Leaked pic of Obama in Somali Headdress shows Clinton Campaign at New Low
I personally found the picture of Barack in Somali headdress published on Drudge Report to be offensive.  Not that the content itself was disturbing, but the manner in which the Clintons attempted to use is smacks of pure desperation.  The subtext of the pic is that Obama is a Muslim and that should bother you.  Just to clarify, Obama is not a Muslim, but a Christian.  This picture, I believe, is going to blow up in Clinton’s face, with Democrats in droves condemning the Rovian tactic. If anything should drive the establishment to pressure Clinton to shut it down, this picture is it.  This does not assist the democratic cause or help them in their November push.  To me the campaign seems downright manic oscillating between the respectful posture in Thursday’s debate and the blazing rhetoric of this past weekend. It should be an interesting debate tomorrow night as Hillary is forced to defend these ugly tactics.
Clinton Campaign at a Tipping Point
The dominoes have begun to fall on the Clinton campaigns much ballyhooed superdelegate strategy as another key supporter has switched to the Obama camp. The New York Times is reporting that long time civil rights activist Rep. John Lewis of Georgia will be throwing his support behind Barack Obama instead of Clinton.
Since Obama’s sweep in last weeks Potomac primary, it has been assumed that he would head into the convention with a small, but important lead in pledged delegates.  With a 100 point lead in superdelegates (party leaders who don’t have to adhere to primary results when choosing a candidate) it was thought that Clinton could still eek out a win buy calling in the chits of these party loyalists.  The fear in the Obama camp and among supporters is that no matter  what happens between now and August, the backroom dealing would somehow put Clinton over the top, despite the will of the popular vote.   Â
Two key points  that should worry Clinton. Â
By citing his districts overwhelming support for Obama and that it would be wrong for him his vote to run counter their wishes, Lewis sends an important message.  One of the Democrats biggest problems in a prolonged battle is the notion that this contest could be decided by superdelegates, who could ignore the results of the primaries and install whichever candidate they wish as the nominee.  How can the party that has fought disenfranchisement for the past eight years put forth a nominee that doesn’t represent the will of the voters?  Do the Democrats really want to risk a street fight with the Republicans with illegitimacy being used as a dagger against them?  Obviously, if the superdelegates adhere to the voters wishes and vote consistent with primary results then Obama wins. Â
Lewis also cited the sense of movement and spirit in Obama’s campaign. Â All season long Clinton has trumpeted her “electability” as an important reason to choose her over Obama, but how can she make the case that she offers a better chance against John McCain if she can’t even defeat Barack Obama? Â Electability is a key issue and by citing the movement and spirit of Obama’s campaign Lewis is stating that he wants to cast his vote with a winner. Â Right now Obama enjoys the appearance of a winner more than Clinton. Â Â Â Â
There have been numerous defections in the past week, but none are as potentially ominous to Clinton as Lewis.  As a respected and influential member of the African American community his loss is particularly painful to the Clinton campaign and it sends a message to other superdelegates beginning to waver that it is okay to switch to Obama.  The more superdelegates switch to Obama’s side the greater will be the perception of his inevitability and the more other superdelegates will want to climb on board, lest they risk remaining aligned with the wrong candidate and one with little to offer politically come the Denver convention.
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Momentum is all about momentum, which itself is about the perception of momentum.Â
McCain Fears Obama
It seems that John McCain will do what he has to to pump up a Hillary Clinton nomination, sparing himself from having to face Barack Obama in the fall. Â With his nomination on the Republican side a near certainty, McCain has trained his focus on Obama as he hopes to tilt that race in Clinton’s favor. Â Yesterday the attacks began in earnest as the Arizona senator derided Obama’s soaring rhetoric for lacking specificity. Â Â
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 ”There’s going to come a time when we’re going to have to get into specifics.  I have not observed every speech he has given obviously, but they are singularly lacking in specifics…To encourage a country with only rhetoric rather than sound and proven ideas that trust in the strength and courage of free people is not a promise of hope, it is a platitude.”Â
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The attacks continued when McCain’s economic adviser, Kevin Hasset, alleged that Obama “plagiarized” Hillary Clinton’s economic stimulus package.  The wording was harsh.  The full text of the attack along with the Obama camp’s response can be found here.   McCain’s attacks hold little water as he has been painfully vague himself in his policy proposals.Â
Why is the Senator bothering to inject himself into this as yet undecided fight?   The polls consistently show that McCain runs stronger against Clinton than Obama by anywhere from 6-11 points.  Obama runs very strong among independents and some moderate Republicans, the same constituency that McCain is courting.  But McCain’s biggest fear is that the conservative wing of his party, jaded by what they see as liberal tendencies of their nominee, simply stays home in November.  With Hillary Clinton on the ballet this is far less likely as she is a most reviled figure in conservative circles and would surely drive Republican turnout in a way that Obama would not.  Â
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Obviously if the McCain camp sees Obama as a more formidable opponent than the Democratic establishment in the form of super delegates are seeing the same thing.  There is nothing this core group of Democratic loyalists want more than to take the White House this fall and if they believe Obama offers them the better shot you can be sure they’ll be abandoning Clinton in droves in the coming weeks. Â
McCain Supports Waterboarding. A Maverick No More.
Talk about hypocrisy. Republican nominee in waiting, John McCain had a golden opportunity today to illustrate how he values principal over ideology, and his willingness to thumb his nose at the Republican establishment to do what he knew was right. He failed.
McCain voted against an intelligence bill that would have banned waterboarding.  Wow. What happened to McCain’s own time in a Vietnamese prison camp? Does that experience get sold out in order to buy the conservative vote this November?
The Maverick, folks, is nothing but fiction.
Shakeup in Clinton Camp over Campaign’s Mismanagement
Much has been written about the mismanagement of the Clinton campaign from the poor use of funds to the positioning of Clinton as an incumbent type candidate.  The scapegoat for this is Patti Solis Doyle who stepped down after this weekend primary sweep by Barack Obama, ending a decade and a half of loyal service to Clinton.  A perusal of the comment section of my favorite blogs suggests that Clinton supporters are hailing the move as long overdue.   Â
In today’s Atlantic, Josh Green expounds on the fissures in Hillaryland that date back to her Sentate campaign in 2000:  Â
In one sense, Solis Doyle performed exactly as Hillary had hoped. Somewhat to my surprise, the long-standing fissures in Hillaryland never truly erupted when Clinton came under presidential-campaign pressure, certainly not the way they did in 2000. For all the chaos and disillusionment with Clinton’s performance so far inside the campaign, very little of it had leaked to the press until just recently. And despite her late start, Clinton did not lag on the money front: she has raised $175 million since winning her Senate seat in 2000, which should have been enough to fund a formidable campaign, even one that dragged on as long as this one has. That the money was so obviously mismanaged and Clinton was essentially left helpless to compete in last weekend’s primaries and caucuses is the reason Solis Doyle ultimately had to go. The problem, as before, was mismanagement — only this time against a worthy enough opponent that the cost was obvious to everyone.Â
Ten Blatant Lies Made By or About the Candidates
Here is a universal truth for you-politicians lie.  They lie because we let them. As a public we don’t really question much, we just passively accept what we are given as truth. They know this and just keep hauling it against the wall seeing what sticks. Whether they are whispers about lesbians, Muslims, tax hikes or crack pipes they know that if a notion drifts along the political wind long enough it will become fact and thus these poison darts will forever be a weapon in a campaign’s arsenal. Here are ten of the more infamous lies made by or about the candidates in the past few months: Read more
Momentum Back on Obama’s Side
Weekend sweep puts the wind at his back. Â Chesapeake Next.
 Like a baseball team winning it’s playoff home games, the Obama campaign did what it was supposed to this weekend taking 5 of 5 home games-Louisiana, Maine, Nebraska, the Virgin Islands, Washington State-and recapturing crucial momentum going into Chesapeake Tuesday. More important than just holding serve, Obama’s wins were decisive, allowing him to increase his lead among pledged delegates and make a convincing case to Super Delegates that his is the campaign best positioned to beat John McCain in the fall. To date Obama has won 19 of the 29 states thus far contested, a 2/3 margin. The next five contests are District of Colombia, Maryland, Virginia, Hawaii, and Wisconsin, all of which he is projected to win. From a delegate standpoint these wins would be offset by Clinton victories in Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, but the combination of ten straight victories coupled with the ability Obama has shown to win anywhere-north, south, east, and west-among whites, blacks, young, and old. This has to weigh heavily among Super Delegates who burn to return the White House to Democratic hands.As for Tuesday’s contests, current polls are showing Obama with commanding leads in both Maryland (53%-35%) and Virginia (53%-37%). Â
Delegate Count Makes Convention Battle a Near Certainty
It’s All About the Super Delegates
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The way the Delegate battle has gone so far it is almost impossible for the Democratic nomination to be decided before Denver’s convention.  With a total pool of 3253 potential delegates, 2025 needed to win the nomination, and roughly 900 won by each so far, there are 1400 remaining delegates to decided this contest.  This means that to wrap this up prior to the convention a candidate would need to win more than 1,100 of the remaining 1,400 delegates. An analysis of the map shows this as an impossibility. Â
The next 7 or 8 contests heavily favor Obama and Hillary should do well in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Â If just that much holds true it secures enough delegates on each side to push this to Denver. Â Then there are myriad other factors that makes a pre-convention decision unlikely. Â The party is split too closely between Obama and Clinton to expect a sudden 80% break in any one direction. Â Barring something crazy happening or some scandal breaking, for the first time in 30 years a primary is going to be decided at the convention. Â This one will be decided by the Super Delegates.Â
What is a Super Delegate anyway? Â Unlike regular delegates who are legally bound to vote as consistent with primary or caucus results, a Super Delegate can vote any way they please. Â Another way to refer to them would be as unpledged delegates. Â Super delegates are normally made up of current elected officeholders, former elected officeholders, current party officials, and former party officials. Â Their creation was an attempt to keep control of the nomination process in the hands of party officials rather than the primary process. Â
Who is winning among Super Delegates?
Currently there are 178 Super Delegates supporting Hillary Clinton, a list that includes:  Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Walter Mondale, Maxine Waters,  Marion Barry, Barney Frank, Dick Gephardt, Jon Corzine, Robert Menendez, Eliot Spitzer, Chuck Schumer, Terry McAuliffe, and Sheldon Silver.  A complete list can be found here. Â
Currently there are 90 Super Delegates that are supporting Barack Obama including:  Patrick Kennedy, Dick Durbin, Jesse Jackson Jr., Ted Kennedy, Deval Patrick, John Kerry, John Conyers, Tom Daschle, Patrick Leahy, and Rick Boucher.  The full list can be found here.
Conventions of recent vintage have been criticized as little more than four-day parties with scripted outcomes, but that hasn’t always been the case.  In 1976, Ronald Reagan battled President Ford all the way through the primaries.  Ford had just enough delegates to win entering the convention.  Reagan worked hard to woo some away; Ford worked equally hard to keep them.  Ultimately Ford won by a slender margin on the first ballot, but not without a ton of back room brokering.   Â
In 1952 it took three ballots for Adlai Stevenson to win the Democratic nomination.  Republicans went three ballots in 1948 to give Tom Dewey the nomination over Ohio Sen. Robert Taft.  Perhaps the most famous battled convention was in 1924 when Democrats went through 103 ballots over nine days in New York to settle on John W. Davis, a Wall Street lawyer and one-term congressman, ending the brutal duel between New York Gov. Al Smith and Californian William McAdoo, the two leading candidates.  Adding to the drams was that many delegates were Ku Klux Klan members, virulently opposed to Smith, A roman Catholic.  Davis–seen as someone above the fray who could help heal a party nearly torn to the seams–was chosen and ultimately lost the presidency to Calvin Coolidge.  Â
While 2008 might not be a return to those turbulent days, the coming months should bring political drama the likes of which has not been seen in years.  Â
The Anti-McCain Movement
They cite his Ideology, but conservatives really just don’t like him.
  The conventional wisdom is that conservatives oppose John McCain because they feel he is too liberal.  While he has staked out positions at odds with the conservative establishment in campaign finance reform, amnesty for immigrants, support for cap-and-trade, and opposition to the Bush tax cuts, he really has not strayed from the conservative line much more than George W. Bush - no child left behind, immigration reform, prescription drug benefit, farm subsidies, steel tarrifs - who is held close to the conservative heart (though not as much as he was).  The ideological argument just doesn’t make a ton of sense in explaining the animosity McCain’s own party feels for him.  More likely it is that they just don’t like the senator.  There are rumblings about McCain’s temperament that have been around for years and even questions of his mental fitness due in part to his years in a Vietnamese prison camp.  Many of these whispers, which have been spreading around the internet recently, have originated in conservative circles.  Conservatives have also never forgiven McCain for his behavior in the 2000 primary.  His references to Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell as agents of intolerance caused the evangelical wing to view him as an enemy and his television commercials comparing George W. Bush to Bill Clinton were widely hailed in his party.  Causing even greater distrust, though were McCain’s staunch opposition to the Bush tax cuts as tax cutting is the hallmark of the conservative agenda.  What does this all mean?  Well, if one looks a little deeper at McCain’s supposed “big night” last night they’ll see that most of his victories came in states that republicans tend to lose in the general election.  The so called “red states” went mainly to Mike Huckabee.  There is no way a republican can win in November without winning the south and with the widespread distrust of John McCain in those regions it seems very plausible that those voters might just stay home this fall.  If that happens we will be looking at a President Obama or a President Clinton.  It’s hard to imagine that is more preferable to republicans than a President McCain.Â
Obama Well Positioned for Stretch Run
To the shock of no one, the results of Super Tuesday on the Democratic side were inconclusive.  With the exception of Connecticut there were no big surprises.  Clinton hung on to Massachusetts, New Jersey, and California, helped in part by early voting that took place prior to Obama’s recent surge.  That he kept himself in the game and within a hundred delegates of Clinton has to be viewed as a victory by Obama’s campaign.   With his superior fund raising - Obama raised nearly a million a day last month, more than twice that of Clinton - and ability to spend time in individual states, gaining face time with voters the turf seems to be shifting towards Obama.  The longer the contest grinds on, the better positioned Obama becomes and one reason why his aids were claiming victory last night. Perhaps the evenings only real loser was Ted Kennedy whose endorsement was not enough to help Obama win his home state of Massachusetts or California where he campaigned vigorously for the candidate. Â
