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:
* Barack Obama’s speech in Philadelphia on race just wrapped up, and I’ll have a report shortly. Here’s the prepared text, which was similar, but not identical, to the delivered speech.
* Interesting development after Hillary Clinton’s speech on Iraq policy yesterday: “Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is sticking to her plan to withdraw troops from Iraq, no matter what. In a testy exchange with a reporter on a conference call Monday, after Clinton delivered a speech about Iraq, top Clinton advisors went to pains to make plain that there would be no room for adjustment in Clinton’s Iraq plans, no matter what happens on the ground. At one point her communications director boiled it down to a one-word answer. Would she stand by her plan? Yes.”
* Good: “A coalition of liberal groups will coordinate $350 million worth of efforts to mobilize voters and advocate for candidates for the general election, its leaders are expected to announce Tuesday. They are billing it as the largest such effort ever across the liberal spectrum. MoveOn.org, labor groups like the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and Change to Win, and other organizations like Acorn, Women’s Voices Women Vote and the National Council of La Raza will be taking part in the effort for the presidential election and House and Senate races.”
* The Clinton campaign asked the Texas Democratic Party to delay their district conventions, the second step in the caucus process. Yesterday, the state party rejected the request (and even seemed to mock the campaign for asking).
* Lots of new polls out over the last 24 hours. CNN has Obama and Clinton leading McCain nationally by similar margins, Gallup’s tracking poll shows Clinton edging Obama by two among Dems nationally, and CNN shows Obama besting Clinton by seven among Dems nationally.
* A new Quinnipiac poll shows Clinton leading Obama in Pennsylvania by 12, 53% to 41%. CNN noted, “Clinton’s widest gains in the state are among white voters, who now back her over Obama by a margin of 28 points. That compares to a 19-point gap in the late February poll.”
* Bill Clinton re-entered the fray over controversial remarks he made in January. “What happened there is a total myth and a mugging,” Clinton told CNN. He said that Charlie Rangel has argued that the Clinton campaign didn’t play the race card, but “that had some played against us.”
* Americans United for Change released a very clever video yesterday showing Bush and McCain talking about the economy with literally the exact same words and phrases.
* McCain’s war cabinet is hardly encouraging.
* We’ve long been under the impression that the first Democratic candidate to reach 2,025 delegates get the nomination. But as CNN noted, the so-called “magic number,” is “a constantly moving target.”