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 very last primaries in the Democratic nominating race are one week from today, when voters in Montana and South Dakota head to the polls. On ABC’s “Good Morning America,” George Stephanopoulos said the race is “almost certain to end” shortly after those contests, and predicted that “several dozen” superdelegates will move to Obama shortly after June 3.
* CNN: “Former President Bill Clinton said that Democrats were more likely to lose in November if his wife Hillary Clinton is not the party’s presidential nominee, and suggested some people were trying to ‘cover this up’ and ‘push and pressure and bully’ superdelegates to make up their minds prematurely.”
* Software used by the Federal Election Commission can’t download data files with more than 65,536 rows or 256 columns. Given the success of the Democratic presidential candidates in raising money, that’s proving to pose quite a practical problem: “The campaign finance reports filed by Obama and Clinton have grown so massive that they’ve strained the capacity of the Federal Election Commission, good government groups, the media and even software applications to process and make sense of the data.”
* The Clinton campaign has repeatedly argued that Bill Clinton didn’t win the Democratic nomination in 1992 until June. The NYT fact-checks the claim and finds that it’s rather misleading. (Even the former president’s own autobiography explained that he locked down the nomination in early April.)
* USA Today: “Twice as many veterans of the Iraq war are running for Congress than in 2006, and this year Republican candidates outnumber Democrats. Although many of the veteran candidates still face primaries and some are long shots, the outcome in November could well increase the number of combat veterans serving in Congress, a group that has been dwindling since 2000.”
* In the early ’90s, John McCain forcefully opposed women pilots having the opportunity to fly in combat missions. McCain ultimately lost, and American women have since flown hundreds of combat missions. Nearly two decades later, however, McCain continues to believe he was right, and that the women who have served in combat missions should have been kept on the ground.
* After a rough few weeks, Al Franken may be regaining his footing in the Senate race in Minnesota. A new Rasmussen poll shows him narrowing the gap against incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman (R), 47% to 45%. A month ago, Rasmussen showed Coleman up by seven.
* Speaking of encouraging polls, I’m almost reluctant to believe this one: “The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of the Kentucky Senate race shows Democratic challenger Bruce Lunsford with a five percentage point lead over long-time Republican Senator Mitch McConnell. The poll, conducted just two days after Lunsford won the Democratic nomination, shows the challenger with 49% of the vote while McConnell earns 44%.” When considering the various scenarios in which the Dems gets to 60, Kentucky is rarely if ever considered part of the mix.
* Mike Huckabee laments the fact that Republicans use a winner-take-all delegate system when picking a nominee. (I bet Mitt Romney is thinking the same thing.)
* And if the landscape weren’t bleak enough for Republicans, appointed Sen. Roger Wicker (R) of Mississippi is struggling in his plans to win a full term in office. Wicker now has a new ad running introducing himself to voters.
