Friday’s political round-up

January 4, 2008

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:

* Hoping to capitalize on his success in Iowa, Barack Obama arrived in New Hampshire this morning (at 4:30am), and talked briefly about his intention to take his model nationally: “We felt good for the last two weeks because we were so proud of what was happening on the ground. We were seeing the crowds, and so regardless of how the numbers played out exactly, we were really confident about us having changed how politics operated in this caucus. And it makes me very optimistic about the country. I think we can do it for the country as a whole.”

* John Edwards has a new ad up in New Hampshire that strikes an interesting note: “Corporate greed is not just stealing the future of the children of Democrats,” Edwards says. “It’s doing the same thing to the children of independents; the same thing to the children of Republicans.” Clever — it’s Edwards’ message, with a tri-partisan Obama twist.

* Mitt Romney arrived in New Hampshire early this morning (3:30am), and vowed to learn from his mistakes. “I let one guy slip by me, hats off to him,” Romney told an early morning rally of supporters at the Portsmouth airport, referring to Huckabee. “We’re not going to let that happen in New Hampshire, or anywhere else.”

* Bill Clinton told ABC News this morning that New Hampshire can make Hillary Clinton the “comeback kid,” just as it did for him 16 years ago. He sounded an optimistic note: “She’s got a better profile here. They know more about her now than they did about me then. And I think she’ll be fine. We just get out and go.”

* Just how close did Clinton come to finishing second instead of third? Extremely close.

* And finally, despite finishing with just 0.4% of the vote in Iowa, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) will press ahead with his presidential campaign. “Absolutely, he is staying in,” his top aide said. Given that he’s already announced that he will not seek re-election to Congress, Hunter apparently has nothing better to do.

I wish we had elections for the media.

  • Bill Clinton said: “They know more about her now than they did about me then.”

    Why does he think this is a good thing for Hillary’s candidacy? If the first year of this campaign (weird to write, but that’s what it’s been) showed anything, it’s that she isn’t even a fraction of the political talent he was/is. Where Bill came from near-total obscurity in 1992 and won it on the strength of his charisma and (lest we forget) willingness to break from Democratic orthodoxy, she started the cycle with every advantage imaginable–and is now fighting for her political life.

    For that matter, I’m not even sure anymore that his campaigning helps her all that much. When voters see Bill, then think about Hillary, they can’t help but make a comparison–and it’s not a favorable one for her. (Maybe this also helps to explain his surprisingly low success rate campaigning for other Democrats–who compares well as a retail politician to Bill Clinton?)

  • Listening to John Edwards, super-rich trial lawyer, lecture about “corporate greed” is disgusting. Evidently his super-rich trial lawyer friends don’t belong to a corporation, and don’t charge nearly $1,000 per hour.

  • * Just how close did Clinton come to finishing second instead of third? Extremely close.

    As I said last night, I don’t expect her to get much sympathy in these quarters, but the media spin really is, pardon me, a screw job. The margin between Edwards and Clinton in percentage of district convention delegates is .28% – 28/100 of 1-percent. The difference just happens to straddle 29.5 (HRC ended up at 29.47), so the .28 gets rounded to a full percentage and the media thus avoids calling it a tie.

    Between the two of them, they have over 1500 district delegates. Edwards’ edge is 7. In projected national delegates – the only thing that really counts for the nomination – they have the exact same number.

    How is this not a tie for second?

  • Paul, it’s often trial lawyers who are the only people who make corporations accountable.

    The law doesn’t let whistle-blowers do it alone, and the Republicans work hard against regular people’s right to defend themselves against corporate abuse with the help of a trial lawyer.

    This is not to say that there are not frivolous lawsuits, but really, isn’t that itself a frivolous charge? Nothing in life is perfect.

    Do you remember the history of how so many products on the American consumer market at one time failed, poisoning or maiming people, and killing children? Do you ever wonder why manufacturers strive so hard to make those products safe to use and to put warnings on them now? Every American who has been to law school knows why, because they all have read the transcripts of cases where ordinary Americans were able to sue these powerful corporations for improperly designed or carelessly manufactured products.

    The rich do not have a right to continually produce products that maim or poison people just so they can get a little richer by spending less on oversight in design or less on manufacturing the products. If lawyers get compensated for winning those cases almost like pro-athletes do, it’s hard to say that it’s unfair. No pro-athlete ever kept a kid from dying or from getting his fingers cut off by playing baseball or football. John Edwards is a hero and trial lawyers like him are unsung heroes.

  • I wrote:

    Every American who has been to law school knows why, because they all have read the transcripts of cases where ordinary Americans were able to sue these powerful corporations for improperly designed or carelessly manufactured products.

    Or, I should more accurately say, they have at least read judicial opinions in those kinds of cases.

  • Just how close Hillary Clinton came to being second is the kind of Monday morning quarterbacking that accomplishes nothing but take up space. Its like Cub fans remarking about how close they came to winning the World Series.

    Everyone knew the rules, everyone played by the rules. Hillary came in third. End of story.

    By the way—Al Gore was almost elected in 2000. All he needed was one person to change his (or her) vote.

  • They know more about her now than they did about me then. -Bill Clinton

    That’s exactly why she won’t win.

    dajafi nailed it at two.

  • Z:

    It is a tie. But spin or no spin, I don’t think it matters whether Hillary got the silver or the bronze. Like Mitt, she didn’t get the gold that she was expecting as the front-runner. Her shield of inevitability has been shattered. That’s the big story.

    Paul in NJ:

    “Super-rich” trial lawyer John Edwards didn’t make his money charging by the hour. He made his money mostly from contingent fees that he won from lawsuits on behalf of persons who had suffered some horrible wrongs. I invite you to read something about his legal career (Wikipedia is a good start), and then come back and discuss it some more when you have a clue what you are talking about.

  • And I will add to Okie’s comment, above, that when it is you or someone you love who has suffered an egregious injury, or when it is you or a loved one who is being unjustly accused of something that could change your life forever, will you just accept your fate, and suffer, will you go it alone against the legal system, or will you get the best damn trial lawyer you can find?

    Strange as it sounds, and as hard as it is for some to believe, there actually are lawyers out there who help people – people who are true victims. A lot of them don’t make the big-firm salaries, but those who do are not all the demons they are made out to be.

  • Okie’s right, Hillary was supposed to be the prohibitive favorite. If she doesn’t make a convincing comeback in NH and SC, she’s done. Theoretically Edwards could pull it out too, but I don’t see that happening.

    Which gives me the chance to harp on my hobbyhorse, the idiocy of having a campaign where the nominees are known my early February but the actual election doesn’t happen till November.

    Also I’ll just remind all those folks defending the Iowa caucuses that, just as we predicted, quite a few candidates the rest of us might have liked to vote for are already out of the race the day after Iowa. Iowa radically redefined the race (particularly on the Dem side) without anyone else in the country having a chance to vote.

  • I think we can conclude from Mitt’s comment that in fact he has learned nothing. He’s going to spend the next five days attacking John McCain with a venom as yet unseen in this campaign.

    It should, in the end, avail him nothing.

    And once again, the conservative frame: “Edwards is rich, how can talk about (to) poor people.”

    If there actually a poor person running? Someone want to point him out to us?

  • Lance wrote: And once again, the conservative frame: “Edwards is rich, how can talk about (to) poor people.”

    At least Edwards comes from a working-class background- aren’t all the Republicans rich kids who were helped out by their daddies all the way?

  • I won’t enter the trial lawyer good or evil debate, but I do think it is important to realize that the corporations of “corporate greed” are the employers of most Americans, and that many good, decent Americans hold positions in those employers. So while it’s good for chest beating and makes a good jury argument, I am not so sure that it makes a good governing philosophy.

  • “Lance: Mitt’s comment that in fact he has learned nothing”

    So true – in fact he’s still attacking “Hillarycare” this morning… what a loser!

  • Hey, did anyone else find Chuck Norris and his blond bombshell trophy wife a little distracting during the Huckabee speech last night? It was hard to pay attention to Huckabee with the two of them grinning and overreacting to everything he said. And then, in the middle of the speech, the two of them suddenly decided to switch places! Bizarre. Is Huckabee trying to be the Hollywood glamour candidate? I don’t get it.

  • I clicked the link to Hillary at Grinnell.

    What a crock of manure!!!

    So if Hillary had been to Grinell then she might have come in 2nd place.

    True enough.

    Which district should Hillary have skipped to go to Grinnell?

    Would she have lost delegates at the district she skipped?

    In perfect hindsight no candidate would bother to campaign where they weren’t viable and would spend extra time in certain districts to just get to the point where they get the most delegates.

    Could’a would’a should’a

    It was close but so what!!!!

  • Michael said: “…but I do think it is important to realize that the corporations of “corporate greed” are the employers of most Americans…”

    I thought the accepted meme was that most Americans work for small businesses, and not multi-national corporations?

    Says one American who does work for a multi-national corporation 😉

  • Michael at 10: It’s the history of the industrial age that corporations are basically at odds with their low-level employees. That’s how unions came about. Giving employees more pay, benefits, protections, or limiting their working hours is a cost for employers (or so the un-nuanced employers used to reflexively think). In contrast, during the tech-booming ’90s, big successful corporations had more employee-friendly, relaxed attitudes.

    No trial lawyer is putting employees out of jobs and putting corporations out of business. It’s corporations that are making the decisions to fire people. When lawsuits become harder to pursue, the executives of corporations pocket the money they save for themselves, they don’t all-of-a-sudden give raises to their workers.

  • Paul in NJ: “Listening to John Edwards, super-rich trial lawyer, lecture about ‘corporate greed’ is disgusting. Evidently his super-rich trial lawyer friends don’t belong to a corporation, and don’t charge nearly $1,000 per hour.”

    “Trial Lawyer” is a euphemism for “Plaintiff’s Lawyer,” the attorneys who take cases on contingency, or sometimes pro bono with an expectation of an attorney’s fee award from the defendant.

    “Defense Lawyers” are the ones who defend the corporations and charge big bucks — very, very few quite as much as $1,000.

    More particularly, John Edwards made his fortune slaying corporate dragons on behalf of injured plaintiffs. Taking cases on contingency, getting paid only if he won — and eating the (substantial) litigation costs if he lost.

  • Hear hear, Swan. Corporations exist to make profits. Pure and simple. That some make a product is almost secondary. If they could all make money the way Enron did – with smoke and mirrors, they would.

    This is not to say that a small business is an easier employer.

  • Keith Olbermann has received his correction: “Sen. Gravel has not dissolved his campaign, and has no intentions of doing so.”

    Here’s the question: how would Mike Gravel dissolve his campaign?? It’s a one-man gig!

  • jimBOB:

    Also I’ll just remind all those folks defending the Iowa caucuses that, just as we predicted, quite a few candidates the rest of us might have liked to vote for are already out of the race the day after Iowa. Iowa radically redefined the race (particularly on the Dem side) without anyone else in the country having a chance to vote.

    I really don’t see how this can be established with any certainty. Two candidates dropped out: Biden and Dodd.

    Prior to Iowa, were these two leading in New Hampshire or South Carolina polls and I just missed it? Were they in double digits in national polls that would suggest what a unified same-day national primary might look like? Were their national campaigns competitive financially?

    The reality is that no matter where this race started, Dodd and Biden were not catching on. Not with the big national donors, not with the media, not with voters. Unless your state went first, you were not going to have a chance to voite for Biden or Dodd. If we solved that problem by having a same-day national primary, Biden and Dodd likely would never have entered the race — the cost would have been prohibitive. Taking their shot in a small state was the best and only chance they had. The existence of Iowa Caucuses made it more likely, not less, that you would have choices beyond the Big Three to vote for.

    Indeed, I would offer to the “same day national primary” folks that perhaps we should switch sides: based on every national poll to date, and given her headstart in name recognition and infrastructure, had we had a national primary yesterday there is a great chance that Hillary would be your Democratic nominee. The “rolling selection” process is going to result in Obama.

  • The theme that the Iowa caucuses weed out candidates that people in other states would like to vote for is not a burden that can fairly be placed on Iowa; whichever state that goes first now has this consequence due to the high cost and the need to keep the money spigot open. Money dries up for other candidates as soon as someone can realistically declare themselves the front-runner. Solve the money question, as well as the compacted primary season, but don’t demonize Iowa or New Hampshire. Neither state is as parochial as the national media and punditocracy like to claim

  • and let me add to Iowan’s point about the media that they, not Iowa, cause much of the problem — and they get worse all the time. long ago, they didn’t consider Iowa a big deal. then it was a big deal as the first test. then, even 4 years ago, there were the alleged “three tickets out of Iowa.” all of a sudden, to hear them this year, on the Dem side there is one ticket – Iowa picks the nominee. that is nuts – and it isn’t because anyone from Iowa did anything differently. what is really happening is not an “Iowa caucus” at all – it is a MSM primary.

  • I hate to say this, but aren’t the unions coming out of Iowa with egg on their faces again?

    I remember in 2000, when Gore had all the labor endorsements and won Iowa 63%-35% against Bradley, this meme developed that “you can’t win Iowa without the unions and their turnout machine. Labor dominates the caucuses.”

    In 2004, most unions endorsed either Dick Gephardt or Howard Dean. Kerry had only one union endorsement, from the firefighters. Edwards had zero union support in Iowa. You all remember what the results were.

    Now, in 2008, you’ve got Edwards and Clinton splitting some degree of union support, Obama with no union support in Iowa, and in fact, some unions criticizing him because he used the term “special interests” to describe the funding behind a 527 ad. And then Obama wins the caucus.

    Doesn’t this make labor look like kind of a paper tiger? For that matter, why do unions feel the need to endorse in primary fields where all the candidates have good voting records on labor issues? Isn’t that kind of a waste of money that could go to organizing in the workplace? Why not release a “Candidate Report Card” a month or two before voting starts that rates the candidates on various workplace/economic issues, distribute them to their members, and say, “Here’s the information you need, make your own decisions”? Save resources to fight labor’s real enemies, the Republicans and bad employers.

  • Re 25 and 26,

    Guys, I’d buy that crap if it weren’t for the fact your State demands to be first with its Republican Straw Vote and Democratic district level state convention selection. Let someone else go before you and then you can blame the media. As it is, you’re at fault.

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