La Opinion in LA reports the Clinton campaign’s claim that they are making 350,000 phone calls to Californians each from 4,500 phones in 28 state offices. Some quick math shows that the campaign could call all 3 million of California’s registered Democrats in the 9 days before the primary.
January 27, 2008
Funny, these allies of Hillary Clinton didn’t have a problem with the Nevada caucus rules before the Culinary Workers Union announced their support for Obama. From the Las Vegas Sun:
A lawsuit filed late Friday in federal court seeks to stop the Democratic Party from holding caucus meetings at nine Strip hotels, which would diminish the influence of casino workers and hamper Illinois Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign…The lawsuit claims that those voting in at-large precincts being held on the Strip would have too much weight compared with those voting at their polling places, violating the equal protection law of the U.S. Constitution. It also claims the at-large precincts violate state statute in the way they were drawn.
January 12, 2008
The John Kerry (nary a mention of the endorsement on Kerry’s own site) and Ned Lamont stories are official. Steve Kornacki on the importance of Kerry:
Obama needs to convey the impression that his campaign is still on the offensive and that the loss hasn’t stalled his momentum at all. The willingness of a big name in the Democratic Party to embrace him two days after New Hampshire caters to this mperative, giving Obama a favorable headline that helps put the New Hampshire mess in the rearview mirror.
More important to South Carolian, the NYT reports that Rep. Jim Clyburn is reconsidering his earlier commitment to remain neutral: “But he said recent remarks by the Clintons that he saw as distorting civil rights history could change his mind.” Oops, indeed.
More on endorsements in the Hotline, WSJ and the Swamp. And the Las Vegas Sun’s J. Patrick Coolican has reveals that caucus rules allow for “at-large” sites that could make the Culinary Workers’ endorsement even more vital:
Although the union is coy about how many of its members are registered to vote, the endorsement is expected to give Obama at least 10,000 supporters in the caucus, in a contest whose turnout estimates have ranged from 28,000 to 100,000.
In a caucus, supporters of a candidate literally stand together on one side of the room, demonstrating to everyone who is supporting whom. Many Strip shift workers, Culinary workers, will be voting at so-called “at-large” caucus sites on the Strip. This means Culinary members, for whom unity is a creed, will be able to enforce discipline. Clinton can no longer expect to win many delegates at those at-large sites.
The infusion of locked-down voters is only the most obvious benefit, however.
The caucus process requires participants to show up at 11:30 on the appointed morning and at the correct precinct location, which means organizations must identify supporters and ensure they show up. The Culinary is known as the most politically active and organized union in the state and one of the most active in the country. Political observers in Nevada have long assumed the union would provide the kind of organization that could deliver victory.
The Obama campaign, which has been working to win Latino voters with a sophisticated effort to woo them in their workplaces, can now do so with Culinary support and encouragement. A significant though ultimately unknown portion of Culinary membership is Latino, and the endorsement could have a prairie fire effect, spreading from workplaces to Latino homes and communities.
Finally, Culinary leadership, including Secretary-Treasurer D. Taylor and political director Pilar Weiss, are two of the most politically savvy — and feared — players in Nevada Democratic politics. State legislators and others are wary of crossing them.
A final thought, not directed at Coolican: political pundits seems to imply that endorsements carry more weight with African American and Latino voters than it does with white folk. If true, is that perception accurate? Certainly, one can imagine, and see historically, that first time voters and new citizens may be more inclined to look to community leaders for guidance. Still, something rankles about the notion that in order to sway “minorities” (Blacks could be the majority in the South Carolina ballot), all one need to do is get their leaders on board, like Machine politics at it worst.
January 11, 2008
In a comment on Rick Klau’s blog, Allison, apparently a New Hampshire voter, offers her analysis as to what happened Tuesday:
1) I think Obama overplayed his hand. Sorry Rick, but we’re not big on vague here, and he wasn’t selling anything specific. Yes, people want change, and they want hope, but they want details and he was woefully short on ‘em.
Rick responds thoughtfully in the comments (and in a new post):
the knock on Barack in IL was that he was a detail guy to a fault. He loved rolling his sleeves up and immersing himself in the minutiae of legislation. And he was really good at it.
Allison didn’t, however, leave me answer the question on so many lips this week: what was wrong with the New Hampshire pre- (and post-) vote polls? For my money, the Pew Research Center’s Andrew Kohut may be onto the most likely explanation:
Poorer, less well-educated white people refuse surveys more often than affluent, better-educated whites. Polls generally adjust their samples for this tendency. But here’s the problem: these whites who do not respond to surveys tend to have more unfavorable views of blacks than respondents who do the interviews.
Did Obama get his “We are not a nation of red states or of blue states; we are the United States of America,” line from Robin Williams’ Man of the Year?
The Annenberg Public Policy Center’s FactCheck looks at two widely-spread and scurrilous anti-Obama chain emails.
Dueling chain e-mails claim he’s a radical Muslim or a ‘racist’ Christian. Both can’t be right. We find both are false.
If these two nasty e-mail messages are any indication, the 2008 presidential campaign is becoming a very dirty one….These false appeals to bigotry and fear remind us of the infamous whispering campaign of eight years ago, when anonymous messages just before the South Carolina primary falsely accused Republican candidate John McCain of fathering an illegitimate child by a black woman…Such attacks usually can be disproved with less effort than it takes to forward them to others. The statement that Snopes endorsed the false claim that Obama is a Muslim radical is an example. So we find it disappointing that they continue to circulate. But we expect to see more of them as the election year wears on,
Like many of us, Chicago rappers Lupe Fiasco and Rhymfest have been engaged in a friendly Clinton-Obama debate. Lupe on his lack of Obamania:
[A]t the end of the day [all of the candidates], the first thing that comes out of their mouths is that they wanna continue this so-called war on terrorism, which is illegal and false.”
Daniel Koffler’s essay, in which he calls Obama a left-libertarian, was widely discussed in the libertarian blog world today:
Obama’s slogan, “stand for change”, is not a vacuous message of uplift, but a content-laden token of dissent from the old-style liberal orthodoxy on which Clinton and Edwards have been campaigning.
The Tribune’s John Kass riffs on Bubba’s “fairytale” criticism:
as we wait for Obama to transform our politics, let’s hold our breath and see who turns purple first…This fairy tale doesn’t begin in Kenya or Hawaii or Kansas or at Harvard. Obama’s political fairy tale really begins in Chicago. That’s where Obama’s own real estate fairy loved to play in Illinois Democratic — and Republican — politics.
Chicago is not really an enchanted land, unless you’ve got clout at City Hall…. And no Democrat — not even our national change-agent Barack Obama — would dare demand answers.
January 10, 2008
Jason Clayworth looks into to a concern that I’ve heard from a lot of people– particularly from Black people, but have rarely seen expressed in mainstream punditry:
Mildred Otis won’t caucus for Barack Obama for president largely for one reason: She wants to save his life. Otis, 87, remembers America’s violent civil rights movement 40 years ago when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.
And, having lived through those events, the Des Moines woman and others fear that Obama’s nomination could end in tragedy. “I think there’s a lot of people not ready for an African-American to be a president,” said Otis, a black woman…Valeria Sinclair-Chapman, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Rochester, said she’s careful not to dismiss such fears because many times they’re grounded in relevant history that is central in the African-American experience.”The strength of the Obama candidacy, I think, is an indication of how far the country has come,” said Sinclair-Chapman. “If, in fact, voters are sincere when they say that they won’t support a candidate because they fear for his or her life if they win the nomination, then that really completely undermines the progress that we think we see.”
Would a repeat of the 1982 Tom Bradley campaign (in which many white folks apparently told pollsters they would vote for Bradley, but changed their minds when the curtains were drawn), also undermine that progress?
In TNR, Sean Wilentz responds to the Fareed Zakaria and David Brooks ObamaLove.
[A]fter seven disastrous years of the Bush experience, otherwise rational editorialists and commentators are insisting that instincts basically are good enough–and are actually more important than what they consider prosaic credentials such as knowledge, experience, and sound policy proposals. The pundits have vaunted good vibes and gut-thinking as the crucial qualifications for the nation’s highest office. They have turned the delusional style into a rallying cry–in support, at least for the moment, of the candidacy of Barack Obama and his allegedly superior intuition…..There is also the troubling possibility that what a senior Bush official once cheerily described as the downfall of “reality-based” politics, including “reality-based” reporting, and commentary, has in fact come to pass, and that fantasy has taken over.
Also in TNR, John Judis asks if Latinos, particularly in Nevada and the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday states, will be “Hillary Clinton’s Firewall”. Judis attributes HRC’s Latino support to:
evidence of growing hostility from Hispanics toward African Americans. Some of this hostility is the result of conflicts, or perceived conflicts, over politically controlled resources in cities and states. But as Tanya K. Hernandez, a professor of law at George Washington, has argued recently, it may also be a legacy of an older Latin American prejudice against blacks that has been transplanted to this country…
(Judis doesn’t explore the possibility that Obama’s status as a first generation American will lead to Latino support.)
Joe Conason on Why conservatives love Barack Obama.
Hillary’s lead in California is apparently narrowing.
Now for the serious stuff:
James Oliphant declares Obama “the absolute King of Facebook” and notes that Obama knows “The Score:”
[He] laps the field at 168, 513 friends…. Obama is also the only candidate who lists the Fugees as a favorite performer.
Apparently, the National Enquirer is reporting that
Stedman admitted he felt “very jealous of [Oprah's] relationship with Barack Obama. It seemed to him as though she was always pushing him away, posing with other powerful men and ignoring him.”
Obama blames the Chicago Bears’ 2007 collapse on injuries and a porous defense (nary a mention of Cedric Benson, play-calling or the offensive line– I think he left Team Clinton an opening.)
December 22, 2007
