Irish Trojan in Tennessee

Hillary throws Osama at Obama

By Brendan Loy

When I wrote last week about a possible backlash among late-deciding Pennsylvania voters against Hillary Clinton's all-negative-all-the-time "kitchen sink" strategy, it occurred to me -- although I didn't say it -- that a possible flaw in my theory was that Hillary would probably stop blanketing the state with negative ads in the final few days before the primary, precisely to prevent any such backlash.

Well, so much for that idea:

Admittedly, the ad doesn't explicitly mention Obama's name. But the implicit attack is pretty damn clear, and very much in keeping with the central argument of her campaign: that he isn't "ready from day one," whereas she is. The Obama camp's response:

When Senator Clinton voted with President Bush to authorize the war in Iraq, she made a tragically bad decision that diverted our military from the terrorists who attacked us, and allowed Osama bin Laden to escape and regenerate his terrorist network. It's ironic that she would borrow the President's tactics in her own campaign and invoke bin Laden to score political points.  We already have a President who plays the politics of fear, and we don't need another.

And then this:

I honestly don't know whether Hillary's endlessly negative frontal assault on her Democratic opponent's basic fitness for office will create a backlash. (Well, I know it's apparently created at least a backlash of one. But will Marty's feelings be mirrored by broad swaths of the electorate? That's the question.)

But one thing that's clear is that Hillary's people are not worried about a backlash. If they were, they wouldn't be running this ad now. They clearly believe their relentless negativity will have no adverse consequences for them whatsoever -- or at least that any such impact will be outweighed by the benefits in tearing down Obama. And they may very well be right.

1 day to go

By Brendan Loy

Mark Halperin calls today "The Last Monday Before the First Tuesday of the Rest of Our Lives." He is referring, of course, to tomorrow's Pennsylvania primary. The latest polls show Clinton with a lead in the high single digits to low double digits. I maintain that a double-digit win is necessary for Clinton to really claim an unalloyed "victory"; Obama "wins" if he can hold her margin under 5 points; and a Clinton margin of between 5 and 10 points is a murky gray area. Though, the state of the race at around 10:00 or 11:00 PM Eastern time probably matters at least as much as the actual final numbers, since the media usually decides its transitory "winners" and "losers" before bedtime on the East Coast.

Oh yeah, and, um, delegates. Those matter too.

One cautionary note to those who, like me, are hoping for a strong Obama showing. Don't put any stock in the leaked exit poll numbers. I'll publish the details tomorrow, but bottom line, when you look at New Hampshire, Super Tuesday and March 4, Obama does, on average, roughly 7 to 8 points worse in the actual, final results than in the leaked, unweighted exit polls. (And sometimes the discrepancy is 15 points or more!) So when Drudge announces the inevitable "SHOCK EXIT POLL" numbers late tomorrow afternoon that show a "DEAD HEAT" in Pennsylvania, you shouldn't get all excited -- and neither should the media. When Hillary ultimately trudges to an 8-point win, nobody should be surprised, nor should it be considered some sort of Clinton "comeback," for heaven's sake. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 21 times, shame on me.

UPDATE: Welcome, InstaPundit readers!

Here are the exit-poll details that I promised above.

P.S. Noam Scheiber writes:

Ben Smith makes a great point here. He says Obama's had such a rough stretch lately that it'll be almost impossible for Hillary to spin a single-digit win...into a victory. Expectations for Obama have fallen through the floor.

I certainly hope that's right, and from what I've read, the MSM seems to be sticking to its "Hillary must win big" guns for once (see, e.g., this AP article), rather than allowing the yea scenario to repeat itself.

Respect the world champion SoCal VoCals!

By Brendan Loy

Back in 2002, I griped in print that the Daily Trojan was ignoring the SoCal VoCals' newsworthy march to musical glory. (For the uninitiated, the VoCals are USC's premier a capella group, and I am a proud ex-groupie.) That year, alas, they fell just short of the International Championship of Collegiate A Capella finals. But six years and a world championship later, the VoCals are finally getting some front-page DT love.

Here's the article. Money quote: "It was absolutely beyond any of our wildest dreams," baritone Adam Hutchison said of the group's performance Saturday in New York City, which earned them the ICCA title (and a live appearance on the Today show Sunday morning).

The DT notes that the VoCals' winning set included Michael Buble's "Feeling Good," Singers Unlimited's "All the Things You Are" and Queen's "Somebody to Love." The A Capella Blog described it as "probably the best competition set I've ever seen," and the judges seemed to agree, giving it a whopping 454 out of a possible 465 points. For comparison purposes, the ICCA champs in 2007, 2006 and 2005 won with scores of 431, 422 and 372, respectively. Moreover, 454 points is the second-highest score of this entire ICCA season -- second only to the VoCals' own near-perfect 463 performing the same set in the semifinals. The 437 earned by Florida State University All-Night Yahtzee at the South semifinal is a distant third. (All-Night Yahtzee finished a very distant second at Saturday's final, with a 384.)

No cameras were allowed in the Lincoln Center for Saturday's final, but YouTube has video of the entire Western Regional semifinal, including the VoCals' 463-point set. So here, without further ado, are the three songs that brought home an ICCA world championship to USC:

Fight on, VoCals!

P.S. And speaking of "Fight on," here, in the interest of school spirit, is a video from this past fall of the VoCals performing their signature medley of the Alma Mater, Tusk, and Fight On, with a SoCal Spellout and some "UCLA SUCKS" thrown in good measure: