Thursday’s political round-up

November 8, 2007

Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:

* The latest Zogby poll out of Iowa continues to show the top-tier Dems battling it out for the top spot. The poll showed Hillary Clinton ahead with 28%, followed by Barack Obama with 25%, and Edwards third with 21%. No other Democrat reached double-digits. If we filter out the undecideds, the race is even closer: Clinton with 30%, Obama 29%, Edwards 27%.

* NYT: “[Former Treasury Secretary Robert] Rubin is now ready to go public: Despite some early misgivings about Hillary Rodham Clinton’s candidacy, he is scheduled to headline a major fundraiser for her on Dec. 13 in New York City, according to a memo describing the event. Democrats close to the Clinton campaign said today that he may appear at additional events, with her or former President Bill Clinton, before the primaries begin in January.”

* WaPo: “Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, bidding to strengthen his appeal among working families, outlined new proposals Wednesday designed to make college more affordable, encourage retirement savings and help people balance the competing demands of work and family.”

* Speaking of Obama, former White House communications director Dan Bartlett told Texas Monthly he’s more worried about Obama getting the Democratic nomination than Clinton. “I think he poses a different set of challenges,” Bartlett said. “When it comes down to it, Hillary Clinton will very much excite the Republican faithful to get out and work hard in the election. I don’t know if a similar case can be made if Obama were the candidate.”

* It looks like Bill Richardson is putting all of his chips on Iowa. Earlier this week, he pulled staffers out of Nevada to head to the Hawkeye State, and yesterday, he moved several members of his South Carolina staff to Iowa, too. Polls currently show Richardson, who has been airing TV ads in Iowa for a couple of months, running fourth in the state.

* It looks Mike Huckabee is doing the same thing on the other side of the aisle: “Huckabee will spend most of the next 65 days in Iowa and has moved the majority of his staff to the state in an effort to capitalize on a sense that he’s gaining ground here.”

* In a disappointing setback for Chris Dodd, a new Quinnipiac poll shows him struggling with Democrats in his home state of Connecticut. The poll shows Clinton with a big lead in the state with 45% support, while Dodd is fourth with 5%.

* Mitt Romney ran into a distant relative while on the campaign trail in South Carolina yesterday, Heather Krueger, who was sitting in the front row at a Romney event. The former governor got her name and profession wrong, but they hugged when he was finished. Asked about Romney by reporters, Kruger said she was “excited” about his candidacy, but wouldn’t commit to voting for him.

* And Obama had a little trouble getting to a campaign rally in Iowa Tuesday night when his plane landed at the wrong airport: “Instead of going to Cedar Rapids, the plane had touched down about 100 miles to the west in Des Moines.” Obama showed up at the event an hour late.

If we filter out the undecideds, the race is even closer: Clinton with 30%, Obama 29%, Edwards 27%.

Why can’t we just have them all combined into some Democratic, womanly male mulatto?

That’d really piss the righties off.

  • “It looks like Bill Richardson is putting all of his chips on Iowa. Earlier this week, he pulled staffers out of Nevada to head to the Hawkeye State, and yesterday, he moved several members of his South Carolina staff to Iowa, too. Polls currently show Richardson, who has been airing TV ads in Iowa for a couple of months, running fourth in the state.”

    Frankly, I do hope Richardson does this and loses in Iowa. Then he can pull out of the presidential primary and qualify to run for Senate inhis home state. That is where the country needs him most.

  • Dan Bartlett said: ” I don’t know if a similar case can be made if Obama were the candidate.”

    Wow, this guy really doesn’t know what the righties are like, does he?

    These people hate black people, they are die-hard black-haters and they will believe in it for their whole lives.

  • IMHO if Edwards or Obama dropped out Hillary would not pick up their voters. Whoever remained would kick her ass.

    And obviously Bartlett is right about the anti-Hillary effect. The wingnuts are dispirited, but give them Hillary and they’ll perk up.

  • At this time Richardson is a long shot but has a remote possibility to do well enough in Iowa to remain in the race. If he doesn’t exceed his current polling numbers there he might as well drop out. Unfortunately I don’t see much of a chance for Dodd at all. He just isn’t catching on anywhere and short of a tremendous break before Iowa I don’t see him going anywhere.

  • Racerx wrote:

    IMHO if Edwards or Obama dropped out Hillary would not pick up their voters. Whoever remained would kick her ass.

    Explain, please.

    What’ll be amazing about an Obama nomination is watching the righties struggle between keeping the racism down low, and keeping their anti-black ire in check. But in my opinion, it’s really not in the cards.

  • Swan, IMO you’re wrong about the typical Republican voter. A lot of them would welcome a black politician who doesn’t sound like all the other prominent black politicians we currently have to listen to. Obama has won over a lot of white Republicans because he is the exact opposite of the typical black hoodlum as portrayed in the media.

  • The DM Register’s website is having problems, so I’ll have to try and find the link later, but that Zogby Iowa Poll is one of the first to ask second choices in anticipation of how the viability threshold and realignment works at the caucuses. I believe it was Yepsen who did a nice analysis on it, and discussed how agreements among lower-polling candidates influence things (that was a big assist to Edwards’ surprise result 4 years ago — the state coordinaters of the Edwards and Kucinch campaigns had a deal for Kucinich supporters to move to Edwards).

    As it turned out, if I recall correctly, absent some sort of effort at a deal, realigning the votes of those under 15% based on their currently stated second choices actually didn’t change the ratios much. The second choices split up in pretty close proportion to what Clinton, Obama and Edwards already had.

  • An explanation for Swan, who really shouldn’t need one:

    What the poll established is that Obama, Edwards and Clinton form a clear first tier of presidential candidates among progressives, pollster Stan Greenberg said. But unlike many national polls that show Clinton in the lead, people polled at the Take Back America conference showed a strong and interchangeable preference for Obama and Edwards.

    http://tba2007.confabb.com/conferences/tba2007/blog/93

  • Barack Obama, bidding to strengthen his appeal among working families, outlined new proposals Wednesday…

    Thanks for the link – on the surface those look like good proposals. I’d rather see the $4000 tax credit be replaced with the Feds just paying the first $4000, and I hope that applies not just to universities but to community colleges and trade/technical schools too – but anything that makes the financial burden of getting an education less is a good investment. Direct deposit retirement accounts are .. interesting. I need to read more about it.

    And if he really wants to help families with children, he should be pushing for reduced or even free day care for children of working parents. Afterschool programs are all well and good, but day care costs eat up a ton of money – and make it hard for families that are struggling when both parents need to work.

    Speaking of Obama, former White House communications director Dan Bartlett told Texas Monthly…

    Something that may be true or may be false but should be roundly ignored by intelligent people everywhere. He could be speaking honestly (but he’s a former White House communications director – it’s doubtful he even knows what “honestly” means) or he could be saying “please don’t throw me in the briar patch”. Or he could be giggling with glee at the thought of going up against either Clinton or Obama and is actually deathly afraid of running up against John Edwards or Bill Richardson or Dennis Kucinich. You can’t tell, so any “advice” he gives should be ignored.

    And that’s Dan Bartlett, former White House Communications director and former Counselor to the President, BTW – he’s one of Bush’s men for a long time and a buddy of Karl Rove, IIRC. Lending more credence to the idea that no matter what he says, it shouldn’t be given any weight as anything other than misdirection.

    And Robert Rubin backs Clinton – gee, what a surprise.

  • I’m surprised it took Rubin this long to remember who it was who bent over and spread 10 years ago for him and his Wall Street buddies. Triangulatin’ Tilly is obviously “his girl Friday.”

  • My 2 cents–I have at least 5 republican friends for whom (who??) Obama is their top pick in this election–not top pick out of the Dem candidates, but top pick out of Dem and GOP candidates. However, it must be noted that they all are relatively younger (under 45), very well educated, and mostly from northern, urban areas.

  • Republicans probably don’t like blacks very much, but Obama probably doesn’t look very “black” to them. He gives an impression more like Colin Powell than like Jesse Jackson, if that makes sense to anyone but me. Remember the silly talk about whether Obama was “black enough?”

    That said, Hillary is in fact the Democratic candidate who will do the most to energize the dispirited Republican base. Dan Bartlett is exactly right about that, but it’s impossible to prove it or to poll about it.

    And I think that Hillary is the third choice of most Edwards and Obama supporters. It’s likely that if one of them drops out (most likely Edwards), the other (most likely Obama) would see a surge in his numbers, although I would avoid the “kick her ass” language used above. Perhaps we’ve all been dumbed down after enduring seven years of George W. Bush.

  • “… have them all combined into some Democratic, womanly male mulatto….” (Swan #1)

    That’s what the front runners (or, rather, their focus groups, pollsters and handlers) seem to be attempting to achieve.

    I would puzzle over why John Edwards is the only one who comes across as interested in working-class Americans, our “base” so-called, except that I realize bris-and-chablis Democrats abandoned them long ago and aren’t ever likely to give a damn about them again. Ordinary working-class families don’t make very good TeeVee either. It’s a shame, really, since they’re still the backbone of this increasingly frivolous and worthless country. I wonder how long it’ll take them to realize how irrelevant beltway politicians and their “system” of graft is to them.

  • I would puzzle over why John Edwards is the only one who comes across as interested in working-class Americans, our “base” so-called, except that I realize bris-and-chablis Democrats abandoned them long ago and aren’t ever likely to give a damn about them again.

    From at least the mid 80s to the mid 90s, Dems blamed many of their losses on the fact that Republicans always seemed to have more campaign cash to spend. The Supreme Court having ruled out meaningful campaign finance reform, the Dems reached a simple conclusion: the working class simply doesn’t have enough money to fund a major modern political campaign under the current rules. So they reduced their advocacy for the working class (to ensure it did not turn off potential donors) and focused more on the issues the wealthy, educated urban liberals cared about.

    It seems that there are two ways to undo this. One is that once the Dems get in through this Faustian bargain, they take steps to enrich the working class, providing a grateful working class more money to contribute to future campaigns. Two is to meaningfully change campaign finance, which will either take great creativity or a reversal of Buckley. Because neither of these are easy, it is more likely that the status quo is simply perpetuated.

  • I believe that Rubin’s chief contribution will be to supply the confetti for Hillary’s victory party, given the amount of worthless paper his company has in its possession.

  • I can understand why Dan Bartlett worries more about Obama.
    He has a dynamic this country hasn’t seen since in a long time.

    He has a certain honest flair.
    He’s eloquent in a genuine way.
    He’s got an honest Abe aura.

    But mostly…
    He is damn different from what we are all used to.
    Crickey, he even has Lord Cheney admitting almost with pride that he’s kin.

    Basically there’s no triangulation with Obama.
    No cloying stench of ruthless ambition.
    He has gotten to this point purely on human appeal.
    Not for who his daddy was…
    Not because his wife was once President.
    But because of one outstanding fact:

    He is who he is.
    And knows who he is.

    Yes, Bartlett is right to worry.
    These sorts don’t come along very often…
    The type of candidate who has cross-appeal is extra rare.
    I believe that fundamentally Obama represents a sea change.
    And by that I mean just this: Obama says in so many words, “Give up your hate everyone.”

    That message is huge.
    Totally + totally huge.
    The planet and the country need it.

    Basically… that message is all humanity has got left.
    It’s either that…
    Or dinosaurville.

  • These people hate black people, they are die-hard black-haters and they will believe in it for their whole lives.

    This is the sort of simplistic and smug generalization that usually causes me just to skip over your lengthy and self-referential comments.

    Outside of a segment of southern reactionaries who wouldn’t vote for any Democrat in any circumstance, it’s simply incorrect. Worse, it’s indicative of the thinking that understandably pisses off so many people who might otherwise consider supporting Democrats, especially ones like Obama who have attributes–religiosity and an understanding of rural issues, for two–culturally conservative voters might find appealing.

  • Racerx at 4 is right. If either Obama or Edwards has to drop out, his supporters would go to the other, not Clinton. Obama and Edwards are both anti-Clintons. Personally, I’m hoping that the race will come down to Obama and Edwards with Clinton out of the equation. I could live with either of them, but I have a feeling Democrats are going to chicken out over having a black candidate which is sad but maybe realpolitik.

  • PS…

    I didn’t want to despoil my runinations on Obama above with direct mention of Hillary.
    So… here is what Hillary’s presidency represents:

    If elected she will grow hate radio and hate TV to new heights.

    If you got stock in hate radio or hate TV vote for her.
    You are going to clean up.
    And you will be one rich sombitch of a dinosaur.

  • Agree that if the race gets to Hillary vs. Not-Hillary soon enough, Not-Hillary will win. And that would be the best possible outcome both for 2008 and, more importantly, the four to eight years following next year’s election. ROTF has it correct: all Sen. Clinton’s election guarantees is a resurgence of right-wing rage, and a second likely outcome will be the demoralization of the left at a president who essentially accepts the Bush/Cheney worldview and represents the worst aspects of our coalition rather than the best.

  • Wow, some of these comments sound odd. I wonder how you people square them with Republicans’ avoiding minority-sponsored debates like the plague.

    It’s a coincidence worthy for Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, eh?

  • From at least the mid 80s to the mid 90s, Dems blamed many of their losses on the fact that Republicans always seemed to have more campaign cash to spend.

    There is that.

    There’s also the fact that a good chunk of the working class largely abandoned the Democratic Party during the Reagan years to vote for Reagan. And they stayed Republican afterward.

    You can argue whethere the Dems pushed them away in the 70s (due to incompetent handling of everything by the largely-Dem controlled government in the post-Nixon era) or whether the working class voters pushed the Dems away (due to the GOP successfully using racism and nationalism as a wedge to separate working class voters from their own economic interests). But the end result is the same – a fractured voting bloc. A good-sized chunk remain in the Democratic Party, voting for their own economic interests. Another chunk sit in the Republican Party, voting for their social conservative interests and for feel-good “America is the Bestest” rhetoric while blaming Democrats for everything that sucks.

    That second chunk are the ones starting to come back to the Dems, not through anything the Dems have done to court them, but because they’ve finally started to realize that the Republicans have screwed them.

  • Looks like the commenters are writing a list of amazing things for us today. My ability to suspend disbelief doesn’t stretch as far as they’re commanding, though.

  • Also, you cannot leave out the internet effect and other changes to fund-raising mechanisms. In the 80s and 90s, the vast majority of fund-raising time and effort was directed towards folks (and entities) with larger disposable incomes–these efforts required, in many ways, a high investment of people time and the cost associated with that, and the cost/benefit of going after those with little to no disposable income was somewhat prohibitive. However, with the development of the internet and mass mailing targetting technology of the late 90s and into this century, it has become much less cost prohibitive to direct fundraising efforts towards those with little to no disposable income. These folks do give, in much smaller amounts, but there are a whole lot of them out there. This too has been, IMHO, a huge help in allowing the Dems to achieve near parity with the GOP in fundraising here in 2007, vis-a-vis the 80s and 90s.

  • I’m really sick and tired about hearing of people ‘insulted’ that some study or trend or indication they were voting against their interests means they’re ‘stupid’ or ‘racist’.

    If you’re not stupid or racist, prove it. Until then, you’re just a whining liar.

    Being ‘insulted’ is no reason to vote against your interests. It just proves they were right. Which, in this country, is a valid defense for allegations of slander…

  • racerx (and dajafi)

    Swan, IMO you’re wrong about the typical Republican voter. A lot of them would welcome a black politician who doesn’t sound like all the other prominent black politicians we currently have to listen to.

    How do you explain Ford’s loss in Tennessee then? It can’t be that GOP dominates there as the governor is a Dem. I think Swan paints with too broad a brush, but Ford’s loss can’t be ignored.

  • Edo, I’m tempted to cite Harry Truman’s line that if you give people a choice between a Republican and a Republican, they’ll choose the Republican… but I did acknowledge that the racist theory is more likely to hold true in the South. I’m more interested in how Obama plays in the midwestern battlegrounds and even the interior west states like Montana and the Dakotas, where Democrats are sometimes competitive if they seem culturally (not necessarily politically) distinct from the Kerry/Dukakis/Dean caricature.

  • dajafi,

    Fair enough. And I agree that its the battleground states (Florida, Ohio, Iowa) and the mountain states that really matter in the next election. How Obama is seen in those states is also of interest to me. Sadly, all we have are polls in Iowa at this point.

  • Edo –

    Here is a site with some limited polling – within a party more than party-match ups, but it may give you some idea – that includes mountain states and other “not Iowa or NH” states. One of my very favorite sites as elections draw near – a ton of stuff here, much of it hidden a bit but worth the search.

  • Everything has changed this year for the republican voter because their party actually has no viable candidate…yet they have to have one to keep from totally capitulating no matter how embarrassing. 30% of republicans (with the loudest mouths) back these yahoos but the rest of the republicans are eying the democratic contenders to see which (they are all viable leaders) will best serve their interests. Rational republicans are just as disgusted with the current GOP candidates as the rest of the nation. They are seriously asking which dem they would prefer as president rather than which dem they would like the GOP candidate to run against.

    Ron Paul is the only viable republican contender but he is only half sane, only half of his political stands are worth pursuing and that half is already covered by some of the dem contenders like Kucinich and Edwards.

    Voters are being more cautious about what they don’t want after being fooled by the present administration so badly. Apparently the real election is in the primaries for the dems. Progressives don’t want anything even resembling what the past 6yrs have given us. We also are aware that the press is trying to pick our candidates for us. We stay aware and alert in our caution and that is attracting more and more republicans.

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