Irish Trojan in Tennessee

And so it begins

By Brendan Loy

Slowly but surely, the superdelegates are abandoning Hillary Clinton. It's been a slow trickle, but Obama has gained a net 27 supers in the last two weeks, according to the Associated Press. "Given where the race is at right now, I think it's very important for us to play a role around bringing the party together around the candidate that people have chosen," says one former Clinton super.

That sentiment will spread very, very rapidly unless Hillary's "firewall" works. Presumably, if she loses either Texas or Ohio, she'll drop out (as Bill suggested). But suppose she wins both states by narrow margins -- perhaps edging Obama in the Texas popular vote but losing the delegate count -- and decides to press on despite still being way behind by every measure (pledged delegates, total delegates, popular vote, states won, etc.). If that happens, I think there's no way the superdelegates will let this thing go all the way to April 22 (when Pennsylvania votes). The trickle will become a flash flood, the numbers will become totally lopsided, and Hillary will be hounded out of the race very quickly. Worst case, Mississippi on March 11 (the last pre-PA primary) becomes Obama's final coronation, and Hillary concedes that night or the next day.

The only thing Hillary can do to stop the bleeding is win, and win big.

P.S. For Hillary, there's a big advantage to bowing out gracefully, of course: if Obama loses in November, she immediately becomes the prohibitive favorite for 2012 -- perhaps truly inevitable this time. (This creates an interesting situation on both sides of the aisle, with Clinton and Romney both at least half-rooting for their own party's candidate to lose, so they can get another shot in four years.)

Sampson out at Indiana

By Brendan Loy

Indiana head coach Kelvin Sampson is walking away from Hoosierland -- a $750,000 walk of shame.

Dan Dakich is IU's interim head coach. It remains to be seen whether anything will come of the threatened mutiny by the team's players.

Rice: no dice

By Brendan Loy

Condoleezza Rice says she won't be running for veep.

Of course, they always say that. (For example...) But in Condi's case, I tend to actually believe it.

Speaking of potential vice presidential runningmates, today I stumbled upon this Obama veepstakes post from Marc Ambinder. It's a week old, but it's interesting. Just keep scrolling through the comments.

UT goes to war with News-Sentinel

By Brendan Loy

On the eve of perhaps the most important college-basketball game in the history of the state of Tennessee, tomorrow night's #1 vs. #2 showdown between Memphis and UT, the sports world here in Knoxville is, as you'd expect, abuzz with talk about... football.

Wait. What?

Well, it seems Knoxville News-Sentinel sports editor John Adams has created a mighty kerfuffle with his commentary on the Tennessee football team's recent discipline problems. On Tuesday, Adams wrote that Phil Fulmer should be fired for allowing his team to become "the college equivalent of the Cincinnati Bengals." He harshly criticized Fulmer for responding to punter Britton Colquitt's arrest by suspending him for five games, rather than dismissing him from the team. "Keep in mind this wasn’t Colquitt’s first brush with the law. Or second. Or third," Adams wrote. "How could Fulmer not dismiss Colquitt from the team after what could be fifth alcohol-related offense? Answer: Colquitt is a starter."

Oh, snap!

But Fulmer didn't take this lying down. Oh, hell no. He's a man! He's 57! So, in today's paper, at the very top of the sports section, there is a column by, ahem, guest columnist Phillip Fulmer. Explaining that the importance of the issues raised in Adams's column "compels me to do something I have never done in my career - respond directly in writing to a negative column in the newspaper," Fulmer writes:

Mr. Adams has never sat next to me in a prospect's living room, looking his mother or grandmother in the eyes and promising to treat the young man like he was my own child - giving him tough love when necessary and an opportunity to straighten up when that's in order. It is a promise I take seriously and will never abandon to please any columnist.

Ouch! He goes on:

Election Question

By dcl

There are a fair number of District attorneys, Public Defenders, Judges, and Law Clerks in this country. Wouldn't it make sense to close court for a day and put one of them at every polling place across the country as a public voter advocate that any voter could ask for help? Or should campaigns come up with their own lawyer for every polling place to serve the same purpose? Or would it just be silly to send out a legion of lawyers every election? Obviously it would be best if the lawyers were completely neutral, though of course nobody is neutral. But would such a thing help make elections more free or more fair?

Positive signs for Obama in Texas

By Brendan Loy

This chart seems like excellent news for Obama. So does this article, and so do these numbers. And then there's Kos's prediction:

Today I talked to a reporter working on a piece on the Obama movement, who had just returned from Texas to see the Obama ground game close up. I asked if it lived up to the hype. He said that he had gone down there cynical, not expecting much, but had been utterly blown away. His piece will be out next week I think, and I can't wait to read the details. But bottom line is that Obama has run a volunteer-driven ground game while the Clintons thought they'd run an advertising air war.

There's a reason Obama is outperforming the polls and even my most optimistic vote predictions -- his volunteer-driven ground game is blowing whatever meager operation Clinton has completely out of the water.

The numbers are moving dramatically in Obama's direction right now. He's going to win Texas, and win it comfortably. Here's the thing -- if the Texas election were today, Obama would likely win it by 10 points, regardless what the polls say. His ground operation is that good.

By the time this thing finally rolls around, expect Wisconsin-like numbers. Obama's victory will be complete.

In an unrelated story, yesterday I asked for a world map of the Democrats Abroad results, and -- hurrah! -- somebody made one.

Also, following up on another post from yesterday: Mayor Bloomberg is backing off his "fraud" claim.

Hillary Clinton's strange debate tactics

By Brendan Loy

I wrote last night that Hillary Clinton seemingly arrived at yesterday's debate not having firmly chosen a side in her campaign's internal debate about whether to go negative or stay positive. As a result, her performance was a strange mixture of politeness and nastiness that I suspect put off a lot of viewers (the "Hillary did better" media CW notwithstanding).

Pondering it some more this morning, I think what's even more puzzling is the specifics of her debate strategy (or lack thereof). When you really stop and think about which points she went negative on, and which points she stayed positive about, you're left wondering what on earth she was thinking. It's as if Mark Penn convinced her to take a couple of meaningless "gotcha" potshots, but forgot to mention that she also needed to aggressively and explicitly connecting her substantive, issue-based contrasts to her broader thematic attacks on Obama's qualifications. So basically, she went negative where she should have stayed positive, and stayed positive where she arguably should have gone negative.

Her two main barbs against Obama were both on utterly insubstantial non-issues: the "plagiarism" nonsense, and the embarrassing but monumentally unimportant fact than an Obama supporter blanked out during a live TV interview. (Does Hillary really want to get into what the candidates' supporters and surrogates say or don't say?) Meanwhile, on substantive issues -- stuff that actually matters -- she was gentle almost to the point of timidity. She drew some contrasts, yes, but she didn't try very hard to make those contrasts stick by explicitly tying them in with her campaign's big-picture themes: experience vs. inexperience, words vs. actions, etc.

Plagiarism?

By Brendan Loy

Sincerity you can Xerox:

Heh. (Hat tip: InstaAlthouse.)

UPDATE: But wait, there's more!

(Hat tip: Politico.)

P.S. She even plagiarized Tom Zbikowski! ;)

P.P.S. Is this a petty, childish line of attack, utterly devoid of substance? Yes! Should it be a non-issue? Yes! But it's Hillary's non-issue; she can't back away from it now.

Besides, she's the one who told us to "look at the YouTube." She said "it does raise questions." And she's right!