as hypocrisy coming from the
Obama campaign, both Gov. Ed
Rendell and her new Chief Campaign Strategist Geoff Garin pounced on the idea that Obama's "new politics" may be older than they appear.
Garin, who appeared on Sunday's "Meet the Press" with Obama's Chief Campaign Strategist David Axelrod, pointed out that members of the Obama campaign have been attacking Clinton for months now. "We want to go ahead and have a good, fair discussion of the issues facing the country, but we really don't want to play by two sets of rules. It's not fair," he told moderator Tim Russert.
One such comment was made by Gen. Walter Stewart (ret.) on a recent Obama Campaign conference call. Addressing Sen. Clinton's recent gaffe about her 1996 trip to Bosnia, he claimed that if Sen. Clinton was elected President she would not possess the "moral authority" to place a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Memorial Day. Both Axelrod and Sen. Bob
Casey (D-PA) hastily repudiated the statement.
The Obama campaign, of course, points out Clinton has not been so positive, and says it is mostly responding Clinton-initiated attacks.
Rendell and Casey discussed the upcoming primary in their state on CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday. Rendell explained that while Clinton's campaign may be somewhat negative, at least they don't deny it. And while Casey tried to defend Obama by pointing out that the Clinton campaign is no stranger to negative campaigning, Rendell was quick to point out, "but we are not hypocritical about it."
From NBC's Lauren Appelbaum ABINGTON, Pa. -- State Rep. and Deputy Speaker of the House Josh Shapiro (D-PA) is an active Obama supporter and enjoys telling his undecided constituents in suburban Montgomery County why. His pitch for the Illinois Senator is similar to what other Obama supporters say -- he wants change.
"We need someone who can build new coalitions and go out and try to solve them," Shapiro told First Read. "Look at what he has done here in Montgomery County. We were trailing Republicans in registrations by 32,000 registrants after the last election in November 2007. Today we are up by 11 or 12,000 registrants.”
"That's not by accident. The Obama campaign went out and re-registered Independents and Republicans," he continued. "And they were attracted to him for some reason, for various reasons. If he can do that on the politics, imagine what he can do building coalitions on important policy issues."
There is no way to determine the Obama campaign is solely responsible for the increase in Democratic registrants. Shapiro did defend this claim, though, at least anecdotally: "I can tell you, being so involved with the Obama campaign, we were having volunteers showing up at the courthouse in Norristown, our county seat with stacks this high and there was no effort like that coming from the Clinton campaign, as far as I know."
CONTINUED >>
From NBC/NJ’s Athena Jones BETHLEHEM, Pa. -- The latest tactic in this protracted primary race? Comparing the other candidate to the Democratic Party's Grand Ole bogeyman: The Republican Party.
Obama did it after the debate on Wednesday, saying Clinton's hits on him were part of the lesson she learned when the Republicans were attacking her back in the 1990s. And Clinton did it Sunday, bringing up last week's Philadelphia debate and painting her rival as the candidate who says one thing and does another.
"This week we had a debate, and it showed you the choice you have, and it's no wonder that my opponent has been so negative these last few days of the campaign, because I think you saw a big difference between us," she told the crowd. "It's really a choice of leadership. I'm offering leadership you can count on. You know where I stand; you know what I've done; you know what I will do. I'm offering my experience, my strength and my readiness for whatever comes our way. I'm ready on day one to be the commander in chief, and I'm ready to fix this economy."
In an indirect reference to Obama's controversial "small-town" remarks, the New York senator suggested he was being divisive.
"I am looking forward with great anticipation to leading all of our people in every city, every town, every village across America, because I want to bring our people together," she said. "I know the best way to do that is to set I highs goals again: goals that we can agree on as Americans, goals that we can achieve together as Americans. My campaign has been about that; it's been about leaving no one behind, but instead bringing us all forward together. We're going to work on behalf of these big goals and we're going to produce results for America. So while my opponent says one thing and his campaign does another, you can count on me to tell you where I stand, and you can count on me to tell you very specifically the solutions that I'm offering for America."
CONTINUED >>
From NBC’s Domenico Montanaro In response to this ad…
…the
Obama campaign released this ad:
Clinton campaign released this ad:
From NBC/NJ’s Mike Memoli Clinton called criticism of his wife’s health-care plan “bull,” arguing that insuring all Americans is both “morally right” and “economically essential.”Obama’s ad, saying, “‘Oh, it’s the end of the world. Oh, you’re gonna be forced to buy health care you can’t afford.’” He quickly added: “That’s bull. The only way you can afford it over the long run is that everyone is covered.”CONTINUED >>
From NBC/NJ’s Aswini Anburajan Clinton 's been running these ads saying, 'Oh Barack's not really insuring everybody,’" Obama said in Lancaster today.CONTINUED >>
From NBC/NJ’s Athena Jones Obama a hypocrite? Hillary Clinton wants voters to think so. CONTINUED >>
From NBC/NJ’s Athena Jones Clinton in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary. Scaife owns the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review , which threw its backing to Clinton today. It cites Clinton’s “political courage” in particular for sitting down with its editorial board. (There, she famously injected herself into the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy.)
From NBC’s Domenico Montanaro McCain in a paid TV spot starting April 22nd on national cable. It attacks McCain for saying it could be argued that we’re better off now than before the Bush presidency. The DNC uses McCain’s words at a debate, splices that with ominous-sounding (almost Exorcist-like) piano music and titles on screen combating McCain’s economic outlook.VOICE OVER: Senator McCain, are Americans better off than they were 8 years ago?
From NBC's Chuck Todd
Click here to read the entire MSNBC/McClatchy/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette poll.
From NBC's Domenico Montanaro The food fight continues.
The Obama campaign went on the offensive with two new ads, one of which attacks Clinton on her health-care mandate. The other highlighting why, they say, newspapers haven't endorsed Clinton. (We reported on those here .) The Obama camp also held a conference call hitting Clinton for her Bosnia “sniper fire” remarks, and the Clinton campaign returned fire, calling Obama a “hypocrite” on the issue of “negative” attacks.
"When it comes to negative campaign tactics, Senator Obama has been a hypocrite from day one, decrying attack politics from one side of his mouth while he and his campaign wage a character assassination effort from the other," spokesman Phil Singer wrote. "The juxtaposition of Senator Obama's comments in the debate and the remarks made on his campaign conference call this afternoon prove the point."
On Obama's ad, Clinton herself, attacked back at Obama. She recycled an argument on this rare area policy difference (and marginal at that) between them: “I just heard that my opponent has put up an ad attacking my health care plan, which is kind of curious, because my plan covers everybody and his leaves out 15 million people -- just leaves them out in the cold," she said. (The statement was also issued in a release by the campaign.) "Now, instead of attacking the problem, he chooses to attack my solution. I don't think that we can just make speeches about this -- we have to have a plan that we can actually implement that will provide quality affordable health care. That's what I've been fighting for for 15 years, and that's what I will fight for as your president.”
Not so fast, says the Obama campaign. It says their health care ad attack is, in fact, a response to a pro-Clinton 527 group's attack ad (and other mailers) on his health-care plan. "The Obama ad is responding to a flurry of negative attacks from the Clinton campaign and their well-financed allies," spokesman Hari Sevugan wrote. "Given that they have been engaging in a self-professed 'kitchen sink' strategy that Senator Clinton describes as 'the fun part,' their charges today are laughable. While they continue to employ the say-and-do-anything tactics of the past, Senator Obama is going to focus on the issues that are affecting the American people."
Meanwhile, the Obama campaign also brought to the forefront Clinton's MoveOn.org comments, revealed by the Huffington Post , framing them as more proof of Clinton's “credibility” problem.
"Hillary Clinton's decision to trash Democratic activists in a closed-door meeting with donors after publicly praising them when she needed their support is just another example of why she has such a serious credibility problem with the American people," Sevugan wrote.
A summary of warring conference calls and candidates' attacks at campaign stops follows below, as reported by NBC/National Journal campaign reporters Aswini Anburajan (following Obama) and Athena Jones (following Clinton).
CONTINUED >>
From NBC/NJ's Aswini Anburajan Obama grabbed hold of the Georgia 300's horn and pulled twice. Two loud, blaring "Whooo whooos" rang out and the candidate laughed and said, "I'm having too much fun."
It was a fitting start to a sunny, four-city whistle stop tour that will wind through the Pennsylvania's suburbs on the way from Philly to Harrisburg. The Georgia 300, a refurbished, velvet-blue caboose carried Obama, Sen. Bob Casey and Casey's daughters and wife.
First stop: Wynwood. Greeting a crowd of supporters that flooded both sides of the platforms, holding Obama signs, Obama's train rolled into the station as the strands of "Summertime" filled the air. With Casey at his side, Obama addressed the crowd in a blue-and-white-checkered shirt sans tie.
The speech, largely a repetition of last night's closing argument, presented in Philadelphia, was heavy on populism and a call for new politics. Referring to the current back and forth in the Democratic primary as "petty, trivial nonsense," Obama criticized not only his opponent but also the coverage of the campaign.
CONTINUED >>
From NBC's Lauren Appelbaum Clinton campaign is using robocalls to tell Pennsylvanians Obama is not the candidate for them. In less than 24 hours, voters living in Lower Moreland Township of Montgomery County received three calls from the Clinton campaign, two attacking Obama and one advertising Bill Clinton's event in Fort Washington on Friday.
"In his TV ads, Barack Obama sounds like he'll take on the oil companies," a male voice tells voters in the first attack call. "What he doesn't tell you is that he voted for the Bush-Cheney energy bill, a bill that's been called the best bill energy corporations could buy. Every gallon of gas takes over three bucks from your pocket. So, why would Barack Obama vote for a Bush-Cheney energy bill that has put six billion in the pockets of big oil? Enough talk. It's time for action. Hillary Clinton will take on big oil and she has the experience to get it done."
The second call attacks Obama on his healthcare plan: "Pennsylvania families cannot afford Barack Obama," a stern female voice says. "Barack Obama's health care plan fails to deliver health care for every American, just what the HMO's and pharmaceutical companies want. What's more, Sen. Obama's healthcare plan imposes a $900 hidden tax on families. That's $900 more than anyone should have to pay to stay healthy. Pennsylvania families need a leader they can count on and a fighter who will deliver."
The call advertising Bill Clinton's event in the area was recorded by a woman with an upbeat, sweet-sounding voice, in contrast to the more pointed voices attacking Obama.
Voters in the area also received a call from the Obama campaign during this time. However, it was simply to promote his rally in Philadelphia Friday evening.
First Read will keep you updated with any more calls from the campaigns to this Philadelphia suburb.
From NBC's Domenico Montanaro Clinton picked up the backing of Rep. Tim Ryan (OH-17), giving her another superdelegate. Obama 236
From NBC’s John Baiata Reuters reports: "Twice-divorced former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani took Communion at a Mass celebrated by Pope Benedict on Saturday, breaching rules that bar those who remarry outside the Church from doing so. As he left New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral with his third wife, Judith, the failed presidential candidate confirmed to Reuters that he took Communion from a priest. Asked if he was uncomfortable with having broken the Church ban on the divorced and remarried taking Communion, Giuliani said, ‘No.’”
From NBC’s Domenico Montanaro Clinton has regained the national lead, 46%-45%, over Obama , according to the Gallup Tracking poll . Clinton had been down by 11 points less than a week ago. This is the first time Clinton has led in the poll since March 20. Newsweek shows Obama with a 54%-35% lead. The two were deadlocked in the prior Newsweek poll, taken right after the Texas-Ohio primaries. The poll was conducted by Princeton Survey Research from April 16-17 -- also after the debate.
From NBC/NJ’s Athena Jones
From NBC/NJ’s Aswini Anburajan Obama campaign is up with two new ads in Pennsylvania, starting today, one of which accuses Clinton of introducing a health-care plan that forces individuals to purchase insurance "even if they can't afford it."
From NBC's Domenico Montanaro
From NBC/NJ’s Mike Memoli Bill Clinton' s.CONTINUED >>
From NBC/NJ’s Matthew Berger Clinton stopped traffic Friday night as she wandered the streets of Philadelphia on a gay bar crawl, winning rave reviews for both her politics and her appearance.Rendell , Chelsea was mobbed by local gays and lesbians, as she walked from one club to the next. They ran up to hug her, posed for pictures and certainly invaded her personal space.Obama stickers -- a rally for the Illinois senator had taken place a few blocks away earlier in the evening -- tried to get a snapshot as well.CONTINUED >>
From NBC/NJ’s Aswini Anburajan Obama gave a closing argument of sorts on Friday night at a rally on Independence Mall in Philly, where the crowd stretched across the lawn and spilled onto the neighboring streets.Clinton was playing from a Republican playbook and that her attacks of recent weeks were an embodiment of an old style politics that the country had tired of.CONTINUED >>
From NBC/NJ's Athena Jones CONTINUED >>
From NBC/NJ's Aswini Anburajan *** UPDATE *** CONTINUED >>
From NBC's Lauren Appelbaum Congressman Chris Carney (PA-10) has a new TV ad out, and it's not directly about his upcoming 2008 re-election race for Congress. Instead, he is using his campaign funds for the 60-second TV spot and complimentary a radio advertisement urging Pennsylvanians in his district to go out and vote in the primary on Tuesday.
CONTINUED >>
From NBC's Domenico Montanaro Clinton picked up two more NJ superdelegates: former Govs. Jim Florio and Brendan Byrne , who are add-ons. Earlier today, Clinton picked up the support of Rep. Betty Sutton (OH-13), giving her three for the day.
That leaves our superdelegate count at Clinton 262, Obama 235. Clinton is now +2 since Super Tuesday; Obama is +65. Obama leads by 166 pledged delegates, 1,417-1,251, and overall by 139, 1,652-1,513.
From NBC's Lauren Appelbaum PHILADELPHIA -- During an event billed as a discussion on the high costs of higher education yesterday afternoon, Chelsea Clinton faced difficult questions from Drexel University law students and faculty. Clinton called on those in attendance to call ABC with their complaints about last night's debate, tied her mother's work with children and women to the current situation with the Texas sect, and poked fun at a conservative first-year law student in the audience.
THE DEBATE: UNFAIR TO OBAMA? One of the questions Clinton fielded came from a university administrator who asked her about her mom's actions during Tuesday night's debate. "Frankly, I was disappointed in her that she didn't have a stronger reaction to some of the inane questions that were asked that last night and that were really insulting to us and the candidates," Leslie Friedman said to Clinton.
"I agree," Clinton said. "My mom's been talking about the issues ... from public school reform to higher education affordability to equal pay to expanding Family Medical Leave. ... That's what she talks about. I wish that was what the media covered. I wish that was what they had asked about from the beginning last night." CONTINUED >>
From MSNBC.com’s Tom Curry
FRAZER, Pa. -- Forty years ago Bill Ayers was a leader of a Leninist group called the Weather Underground that carried out bombings of the Pentagon, the Capitol and the New York City police headquarters. Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton , ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked Obama about his association with Ayers.Bill Clinton , too, had a connection to Ayers, albeit an indirect one. David Lytel, who worked in the White House for President Clinton from 1993 to 1996 as the White House “Web master” and helped create the Whitehouse.gov web site, left in April 1996 and formed Democrats Online, one of the earliest political advocacy sites.He added, “I’m a Clinton supporter, but I think it’s the absolute height of stupidity” and “preposterous” for her to try to use the Ayers connection as a weapon against Obama. “This is an insane way for her to try to define her opponent. I have no reason to think that Ayers is anything other than smart, skeptical American,” Lytel said. “He’s like anyone else who has activities in his past that might be embarrassing to them as a middle-aged person.”
READ THE FULL STORY HERE.
From NBC/NJ’s Athena Jones, NBC’s Mark Murray and Domenico Montanaro
The Clintons are teaming up to paint Obama as a whiner who can't handle the kind of tough questions that will face the next president. Bill and Hillary Clinton say they’ve never whined about debates. But that it not quite true.e-mail rebuttal from Clinton spokesman Phil Singer:
CONTINUED >>
From NBC/NJ's Athena Jones Clinton reprised a line that was a favorite back in the Iowa days to question rival Obama 's ability to withstand the pressures of being president.
Clinton and her husband have been hitting Obama for the past two days after the Illinois senator said the Wednesday night debate had not focused enough on the issues people care about and that it had been a preview of the kind of Republican attacks that would be seen in the general election.
The New York senator's comments at Radnor Senior High School were a snappier version of statements she made earlier this morning during a television interview.
Yesterday, Bill Clinton said he "didn't hear her whining" when she was attacked in the past and said this race was "a contact sport".
But the Clinton camp has also been known to complain about treatment in past debates that they saw as overly harsh.
NBC/NJ’s Aswini Anburajan reports that Obama took issue with the assertion that his comment about "gotcha questions" at Wednesday's debate was "complaining."
Asked about it on the tarmac as he was about to get into his campaign SUV, Obama grinned and shook his head.
"Who's complaining?" he asked in return. "Who's been complaining about the press for the last six months?"
CONTINUED >>
From NBC's Domenico Montanaro Sutton (OH-13) endorsed Clinton today, giving the New York senator one more superdelegate. Our superdelegate count now stands at Clinton 260, Obama 235. This also marks Clinton breaking even since Super Tuesday, Feb. 5. In mid-March Clinton had been at a net loss of seven delegates since Feb. 5. Obama has netted 65 delegates since Feb. 5.
As noted earlier, the overall count has Obama leading 166 pledged delegates, 1,417-1,251, and overall by 141 delegates, 1,652-1,511.
In a non-superdelegate endorsement, Obama got the backing of Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration and current professor at UC-Berkeley.
From NBC's Domenico Montanaro McCain campaign has beefed up its staff -- going from between 90 and 100 staffers after the Texas and Wisconsin primaries to more than 150 currently, campaign aides said in a meeting with about 20 reporters this morning.
Among those brought on board (either working directly with the campaign or in coordination with the campaign or RNC) are:
POLLING: The McCain campaign, which has been relying on public polling, is beefing up its internal polling team as well. We’d reported on Bill McInturff’s return, but the campaign is also bringing on board: Linda DiVall and Ed Goeas.
REGIONAL CAMPAIGN MANAGERS: Instead of regional political directors, the campaign has set up what it’s calling Regional Campaign Managers. These 11 individuals will have a great deal of autonomy, including being responsible for budgets. The 11 are:
CONTINUED >>
From NBC's Domenico Montanaro Obama and subtracting one for Clinton . Despite Clinton's double-digit victory, she netted seven delegates (74-67).
Obama now leads by 166 pledged delegates, 1,417-1,251, and leads overall by 142 delegates, 1,652-1,510.
Clinton leads in superdelegates, 259-235. (Neither David Boren nor Sam Nunn, who endorsed Obama today, are superdelegates.)
From NBC's Domenico Montanaro
But Clinton and Obama have both released their tax returns dating back to 2000 (Clinton released a summary for 2007, but not the full return yet), and Clinton further back than that, since the days her husband was governor of Arkansas in the 1980s. Additionally, the Clinton campaign has recently called on Obama to release his tax returns from 1997 to 1999 when he was an Illinois state senator.
VIDEO: The presidential hopeful reported a taxable income of nearly $259,000 for 2007, a figure that does not include his wife's wealth . NBC's Kelly O'Donnell reports *** UPDATE *** While Teresa Heinz Kerry did not release her full income tax returns/schedules (in interest of privacy for her children, she said at the time), she did, in fact, release at least a partial return showing her income from 2003.
The New York Times wrote on Oct. 16, 2004: "Ms. Heinz Kerry on Friday released a small part of her 2003 income tax return, unlike her husband, Senator John Kerry, and President Bush and his wife, Laura, who have made their full tax returns available for public inspection. The Kerrys file separate tax returns, a common arrangement when one spouse is wealthy."
Here's the release from the McCain campaign: CONTINUED >>
From Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, and Domenico Montanaro *** ObamaNation’s power: Curious of what the bitterness and anger could look like if Obama is somehow denied the Democratic nomination? Check out the reaction from the ObamaNation over Wednesday’s debate. To put it simply, ABC was under siege yesterday. This may only be a taste of how the ObamaNation would react to a Clinton nomination. If MoveOn is motivated to do a petition campaign against the media over a debate, imagine what Clinton delegates and undecided superdelegates would face this summer if there is doubt. And as the Politico’s Ben Smith pointed out yesterday, it’s also what the GOP would face in the general election, especially if Obama is nominee. The level of devotion among Obama's supporters rivals what Bush had with his flock in 2004. The left-wing blogosphere is MUCH more powerful than what you see on the right this cycle and it reminds us of the advantage Bush had in '04. While we all know about that so-called right-wing voice machine, don’t forget that there is now a left-wing noise machine (on the internet) as well. And it has found its voice.
*** More Philly phallout: The biggest post-debate issue Obama may have to deal with is this "weak" perception that's growing about his answers. Yesterday, he tried to sound tougher: He had the shoulder gesture and tried to power up his rhetoric. But Clinton surrogates and the RNC both jumped on the weak argument, noting if he couldn't handle 45 minutes of uncomfortable questions, how will he handle bad days during the presidency? It's one thing to be labeled "inexperienced"; it's another to be "weak and inexperienced." Meanwhile, in perhaps today’s biggest story, the New York Times writes that Democratic superdelegates haven't been swayed by the debate or Obama’s recent gaffes. “Despite [Clinton] giving it her best shot in what might have been their final debate, interviews on Thursday with a cross-section of these superdelegates — members of Congress, elected officials and party leaders — showed that none had been persuaded much by her attacks on Mr. Obama’s strength as a potential Democratic nominee, his recent gaffes and his relationships with his former pastor and with a onetime member of the Weather Underground.”
*** The soft sell: We also shouldn't ignore the attempt by Clinton to go soft again. She flirted with softness early in the debate -- and then decided to take advantage of negative openings against Obama. Now, yesterday, in the closing days of the PA primary (and with evidence of rising negatives), she brought her mom back on the trail for the first time in three months. Clearly, she's got an image issue (particularly with Obama supporters where her negatives are growing fast and may actually be making her look more unpopular than she will be as the eventual Dem nominee). The problem for Clinton, though, is that while her campaign stops may be softer, her current ad campaign in Pennsylvania is fairly negative. Then again, if her supporters aren't punishing her for the negative campaign, she should hold up ok in the primary. But if the various polls are to be believed, her numbers are slipping a tad. Could it be the negative campaign is driving some folks to undecided who will eventually decide simply not to vote?
*** Enter Tax Man: While the release of Clinton’s and Obama’s tax returns have sparked interest, controversy, and a game of one-upsmanship between the campaigns, McCain’s own taxes haven’t received the same level of scrutiny. Well, today he finally releases those taxes at 11:00 am ET. One thing that they will likely show is that the McCains are much wealthier than the Clintons and the Obamas, due to Cindy McCain’s beer fortune. But it's old money and it appears to be money that wasn't earned due to fame in public life. One thing to watch for: Will the taxes be for just 2007 or will they go back farther? But the real records that reporters are looking for aren’t the taxes; rather, it’s his medical records.
*** Appalachia, here we come: Speaking of McCain, he goes on his Appalachia trip preview next week. It’s the type of pre-Dem nominee tour that makes a lot of sense. His earlier Bio Tour seemed slapped together at the last minute and never really worked out the way the campaign hoped. Next week seems like a message-specific tour that could work very well for him politically. It takes him through some potentially important states, including Ohio. Again, the longer the Democratic nomination fight goes on, the more opportunity McCain has to strengthen his own base and begin to court swing and Dem terrain.
*** It’s time to make a decision: And given all the time McCain has, is that why Dean has now changed his tune on when the Dem race needs to end? Or was Wednesday’s debate the catalyst? Dean told CNN yesterday that undecided superdelegates need to start making up their minds -- now. “We cannot give up two or three months of active campaigning and healing time,” he said. “We’ve got to know who our nominee is.” Just what is the definition of "start making up their minds"? Is Dean hoping for a bunch of public decisions by May 7? Sure sounds like it. *** The delegate count: Clinton leads Obama by 24 superdelegates, 259-235. Obama picked up two more supers yesterday -- Reggie Whitten (OK) and Harry Thomas (DC). But as we continue to audit our lists, we have also taken one away from Obama (Frank Montanaro-RI) and added him to Clinton. We have also added another RI superdelegate to Clinton's column, Grace Diaz, who we inadvertently missed. In the overall count now, Obama leads by 140 (1,651-1,511). He has a 164 pledged-delegate lead (1,416-1,252).
*** On the trail: Clinton campaigns in Radnor, PA before heading to North Carolina, where she has a conversation with Maya Angelou at Wake Forest University; McCain has already attended the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast; and Obama spends his day in Pennsylvania, where he visits Erie and Williamsport and has a rally in Philadelphia. Also, Bill Clinton is in Pennsylvania and Michelle Obama is in Indiana.
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The New York Times finds superdelegates are not yet moved by the new round of attacks on Obama. "Yet despite giving it her best shot in what might have been their final debate, interviews on Thursday with a cross-section of these superdelegates — members of Congress, elected officials and party leaders — showed that none had been persuaded much by her attacks on Mr. Obama’s strength as a potential Democratic nominee, his recent gaffes and his relationships with his former pastor and with a onetime member of the Weather Underground."
More: "In interviews, 15 uncommitted superdelegates said they did not believe that recent gaffes by both candidates would carry any particular influence over their final decision. They said they had particularly tired of all the attention, by the Clinton campaign and the news media, on Mr. Obama’s recent comment that some Americans were ‘bitter’ over the economy and chose to ‘cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them’ as a result.
“And if there were some moments of concern reflected in the debate — the talk of Mrs. Clinton’s high unfavorability ratings, Mr. Obama’s flashes of annoyance — they all doubted that those moments would be deal-breakers, either. Instead, most of the superdelegates said they wanted to wait for the results of at least the next major primaries — in Pennsylvania on Tuesday and Indiana and North Carolina two weeks later — before choosing a candidate."
USA Today and Gannett News also talked to a slew of superdelegates this week and found most won't make a decision based on the Pennsylvania results.
CONTINUED >>
The Washington Post notes how Obama is trying to turn the debate lemons into lemonade. "A day after undergoing the toughest grilling of the campaign, Sen. Barack Obama attempted to get back on the offensive Thursday, arguing that his candidacy offers a clear departure from the attack politics and trivial issues that he said have dominated presidential campaigns and led to gridlock in Washington." More: "Obama and his team appeared taken aback by some of the negative reviews of his performance in the 90-minute debate in Philadelphia with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.). In their estimation, he had more than held his own and delivered a stronger performance than in some early debates, when his low-key style sometimes appeared soft in contrast to Clinton's bite."
The Los Angeles Times does a whole story on the criticism that was leveled at ABC yesterday, as does the New York Times .
By the way, in Pittsburgh ratings, the debate lost to the Penguin playoff game.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal does an expectations-setting piece for Clinton, noting she needs close to a double-digit win to really grab momentum.
"These are Philadelphia's western suburbs -- a patchwork of charming small towns, elite colleges and working class neighborhoods that constitute one of the most competitive political battlegrounds in the state," the AP writes, adding, "Clinton holds a lead in statewide polls. But Obama is strongly favored in Philadelphia and polls show him holding a slight lead in the arc of four increasingly Democratic counties around the city."
The Los Angeles Times does a tough piece on Chelsea. "For the first time, she is facing the kind of scrutiny that has bedeviled the candidates and their surrogates along the campaign trail. During a long day of campaigning in Oregon on Saturday, she mentioned at two different stops that during the course of the campaign a 7-year-old and an 11-year-old had separately asked her ‘with terror in their eyes’ what will become of the Social Security system. It's possible they were precocious, or that their parents put them up to it, but one skeptical blogger wrote afterward that the story was ‘stunning in its absurdity.’ (When asked for details, such as where and when Clinton met the children, the campaign could not provide them.)"
The University of Pennsylvania's student newspaper endorsed Clinton. "But while Obama's charisma far outshines that of Sen. Hillary Clinton, her public service, political experience and tenacity tell us not only 'Yes we can' but also 'How we can.'"
Clinton poked fun at her own readiness-to-solve-problems mantra, during a taping of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report last night, NBC/NJ’s Athena Jones reports. John Edwards was also on the show, and he and Clinton chatted backstage before she taped a minute-and-a-half bit with comedian Stephen Colbert. Details regarding what she and her former rival spoke about and how long they talked were not forthcoming.
CONTINUED >>
This is interesting. Peggy Noonan wonders whether McCain ought to announce he'll be a one-term and do so before this election. Bloomberg News fact-checks a bit McCain's economic plan that claims to cut taxes and balance the budget and doesn't find too many economists who believe McCain's goal is possible. "McCain's proposal, outlined April 15, would extend President George W. Bush's tax cuts, reduce the top corporate rate, repeal the alternative minimum tax and double exemptions for dependents. Price: $3.3 trillion by the end of a President McCain's second term in 2017, according to figures from his campaign and the Treasury.”
“The Arizona senator said that would be offset by eliminating pork-barrel spending, freezing a portion of the budget, and Medicare savings. He could cut the budget by $100 billion a year ‘in a New York minute,' he said in a Bloomberg Television interview yesterday.
“‘The huge imbalance' in McCain's plan ‘is that the tax cuts are specific and large and the spending cuts are small and vague,' said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Washington- based Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan group that advocates budget restraint.” CONTINUED >>
Here are the predictable Weather Underground stories. The LA Times : "The evidence linking Obama, who was born in 1961, to the two former militants, now in their 60s, remained thin, despite the appearance of a slickly produced, anonymously issued five-minute video titled ‘Obama's Terrorist Connections’ on YouTube that sought to exploit the alleged tie. Obama and Ayers moved in some of the same political and social circles in the leafy liberal enclave of Hyde Park, where they lived several blocks apart. In the mid-1990s, when Obama was running for the Illinois Senate, Ayers introduced Obama during a political event at his home, according to Obama's aides. Ayers, a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, later contributed $200 to Obama's state campaign.”
“Obama and Ayers met a dozen times as members of the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, a local grant-making foundation, according to the group's president. They appeared together to discuss juvenile justice on a 1997 panel sponsored by the University of Chicago, records show. They appeared again in 2002 at an academic panel co-sponsored by the Chicago Public Library."
The Boston Globe also does the Ayers story -- but from the how-it-became-news angle. "The news that Obama held a campaign event at Ayers's home in 1995, and served with Ayers on a Chicago community board, was either damning or innocuous, a worthy disclosure or a sure sign of the decline of political journalism. But the Obama-Ayers story itself is a case study in the ways that news jumps between blogs and traditional media, the lingering power of network news, and the persistence of Internet conspiracy theories. In fact, it was hard yesterday to tell which got more scrutiny: the link between Obama and Ayers, or the link between ABC's George Stephanopoulos and Sean Hannity of Fox News."
CONTINUED >>
"The Gallup Poll looked at the dozen so-called purple states - swing states crucial in November - and reported yesterday that both Obama and Clinton led McCain 47 percent to 43 percent. The dozen states were where the margin of victory in 2004 for President Bush or Senator John F. Kerry was 5 percentage points or less: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin."
So Mike Huckabee did an interview with the Club for Growth's blog -- going right into his lion's den, talking about VP speculation, including Lieberman and Romney.
National Journal’s Ron Brownstein notes how this campaign season has transformed politics. “In scope and sweep, tactics and scale, the marathon struggle between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton has triggered such a vast evolutionary leap in the way candidates pursue the presidency that it is likely to be remembered as the first true 21st-century campaign.”
From NBC's John Yang
After Wednesday night's debate and days ahead of the Pennsylvania primary, we thought it was a good time to check back in.
Medley tried to watch the debate, but turned it off before it was over. "It was so contentious," she said. "I'm so worn out with all the arguing."
Chappelle-Nadal missed the debate because the legislature, now debating the state budget, was in session until about 1 a.m. Thursday. But she, too, laments that the campaign has been reduced to "bickering."
Medley fears it's hurting the Democrats' chance in November. "What we're doing is we're letting John McCain have a free ride," she said. "He's running a general-election campaign, and we're still fighting among ourselves. … They need to be more civil to each other. It's just gotten too contentious. Somebody has to step aside."
CONTINUED >>
From NBC/NJ's Mike Memoli Bill Clinton has been talking all day about how great he thought last night's debate was. At his most recent stop, he pushed back at some of the complaints coming from the Obama campaign, saying his wife didn't whine when she took some hits.
"[Obama staffers] were saying, 'Oh this is so negative, why are they doing this.' Well, they've been beatin' up on her for 15 months," Clinton said. "I didn't hear her whining when he said she was untruthful in Iowa, or called her the senator from Punjab... But you know, this is a contact sport. If you don't want to play, keep your uniform off."
Clinton also noted that the Obama camp has "said some pretty rough things about me, too," and shortly after again pushed back against the sentiment that there wasn't much difference between his or the Bush Administration.
"They've been trying to make that old mangy dog hunt since Nevada," he said.
CONTINUED >>
From NBC/NJ's Athena Jones Hillary Clinton campaigned with both her mother and daughter today.
Chelsea and Dorothy Rodham accompanied the former first lady on campaign swings in Iowa and New Hampshire late in those campaigns in an effort soften and humanize the candidate's image and to appeal to women voters. Both Chelsea and Bill Clinton have been campaigning extensively for the New York senator across this must-win primary state, and it was Chelsea who introduced her mother today.
"My mother and my grandmother have been my role models my whole life, and I can only hope to be as good a mother to my children as my mother's always been to me," the youngest Clinton said.
"I'm just so proud to be here with my mom and my grandmother. It's also a really nice treat, because I spend a lot of time traveling and talking about my mom but not as much time getting to actually see her and sit next to her," she continued, eliciting "awwws" from the overwhelmingly female crowd. Rodham sat on the stage opposite Chelsea, but did not speak.
CONTINUED >>
From NBC's Ben Weltman and Mark Murray Obama said on whether he will agree to participate in the April 27 debate in North Carolina: "You know, we had agreed earlier to a debate. Sen. Clinton declined that one. And now we are trying to figure out what our schedule looks like. I'll be honest with you, we have now had 21. And look, I mean, on the previous three you know, we did very well, and so it's not as if we don't know how to do these things. I could deliver Sen. Clinton's lines; she could, I'm sure, deliver mine. So what we've got to figure out is how we fit in campaigning actively both here in North Carolina and in Indiana. Because if we do it in North Carolina then the folks in Indiana will say, 'What about us?'"
From NBC's Ben Weltman and Mark Murray Obama said the following: "So last night Sen. Clinton and I had our 21st debate of the year [pro-Obama boos]. I will tell you it does not get much more fun than these debates. They are, they are inspiring events [laughter]. I mean last night I think we set a new record because it took us 45 minutes before we even started talking about a single issue that matters to the American people. Took us 45 minutes... 45 minutes before we heard about health care, 45 minutes before we heard about Iraq, 45 minutes before we heard about jobs, 45 minutes before we heard about gas prices."
VIDEO: Obama tells a North Carolina audience that he just had to brush off negative attacks. "That's why she is only airing negative attacks on TV in Pennsylvania... Look, I understand that because that's the textbook Washington game. That's how our politics has been taught to be played. That's the lesson that she learned when the Republicans were doing the same thing to her back in the 1990s. So I understand it and when you are running for the presidency than you've got to expect it and then you've got to kind of [makes a "brush off shoulder" motion]. That's what you got to do. That's what you got to do [brushes off his shoulder again]."
"But, understand this: That is also precisely why I'm running for president, to change that kind of politics."
The most prominent adviser to the campaign of John McCain , longtime lobbyist Charles Black, wrote letters on behalf of a convicted felon in 2005 to the Justice Department and a federal judge.
The letters written by Black here and here .
CONTINUED >>
From MSNBC.com's Andy Merten Last night at the Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner here in Washington, Vice President Dick Cheney tried his hand at a little stand-up comedy. President Bush, who typically attends the event himself, was busy holding a dinner honoring the visit of Pope Benedict XVI. So he opted to send Cheney, who he described as the funniest person he knows.
The VP joked with the Washington press corps about comparisons of him to Darth Vader, Obama's bitter remarks, and of course, that little rumor about the reflection in his sunglasses.
From NBC's Mark Murray Obama camp held a conference call to highlight what it sees as the negativity emanating from Clinton and her campaign. The call featured three Pennsylvanian women who once backed Clinton but are now for Obama -- in part citing that negativity.
One woman, Susan Petro of Allentown, referred to Clinton's earlier claim that she and McCain have passed commander-in-chief tests, but that Obama had just given one speech. "I found that very difficult for me to understand." Another, Dar Thomas of Pittsburgh, said she really wanted to vote for a woman but became disillusioned with Clinton's "duplicity" and "dishonesty." The third, state Sen. Leanna Washington of Philadelphia, said: "The relentless negativity of the Clinton campaign gave me no other choice but to listen and pay attention to Barack Obama."
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe then added to the criticism. "It is a relentless and negative campaign." He added that even Clinton supporter Ed Rendell decried the "gotcha" questions from the first 45 minutes of last night's debate. "Sen. Clinton seemed awfully comfortable and almost eager to have that debate," he later said.
CONTINUED >>
From NBC/NJ’s Athena Jones, NBC’s Domenico Montanaro and Andrea Mitchell Clinton aides held an hour-long conference call Thursday morning to highlight what they described as a winning debate performance last night by the New York senator, calling it a "game-changing" moment because it had raised new questions about Obama for voters and the press to consider.
Communications Director Howard Wolfson called the meetup in Philadelphia last night a "very important and illuminating debate" and said that in it Clinton showed "the strength of her leadership" in foreign policy, getting troops out of Iraq and other issues.
VIDEO: Tim Russert, moderator of "Meet the Press" talks with TODAY's Matt Lauer about the Democratic candidates’ debate in Philadelphia. The campaign also continued to maintain that Clinton never made the “screw ’em” remark about Southern white voters after the 1994 midterm election losses -- as has been claimed by three people present.
Spokesman Phil Singer insisted that Don Baer and Bruce Reed, other participants in the Camp David 1995 meeting, have no recollection of Clinton making the comment and don’t remember this as reflecting the tone of the meeting. Singer went on to say that if you look at the way Sen. Clinton has lived her life and the policies she's pursued, it’s clear she's advocated a progressive agenda aimed at lifting all Americans up.
Benjamin Barber, a noted political scientist and author who was also at the meeting, wrote in his 2001 book that Clinton did say it. As we noted earlier , Barber confirmed to First Read that he heard her make the comment and added that he is a Clinton supporter and donor. FEC data shows Barber donated $1,000 to Clinton’s campaign on Jan. 24.
CONTINUED >>
From NBC/NJ's Mike Memoli Bill Clinton thinks his wife won the debate last night.Hillary “was great.”
“She was great because she showed the strength and leadership and knowledge of the issues that is very important to the next president, and she didn’t hedge, beat around the bush on tough questions,” he said. “She told us what she was gonna do on health care, she told us what she was gonna do on jobs. That’s what you want in a president -- someone who is leading for you.”Joining Clinton for his events today is actor Ted Danson. In his remarks here, Danson talked about his family’s friendship with the Clintons, and called Hillary “the most authentic person I have ever met.” It was a tribute that Clinton felt deserved expanding upon.
“You heard what he said about Hillary? That’s what the people who know her think,” Clinton said. “That is very different than the image that they have tried to create for her, isn’t it, in the media, and out of the other campaign, who are always nagging, nagging, nagging. You heard it for 15 months, you know? How come no one who knows her believes that?”
From Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, and Domenico Montanaro *** Obama’s tough night: Last night wasn’t a good debate for Obama. Period. But it wasn't a great debate for Clinton either. Of course, that may not matter to her campaign -- in a two-way debate, it's not about which candidate narrowly wins, but which candidate gets pummeled in the post-debate reviews. And Obama is getting pummeled because, well, he did get pummeled, a bit by Clinton and a little bit by the moderators. In the first 40 minutes of the debate, most of the questions were focused on Obama's negatives (except for a lone Bosnia-sniper question to Clinton, with no follow up) and that's what helped create what was a near disastrous performance for the front-runner. Obama was weak in a lot of his answers on his personal negatives. (Did he really compare Tom Coburn to a one-time '60s radical/terrorist?) Meanwhile, Clinton piled on, particularly (and surprisingly, actually) on Bill Ayers, the former '60s radical who has tenuous ties to Obama. We’re not sure if Clinton's piling on ever is good for her in the long run -- see her current poll standing -- it created some post-debate issues for Obama. Many news organizations will feel compelled to do Ayers stories in the next few days (and they already have). While some may question the fairness and relevancy of the Ayers issue, it's not going to be good for Obama. Backlash? This debate is going to lead a lot of Obama supporters to ratchet up the calls on Clinton to either withdraw or tone down the attacks. Clinton supporters will point to this debate as proof that he's not yet ready for the general, that's why she should stay in, and that's why superdelegates should overturn the winner of pledged delegates. Still, Obama supporters -- and probably some neutral Democrats, too -- are going to be livid at how damaging this debate was to both of them. And the calls for getting the primary over with are going to rise. Indeed, per an aide, the Obama campaign is going to try to seize on last night’s negativity by announcing the support of Pennsylvania voters “who have switched their allegiance from Clinton to Obama, largely because of her negativity.”
VIDEO: NBC Deputy Political Director Mark Murray gives a post-game analysis of last night's debate and looks ahead at the approaching Pennsylvania primary. Where we go from here: Overall, with the spotlight on him very bright, Obama didn't step up. He got rattled early on and never picked his game back up. Clinton wasn't very warm (outside of he first few minutes), but she didn't have the spotlight on her very bright. And as we've noted here quite a few times, whenever the spotlight is on one candidate, the other seems to benefit. Last night, the spotlight was on Obama, and for a short period of time, expect Clinton to benefit. But the question is whether she can sustain any benefit since as the negativity goes on, she pays a bigger price than Obama. Let's see what Pennsylvania decides in five days. A big Clinton victory and this debate will be seen as an important turning point. But a narrow victory (less than five points) and she could find herself facing more calls to get out.
*** Two other takeaways: Could last night’s true winner be John McCain? That appears to be the scoring by quite a few pundits. One other thing, and you can take this to the bank: that was the final debate of the primary season. The Obama folks still control the debate schedule and until they don't, don't count on more debates. The control could change, but not before May 6.
*** The delegate count: Obama picked up an Oklahoma superdelegate, add-on Reggie Whitten. Clinton now leads in superdelegates 257-235. Since Sunday, Obama has picked up five supers to Clinton’s zero. With his three elected superdelegate pick-ups yesterday, Obama has moved past Clinton among the group (U.S. Senators, Reps and governors): 96-94. In the overall count now, Obama leads by 142 (1,651-1,509). He has a 164 pledged-delegate lead (1,416-1,252).
*** Flash Gordon: All three presidential candidates meet with British PM Gordon Brown at the British embassy in DC today. Obama goes at 9:00 am ET, McCain goes at 10:00 am ET, and Clinton goes at 11:00 am ET. Why do we have visions of the three presidential candidates all waiting in the waiting area -- like at the doctor’s or dentist’s office? Per NBC’s John Yang, Brown also meets with President Bush today and will hold a joint news conference (two questions from British reporters, two questions from the White House press corps).
*** On the trail: Elsewhere today, Clinton stops by Haverford College, tapes an appearance on Colbert, and attends a block party in Philly; Obama heads to North Carolina, stumping in Raleigh and Greenville; and Bill Clinton has a whopping six campaign events in Pennsylvania.
Countdown to Pennsylvania: 5 daysClick here to sign up for First Read emails.
The New York Times : “Clinton did not let an opportunity pass as she repeatedly challenged Mr. Obama on his record and views -- assisted, as it turned out, by vigorous questioning by the two moderators from ABC News, Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous. The result was arguably one of Mr. Obama’s weakest debate performances. He at times appeared annoyed as he sought to answer questions about his former pastor, his reluctance to wear an American flag pin on his lapel and his association in Chicago with former members of the Weather Underground, a radical group that carried out bombings in the 1960s that were intended to incite the overthrow of the government.”
The Washington Post adds, "The encounter, particularly in the early stages, seemed more like a grilling of Obama on a Sunday-morning talk show than a debate between the two candidates. Obama fielded most of the questions calmly, although at times he appeared to choose his words with extreme care as he faced perhaps the toughest series of questions he has encountered since taking the lead in delegates in the nomination battle."
The Los Angeles Times : "With the moderators and Clinton raising assorted questions about Obama's past for the first half of the debate, issues received relatively short shrift. Not until 50 minutes in was a policy issue -- Iraq -- asked about by the moderators. More than an hour went by before a question was asked about what Stephanopoulos called ‘the No. 1 issue on Americans' minds’ -- the economy."
The Boston Globe : “Clinton, seeking momentum in the dwindling weeks of the primary campaign, accused Obama of associating with controversial figures, including his own former preacher. Though she called Obama a ‘good man’ and said, after some prodding, that he could win the White House, Clinton said he would have many liabilities in the fall campaign.”
CONTINUED >>
NBC’s Lauren Appelbaum covers the take from Obama’s chief strategist David Axelrod. “I think that this is the way the Clinton campaign thinks. They are running nothing but negative ads in Pennsylvania. And she came in and she was obviously aided by a series of questions for the first 50 minutes that were virtually all aimed at Senator Obama,” he said. “So it's easy to take the offensive when others are helping. Nonetheless, that was her strategy. She came in, she wanted to be negative. She was negative. They seem proud of that. That seems to characterize their campaign. I think most people though want something else in our politics.”
On whether the questions were unfair to Obama: “You know what, I think you show up for a debate. You answer the questions you are asked. I'm not here to whine about it. Everybody saw. It was an unusual debate. I've never seen anything quite like it. But I'm not going to complain about it.”
Did Obama have a good night? “I think he had a good night because he's a genuine honorable person trying to deal with the problems facing this country. He's not in there trying to rip someone else down. He's not in there trying to score political points. I think people will appreciate that. They want a change in our politics and they know they are not going to get it from the same old approach.”
Per NBC/NJ's Athena Jones, the Clinton camp was clearly pleased with her performance and were focusing on the handgun ban question to Obama -- and were passing out a copy of the survey he filled out while running for state senate showing his support for a handgun ban. Communications director Howard Wolfson said the Ayres Weather Underground issue had now been raised and would be something voters would now be asking about.
He also repeated that the Democrats would unify behind the eventual nominee. "Regardless of who the nominee is, there are huge stakes in the election and Democrats are going to do everything they can to unites behind our nominee and elect that person president," he said.
The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein : “During the past week, Sen. Hillary Clinton has presented herself as a working class populist, the politician in touch with small town sentiments, compared to the elitism of her opponent, Sen. Barack Obama. But a telling anecdote from her husband's administration shows Hillary Clinton's attitudes about the ‘lunch-bucket Democrats’ are not exactly pristine. In January 1995, as the Clintons were licking their wounds from the 1994 congressional elections, a debate emerged at a retreat at Camp David. Should the administration make overtures to working class white southerners who had all but forsaken the Democratic Party? The then-first lady took a less than inclusive approach.”
“‘Screw 'em,’ she told her husband. ‘You don't owe them a thing, Bill. They're doing nothing for you; you don't have to do anything for them.’ The statement -- which author Benjamin Barber witnessed and wrote about in his book, ‘The Truth of Power: Intellectual Affairs in the Clinton White House’ -- was prompted by another speaker raising the difficulties of reaching ‘Reagan Democrats.’”
In the spin room after last night’s debate, NBC/NJ’s Athena Jones reports, Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson said Clinton was quoted inaccurately and that she did not say it. Wolfson reiterated that on MSNBC's Morning Joe. “It ain’t so. It ain’t so," he said. "This is not something that occurred.” Wolfson dismissed it as a sign of the "situation" that the Obama campaign is in. “It did not happen,” he said again.
First Read, however, spoke with Barber, who confirmed the "screw-em" remark but wanted to add some context:
“The Operative Plasterers' and Cement Masons' International Association, which represents about 45,000 plasterers and cement masons in the construction industry in North America, announced its support for Clinton.” New York Post highlights the man in Clinton’s ad who is registered to vote in New Jersey.
“Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who is basing his bid for the White House on his credentials as a decorated veteran and leader on defense policy, has become the target of veterans groups pushing hard for more aid and relief for troops returning from conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the Washington Post writes. “At issue is a growing slate of legislation to boost veterans' education assistance and to rest troops between combat assignments. Two of the bills were written by Sens. James Webb (D-Va.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), both fellow Vietnam veterans, and are expected to see votes in Congress soon. Those bills would substantially boost college assistance for returning war veterans to cover fully tuition at a state university, while mandating that troops spend a month out of the combat zone for every month in it.”
The Obamas released their tax returns yesterday, Washington Post reports. They “show he made $4,238,165 last year, most of it ($3.9 million) a result of profits from his best selling books. He reported paying $1,396,772 in federal taxes and making charitable contributions totaling $240,370. Those donations included $26,270 to the Trinity United Church of Christ, which was the Chicago parish of his controversial longtime pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.”
More: “The release … appeared to be the latest move in a game of transparency one-upmanship between Obama and Clinton. Earlier … Clinton's campaign knocked Obama for failing to release returns from 1997 through 1999, something the Clintons had done as part of their time in the White House. Obama had previously released returns from 2000 to 2006 and pressed Clinton to release her tax returns from the years after she lived in the White House, which she did earlier this month. The Clintons' returns showed that they had made $109 million in income since leaving the White House. They filed for an extension for their 2007 taxes.”
“While in the upper echelon of taxpayers, the Obamas' income still pales in comparison to the estimated $20 million that Hillary and Bill Clinton reported earning last year.”
“Obama said yesterday he had a fundamental disagreement with [Jimmy] Carter, who was rebuffed by Israeli leaders during a peace mission to the Middle East this week and who has hinted that he supports Obama. ‘We must not negotiate with a terrorist group intent on Israel's destruction,’ Obama said. ‘We should only sit down with Hamas if they renounce terrorism, recognize Israel's right to exist, and abide by past agreements.’”
From NBC's Chuck Todd This was not a good debate for Obama, period. But it wasn't a great debate for Clinton either. Of course, that may not matter to Team Clinton. In a twp-way debate, it's not about which candidate narrowly wins -- but which candidate gets pummeled in the post-debate reviews. And Obama will get pummeled because well he did get pummeled, a little bit by Clinton and a little bit by the moderators.
Overall, with the spotlight on him very bright, Obama didn't step up. He got rattled early on and never picked his game back up. Clinton wasn't very warm (outside of he first few minutes), but she didn't have the spotlight on her very bright. And as we've noted in "First Thoughts" quite a few times, whenever the spotlight is on one candidate, the other seems to benefit. Tonight, the spotlight was on Obama, and for a short period of time, I expect Clinton to benefit. But the question is whether she can sustain any benefit since as the negativity goes on, she pays a bigger price than Obama. Let's see what the PA Dem voting public decides in six days. A big Clinton victory and this debate will be seen as an important turning point, a narrow victory (less than five points) and she could find herself facing more calls to get out.
Could tonight's true winner be John McCain? We're betting that's the unanimous pundit scoring tonight.
From NBC's Lauren Appelbaum
"I say to them what I've said to voters -- we need a fighter back in the White House," Clinton responded, going on to say that she will fight the special interests and touting her miltiary endorsements. "I will tell everyone that listens I am ready to be commander in chief."
"The American people have lost trust in their government," Obama said. "The bet I was making was the bet on American people ... they didn't want spin and PR out of elected officials. They wanted an honest conversation." Obama asserted his pledge that he did not take PAC or special interest money.
"My point to the superdeleagets will be is if we're going to deliver ... it will be for a new political coalition in this country," Obama concluded. "That's what I've been doing in this campaign and what I will do in November."
From NBC's Mark Murray
From NBC's Lauren Appelbaum Asked how she would use President Bush in a Clinton Administration, Clinton paused before saying "I'm going to have to give serious thought to that." She said she would look for a way to use all former presidents.
Obama used this question as an opportunity to talk about unifying the country across bipartisan lines. "I don't think the Democrats have a monopoly on good ideas."
From NBC's Chuck Todd
From NBC's Chuck Todd
From NBC's Chuck Todd
From NBC's Lauren Appelbaum
From NBC/NJ's Matthew E. Berger
From NBC/NJ's Aswini Anburajan
From NBC's Lauren Appelbaum
*** UPDATE ***
From NBC's Chuck Todd
From NBC's Chuck Todd
From NBC/NJ's Matthew E. Berger
From NBC's Lauren Appelbaum
He went on to say it is important to not focus on gaffes but the issues important to the American people.
"To be obsessed with these errors, I think is a mistake."
From NBC's Chuck Todd
From NBC/NJ's Matthew E. Berger
From NBC's Chuck Todd
From NBC's Mark Murray
From NBC's Chuck Todd
From NBC's Mark Murray So far, the questions have been about "bitter," whether Obama can win, and Jeremiah Wright. Nothing on Clinton yet.
*** UPDATE ***
*** UPDATE II
From NBC's Lauren Appelbaum
From NBC's Chuck Todd
From NBC's Chuck Todd
From NBC's Mark Murray and Lauren Appelbaum Clinton says that Obama CAN beat McCain, but says that she would be the better candidate.
Obama: "I, too, think I would be the better candidate."
NBC/NJ's Athena Jones adds... This is the first time I've heard her not dodge the question (of course she tried to, but ultimately answered it).
From NBC's Chuck Todd
From NBC/NJ's Aswini Anburajan The one thing going in Obama's favor as he answers this question is that he's answered about a dozen times now, in interviews, with voters, addressing it on his stump. It's down to two core talking points: 1) I messed up my language; 2) My intention was accurate; 3) My comments are being used as a wedge issue with voters who are already suspicious of the Democratic Party.
From NBC's Lauren Appelbaum
Clinton focused her answer on the problem during the Bush administration, tying that to McCain. "Regardless of the differences there may be between us, they pale between us and Senator McCain. We will do whatever is necessary to ensure a Democratic nominee wins the presidency."
From NBC's Chuck Todd
From NBC/NJ's Matthew E. Berger
From NBC's Chuck Todd
From NBC's Mark Murray
NBC's Lauren Appelbaum adds...After just five minutes of the debate, ABC goes to commercial. In the short amount of time allowed to the candidates before the first break, Right off the bat, Obama talked about the frustrations Pennsylvanians are feeling. Both Obama and Clinton promised they will help change the future for the better of all Americans.
From NBC's Chuck Todd
From NBC's Mark Murray
From NBC's Lauren Appelbaum
Hundreds of Clinton and Obama supporters greeted the press as they arrived today. The crowds around the Constitution Center here competed for the media's attention, with a blimp saying "boilermakers for Obama" flying above a mainly pro-Clinton area of supporters and a car driving by on a loop with models of Hillary and Bill Clinton sitting in the back.
One Clinton supporter is attempting to capitalize on the "bitter drama," holding a homemade sign saying "I'm not bitter because I vote better!"
Another woman who truly wants to vote for both candidates held a sign saying "Hillary 2008, Obama 2016."
Interest groups are taking advantage of the crowd to blast their messages. Two people are driving a van advertising clean coal, throwing t-shirts out the windows of the vehicle. DividedWeFail.org is using a billboard display on a truck calling for "healthcare and financial security for all." And those advocating the fair tax painted a bus to drive through the area.
A crowd favorite is a yellow car driving with a large billboard on top saying "Not Another War" and a trailer with Bush sitting on top a bomb labeled for Iran.
From NBC's Mark Murray Obama saying that people from small towns like Pennsylvania are often bitter and cling to guns and God, has published a new article .
Per the piece by Sam Stein: "In January 1995, as the Clintons were licking their wounds from the 1994 congressional elections, a debate emerged at a retreat at Camp David. Should the administration make overtures to working class white southerners who had all but forsaken the Democratic Party? The then-first lady took a less than inclusive approach. 'Screw 'em,' she told her husband. 'You don't owe them a thing, Bill . They're doing nothing for you; you don't have to do anything for them.'"
"The statement -- which author Benjamin Barber witnessed and wrote about in his book, 'The Truth of Power: Intellectual Affairs in the Clinton White House' -- was prompted by another speaker raising the difficulties of reaching 'Reagan Democrats.' It stands in stark contrast to the attitude the New York Democrat has recently taken on the campaign trail, in which she has presented herself as the one candidate who understands the working-class needs."
First Read just got off the phone with Barber, who confirmed the "screw-em" remark but wanted to add some context:Hillary from '94-'95 was a MUCH different person from the Hillary in Bill's second term. She had moved from ideological liberal to a pragmatic leader. He says his 2001 book, in fact, has a chapter on this transformation.
From NBC/NJ's Aswini Anburajan and NBC's Mark Murray 2007 tax return , which shows they earned more than $4 million -- which is a sizable increase from past filings (almost all of which comes from sales of his books).
Per the campaign, here are the highlights:
From NBC/NJ’s Carrie Dann Obama superdelegate backers -- Reps. David Price (CD-4) and Mel Watt (CD-12) -- predicted on a conference call with reporters today, that Obama's comments regarding bitterness in rural America would not hurt his momentum in North Carolina, where most polls show him leading by double digits.
Price said the Illinois senator was "simply stating the obvious," noting that economic distress has fostered anxiety and "a certain level of anger" throughout the country. The focus of the race should be not on "diversionary tactics," he said, but on solutions to the root problems of rural economic woes. (The GOP appeared to be the main target of that remark, though, not Sen. Clinton ; Price complimented both Democratic candidates for their "high marks" on presenting viable proposals.)
"What I'm hearing is a lot of disappointment at the negativity, and the jumping on this and taking the words out and trying to parse them, that the Clinton campaign has done,” Watt said. “And that could have some adverse impact on the Clinton campaign in North Carolina."
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From NBC's Victoria Riess
“So when people talk about this elitism stuff, I say, you couldn’t possibly know anything about me,” Obama said. “So let me give you a better sense of who me and Barack are and why we're doing this.”
Obama then outlined her and her husband’s upbringing and highlighted their commitment to public service in efforts to assuage the elitist attacks sparked by Obama’s “bitter” and “cling to” comments. About her husband, she said, “He was the product of a single parent, teenage mother. His mother was 18 years old, an 18-year old white woman raising a black kid in the 60s.”
CONTINUED >>
From NBC/NJ's Aswini Anburajan Obama pleaded his case in front of the local Jewish community at a Philadelphia synagogue, saying that he had always had a "kinship" with the Jewish community and any mistrust that might exist of him was because of "scurrilous emails' and speculates based on him having a Muslim middle name.
"But if people don't mind, I'd like to be honest: A lot of the concern has been generated because of scurrilous emails that have been sent, generated based on speculation of the fact that my middle name is Hussein," he said, adding: "A lot of it has been generated as a consequence of the fact that I'm African American and that at times there've been tensions between the African-American leadership an the Jewish community."
Today's meeting was the seventh that Obama has held across the country with members of the Jewish community, seeking to assuage fears that he is anti-Israel, especially after comments by his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, became public. In attendance were religious leaders and members of Jewish organizations in the local area.
Obama repeatedly said that he was for a Jewish state, while Reps. Robert Wexler and Steve Rothman , Obama backers who were both in attendance, put it more bluntly, saying that Obama would not allow Palestinians in the right of return.
CONTINUED >>
From NBC's Mark Murray and Chuck Todd McCain leading both Obama and Clinton in Colorado, a state that Dems believe they can win, especially if Obama is their nominee.
According to the poll, McCain leads Clinton there, 52%-40%, and he leads Obama, 51%-39%. (The margin of error for these match-ups, though, is fairly high at 5.6%.)
What's also striking in the poll is Clinton's poor favorability standing in the state. Her fav/unfav is 39%-57%, while McCain's is 55%/36% and Obama's is 55%-39%.
From NBC/NJ's Carrie Dann Obama conference call taking place right now, the two North Carolina superdelegates who are announcing their support for Obama today are:
US Rep. Mel Watt US Rep. David Price
We'll have more on this call shortly...
*** UPDATE *** Clinton 257, Obama 234.
Also note: Going back through our lists, we have taken two away Hillary Clinton. One Clinton supporter, Ken Curtis, moved from Maine to Florida. (Florida is not included in the count, as the state has been stripped of its delegates to the national convention.) The other is Sarah Swisher (IA), who had been supporting Edwards then moved to Clinton and then switched to Obama last month. We added her in for Obama at the time, but still had her factored into our count for Clinton as well.
In the overall count now, Obama leads by 141 (1,650-1,509). He has a 164 pledged-delegate lead (1,416-1,252).
From MSNBC.com’s Andy Merten Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter (R) discussed his battle with cancer with reporters on Capitol Hill today, after announcing Tuesday that he has been diagnosed with a recurrence of Hodgkin’s disease. He appeared upbeat and even joked with the press, likening his physical appearance change during chemotherapy to a case of identity theft.
“I consider it another bump in the road,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of bumps, and I’ve got good shock absorbers.”
VIDEO: See Specter's statement on his health.
From NBC/NJ's Athena Jones Hillary Clinton hit McCain in a speech this morning to construction trade unionists, arguing that his economic speech yesterday shows he doesn't understand the economy and isn't prepared to lead.
"I have a great deal of respect for Sen. McCain. But yesterday, he made it clear that when it comes to the economy, he looks at the hole that President Bush has dug us into and says 'Why not more? Lets go deeper"," she said. "You know, when I was a little girl, my brothers and their friends were digging a hole in our backyard and I remember my mother asking 'What are you digging for?' And they said 'We're digging a hole to China.' Well, little did I believe all these years later, that we would have a Republican Party and a president and a Republican nominee who were literally digging us a hole to China." CONTINUED >>
From NBC/NJ's Mike Memoli Bill Clinton told a crowd here that small towns are “the backbone of this country” and the “heart of her campaign.”
“If she is going to win Pennsylvania, and win it by a good margin to propel her to these other states, it will have to be in places like Indiana,” he told 2,500 at Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s gym. “Places that say, we need a president, we want somebody who we know can change everybody’s lives for the better by empowering us to deal with these problems."
Clinton said that his wife’s campaign has “concentrated heavily from the beginning” on small towns and rural areas. His schedule, in particular, has focused on these places. “You should know how much communities like this have allowed her to continue to compete and be in a position to win this nomination, in spite of being outspent by millions and millions of dollars,” he said.
From NBC's Domenico Montanaro Here’s Obama’s response ad to Clinton’s latest on his gas prices ad.
Here’s the script for “Dime”ANNCR: Across Pennsylvania families are struggling. What's Hillary Clinton's answer? The same old politics. Misleading negative ads. The truth? It's Barack Obama who's taken on the oil companies, worked to strip away their tax breaks as they run up record profits, and demanded higher gas mileage standards.
From NBC's Mark Murray The Hill : "Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), the Democratic Party’s 2000 vice presidential nominee, is leaving open the possibility of giving a keynote address on behalf of Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) at the Republican National Convention in September. Republicans close to the McCain campaign say Lieberman’s appearance at the convention, possibly before a national primetime audience, could help make the case that the presumptive GOP nominee has a record of crossing the aisle. That could appeal to much-needed independent voters."
"Lieberman said he doubts McCain will ask him to give a keynote address, but acknowledges the subject has yet to come up in the two senators’ discussions. A Lieberman aide said even though there are no plans for the Independent to give a speech at the convention, it is a 'likely possibility' he will address the Republican audience in some form."
From NBC's Pete Williams
The court's ruling was on a 7-2 vote, though different justices found different reasons for joining the opinion.
The two dissenters were Ginsburg and Souter.
From NBC's Domenico Montanaro Obama picked up another superdelegate, Rep. Andre Carson , further narrowing the gap with Clinton . The superdelegate count now stands at Clinton 259, Obama 232. In the overall count, Obama leads by 137 (1,648-1,511). He has a 164 pledged-delegate lead (1,416-1,252).
Carson, one of two Muslim members of Congress (both backing Obama), won a special election to replace his late grandmother Julia Carson.
And... while he's not a superdelegate, Obama also got the backing of The Boss , Bruce Springsteen. Maybe it'll help on the "Streets of Philadelphia ." (We just can't help ourselves.)
NBC's Abby Livingston adds that Clinton has been playing Springsteen's "The Rising ." Wonder if that will end soon. Remember that John Mellencamp asked McCain to stop using his songs at rallies since he was backing Edwards and is sympathetic to Democratic causes.
From Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, and Domenico Montanaro Time to debate: Here’s something that we probably wouldn’t have said a month ago: Finally, a debate! For a Democratic campaign season that has featured almost one of them every two or three weeks since last April -- 20 in total -- it's a bit jarring to think that almost two months have passed since the last debate in Cleveland. Off the top of our head, here is what has transpired in the interim (in reverse order): Bittergate, the reporting on Bill's conflicts of interests, Mark Penn's work for Colombia and his subsequent demotion, the Clintons' tax records, the should-she-stay-or-should-she-go stories, Bosnia sniper fire, Obama's race speech, and Jeremiah Wright. That's a lot of ground to cover when Clinton and Obama square off for the 21st Dem debate and the fourth one featuring just the two of them. The 90-minute debate from Philadelphia airs nationally on ABC beginning at 8:00 pm ET, and ABC's Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos are the moderators.
*** October 2007 flashback: Of course, we all remember what happened the last time the Democrats debated in Philadelphia: Clinton’s answer on drivers’ licenses for illegal immigrants, which began to change the political terrain heading into Iowa. Should Obama go on to be the nominee, the first Philadelphia debate will always be pointed to as the moment the foundation started crumbling under Clinton's feet. Could we see a similar game-changer tonight? Do note that today is already a crowded day -- with the Pope in DC, this being the one-year anniversary of the Virginia Tech shootings, and tonight’s Radio-TV Dinner in Washington.
VIDEO: NBC Political Director Chuck Todd touches on Clinton's rising negatives and Obama's potential ceiling in Pennsylvania. Backlash? Two polls in major papers today will set the CW that the Clinton campaign will struggle with: that the attacks on Obama -- while softening up Obama -- have done as much, if not more, damage to Clinton. And that damage doesn't do anything to make the case she's somehow more electable than Obama. Per the Washington Post/ABC survey , Clinton’s unfavorability score is 54%, which is up 14 points since January; Obama’s, by comparison is 39%. Also, 58% say she’s not honest and not trustworthy. What’s more, Obama leads McCain by five points, while Clinton trails the Arizona senator by three. In addition, new LA Times/Bloomberg polls -- which show Obama ahead by five points in Indiana and 13 points in North Carolina, yet trailing Clinton by five in Pennsylvania -- has some similar findings. “Clinton also suffers from being seen as less admirable than Obama. Even in Pennsylvania, 47% of Democrats said he had more honesty and integrity, compared with 26% who thought that of Clinton.” This is the box Clinton's been in ever since Obama took the lead in this race: If she attacks, she raises her negatives almost as fast (if not faster) than she raises Obama's. These new poll numbers from the Post and Times indicate Clinton cannot be overly aggressive tonight and that could mean there's little chance of a knockout blow by her of him.
*** But a warning sign for Obama: While we've been as critical of most of the polling we've seen out of Pennsylvania (there are a LOT of bad pollsters circulating numbers these days which makes averaging VERY problematic), there's a pattern that ought to worry Obama: He is consistently sitting in the low 40s in the state. In fact, his range is strikingly consistent, while Clinton's number is all over the map -- from the mid-40s to mid-50s. Does Obama have a ceiling in Pennsylvania? And does this mean a five-point lead for Clinton in these new polls today could quickly turn into a 15-point one if undecideds move en masse to Clinton? The seed of doubt these last two weeks has been raised on Obama, which may explain the surprisingly high undecided Dem vote this close in. No doubt the hammering of Obama hasn't helped Clinton -- but Obama's not YET benefiting in Pennsylvania; he's simply treading water.
*** Just asking: Do you get the sense that there are a chunk of Dems (both nationally and in Pennsylvania) who, while decided that they don't want Clinton, but don't want to be forced to be the voter that says "Obama”? But if Obama is the nominee, these voters will be ok? They just don't want the responsibility of picking Obama? There's certainly a lot of evidence to support this theory and it explains why undecideds aren't moving to Obama and why many of these white working class voters seem reluctantly with Clinton.
*** Over in June? The Boston Globe reports that George McGovern and Mike Dukakis have joined the call for the so-called “June Solution” of a superdelegate convention to decide the nominee before the August convention, while Clinton supporter Rep. Barney Frank -- who’s the brother of Clinton adviser Ann Lewis -- told the AP that whoever is behind after the last primaries on June 3 should drop. Veep "choice": On Hardball yesterday, did McCain rule out picking either Tom Ridge or Kay Bailey Hutchison as his veep pick. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews asked him if his veep could be pro-choice. “I don't know if it would stop him but it would be difficult… I'm not saying that would be necessarily, but I am saying it's basically the respect and cherishing of the right of the unborn is one of the fundamental principles of my party and it's a deeply held belief of mine.”
*** Fixing his Jewish problem? Obama will meet with about 50 American Jewish leaders in Philadelphia this morning, NBC/NJ’s Aswini Anburajan and Matthew E. Berger report. The meeting will include rabbis, professional leaders and lay leaders. An Obama aide says that the goal of the meeting will be to introduce Obama to the Jewish community and re-affirm his strong support for Israel. The question of whether Obama has a 'Jewish problem' is one of perception more than the fact, the aide adds, pointing to the fact that Obama was able to win the Jewish vote in a state like California, and a recent poll by the JTA showed the two neck and neck in terms of support within the Jewish community. Nevertheless, the fact is that if Obama doesn't fix his Jewish perception problem, he'll hit a 48% ceiling in Florida and potentially put New Jersey in play as well as keep Pennsylvania closer. The difference in winning the Jewish vote 65-35 and winning it 80-20 does matter in those three states.
*** On the trail: Before tonight’s debate, Clinton takes her turn addressing the Building Trades National Legislative Conference; McCain attends an economic summit meeting in Milwaukee, WI; Bill Clinton stumps in Pennsylvania; Chelsea does the same; and Michelle Obama is in Indiana.
Countdown to Pennsylvania: 6 daysClick here to sign up for First Read emails.
A new poll: Franklin & Marshall has Clinton at 46%, Obama at 40%.
The Philadelphia Inquirer previews the debate. Clinton and Obama “yesterday prepped for tonight's Philadelphia debate as Obama and his backers expressed a desire to get beyond the flap over his remarks about small-town Pennsylvania and address issues of substance… Tonight's debate will be far from the only time the two candidates appear on area televisions between now and Tuesday's primary. The two campaigns have bought at least $4.5 million of time for commercials in the closing week.”
Also: "Tonight's debate will be far from the only time the two candidates appear on area televisions between now and Tuesday's primary. The two campaigns have bought at least $4.5 million of time for commercials in the closing week. According to industry sources, Obama has bought more than $3 million of time, breaking the Pennsylvania record he set last week. About 60 percent of the money is going for ads in the Philadelphia market. Clinton has purchased at least $1.4 million, her largest buy to date in Pennsylvania."
Will this be the final Clinton-Obama debate? North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley (D) hasn’t thrown his hat in the ring in his state’s primary, NBC/NJ’s Carrie Dann reports. But he’s siding with Clinton on at least one issue -- a proposed CBS debate on April 27th that Obama has not yet committed to attend. Easley, a superdelegate, penned a letter to Obama yesterday urging him to accept CBS’s invitation to the forum, arguing that the explosion of new North Carolinian voters deserve a head-to-head competition between the candidates. “By participating in a nationally televised forum,” he wrote, “you will send a message to those newly registered voters, as well as millions of other North Carolinians, that their vote will count and their voice is being heard.”
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A new Washington Post/ABC poll shows lots of problems for Clinton. "Democrats by a 2-1 margin, 62-31 percent, now see Obama as better able to win in November -- a dramatic turn from February, when Clinton held a scant 5-point edge on this measure, and more so from last fall, when she crushed her opponents on electability. The poll finds other pronounced problems for Clinton. Among all Americans, 58 percent now say she's not honest and not trustworthy, 16 points higher than in a precampaign poll two years ago. Obama beats her head-to-head on this attribute by a 23-point margin. The number of Americans who see Clinton unfavorably overall has risen to a record high in ABC/Post polling, 54 percent -- up 14 points since January. Obama's unfavorable score has reached a new high as well, up 9 points, but to a lower 39 percent."
More: "As things stand, this poll suggests a close general election contest. Obama has a scant 5-point advantage over McCain, 49-44 percent, compared with a 52-40 percent race last month. McCain and Clinton stand at 48-45 percent; it was a Clinton advantage, 50-44 percent, last month."
The Washington Post’s headline for the poll: "Democrats Willing to Let Battle Continue." From the article: "While Clinton retains a big edge over Obama on experience, public impressions of her have taken a sharply negative turn. Today, more Americans have an unfavorable view of her than at any time since The Post and ABC began asking the question, in 1992. Impressions of her husband, former president Bill Clinton, also have grown negative by a small margin."
Meanwhile, a new set of state polls from the L.A. Times/Bloomberg in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Indiana, also have bad news for Clinton -- as Obama leads in two of the three states (IN and NC), while Clinton's lead in PA is only five points. "In all three states, Clinton was seen as better-equipped to handle trade and healthcare policy. But she does not appear to have been as persuasive in making a core argument of her campaign: that she would be better-prepared to lead the nation's military and foreign policy. Asked who would be better as commander in chief, voters in North Carolina chose Obama, 45% to 28%; in Indiana, Obama was chosen 37% to 29%. Only in Pennsylvania did voters prefer Clinton as commander in chief, 44% to 39%.”
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The New York Times on McCain's economic speech yesterday: "The speech, delivered on the deadline for filing taxes, afforded the clearest view to date of what McCainomics might look like. There was a dash of populism, as Mr. McCain criticized executive pay and corporate wrongdoing. There was a strong supply-side bent, with Mr. McCain focusing on cutting corporate taxes and making permanent the Bush tax cuts that he once opposed. And there was a decidedly less hawkish note on deficits, as Mr. McCain called for spending cuts but did not mention balancing the federal budget."
The LA Times : "Though the package of ideas drew support from some economists for its pledge to cut taxes and simplify the tax system, many analysts called the proposed holiday in the 18-cents-a-gallon gas tax a gimmick. Others questioned whether McCain's plans would bloat the federal budget deficit."
“McCain's staff is drafting a bill to suspend the gasoline tax and the 24.4-cent tax on diesel fuel between Memorial Day and Labor Day,” the Boston Globe writes, adding, “But the bill would probably be dead on arrival. Similar proposals in recent years have all failed in Congress, and the proposal was immediately greeted with skepticism by some tax analysts. Leonard Burman, director of the Brookings-Urban Tax Policy Center, said it would have little effect and ‘as a matter of fiscal stimulus, it makes no sense at all. ... In the campaign season, there is an irresistible pressure on candidates to promise giveaways.’” MSNBC.com's Tom Curry writes, "If it seems like there is something familiar about the gasoline tax 'holiday' being proposed by Sen. John McCain, there is. You may have heard the Republican presidential nominee propose something similar before -- 12 years ago when the GOP nominee’s name was Dole, not McCain."
“Often accused of hawkish policies, McCain told MSNBC's ‘Hardball’ it would be difficult to convince the American people to go to war against Iran. ‘I believe we can act with nations with values and principles that we hold dear and exercise enormous pressure -- diplomatic, trade, financial,’ he said. If he decided he had to attack, McCain said he would have to make an ‘even more convincing argument that it was necessary to do so because of our failure to find weapons of mass destruction’ in Iraq.” New York Post writes. “The ingredients of at least three McCain ‘family’ recipes -- ‘ahi tuna salad,’ ‘passion fruit mousse’ and ‘farfalle pasta with turkey, sausage, peas and mushrooms’ -- were plagiarized, word for word, from Food Network chefs listed on the culinary company's Web site.” The Huffington Post broke the story.
The New York Times , keeping the “bitter” story alive, delves into some electability concerns about Obama. "Indeed, advisers to Mr. Obama concede, his job has been made that much more complicated by his remarks about bitterness among small-town voters. Though it remains unclear what effect the episode will have in the long run, it has suddenly prompted a series of questions -- and worry -- from Democrats about whether Mr. Obama could weather a Republican onslaught in the fall, should he win the presidential nomination.”
“In Pennsylvania, as well as coming primaries in Indiana and North Carolina, did Mr. Obama provide another excuse for white voters to voice qualms about his candidacy without acknowledging that it is his race that troubles them? If he defeats Mrs. Clinton, will accusations of elitism dog him as they have previous Democratic nominees? Does Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, suddenly have an issue that will resonate for the next six months?"
Morning Joe featured Obama communications director Robert Gibbs and Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson discussing this issue, and several others this morning.
USA Today fact-checks Obama's claims about lobbyists and finds some inconsistencies. "Obama often boasts he is "the only candidate who isn't taking a dime from Washington lobbyists," yet his fundraising team includes 38 members of law firms that were paid $138 million last year to lobby the federal government, records show. Those lawyers, including 10 former federal lobbyists, have pledged to raise at least $3.5 million for the Illinois senator's presidential race. Employees of their firms have given Obama's campaign $2.26 million, a USA TODAY analysis of campaign finance data shows.”
More: “Thirty-one of the 38 are law firm partners, who typically receive a share of their firm's lobbying fees. At least six of them have some managerial authority over lobbyists… Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said that while Obama's refusal to take money from lobbyists ‘isn't a perfect solution or symbol, it does reflect Obama's record of trying to change the way that Washington does business.’ He declined to elaborate.”
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British PM Gordon Brown will meet with all three major candidates tomorrow. "Brown's own relationship with President Bush has been cordial but much less close than the ties Bush enjoyed with former prime minister Tony Blair, who bucked British public opinion to remain Washington's chief ally in Iraq and the wider battle against terrorism. With Bush in his final months in office, however, Brown is hoping to lay a foundation for closer relations with the next U.S. president, bolstering both transatlantic links and his own stature, according to analysts in London and Washington."
More: "Brown has had a longtime working relationship with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), dating to the presidency of her husband, Bill Clinton, when Brown served as Britain's chancellor of the exchequer. He also conferred with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) when the presumptive GOP nominee traveled to London last month, but he has yet to meet with Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.)."
A superdelegate convention? George McGovern and Mike Dukakis have joined the call for the so-called “June Solution” of a superdelegate convention to decide the nominee before the August convention, the Boston Globe’s Scott Lehigh reports. McGovern warned that “his inability to claim the nomination until he had won a floor fight over the seating of some of his delegates left little time for anything else … and thereby contributed to the political disaster of his first vice-presidential pick.”
Another Clinton super hedger : “Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank is the latest superdelegate to weigh in on the Democratic nomination fight, declaring that whoever is behind after the last primaries on June 3 should drop out and not drag out the race to the convention. Frank told the Associated Press today that that should be the case, even if the trailing contender is the one he supports, Hillary Clinton.”
CBN's Brody picks up on McCain's comments during "Hardball" regarding whether his running mate would have to pro-life.
Brody also unearths video from 2000 where McCain seemed a tad more open to a pro-choice running mate. Good news for Tom Ridge and Kay Bailey Hutchison or not?
From NBC's Mark Murray Biden's critical remarks on McCain today with this past clip of Biden on Jon Stewart...
From NBC's Ken Strickland Obama and Clinton argue over who's the better security guard, McCain is robbing the bank. Today, Joe Biden -- a bank customer -- decided he'd intervene and stop McCain from stealing the money and the White House.
"When it comes to Iraq, there is no daylight between John McCain and George Bush . They are joined at the hip," Biden said today in a speech at Georgetown University. He told the students "when it comes to Iraq, there will be no change with a McCain Administration and so there is a real and profound choice for Americans in November."
As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and having no alliance to either the Clinton or Obama campaigns, Biden may be the best suited to go after McCain. After the speech, a senior Biden aide lamented that McCain was "getting a free pass" in the national security debate and Biden wanted to do something about it.
In the typical Senate fashion of praising your colleague just before you cut their legs out from under them, Biden was gentlemanly. He started by calling McCain "a man I greatly admire, a man I consider a personal and close friend." He went further, adding that McCain's foreign policy speech last month was "a stark repudiation of the Bush Administration's approach to the world."
But in almost the same breath, Biden dropped the hammer: "John McCain remains wedded to the Bush Administration's myopic view of a world defined by terrorism... It's time for a fundamental change, but that's going to require more than a great soldier. It's going to require a wise leader."
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From NBC's Mark Murray LA Times/Bloomberg polls for Pennsylvania, Indiana, and North Carolina are out...
Pennsylvania
Indiana
North Carolina
Methodology: "The poll, conducted under the supervision of Times Poll Director Susan Pinkus, interviewed 623 voters in Pennsylvania, 687 in Indiana and 691 in North Carolina who expected to cast Democratic ballots. The margin of sampling error for the findings in each state is plus or minus 4 percentage points. The telephone interviews took place Thursday through Monday, meaning the bulk were conducted just as controversy broke out over an Obama remark widely criticized as demeaning rural voters in Pennsylvania."
From NBC's Mark Murray McCain's strongest economic credentials is his reputation as a anti-pork crusader. "I have a clear record of not asking for earmarks for my state," he said in his economic speech today. "For their part, Senators Obama and Clinton have championed a long list of pork-barrel projects for their states... That kind of careless spending of tax dollars is not change, my friends: It is business as usual in Washington, and it's all a part of the same wasteful and corrupting system that we need to end."
But Democrats are now circulating oppo on McCain to put a dent in those credentials. Here's a campaign ad from 2000 -- given to First Read -- in which McCain touts the work by then-US Sen. Spence Abraham (R) in securing money for Michigan in the 1998 highway bill. (Abraham ended up losing that 2000 Senate contest to Debbie Stabenow.)
The hitch here: McCain didn't support the 1998 highway bill (he didn't vote ). "I did not support or sign the conference report on H.R. 2400 for one simple reason -- pork," he said in '98, referring to the highway legislation.
From NBC's Domenico Montanaro Clinton hit Obama over his "bitter" and "cling to" remarks, Obama is up with this response:
Here's the script:
ANNCR: There's a reason people are rejecting Hillary Clinton's attacks. Because the same old Washington politics won't lower the price of gas or help our struggling economy.
Barack Obama will represent all Americans. He offers a new approach.
OBAMA: When we get past the politics of division and distraction and we start actually focusing on what we have in common, there's nothing we can't accomplish.
I'm Barack Obama and I approve this message.
From NBC/NJ’s Athena Jones Clinton told a newspaper association today that the issue of gender had gotten less attention than the issue of race in this election. The comments came in response to a question about the role race was playing in the 2008 election.
"It's inescapable that race and gender -- which has gotten, I must say, much less attention -- are part of who we are," she said at a luncheon at the Newspaper Association of America Annual Convention. "But we both wished to be judged on the sum of our parts, and that is our life experience, our record in public service and so much else."
Clinton repeated her assertion that the Florida vote should be counted and appeared to advance one of her campaign's recent arguments that whether or not the state's delegates are counted at the convention, the popular vote totals there should be counted.
"They [Florida voters] have expressed their views," she said "They have had their votes certified by the Florida Secretary of State; it's part of the popular vote that has been in this campaign and the only remaining question is how will the Democratic Party fairly take into account what the voters of Florida said in trying to determine who the delegates are to go to in the convention, and I think they should do that, and I think they should do it expeditiously."
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From NBC/NJ’s Aswini Anburajan Clinton ’s “elitist” attacks as racist Obama cautioned a voter at a town hall meeting with veterans and military families.
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From NBC/NJ's Mike Memoli Bill Clinton made another pitch for campaign donations during a rally this morning in Pennsylvania, telling a supporters that his wife risks being “blown out” by Obama on the airwaves.
“I want you to get out there and work for her,” he told a crowd of about 200 at a union hall in this small town. “She can win being outspent -- the first two weeks of this television campaign she was outspent five-to-one on television. But she can’t be blown out.”
He asked the supporters to not only vote for Hillary and convince their undecided friends, but also ask them to “send $10 or $5 or $15 dollars on the Internet.” “I’m telling you, she’s your candidate. She is the best person you can elect to be president to change lives for the better,” he said.
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