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:
* There’s been a flurry of superdelegate announcements over the last 24 hours. If my count is right, Obama has picked up eight (South Carolina’s James Clyburn, Michigan’s Brenda Lawrence, Michigan’s Lu Battaglieri, Florida’s Janee Murphy, Washington state’s David McDonald, Missouri’s Maria Chappelle-Nadal, Massachusetts’ John W. Olver, and Michigan’s Joyce Lalonde). Clinton picked up one (New York’s Irene Stein).
* The latest national USA Today/Gallup poll shows Obama leading McCain by three, 47% to 44%. A month ago, McCain led Obama by two (47% to 45%).
* Rasmussen: “The ongoing race for the Democratic Presidential Nomination may be causing angst for party leaders, but the competition has been good for the Party label. In fact, the Democrats now have the largest partisan advantage over the Republicans since Rasmussen Reports began tracking this data on a monthly basis nearly six years ago.”
* Mitt Romney criticized Obama for only having visited Iraq once. Mitt Romney has only visited Iraq once. Why these guys don’t think before criticizing remains a mystery to me.
* On a related note, Rudy Giuliani may be McCain’s “right arm” in counter-terrorism, but Giuliani has never been to Iraq. I can’t imagine why McCain hasn’t thought to criticize him for it.
* Interesting scoop from Ambinder: “When he formally announced his presidential candidacy last year, Sen. John McCain was inches away from making an unprecedented pledge: if he were elected, he would serve only one term as president. It could have been an earth-shifting moment for the campaign and the primary. At the time, McCain’s fundraising pace was falling well short of its target and Republicans were not treating McCain as the frontrunner. The idea to serve one term had long been discussed among top advisers, and McCain was on board. A one-term pledge was set to be the central thread of his presidential campaign, and Mark Salter, McCain’s chief speechwriter, crafted an announcement speech around it. But less than a day before he was set to speak in New Hampshire on April 25, McCain ordered his aides to excise the paragraphs describing the pledge.”
* More lobbyist trouble for McCain: “In the summer of 2005, John McCain’s chief strategist Charlie Black, working for his firm Black, Kelly, Scruggs & Healey, was paid $60,000 to lobby the U.S. government on behalf of the Chinese oil conglomerate CNOOC. At the time, CNOOC was mounting an aggressive bid to buy Unocal, a California-based oil giant, and Black was tasked with churning up congressional support. But the bid ultimately fell through, in part because of objections over the China oil industry’s ties to Iran, a country in which it had already invested tens of millions of dollars.”
* Bob Barr may have gotten an endorsement from a white-supremacist group, but he quickly rejected it. Good for him.
* A good point to keep in mind: “By the standards of this long, long primary season, this general election is going to be over in a blink. The primary, which essentially began in January, lasted 17 months. The general election, which is starting around now, will last about five months — less than a third as long. It’ll be over before we know it.”