Wednesday’s campaign round-up

April 30, 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:

* There’s been a flurry of superdelegate endorsements over the last 24 hours. Hillary Clinton picked up the support of House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton of Missouri, and Pennsylvania AFL-CIO president Bill George.

* Barack Obama meanwhile, has picked up a few superdelegates of his own, including farmer Richard Machacek, Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa), and Rep. Baron Hill (D-Ind.). Hill may prove to be the most significant, at least in the short term, in light of the looming Indiana primary.

* With yesterday’s and today’s endorsements, the number of uncommitted superdelegates has dropped below 300, to 294. Clinton’s lead among committed superdelegates has shrunk to 20 (or 18, or 24, depending on which count you prefer). Both Clinton and Obama have added three superdelegates each since yesterday morning.

* In polling news, SurveyUSA shows Clinton closing the gap in North Carolina, where Obama’s lead is down to just five points, 49% to 44%.

* A Public Policy Polling (D) survey in Indiana puts Clinton’s lead in Indiana at eight points, 50% to 42%.

* I’m always encouraged to hear Clinton say things like this: “Anyone, anyone, who voted for either of us should be absolutely committed to voting for the other because it would be the height of political foolishness to have voted for one of us and what we stand for and then either to stay home or not vote for a Democrat and instead vote for Sen. McCain.”

* Clinton beat Obama in New Jersey’s primary three months ago, but since then, Garden State Dems seem to have shifted into Obama’s camp.

* Another plan to fix the mess between the DNC, Michigan, and the candidates: “This latest plan would split the difference between the positions of Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. Mrs. Clinton insists that the state’s 128 pledged delegates be seated according to the result of the Jan. 15 primary, which she won although the national Democratic Party declared the contest illegal in advance and Mr. Obama’s name was not on the ballot. That would give her a 73 to 55 advantage in delegates.”

* When North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley endorsed Clinton yesterday and used the word “pansy,” it rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.

* The West Virginia Secretary of State’s office is screwing up in a major way when it comes to independents participating in the Democratic primary.

* And in Minnesota’s Senate race, Al Franken is trying to resolve the flap that’s been dogging him: “The comedian-turned-Democratic politician announced on Tuesday that he will be paying $70,000 in back taxes and penalties in 17 states after several weeks in which the campaign downplayed the amount of money that his company owed and changed the reasons for why the taxes (and workers’ compensation insurance) had not been paid. During this period of time, Franken has also been avoiding publicly commenting about the controversy, instead relying on his surrogates to offer explanations.”

Also note the Rasmussen poll conducted on 4/08/08 which shows Obama with a 14-point lead. I’m more concerned about Indiana, which has shown a huge swing in Clinton’s favor over the past week.

  • I find it amazing that anyone can think about what Clinton is doing with Michigan and not find her actions disgusting.

    I was a Clinton supporter but, long ago, her actions concerning Michigan turned me against her.

  • The West Virginia Secretary of State’s office is screwing up in a major way when it comes to independents participating in the Democratic primary.

    In WV if an independent goes to the primary, and doesn’t specifically ask for a Rep or Dem ballot, all they get is a school board ballot. The article doesn’t explain that, and further suggests this will hurt Obama more than Clinton. Personally I cannot imagine anyone going to the polls and not noticing that the people they wanted to vote for were all missing. Also I can tell you, this is the first thing Obama supporters tell Independents. IMHO, this story is much ado about nothing.

    That said, the WV Dems are a bit sad. Here’s what wvablue says about the delegate selection process:

    No one expected the W.Va. primary outcome to matter when these rules were put together. The rules were drafted  with a major concern about who gets to attend the convention instead of who they represent once they get there.

    I attended the county convention, and frankly these delegates have no purpose whatever. It’s nothing more than a party building exercise. Except for one delegate who is chosen by the party leaders, the delegates going to Denver are selected by the candidates’ campaigns according to the percentages of votes cast in the precincts.

  • Obama just picked up another supe not in your list: Lois Capps of CA.

    Since the Cappses have long been Clintonites (though Rep. Capps’ daughter is now married to an Obama staffer), and since Bill Clinton spoke at Rep. Capps’ husband’s funeral, I suspect that James Carville will have some classless and wildly inappropriate insult for her.

  • According to Crooks & Liars, the photo ID law will apply in the Indiana primaries next week. That could hurt Obama.

  • Danp,

    I’m skeptical that the ID law will have much of an effect on anyone, but assuming it has any appreciable effect at all, wouldn’t it be likely to hurt Clinton? Clinton is stronger among elderly and low-income voters; Obama is stronger among minorities, all of which are purportedly going to suffer under the ID law. It seems to me that the former two groups are likely larger in Indiana than the latter group.

  • JRD: You make a good point. The C&L article said (I’m going from memory here) that 20% of African Americans don’t have photo ID, but I think they are only about 9% of Indiana’s voters, so you may very well be right about who is at a disadvantage.

  • Today the McClatchy website is reporting the following news about another Hillary ‘misrepresentation. Will the tv media report on it tonight?

    INDIANAPOLIS — Hillary Clinton loves to tell the story about how the Chinese government bought a good American company in Indiana, laid off all its workers and moved its critical defense technology work to China.

    It’s a story with a dramatic, political ending. Republican President George W. Bush could have stopped it, but he didn’t.

    If she were president, Clinton says, she’d fight to protect those jobs. It’s just the kind of talk that’s helping her win support from working-class Democrats worried about their jobs and paychecks, not to mention their country’s security.

    What Clinton never includes in the oft-repeated tale is the role that prominent Democrats played in selling the company and its technology to the Chinese. She never mentions that big-time Democratic contributor George Soros helped put together the deal to sell the company or that the sale was approved by her husband’s administration.

    http://www.mcclatchydc.com/election2008/story/35337.html

  • The problem with the “pansy” slur that Hillary thought was so funny, is all in how you define pansy. Seems the Hillary supporters are going with ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ as their solution. Guess they think it worked for them before…

  • So, Hillary is responsible for everything George Soros does? Since the govt must approve all deals with foreign countries, does that mean Bill Clinton put the deal together or even liked it? He’d have to have a major substantive reason to interfere with commerce by refusing a pro forma approval to something like this. That doesn’t mean he approved. Unless you consider Hillary a Bill-clone, it is hardly a contradiction of her speech, since she had nothing whatsoever to do with it. But maybe this kind of reasoning appeals to Obama supporters.

  • Certainly HRC’s campaign style of taking no prisoners appeals to Clinton supporters, Mary. Wasn’t she one of the biggest finger pointers in the Jeremiah Wright controversy? Guilt by association lives on only now the one caught in the web is the spider.

  • Always hopeful, @ 12,

    Not only is she happy to rehash Jeremiah’s jeremiads with or without a prompt (apparently, doing it again in her interview with O’Reilly), her “35 yrs of experience” that she touted earlier on in the campaign, explicitly tried to make her into a Willy Wanker’s…. if not exactly clone, then at least a doppelganger…

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