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
* Over the last 72 hours, there’s been quite a bit of delegate movement. Unless I missed some, Barack Obama has picked up seven since Friday at noon — Oregon’s Jenny Greenleaf, Georgia’s Stephen Leeds, Alaska’s Tony Knowles, Wyoming’s W. Patrick Goggles, and Brian Schatz, Kari Luna, and James Burns, all of whom are from Hawaii. Clinton picked up one, Verna Cleveland in Georgia.<\/p>\n
* McClatchy<\/a>: “A co-chair of Hillary Clinton’s National Hispanic Leadership Council has defected and pledged his support to Barack Obama, Clinton’s rival for the Democratic presidential nomination. He was joined by another California superdelegate. The defections came as a new poll showed that Obama would handily defeat John McCain in California in November \u2014 and do so by a larger margin than Clinton would.”<\/p>\n * We’re about a week away from the Montana primary, and in the first major poll of the state in a long while, Obama appears to have the edge<\/a> over Clinton, leading 52% to 35% according to a Mason-Dixon poll.<\/p>\n * An LA Times poll released over the weekend shows Obama doing quite well in California<\/a>, despite losing the state’s primary in February. He now leads McCain by seven (47% to 40%), while Clinton leads McCain by three (43% to 40%).<\/p>\n * A series of recent polls from SurveyUSA show Obama doing fairly well in some key battleground states<\/a>. In Ohio, Obama leads McCain by nine; in Pennsylvania, Obama leads McCain by eight; in Virginia, Obama leads McCain by seven; and in New Mexico, the two are tied. * Though his campaign likes to pretend that the senator is personally heading the VP selection committee, John McCain has actually tapped Arthur Culvahouse<\/a>, who was Reagan’s White House counsel from March 1987 to January 1989, to head the search.<\/p>\n * CNN<\/a>: “Former President Jimmy Carter said Sunday that in a little more than a week, when the last Democratic primary voters weigh in, it will be time for Hillary Clinton to ‘give it up.'”<\/p>\n * A Rasmussen poll shows Clinton leading McCain in Kentucky<\/a> in a general-election match-up, while Obama, not surprisingly, loses badly.<\/p>\n * If you missed Obama’s speech at Wesleyan<\/a> yesterday, it was a real gem.<\/p>\n
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\n* Speaking of battleground states, a Rasmussen poll shows Obama pulling ahead of McCain in New Hampshire<\/a>, 48% to 43%. In April, a similar poll showed McCain beating Obama by double digits.<\/p>\n