Thursday’s Campaign Roundup

February 21, 2008

Guest Post by dnA

Y’all know the drill. Here’s my best Steve B. impression:

  • For once, I agree with David Broder, who offers a “mixed verdict” from Democratic pollster Peter Hart who is “endorsing Obama’s position on caucuses, proportional representation and the Florida-Michigan dispute, and Clinton’s stance on the superdelegates.” Both candidates knew the rules going in, and neither should expect them to change now.
  • Hilzoy explains why Hillary has been raising lots of money but still seems to be struggling financially.
  • Matthew Yglesias thinks the AP version of the McCain story has less innuendo, but more misconduct.

That’s it for now, at least from me. Hopefully one of the other guest posters will come through.

Thanks dnA.

Since the candidates didn’t campaign in Fla the votes should count there. But since Hillary was the only one on the ballot in MI that should not count.

Did anyone see that godawful Hillary ad on Andrew Sullivan’s site? Rhythm and blues it ain’t.

  • Some of Hilzoy’s points about Hillary’s debt are either disingenuous or betray a complete lack of understanding of accounting.

    In particular, the smaller amounts probably reflect a normal accounts payable cycle. At the moment they filed the finance report, of course they had outstanding small debts. Not reporting them would be wrong. Rushing to print checks so as to take a line item off the report would be silly and counter to normal accounting practice.

    When places complain that the campaign isn’t paying its debts, then there may be a story there. That the campaign (probably) operates on a standard net-30 system is such a non-story that it reflects poorly on Hilzoy.

  • The part of the McCain story that I get a kick out of is that (according to ABCNews.com’s Political Radar) the Willard Romney campaign knew of the story and prodded the NYTimes from time to time about when/if it was going to run the story.

    Seems that Mittens and his boys were hoping the story would run before super tuesday. And thus it would benefit Mittens.

    It’d be a real kick to lay this lobbyist/affair scandle at Mittens’ feet.

  • Just because Saint McCain admits that he cheated on his first wife a bunch of times and divorced her to marry the richest mistress he could get, and just because he sold his soul to Charlie Keating one time, that doesn’t mean he did anything improper this time.

    Let’s be fair to the guy, after all his former mistress, er trophy wife, er, proud wife Cindy says he has “great character”.

    And WTF is wrong with Romney? He’s got millions of dollars and he couldn’t hire a PI to uncover Walnuts McNutbag’s floozie lobbyist problem?

  • About that AFSCME address that Hillary did in Youngstown: I’m looking at the pic put up by WaPo, and those people don’t seem to be especially pleased to be sitting there and listening to “Her Royal Harpiness” banter on about how she’s so “real.” Maybe she’s the one who should get “real.” She could start by paying the trail of unpaid tabs her campaign in leaving behind (if Penn’s not getting paid, then it’s likely that no one’s getting paid—including caterers, restaurants, hotels, phone companies, entities renting out their halls for rallies, and the like).

    Then she needs to sit back and examine just how stupid some of her “spin” really is. Fortress Hillary is pushing the “we’re up by 12!” mantra next door in PA—but if you take into consideration that she was “up by 20” just three weeks ago, then I’d have to call that “down by 8.”

    After that reality check, she needs to sit down and think about her hard-ball attack posture. She played it fast and loose in the runup to Feb-5, and she garnered what amounts to a split decision. Since then, she’s 0-for-10—and she keeps ramping up the attack posture. There’s only so many times you can drill a hole in the bottom of a leaky lifeboat to let the water out before the boat has no bottom left—and sinks like “a singing fat lady in quicksand.”

    Note to Hillary fans everywhere—the fat lady’s singing up a storm right now—and the quicksand doesn’t give a damn. You may want to think about finding another lifeboat—or another candidate….

  • “Clinton says voters need to “get real” about Obama.”

    Exactly! I have met some of these “voters” before, they are truly a rogue group, always indulging in fantasy – they need to STOP their recklessness and start being serious.

    As Bill Clinton once said, most of those voters “don’t need a President” and even come from states that are “not significant”.

    I think the whole system is broken – if only there were a group of establishment people who could swing the election back in Hillary’s favor. We could call them the “super-schmelegates” or something.

    /end sarcasm

  • Time to get real about who’s ready to be commander in chief?

    So we should pick someone who :

    1. Surrounds themselves with people that hide information from them.
    2. Keeps people in their jobs well after they’ve demonstrated their incompetence.
    3. Keeps sticking to the same story line no matter how many times it is demonstrated to be false.

    Hmmmm. Sound’s a lot like our current commander in chief. I guess Hillary is the best choice.

  • “These are not true debts accruing by the campaign, but simply unpaid invoices,” said (Clinton) spokesman Blake Zeff.

    Huh? Is she planning on challenging their authenticity?

    Brooks(3) DnA’s lead is a bit misleading and the Hilzoy story is bizarre. The better explanation comes from the politico story below. Essentially, though, it is a cash flow problem.

    http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0208/8613.html

  • *Hillary is up by 12 in Pennsylvania. — dnA

    I saw that and wondered “how come?”. But, before I went looking elsewhere, I saw Steve’s explanation, @7. She hasn’t jumped up 12 points, she’s still holding onto a 12 point margin. Which, as Steve points out, is actually *down* from what it had been, and much more like what I’d have expected. And there are still 8 weeks (of chipping away) before the PA primary…

  • About the debts: Obama spent a couple of million dollars more than Clinton during January. I would expect any debt that was due to normal accounting practices to be more or less comparable between the two campaigns, with Obama owing slightly more. In fact, Obama ran up $1,104,693.38 in debt during January, while Clinton ran up $7,576,700.48 (not counting her loan to herself.) I wouldn’t have mentioned the debt (except in calculating the campaign’s net assets) had the two figures been comparable.

    The part about the pizzeria, of course, was just snark. That said, I did read over the two campaigns’ debt filings before I wrote the piece, and the Obama campaign just doesn’t have outstanding debts to caterers, restaurants, etc., in Iowa. I count five debts to Iowa businesses, total, and they include things like cell phone companies and the like, not little delis. It’s completely different from Clinton’s, and the differences suggest, to me, a decision not to pay certain bills promptly.

  • Anyone else think Vicki Iseman and Cindy McCain a little too much alike ??

    This story is a disaster for McCain. There is no way to spin this thing and I suspect there are a zillion reporters trying to be the one who breaks this story wide open. No stone left unturned, as they say.

    McCain’s free press ride just ended.

    This could not have come at a better time for Obama. Michelle off the front page and the attacks have come to a screeching halt. Hillary can not catch a break.

  • That the campaign (probably) operates on a standard net-30 system is such a non-story that it reflects poorly on Hilzoy

    Brooks – Not a big correction, but as an accountant, I wanted to say that net-30 is not standard, and it’s up to the vendor to decide the terms, not the customer. For instance, I believe UPS wants to be paid after ten days and will charge extra if you’re late, while their “supply chain” division (which delivers bulk stuff) wants to be paid immediately, but doesn’t have late fees. While there are some vendors who still allow 30 days to pay, that’s really not standard anymore. One of my clients won’t accept terms at all except from government agencies, and makes everyone else pre-pay by credit card, wire transfer, or Paypal. It’s all up to the vendor.

    Again, not a big complaint. I just like to show-off my accounting knowledge whenever possible.

  • Oh, and something else I’d like to add as a longtime Accounts Payable guy, having read Hillary’s payable schedule, it doesn’t look good. Sure, if you’ve got thirty days to pay a $30,000 bill, unless you’re made of cash, you’ll probably wait until the end of the 30 days to get the check in. But you generally pay small bills as soon as you’ve got the cash, unless you’re so cash-strapped that you can’t do so. And based upon Hilzoy’s assessment, I’d say they’re pretty strapped for cash.

    Now, I once had a CFO who insisted that we pay everything as late as possible, as he was a control freak and imagined he was being money savvy. But that was more a personality quirk and has nothing to do with good business practice. I generally try to pay little bills as soon as they’re entered, just to get them off the books. And the term “little” is relative to how much cash you’ve got. Of course, I don’t know if I’ve worked for anything as big as Hillary’s campaign is (though I have worked for some big companies), so it’s possible they just can’t do it like that. But I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t, unless they didn’t have the cash. It’s inefficient to keep this stuff on your payables list and it looks bad on your financial statements. The sooner you get it filed away in your payables file, the less you have to deal with it.

    Now, it’s understandable if you owe $2 million to Mark Penn and you didn’t feel like paying that right away (or ever). But if you owe $625 to the Boys Club of Sioux City, it just makes more sense to pay it off immediately rather than keeping it sitting around. Unless, that is, you’re so broke that you need to save the $625 for somebody else. So while it’s possible this isn’t a big deal, it could be an indicator of how totally broke her campaign really is. Debts are one thing, but waiting to pay little debts is another.

  • Congrats dnA – You are not as pro Hillary & anti Obama today as usual… Before you tell me again to check your profile – when I click on it I get:

    Oops…
    The page you’re looking for can’t be found.

    LOL You really are not that bad for a Clintonista.

    Do wish Steve would add AfterDowningStreet.org to his list of political sites.

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