Monday’s campaign round-up

March 24, 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:

* AP: “Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton called on President Bush on Monday to appoint ‘an emergency working group on foreclosures’ to recommend new ways to confront the nation’s housing finance troubles. The New York senator said the panel should be led by financial experts such as Robert Rubin, who was treasury secretary in her husband’s administration, and former Federal Reserve chairmen Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker.” (Don’t most Democrats believe Greenspan helped create the current mess?)

* This might be my favorite online DNC project ever: the McCain Debates. Jonathan Martin explained, “While meant to contrast McCain statements at different times about the conflict, the cartoon also is as much about tying the candidate to President Bush. Hence the upside-down ‘W’ insignia turned around to read ‘M 2008’ on one of the podiums, the appearance of a smiling and thumbs-upping Bush after every answer and the message at the end: ‘No Matter Which McCain You Listen To, He Only Offers A Third Bush Term On Iraq.'”

* McCain’s lobbyist problems continues: “Republican presidential candidate John McCain has condemned the influence of ‘special interest lobbyists,’ yet dozens of lobbyists have political and financial ties to his presidential campaign — particularly from telecommunications companies, an industry he helps oversee in the Senate. Of the 66 current or former lobbyists working for the Arizona senator or raising money for his presidential campaign, 23 have lobbied for telecommunications companies in the past decade, Senate lobbying disclosures show.”

* Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) will inevitably endorse John McCain’s presidential campaign, right? Well, maybe not. Hagel told George Stephanopoulos he’s waiting: “I want to understand a little more about foreign policy, where he’d want to go.”

* Rasmussen polled Nevada, expected to be a key battleground state, on the general election. Clinton leads McCain by one (44%-43%), and Obama leads McCain by four (45%-41%).

* On a related note, Clinton seems to fare better in Arkansas, though both Dems lose to the Republican. Rasmussen shows McCain leading Clinton by seven (50%-43%), and McCain leading Obama by 29 (59%-30%).

* The AP’s new delegate totals: Obama 1,620, Clinton 1,499. Obama’s net gain last week was 14.

* Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) reversed course on resigning, but he kept his word about retirement — Idaho’s filing deadline came and went on Friday, and Craig isn’t running.

* Speaking of Idaho, reader G.B. alerted me to an unfortunate situation in which a candidate changed his legal name to “Pro-Life” in order to get those two words on the state ballot.

* And speaking of quirky candidates, assisted-suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian is running for Congress as an independent in Rep. Joe Knollenberg’s (R) Michigan district.

It’s funny, I was talking to family back home (Detroit), and when they told me about Kevorkian running, the first thing I asked was “He’s running as an independent, right?”

I could only imagine the shitstorm if he were to run as a Dem. Ponnuru would be so happy…”See? They really ARE the Party of Death!”

  • Great – the clintons are some of the biggest enablers of BIG BANKING and now shilllary wants a “commission” – what a pants-load of crap!

    Will someone find a larger, obese woman and get her to croon that final song so we can tell the clintons that THE FAT LADY HAS SUNG!

  • CB: “The AP’s new delegate totals: Obama 1,620, Clinton 1,499. Obama’s net gain last week was 14.”

    From CB’s link “AP just sent out a new delegate tally, showing Senator Obama up 41 and Senator Clinton up 27 in the past week.”

    Does anybody know where these 68 (41 + 27) new delegate gains from came from? I know that Murtha = 1 and Richardson = 1, but where did the other 66 come from?

  • The only possible problem that McCain can have would be if the Corporate News Media stopped giving him a pass on anything or everything AND THAT WILL NOT HAPPEN.

    Therefore: McCain has no problems with lobbyists. McCain has no problems with his extended Bush economic platform. McCain has no problems with his misunderstandings of the middle east. McCain has no problems with the wacked out right preachers.

  • Don’t most Democrats believe Greenspan helped create the current mess?

    Tells you the whole thing will be a whitewash – doesn’t it – let the lying liars that created the mess be in charge of an “investigation” – this should not suprise anyone.

    Bill immediately dismissed any investigations on Iran/Contra once he took office – not holding anyone accountable for the crimes there is precisely WHAT MADE IT POSSIBLE FOR THE SAME CRIMINAL CABAL TO FRAUDULENTLY PROMOTE AN AWOL ALCOHOLIC/COCAINE as our next “War President”.

    CLINTONS = MORE OF THE SAME CRAP!!!!

    The American government was NEVER meant to be BUSH-CLINTON-BUSH-CLINTON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • The AP’s new delegate totals: Obama 1,620, Clinton 1,499. Obama’s net gain last week was 14.

    When you play CalvinBall with the Clintons, it doesn’t matter who has the most delegates.

  • Hillary Clinton wants Greenspan to help with foreclosures? I think he’s done enough, already. Next she’ll want Bush to head up an accountability task force.

    She’s an incompetent leader who rewards failure.

  • Don’t hold your breath waiting for Chuck Hagel to do anything other than toe the party line. He’s the definition of a “moderate Republican”: he’s always there until you need him. His endorsement of McCain is as sure as the sun coming up in the morning. The only mystery is who he thinks he’s fooling by keeping up these coy little games.

  • She’s an incompetent leader who rewards failure.

    It’s worse than that – she represents the same interests as the chimp – why do you think hubby gave the criminals a “free pass” on Iran/Contra?

    They investigated him for 8 years and found nothing more than oral sex – he could have stopped it all in its tracks by holding people accountable for Iran/Contra.

  • RJ:

    I imagine there are a couple things going on. For the first, while the Obama campaign has been projecting how delegates would turn out within days of the primaries, they often aren’t officially allocated for weeks, when all the tallies have been run and re-run and the provisionals have been checked over, etc. So its very possible those include Texas caucus delegates, Mississippi delegates, etc, that were previously un-allocated. Also, there are a lot of super-delegate endorsements that go unheralded, like DNCers and little-known House Reps whose endorsements mean little outside their congressional districts.

  • Spot on, Curmudgeon, the repugs have learned that they can make statements to the media to provide the illusion that there is some oversight or debate on issues within the criminal cabal called the republican party – just talk that gets retracted later and ABSOLUTELY NEVER results in any action.

    Just look at how “magic bullet” arlen sphincter repeatedly made remarks purporting to express concerns about illegal spying – then took each and everyone one back by capitulating to EACH AND EVERY demand by those that illegally spy. Hagel is no different.

  • RJ, following up on Michael #10, I suspect some of this is that many of the caucus states have multi-layer caucuses: the precinct caucuses that get all of the attention really just select delegates to district convention, whichthen selects delegates to state convention, which then selects the official delegation to the national convention. As you move through those layers, the numbers will change (because candidates dropped out, etc) and will get more firm.

  • The New York senator said the panel should be led by financial experts such as Robert Rubin, who was treasury secretary in her husband’s administration, and former Federal Reserve chairmen Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker.”

    Ah yes, let’s get Rubin back in shilling for Wall Street and Greenspan and Volcker telling us that atmosphere they’ve been breathing “up there ” is actually Chanel No. 5 and not what it smells like.

    What a “Clintonian” conclusion: put the foxes back in charge of the henhouse.

  • (Don’t most Democrats believe Greenspan helped create the current mess?)

    Intellectually sane, reality-based, keep-moving-forward Democrats, yes. Clintonian democ(R)ats, on the other hand—well, let’s just say “’nuff said,” and leave it at that, shall we?

    I do so love that McCain Debate thing. We’ve got a chimp-in-chief who embraces Putin, and now we’re supposed to want a shrimp-in-chief who looks like Nikita Khrushchev? All we need is for him to start banging on the desk with a shoe!

    And I could really have some fun with that McCain/lobbyists model—just by pointing out that McCain’s got more lobbyists in his pocket than he has days of recorded attendance in the US Senate. “Hmmm…play with the K-Street crowd, or SHOW UP FOR WORK AND DO MY DAMNED JOB?!? Such a burdensome choice!”

  • If’s generous to define Rubin as former Sec Treas., since a cynic might point out that after the Clinton presidency, he joined Citigroup, where he lobbied for Enron just before they collapsed and was as enmeshed in the subprime mess as anyone. Says CNN:

    He told a small crowd at Manhattan’s Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art Wednesday that the problems now roiling the markets and forcing the Federal Reserve into a defensive posture are “all part of a cycle of periodic excess leading to periodic disruption,” and that we are not in fact on the verge of a financial meltdown.

    And the economic problems that he did acknowledge were blamed on just about everyone but the major U.S. financial players.

    Citigroup also paid $215 million in 2002 for subprime lending practices.

    http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2002/09/associates.shtm

  • Thanks to Michael at 10 and Mark Pencil at 12.

    CB indicates that these delegate pickups occurred in the last week. Seems like big news to me, but it appears to have happened pretty quietly.

    Interesting, because this just makes Obama’s insurmountable lead even more insurmountable

  • That Rasmussen poll on Arkansas is clearly wrong, as I was assured by Clinton supporters that she’d win that state because she beat Obama there. She’s also going to win Texas and Oklahoma for that same reason. In fact, if Hillary and Barack ran together, they’d win every single state, because one or the other of them have won each state; while McCain hasn’t won ANY states in the Democratic primary. Is it too late to change the rules to create a co-presidency, with each president controlling the states they won? That’d be great.

    Desperation is the mother of invention.

  • Don’t most Democrats believe Greenspan helped create the current mess?”

    Yes – I REALLY want to know what Paul Krugman thinks about this – depending on whether or not he writes about this and how, we’ll know for sure whether or not he has been biased towards Clinton based on (a) all facts or (b) just selective facts.

  • Don’t most Democrats believe Greenspan helped create the current mess? — CB

    Paul Krugman certainly does. Or used to. Now that Clinton is pushing him… Who knows? He may change his opinion about Clinton but its highly unlikely, his dislike of Obama is too great.

    OTOH… Whom do Repubs have that’s better than Greenspan? And it would make that trio that’s as close as possible to a “bipartisan” one; IIRC, Volcker is pro-‘bama.

  • Is it too late to change the rules to create a co-presidency, with each president controlling the states they won? That’d be great.

    We bought a house in Ohio last July, Doc. If you want to pay off the mortgage and give us enough money to pay for relocating out of your proposed “Fiefdom of Hillary,” then I will support your proposal. Otherwise, stop smoking whatever it is you’re smoking!

  • Alright Steve @21, I’ve got my banker friends working on it right now and they’re lining up a nice house in Georgia for you. Hope you don’t mind Confederate flags, as they’ve got plenty of them where you’re going. Oh, and apparently there’s a group that likes to dress up like ghosts and hold impromptu rallies late at night as a way of showing their support for minorities in the community, so perhaps you can get with them and show a little civic pride as a new member of the Dominion of Obama.

  • #20 – exactly my thoughts. Not only is Volcker pro-Obama, why didn’t Clinton call on this ‘Working Group’ to work with the Senate Banking & Housing Committee chairman, who is close to finishing new legislation?

    Oh wait. She can’t because that’s Chris Dodd and he’s pro-Obama too…

  • I’m pretty sure the additional delegates are mostly Iowa (relying on a slightly loose definition of “last week,” since the county caucuses were a week ago last Saturday.) The final Iowa totals were Obama 25, Clinton 14, Edwards 6, for a total of 55.

  • I’m confused about Nevada…it’s purple, so i’m not sure that it counts at all. And it’s a caucus state, so it clearly doesn’t count. But Clinton won, so it counts right? But she might not have won the delegate count, which would mean that it doesn’t count anymore.

    And since, as Nell pointed out, the margin of error in the poll is the same as the difference…it really doesn’t count.

    I’m glad that i live in a state that isn’t constantly shifting its count/doesn’t count status. We didn’t count before we voted…and maybe that’s the way that it should be.

  • Addendum:

    Does Michigan get to be neutral under the fiefdom electoral theory? Can we join Canada? Or do we have to become the Clinton’s hermit kingdom, where no one else ever gets to be on the ballot? (elections really are easier that way)

  • Sorry Lex, but Michigan and Florida will cease to exist until 2012. What part of “they don’t count” don’t you understand? You guys can do anything you want, but you’ll just be getting the big silent treatment from the rest of us. Same goes for your sports teams, which will be allowed to compete in other states, but the results will be considered unofficial and they will be denied any championship games. Howard Dean is truly a powerful man.

    BTW, regarding states that Hillary won, but which Obama received more delegates (eg, Nevada and Texas); Hillary will be the figurehead leader, but Barack will be the effective leader. He’ll have all the influence, but she’ll get all the credit.

  • Ceasing to exist might not be so bad. I’ll look at it as a sort of existential time out. But i see what this really comes down to: George Steinbrenner is afraid of this year’s Tigers lineup, and he has Howard Dean in his back pocket.

    Not to be sexist or anything, but i think that you should have used “titular” instead of “figurehead”.

  • What happened to playing by the rules? Hillary knew before the vote in Michigan and Florida that delegates wouldn’t be counted and she had agreed to the outcome until it was clear that she was behind in the delegate and popular vote count. So her plan was to get voters angry in Michigan and Florida by acting as if she cared about them and their vote not counting after the fact! Obama didn’t campaign in either state and his name didn’t even appear on the ballot! How fair is that to a candidate who has run a well organized campaign. Don’t be a voter that allows the rules to be changed so that Hillary stays in the competition to be leader of the Democratic Party.

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