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:
* More intra-party reconciliation: “As we first reported here, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe wooed top Clinton donors at a private presentation in Manhattan yesterday, and the early indications are that such efforts are paying off. Top Hillary supporter Ed Rendell is hosting a fundraiser for Obama tonight in Philadelphia. My sense from talking to Hillary donors is that from their point of view, there’s just no percentage in not getting behind Obama, and while there’s definitely still a bit of grumbling in these circles, they’re basically falling into line.”
* Even more intra-party reconciliation: “The Barack Obama campaign continued its effort to reach out to women and supporters of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) Wednesday night with a dinner for female House members. The dinner, at the home of Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), was attended by 28 female members. More than half of the women were former Clinton supporters, said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), a national co-chairwoman for Obama.”
* Howard Dean is staying atop the DNC, but the Obama campaign is enveloping much of the party’s apparatus: “Barack Obama’s move to merge key elements of the Democratic National Committee into his own campaign’s Chicago headquarters appears aimed at the goal of a centralized and united Democratic Party. The shift of the DNC’s political and field organizing operations to Chicago will consolidate the Democratic presidential campaign apparatus more than in either of the last two cycles, when staffers at DNC headquarters overlapped – and occasionally competed – with aides to Al Gore and John Kerry.”
* Don’t look now, but North Carolina is looking competitive — Rasmussen shows McCain leading Obama by just two points, 45% to 43%.
* Great point by Rick Hasen: “…McCain says that there’s nothing he can do to stop 527 attacks on Sen. Obama. As TPM notes: ‘Obama’s finance team has explicitly instructed donors not to give money to those groups. McCain, by contrast, seems to be saying that he can’t control the groups on his side.’ Bad news for Sen. Obama? Not necessarily. It has been clear for some time that Sen. Obama rationally would not choose to opt into public financing for the general election, and now he has a reason not to do it.”
* MSNBC makes a fascinating observation about general election match-ups from 2004, when the polls were largely spot-on about Bush’s lead over Kerry — but Bush’s lead was never as big as Obama’s lead is now.
* Speaking of polls, Steve M. offers a key observation that has gone unnoticed by the talking heads: “Not only is [Obama’s] 7-point lead among white women better than what Gore and Kerry accomplished (both lost the white female vote), it’s actually slightly better than Bill Clinton did when he won the presidency handily in 1996 — his lead among white women was 5 points, according to CNN’s exit poll (48%-43%).”
* Obama probably won’t be able to compete in Oklahoma, where he now trails by 14 points, 52% to 38%. Given that Bush won Oklahoma by 32 four years ago, I’m actually surprised Obama is as close as he is.
* Yglesias raised an interesting angle yesterday (in response to a commenter) that I hadn’t considered before: if Mitt Romney is added to McCain’s ticket, it would likely boost Mormon turnout in battleground states like Nevada and Colorado.
* There was some recent evidence that Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R) would struggle to win re-election, but a new Rasmussen poll shows her leading state Sen. Kay Hagan by 14, 53% to 39%.
* The NBC/WSJ poll released yesterday shows Americans preferring a Dem-led Congress to a Republican-led Congress, 52% to 33%/ Marc Ambinder noted this is, by far, “the highest margin for either party in the 13 years of data available from previous polls.”
* Might CNN anti-immigration personality Lou Dobbs run for governor of New Jersey?
* And Ron Paul finally ended his Republican presidential bid last night. He’ll continue to run for re-election to the House, but Paul will also launch a new advocacy group, called The Campaign for Liberty.