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:<\/p>\n
* I get the sense that supporters of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are borderline obsessed with hypothetical general-election polls, each hoping to prove they could beat John McCain while the other couldn’t. In the newest fuel for the fire, Time magazine shows<\/a> Clinton and McCain tied nationally at 46%, while the same poll found Obama leads McCain, 48% to 41%. The pollster who conducted the survey said, that “independents tilt toward McCain when he is matched up against Clinton, but they tilt toward Obama when he is matched up against the Illinois Senator.”<\/p>\n * Clinton wants weekly debates, Obama isn’t anxious to have any more debates at all. Yesterday, Obama agreed to two more debates<\/a>, so long as one of them is in Ohio. “We have such a compressed schedule, it is important for us to be able to travel around Ohio as much as possible. Whenever there is a debate, that is a day that is lost,” he said.<\/p>\n * The race for the Republican nomination is over? Not officially<\/a>: “Mike Huckabee said Thursday he will continue his quest for the Republican nomination, and directly appealed for support from backers of Mitt Romney\u2019s now suspended presidential bid. ‘As a true authentic, consistent, conservative, I have a vision to bring hope, opportunity and prosperity to all Americans, and I’d like to ask for and welcome the support of those who had previously been committed to Mitt,’ Huckabee said in a statement. ‘This is a two-man race for the nomination, and I am committed to marching on.'”<\/p>\n * Whether this is an elaborate head-fake is unclear, but Rush Limbaugh told his audience yesterday that he’s considering raising money for Hillary Clinton<\/a>, to help her get the Democratic nomination. The phrase Limbaugh used was, “Keep her in it so we can win it.”<\/p>\n * You may have noticed that Bill Clinton is keeping a lower profile these days. That’s not an accident — the former president conceded yesterday<\/a> that he probably went a little overboard in the week leading up to the South Carolina primary. “The mistake that I made is to think that I was a spouse like any other spouse who could defend his candidate… I think I can promote Hillary but not defend her, because I was president,” he said. * CNN<\/a>: “In an interview with CNN\u2019s Wolf Blitzer, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-California, explained and defended the involvement of so-called ‘superdelegates’ in picking her party\u2019s presidential nominee. Superdelegates were established, Pelosi explained, in order to allow grassroots Democratic activists to attend the nominating convention without having to compete with high-ranking Democratic party officials for a coveted spot on the convention floor. ‘So, again, I don\u2019t think that members of Congress, governors and senators are not attuned to what\u2019s happening in their states and in their districts,’ said Pelosi.”<\/p>\n * Obama picked up two gubernatorial endorsements yesterday: Chet Culver<\/a> of Iowa and Christine Gregoire<\/a> of Washington state.<\/p>\n * Hillary Clinton picked up the support yesterday of Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln<\/a>.<\/p>\n * Oddly enough, we still don’t know<\/a> who won New Mexico’s Democratic presidential primary.<\/p>\n
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\n* Obama encouraged Hillary Clinton to follow his lead and release her and her husband’s income tax returns<\/a>. “I’ll just say that I’ve released my tax returns. That’s been a policy I’ve maintained consistently. I think the American people deserve to know where you get your income from. But I’ll leave it up to you guys to chase it down,” Obama told reporters on a flight to Nebraska.<\/p>\n