Irish Trojan in Tennessee

Rendell's at it again

By Brendan Loy

You may have heard that Ed Rendell made some controversial remarks about Barack Obama and some voters' readiness, or lack thereof, for a black president. I just thought it would be worth noting that this sort of thing isn't a first for Rendell. He has a history of not having very much faith in the American people when it comes to their potential reactions to barrier-breaking candidates. I vividly remember the controversy -- and the wonderful New York Post headline, "DEM BIG STIRS VEEP FLAP" -- that he caused when he commented in 2000, during Al Gore's vice-presidential selection process, that: "I don't think anyone can calculate the effect of having a Jew on the ticket. If Joe Lieberman was Episcopalian, I think he'd almost be a slam dunk." Two days later, Gore picked Lieberman, and the rest is history. Say what you will about Senator Joe, but I don't think I've ever heard anyone contend that his Jewishness cost Gore the presidency.

P.S. These days, the far more controversial portion of Rendell's 2000 comments, among his fellow Democrats at least, would be his statement that Lieberman is "maybe the finest person in politics." Heh. You don't hear too many Dems saying that anymore...

Obama leads national popular vote

By Brendan Loy

Assuming for the sake of argument that the "national popular vote" means something in the context of a state-by-state, district-by-district fight for the nomination -- and I'm not at all sure it does, but the Hillary folks will certainly argue that it does if such an argument suits their spin -- it's interesting to note that, even if you count Florida and Michigan, and even if you ignore the caucus states that don't report popular-vote totals, Obama is winning the popular vote.

Of course, it's totally absurd to count Michigan, since Obama wasn't even on the ballot there, and both campaigns agreed in advance that it didn't count and they wouldn't compete there. Same goes for Florida, except for the ballot thing, so counting the Sunshine State is pretty suspect, too. Furthermore, the only fair way to accurately reflect the national popular-vote totals is to try and somehow estimate the votes in those caucus states, as ObamaIsWinning.com is doing; otherwise you are just completely ignoring Iowa, Nevada, Washington and Maine, all of which were (unlike FL and MI) actually contested by both candidates.

So really, Obama's legitimate lead is actually much bigger than the 9,942,375 to 9,860,138 that you get if you count FL & MI and ignore IA, NV, WA and ME. Still, he's ahead no matter how you slice it, and that counts for something. I think. Sort of.

Even a broken clock...

By Brendan Loy

Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we have official confirmation that the Wisconsin-as-Hillary's-mini-firewall meme, first predicted by yours truly in my Monday post "Wednesday's CW today," has become, well, Wednesday's CW.

I wrote on Monday that, as the "growing media consensus that Hillary's in trouble and March 4 might not be able to save her" collides with the reality of an Obama Beltway sweep, the result would be that Wisconsin would become "a pre-March 4 'firewall' for Hillary." I added, "Maybe [the MSM and her superdelegates] won't demand that she win Wisconsin, but if she loses badly (again)," she'll be in trouble.

Well, here what the AP's Scott Bauer has to say, under the headline "Clinton Scrambles to Contest Wisconsin":

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is moving belatedly to make a contest of next Tuesday's [Wisconsin] Democratic presidential primary. ...

Clinton hasn't conceded the 74 delegates at stake even though she has already begun campaigning for the larger delegate prizes offered in Texas and Ohio on March 4. Her advisers say the New York senator may not win Wisconsin but can't afford another of the lopsided defeats she suffered in three mid-Atlantic primaries Tuesday. ...

Scrambling to prevent an Obama runaway, Clinton plans to spend three days in the state. On Tuesday, she squeezed in three satellite TV interviews with Milwaukee, Madison and Green Bay stations amid seven interviews with Texas and Ohio stations. Former President Clinton arrives on Thursday.

A new Clinton TV ad begun Wednesday asks why Obama hasn't joined her in accepting an invitation to debate at Marquette University...

So there you have it. The Irish Trojan: your source for occasionally-correct election predictions and media-CW prophesies! ;)

In less obnoxiously self-referential election news, Politico's Ben Smith says Obama is winning the spin war over whether the superdelegates should be lumped in with the pledged delegates as an undifferentiated mass in the media's delegate counts. (Answer: no.) But Hillary's camp isn't conceding the point, not by a long shot. Says communications director Howard Wolfson:

We are not making distinctions between certain kinds of delegates. We don’t make distinctions between delegates that are chosen by millions of voters in a primary or tens of thousands of voters in a caucus. We don’t make a distinction between elected officials.

Heh. I love the blatant dishonesty of the statement, "We don't make distinctions between [primaries and caucuses]." I wish someone had replied, "Of course you do, Howard! You've done it consistently throughout the last several weeks, and in fact, you're doing it right now, under the guise of denying it!" It takes a truly artful liar to lie about the very words he is saying, even as he says them. These Billary people really make dishonesty an artform.

Alas, they aren't going to quit with this delegate-count-obfuscation business, and even if Smith is right that Obama is gaining ground in the delegate-count spin war, the "total count" is still going to keep carrying a fair amount of weight -- as Team Billary obviously recognizes when it sets a "target" of being within 25 total delegates (pledged and unpledged) of Obama after March 4.

Of course, they're setting that goal because it should be a pretty easy one to exceed -- unless Obama can even out the superdelegate numbers in the mean time, which, as I mentioned in my P.S. earlier, would really help with the perceptions game in the event of an inconclusive situation when March 5 dawns. And this Clintonian spin tactic is precisely why.

UPDATE: More on Wisconsin:

The Clinton campaign has coaxed Teresa Vilmain (left), who earned high marks for running her Iowa operation, down from the wilds outside of Madison to run her suddenly-rejuvenated Wisconsin operation, we're told.

Early on, it looked like Hillary Clinton might effectively concede Wisconsin's Feb. 19 contest to Barack Obama. But her schedule released late last night shows an apparent change of heart...

(Hat tip: Politico.)

P.R. governor backs Obama

By Brendan Loy

Last week, in a much-discussed article about the final stop on the Democratic election calendar -- the Puerto Rico caucuses, on June 7 -- Michael Barone argued that the island's 63 delegates (actually 55, plus 8 supers) will probably be distributed in an effectively winner-take-all manner, and thus could prove incredibly important if Clinton and Obama are still locked in a close delegate battle at that point. Barone argues that, although proportional allocation of pledged delegates is a universal requirement under national Democratic Party rules, such a concept is "alien to highly competitive Puerto Rican politics," and therefore, in past years, "the dominant figure in Puerto Rico identifying with the Democratic Party has seen to it that his faction gets all the territory’s delegates."

I don't know anything about Puerto Rican politics, but as I stated yesterday in comments, I think Barone will probably be proven wrong about this. Precedent from prior years is relatively meaningless in the current context, as there hasn't been a down-to-the-wire delegate battle in many years, so there hasn't been a reason for anyone to challenge any Puerto Rican party shenanigans that may have occurred. Whatever the island's Democratic power-brokers might try to pull off, I can't imagine the national party allowing its presidential nomination to be decided -- over the loud, vociferous, and absolutely correct objections of the loser -- on the basis of blatant territorial rule-breaking. So I have to believe that any effort to manufactuer a 55-0 win for either candidate will be nipped in the bud. (The actual, official rules of Puerto Rican delegate selection can be found at The Green Papers. Needless to say, they are not winner-take-all.)

That said, whether Barone is right or wrong, even a proportional battle over 55 delegates at the very end of the calendar certainly could be important -- and, as such, today's Obama endorsement by Puerto Rico's governor strikes me as pretty significant.

And if, by chance, Barone is right, then it's really significant.

Too good to be true

By Brendan Loy

Is it really possible that Bill Clinton actually said to Bill Richardson -- in reference to Richardson's refusal to endorse Hillary -- “Isn’t two Cabinet posts enough?”

Color me skeptical. I'd love to know what the sourcing is on the report where the quote first appeared. Like the allegation that Paul Wolfowitz said the Iraq War was "all about oil" (subsequently corrected and deleted), this is one of those quotes that's so deliciously wonderful, so perfect, so neatly encapsulating what everybody in the Beltway secretly (or not-so-secretly) thinks about Bill Clinton -- that he's a presumptuous, insufferable egomaniac who considers himself God's gift to the Democratic Party and believes that everybody in the known universe "owes" him -- I just can't believe it's actually true.

Obama on the verge

By Brendan Loy

If you want to know where the Democratic race stands right now, do not pass go, do not collect $200, just head straight over to TPM Café and read FlyOnTheWall's latest post. I was going to quote excerpts from it, but then I realized I'd end up blockquoting the whole thing. Just go read it already. :)

(Also read his follow-up comment. Money quote: "I expect the superdelegates to coalesce [around Obama] remarkably quickly after March 4" -- even if Hillary wins reasonably big in Texas and Ohio.)

Oh, and if you're still worried about Hillary's potential superdelegate shenanigans, you might want to read this, too. It'll get you all fired up, if you're an Obama supporter -- or a supporter of small-d democracy in general, or for that matter, truth, justice, the American way, etc. :) But Fly's math and logic are persuasive: it appears unlikely that Hilldog can even get the pledged-delegate count close enough to make such shenanigans plausible.

IMHO, the only way Hillary wins this nomination now is if, under the increased media and public scrutiny that comes with being the clear-cut frontrunner, Obama seriously stumbles in the next three weeks. He and his campaign have been so disciplined and on-message to date, it seems unlikely he'll commit an unforced error (knock on wood), so really, it's all about the debates. She's got two chances to trip him up. All he has to do is not fall flat on his face, and he'll be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States. Which is pretty damn remarkable.

P.S. Fly predicts that Obama will be rolling out a bunch of superdelegate endorsements over the next three weeks. I hope that's true. Given the media's unholy obsession with the grossly misleading "total delegate count" -- lumping the pledges and the supers together into an undifferentiated mass -- it would help Obama immensely in the perceptions game if he can pull as close to even in the superdelegate count as possible before March 4. That way, even if Hillary wins big in Texas and Ohio (which, frankly, I doubt will happen; I think Giuliani syndrome is going to take hold between now and then, again barring an Obama gaffe), Obama will still be able to maintain a sizable, obvious lead in both delegate counts: the one that actually ought to matter (pledged delegates) and the one that the media is obsessed with (total delegates). The less ambiguity about who's "ahead," the better Obama's chances to wrap this thing up.

Hillary Clinton's bleak delegate math

By Brendan Loy

Does Obama already have a pledged-delegate majority effectively wrapped up? MSNBC's Howard Fineman says both campaigns think so, as Josh Marshall explains:

[T]he gist of [Fineman's analysis] was that both sides agree that it's highly unlikely that Clinton can end up with more pledged delegates than Barack Obama. And the issue now is how close she can keep the margin.

If she can keep it within a couple dozen delegates, he argued, it would be credible to try to make up the margin with super delegates. On the other hand, if Obama's ahead by 100 or 200, the pressure against trying to make up the margin with non-elected delegates would just be too great.

Sounds about right. Here's the clip: