Presidential election may be up for grabs

[Edward Campbell]

I agree that Americans and other assorted Phillistines will hold out for gridiron football but real men play Rugby!

:argument:

 

[Old Sweat]

Indeed. Rugby requires a fair degree of mental and physical dexterity as shown by the ability to swill beer and sing dirty songs at the same time.

 

[a_majoor]

Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120718359261185135.html?mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks

Hoover's Heirs
April 3, 2008

Democrats may not be able to agree on a Presidential nominee, but at least they're united on one thing: The ghost of Herbert Hoover now stalks the land.

Senator Chuck Schumer – you had already guessed that – kicked off the revival last month on the Senate floor, claiming that the Bush Administration's policy was "Let the economy sink" and "We heard that from Herbert Hoover."

A week later, Mr. Schumer returned to his history lesson in a press release claiming that "this President is beginning to resemble Herbert Hoover in his hands-off approach."

Hillary Clinton joined the seance next, tentatively at first. On March 18, she said that "nobody likes to make comparisons" to the Great Depression, while noting that her colleague Mr. Schumer was doing it anyway. Five days later, Mr. Schumer was back at it on the Sunday talk circuit, echoing Representative Marcy Kaptur's (D., Ohio) claim that "we have the most anemic job growth since Herbert Hoover."

By last week, Mrs. Clinton was in full Ghostbusters mode, claiming that John McCain's speech on the housing problem "sounds remarkably like Herbert Hoover, and I don't think that's good economic policy."

No, Senator, it surely isn't. Around our offices, we're still recovering from the fact that Hoover was the last Presidential candidate we've endorsed. We've been trashing Hoovernomics ever since. The issue this year, however, is who is really pursuing the Hoover model.

To hear Mr. Schumer and his fellow-traveling columnists tell it, Hoover's great policy blunder was to do nothing, all the while insisting that everything was fine. But the problem with Hoover's economic policy isn't that it was passive but that it was actively destructive.

In 1930, he signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, setting off a wave of protectionist retaliation that undid the globalization of the preceding decades and did far more harm to the world economy than the stock-market crash ever did. Two years later, amid a bad recession, he undid the Calvin Coolidge-Andrew Mellon tax cuts, raising the top marginal income-tax rate to 63% from 25%. The recession became a Depression.

Now, since we're talking Hoover, which Presidential candidate has a similar agenda of protectionism and tax increases? Hmmm.

Oh, that's right. Just the other day, one of the candidates for President was saying she'd withdraw from Nafta if the Mexicans didn't do what she demanded, and she wants "a pause" in free trade. She also wants to repeal the Bush tax cuts, more than doubling the rate on dividends back to 39.6% from 15%.

Her Democratic opponent agrees with her, except that he'd raise taxes even more, including by eliminating the $102,000 cap on income subject to the 6.2% payroll tax (12.4% when you include employers), and raising the capital gains tax to at least 25%, and maybe even 28%, from 15%. Add up all of Barack Obama's tax increases and his proposals would get entirely too close to Hoover's top marginal rate of 63%.

Maybe we should be afraid of Hoover's ghost.

 

[CougarKing]

US Senator and former Presidential race candidate John Edwards says no to VP possibility.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/trailhead/archive/2008/04/04/accepting-his-fate.aspx?GT1=38001

Accepting His Fate
By Chadwick Matlin

John Edwards has finally given up on the presidency. Even as he was standing behind a podium in New Orleans announcing his withdrawal in late January, we didn’t really believe he was done. Remember, this is the same guy who mounted a failed campaign to be the Democratic nominee in 2004, went along for a failed vice presidential ride, and got back on the saddle for a failed campaign in 2008. Moreover, after he fell on his face in New Hampshire this year, he kept on begging for the country’s vote like a spurned teenage lover. When a politician that determined to become president claims he’s dropping out of the race, it’s hard to take his words at face value.

But now we’re sure that he’s ready to slink away from the bustle and grind of electoral politics. After months of not endorsing either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, Edwards said yesterday that he wouldn’t accept a vice presidential slot on either candidate’s ticket. After a rocky road with John Kerry in 2004, Edwards seems to have finally acknowledged what the American people have been trying to tell him all along: They don’t want him to be president.

This is the culmination of a rough few months for Edwards. He abstained from leveraging his superdelegate star power for either candidate; his Iowa delegates deserted him once he dropped out of the race; and neither of the candidates has paid much lip-service to his poverty agenda. Now he’s putting the kibosh on his last chance to get back in the game—before anyone even asked him to play. If he doesn’t reinject himself into the conversation now he’ll be as dated as an episode of Temptation Island.

While he rattled off moribund stump speeches between New Hampshire and his withdrawal, we sat Edwards down on the Freud sofa and psychoanalyzed his candidacy. At the time, there were five stages to his grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. His recent no-VP comments show that he’s finally reached the acceptance stage. He knows that the only way he’ll be in the Oval Office is as an invited guest.

But just because he’s done with the campaign trail doesn’t mean Edwards is done with politics. Hillary Clinton announced that she wants a Cabinet-level “poverty czar” in her administration—a position probably created with Edwards’ endorsement in mind. If Hillary doesn’t sweet-talk her way into the White House, Edwards can always emulate a certain former vice president and become a Poverty Gore rather than a poverty czar. What Al did for the environment John can do for the poor. Hell, if Gore’s current status is any indication, more people will want Edwards to be president when he isn’t trying to become one.

 

[Yrys]

John Cleese offers to write for Barack Obama

Monty Python comedian John Cleese is to offer his services as a speechwriter to Barack Obama if he wins the Democratic nomination to become US president.
Cleese, who lives in California, told the Western Daily Press newspaper that his jokes could help the Illinois senator get into the White House."I am due to come to
Europe in November but I may be tied up until then because if Barack Obama gets the nomination I'm going to offer my services to him as a speechwriter because I
think he is a brilliant man," the 68-year-old said.

"I live in California now and only come back to England in May or June when my personal assistant tells me it is safe to do so," he added. "I moved here for health
reasons because I get terrible chest infections during the English winter, sometimes two a winter, and I have suffered from diverticulitis."

Cleese shot to international fame in the 1970s as a member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. In 1987, he recorded a party political broadcast for the SDP-Liberal
Alliance, the previous incarnation of the Liberal Democrats.

Link

 

[CougarKing]

In the same way that one cannot deny the influence of "racial identity" politics, perhaps the same can be said of religious group politics, although candidates have to keep the issue of religion within a context of an increasingly secular society.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24117505

NYT: Candidates battle for Catholic votes

All three contenders hope to parlay pope's visit into November support
By Robin Toner
The New York Times
updated 8:04 p.m. PT, Mon., April. 14, 2008
WASHINGTON - Many years have passed since the Democratic Party was as much a part of American Catholic identity as weekly Mass and parochial school. But it still came as a shock to many Democrats to lose the Catholic vote, a key group in must-win states like Ohio, in the 2004 presidential election.

It is an experience they are determined not to repeat.

The presidential candidates are in the middle of an escalating battle for Catholic voters — most immediately between Senators Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary, but also between the two parties as they look ahead to the general election. This struggle is an important part of the backdrop for Pope Benedict XVI’s trip to the United States starting Tuesday, which has drawn gestures of respect from all of the presidential contenders.

There is widespread agreement that American Catholic voters are far more diverse than monolithic. Even so, both the Clinton and the Obama campaigns have hired Catholic outreach directors, deployed an army of high-profile Catholic surrogates testifying on their behalf and created mailings that highlight their commitment to Catholic social teachings on economic justice and the common good.

Democrats opening up about faith
Dismayed at losing so many Catholic and other religious voters to the Republicans in 2004, Democrats talk far more often, and more comfortably, about their values and the importance of their own faith these days.

Essentially, they have tried to broaden the definition of “values” issues beyond abortion rights, on which they disagree with the teachings of the Catholic Church and many religious conservatives. Mrs. Clinton, for example, spoke recently about the economy and the needs of working families to a crowd of more than 2,000 at Mercyhurst, a Catholic college in Erie, Pa. The college and the candidate went ahead with the event despite the objections of the local bishop, who argued that a Catholic institution should reflect the church’s “pro-life stance” on abortion.

On Sunday, the Democratic candidates appeared separately at a forum at Messiah College in Grantham, Pa., for a televised discussion of poverty, health care, energy prices and the rest of the party’s policy agenda as moral and spiritual issues. (The forum also offered Mr. Obama a chance to note that he had once attended Catholic school, and Mrs. Clinton a chance to praise the Vatican as “the first carbon-neutral state in the world.”)


Clintons have enjoyed Catholic support
Mrs. Clinton, a Methodist, carried the Catholic vote overwhelmingly in Ohio, Texas and several other major states that have held primaries and caucuses this year, according to surveys of voters leaving the polls; she hopes to do so again in Pennsylvania, which holds its primary next week. (Aides say she is particularly popular among nuns.) In an open letter to Pennsylvania Catholics, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., two children of Robert F. Kennedy, wrote, “Catholics have a partner in Hillary Clinton, one who will work to advance the common good of all Pennsylvanians and all Americans.”


Burns Strider, senior adviser and director of faith outreach for the Clinton campaign, said: “There’s no grand clandestine or secret message or formula here. It’s just a matter of middle-class and working-class people whose values match up very well with Senator Clinton’s.”


Bill Clinton carried the Catholic vote in 1992 and 1996. Some analysts say that considerable loyalty remains to the “Clinton brand,” notably on bread-and-butter issues like health care. The Obama campaign is acutely sensitive to the notion that their candidate is vulnerable among these voters; some of Mr. Obama’s allies argue that it makes little sense to even think of Catholics as a voting bloc, given the huge differences among them.

Even so, on Friday, the Obama campaign unveiled its national advisory council of prominent Catholics, including elected officials, theologians, academics, nuns and social advocates. On a conference call, Representative Patrick J. Murphy — who represents Bucks County, Pa., and prefaced his remarks by noting that he was St. Anselm’s Altar Boy of the Year in 1987 — said that Mr. Obama spoke “to the better angels in all of us.”

Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, another high-profile Catholic supporting Mr. Obama, noted: “I don’t agree with him on some issues. We disagree on abortion.” But Mr. Casey said he believed that Mr. Obama, as president, would advocate for “the least, the last and the lost.”


McCain the ‘full package’?
Republicans said their party raised its share of Catholic voters from 37 percent in the 1996 presidential election to 52 percent in 2004, part of their overall success in wooing and mobilizing church-going voters. They vow to hold them this time.

“We’re going to devote substantial resources to winning the Catholic vote,” said Frank Donatelli, deputy chairman of the Republican National Committee. “I think the natural home of Catholics is the Republican Party.”

The campaign of Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, recently rolled out his National Catholics for McCain Committee, with Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, as a co-chairman.

Mr. Brownback’s chief of staff, Rob Wasinger, said Mr. McCain was “the full package” for Catholics, with his opposition to abortion and his support for overhauling immigration laws, a major issue for Hispanic Catholics. Against this backdrop, the pope’s words and gestures will be scrutinized not just by the faithful and the theologians, but also by political professionals in both parties.

“The Republicans are just hoping and praying he’ll say something about abortion and gay marriage, and the Democrats are terrified he will,” said the Rev. Thomas Reese, a senior fellow and political scientist at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University. “But at the United Nations, he will also say a lot of things to the left of Hillary and Obama.”


A diverse, powerful voting bloc
In fact, some conservatives worry that the war in Iraq, opposed by the Catholic Church from its inception, is hurting the Republican Party among Catholic voters — just as it is with other independent and swing voters.

“There’s one big question mark hanging over the Catholic vote, and that’s the Iraq war,” said Deal Hudson, an informal adviser to Mr. McCain and a longtime adviser to President Bush on Catholic matters.

Catholic voters are hardly monolithic, either in their demographics or in their political philosophy. They range from upscale suburbanites to first-generation working-class Hispanics. The church itself has teachings that, taken as a whole, do not fit neatly into either party — often to the left on poverty, health care and economic justice, for example, and to the right on abortion and embryonic stem-cell research.

But Catholics play enough of a role as a swing vote to draw the intense focus of political strategists. Catholics were a reliable part of the urban, New Deal coalition for many years but trended Republican in the 1970s and 1980s, becoming an important element of the so-called Reagan Democrats. After swinging back to the Democrats in the early 1990s, and then voting 53 percent to 37 percent for Mr. Clinton in 1996, they voted narrowly for Al Gore in 2000 but then returned to the Republicans in 2004.

That was a difficult year for the Democrats in several respects. Their nominee, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, was himself a Catholic, but his support for abortion rights drew the ire of some conservative bishops who challenged his right to receive communion. After that election, Democrats went through soul-searching about the way they approached Catholic and other religious voters.


‘Overlapping demographics’
Whoever ends up with the Democratic nomination, Pennsylvania is proving to be an important testing ground for both candidates’ ability to speak to these voters. G. Terry Madonna, a political scientist and pollster at Franklin & Marshall, estimated that “somewhere between 32 and 36 percent” of the voters in the primary would be Catholic.


Theories abound for why Mr. Obama runs less strongly in that group, including the possibility that he has a evangelical speaking style that, as Mr. Reese put it, is “just not what they hear in their churches.”

But Mr. Madonna noted that there were “overlapping demographics” at work — the group includes a lot of older and blue-collar workers — that tended to explain Mrs. Clinton’s advantage.

This article, With Faith in the Spotlight, Candidates Battle for Catholic Votes, originally appeared in the New York Times.


Copyright © 2008 The New York Times

 

[geo]

Was listening to the news last night... looks like Obama has put his foot in it and has burnt his bridges in advance of the Pensylvania primaries.....

 

[tomahawk6]

Agreed the next primary is in Pennsylvania 7 days away.A recent poll showed him down as much as 20 points to Hillary but the poll that counts is on election day.If the primary tallies bear out that poll then there will be alot of soul searching by the super d's. I think Obama is just too liberal to get elected. The worrying thing for the party elite is that if he is the nominee and he goes down to a huge defeat ,that could also drag down alot of congress folks and senators. A ripple effect that the dem's dont want thats for sure.

 

[geo]

Hillary's liability is Bill while Obama's liability is his mouth....... Neither appears to know when to shut up.

The Super Delegates are gonna have to watch and listen real well if they are gonna chose a candidate that will be palatable to the public

 

[Edward Campbell]

Agreed the next primary is in Pennsylvania 7 days away.A recent poll showed him down as much as 20 points to Hillary but the poll that counts is on election day.If the primary tallies bear out that poll then there will be alot of soul searching by the super d's. I think Obama is just too liberal to get elected. The worrying thing for the party elite is that if he is the nominee and he goes down to a huge defeat ,that could also drag down alot of congress folks and senators. A ripple effect that the dem's dont want thats for sure.

The longer and more difficult the Democratic Party's primary campaigns are the better for John McCain who, in my opinion, will be friendlier to Canada than either Clinton or Obama.

 

[geo]

heh... Populist candidates do have their drawbacks.

 

[Long in the tooth]

John McCain is the only leader who can either exit Iraq or keep troops there with any integrity.  I wouldn't trust the dems to run a lemonade stand, let alone abrogate NAFTA.

 

[geo]

Watched a little bit of CNN & other news reports last night.  They drew exerts from Hilary's position on NAFTA.
She's pointing and waving a pretty big finger our way for how "cavalier" we are with the NAFTA rules WRT Agricultural imports to Canada - talking about how our thumbing our nose to the US is costing Americans jobs.... She does not talk about same said thumbing of rules done by Americans for agriculture, cattle and lumber.....

talk about a pot calling a kettle black

 

[TCBF]

- And the Canadian Left - who adore Billary - are strangely silent on this issue.

 

[a_majoor]

More analysis. Given the egos and personalities involved, this really may become a war to the knofe:

http://strongconservative.blogspot.com/2008/04/hillary-obama-down-to-wire.html

April 21, 2008
Hillary-Obama Down to the Wire

Tomorrow is basically do or die for Hillary, and many think she's already history. If Hillary wins PA tomorrow, she'll likely fight on into June. But if Obama pulls out a win, the pressure may be overwhelming for her to pull out of the race so that the Dems can unite against John McCain. The latest polls according to RCP, however, show Hillary with a approximately a 6 point lead on Barack Obama.

The Hillary Clinton campaign expressed confidence today that they would prevail tomorrow. Drudge reports that internal Clinton polling is showing an 11 point lead over Obama. "It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of how much," a senior campaign source said Monday morning.(Ibid)

Obama's biggest advantage at present may be his coffers, which are overflowing. Clinton's campaign, on the other hand, is in debt having already received personal loans from Hillary herself.

I still believe that Hillary would sacrifice Chelsea and Bill on an altar to win the nomination. She will not go quietly into the night, that is for sure. Obama's verbal gaffes have been mounting as the campaign progresses. He has given the GOP plenty of ammunition on Rev. Wright who Obama never really distanced himself from, William Ayers and Obama which Obama has not really come clean on, his elitist attitude towards suburban and rural Americans, his wife's comments on never being proud of her country until her husband won a few primaries, Obama's radical anti-gun and pro-abortion views, his refusal to say the pledge of allegiance, and his willingness to meet with tyrants and dictators in Iran, Syria, Cuba and elsewhere despite refusing to come on to Fox News.

Well, Obama will have to answer those questions eventually. But it is certainly refreshing and enjoyable to watch the Dems pummel each other over who is more socialist, more of an appeaser, more defeatist, more protectionist, and more willing to raise taxes.

Join Operation Chaos!

 

[CougarKing]

Interesting...former US Sec. of State Colin Powell praises Obama. This is interesting, coming from a man who served in and strongly supported both Bush administrations. Wasn't he the chair of the JCS in the first Bush administration?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/11/us/politics/11campaig.../qsiMxMuZdwFiw4Lq97A

GARY, Ind. — Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell may have contributed $2,300 to the Republican presidential campaign of Senator John McCain, but he is reserving his strongest praise for the Democratic candidacy of Senator Barack Obama.

In a television interview that was broadcast Thursday, Mr. Powell said he “admired” how Mr. Obama handled a speech last month on race. He also said he agreed with much of what Mr. Obama had said about the controversial sermons of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.

“I thought that Senator Obama handled the issue well,” Mr. Powell told ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “He didn’t abandon the minister that brought him closer to his faith, but at the same time he deplored the kinds of statements that the Reverend Wright had made.”

Mr. Powell noted that he was friends with all three presidential candidates. While he said he had not decided whom to support, he said he was impressed by Mr. Obama’s ability to “learn quickly.”

“With Senator Obama, he didn’t have a lot of experience running a presidential campaign, did he?” Mr. Powell said. “But he seems to know how to organize a task, and he seems to know how to apply resources to a problem at hand.”

Mr. Obama said that he had not spoken to Mr. Powell recently, but that he valued his remarks.

“He’s somebody whose counsel I value,” Mr. Obama told the Chicago television stations WGN and CLTV, “and I’m grateful for his recognition that we can have differences of opinion — or be part of different political parties — but that we can still acknowledge the service we are rendering to the country.”

 

[tomahawk6]

Powell is a private citizen and if he wants to support an uber socialist like Obama he is free to do so. Obama is the most extreme person we have ever had run for President and as such is unelectable because the country is more to the center. Bill Clinton got 8 years in the White House because he was able to capture the center. Obama has the most liberal voting record in Congress which would make it very hard in the general for him to claim he is a centerist. He has $1.4 trillion in new spending. He wants to spend 350b on aid to Africa. I suspect that he will gut the defense budget and he will probably create a Dept of Peace to siphon off defense funding.Then of course there will be the global warming legislation that will see income redistribution. Of course with a McCain victory you will see much the same legislation but with some budget discipline and I dont see McCain gutting the defense budget.

 

[a_majoor]

A look at the Clinton campaign:

http://rightwingliberal.wordpress.com/2008/04/23/is-2008-really-senator-clintons-only-chance-nope/

Is 2008 really Senator Clinton’s only chance? Nope.

Much of the scuttlebutt surrounding the nomination battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama deals with the motives of the former.  Conventional wisdom holds that this is Clinton’s “one shot” at the White House, and thus she is desperately going all-in, party be damned.  While, I certainly believe the Clintons would put their own interests over those of their party, I don’t by the CW here.  Senator Clinton could easily run again in 2012 - depending upon what happens this fall.

The two pillars of the Clinton-can’t-run-anymore argument are her age, and her performance up to now this year, neither of which stand up to serious scrutiny.  Let’s start with age: in 2012, Senator Clinton will be 65.  Compared to Obama (who would be 51 on Election Day 2012), that would certainly seem old.  However, if John McCain were the incumbent, he would be 75.  Clinton would hardly have to worry about the age factor in comparison (her would-be primary opponents might try it, though).

A corollary of this is the notion that Clinton (and her husband) represent “the past,” and such “past” would even be further back by 2012.  Again, should Obama be nominated and elected this year, he could reshape the party’s image and thus make Clinton what the Canadians would call “yesterday’s woman.”  However, going up against a McCain Administration, the “past” will likely look pretty good to a lot of Democrats.

The second argument (her supposedly divisive campaign) only looks bad if Obama manages to win in November.  That is no longer a sure thing (if it ever was), and Clinton has been able to highlight Obama’s vulnerabilities.  Would the Democrats have preferred the GOP find and exploit them?  Would that have given them less credibility?  Perhaps it would have to many Democrats, but not to the independents and would-be “Obamacans” who made Obama seem so much more electable in February, but who have practically disappeared since.

Should Obama lose to McCain, Clinton can subtly remind the Democrats that she warned them for months this spring and early summer, only to be ignored.  Don’t underestimate the impact of that; after all, even being half-right turned Jose Canseco into a somewhat respectable whistleblower.

Furthermore, if the numbers we’re seeing from Massachusetts or New Jersey are accurate, they show that Obama could very well wipe out all of the gains Bill Clinton built in the northeast (which was the most competitive region in the country until Clinton swept it in 1992 and 1996).  If McCain manages to enter the White House on the votes of Pennsylvanians, New Jerseyans, or (admittedly a stretch) Bostonians, the Clinton case for 2012 would practically write itself.

Notice that the entire Clinton case, however, is dependent upon one thing - Obama losing the general election.  This isn’t just because of the difficulty of unseating an incumbent from within the party.  With an Obama victory, the Democrats would move past the Clinton years.  However, an Obama loss would mean that no Democrat not named Clinton will have won a Presidential election in over thirty years.  More than a few Democrats will start to wonder if moving on is really the wise thing to do.

Lest we forget, John McCain himself has benefitted tremendously from his position (real, then somewhat imagined) as President Bush’s foil within the party - and this after Bush won two terms.  Now, the dynamic of an Obama Administration would work much more to Clinton’s disadvantage, but again, should Obama lose, millions of rueful Democrats will wonder - what if we had nominated her?

So Senator Clinton can run in 2012.  This leads to another question, though: why is she persisting in running now, when the odds seem low and so many Democrats think she is hurting Obama?

The answer is this: Senator Clinton can run in 2012, but only against McCain.  Thus she has no personal interest in seeing Obama win.  Given that so many are willing to assume the Clintons would sabotage Obama in the general election, is it so hard to believe she would maintain a nomination campaign that - at worst - would do this anyway, while at the same time making her case that he is unelectable and keeping open the possibility (however slim) that she could win the nomination in Denver?

In fact, Clinton has no downside from continuing the campaign.  An Obama loss would transform her image from hopeless politician to high-minded prophet, while should Obama win, any damage she does to him would be rendered moot.  Senator Clinton is staying in the race because she believes she can win - in 2008 or 2012.

 

[CougarKing]

Yet another look at the Clinton campaign's chances in the wake of her own victory from last Tuesday; perhaps she can win this nomination so that she and her party can lose to McCain later, since either T6 or Mr. Campbell said, IIRC, that Clinton was less electable for the national election than either Obama or McCain.  :blotto:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24276527/

Clinton's Pa. win comes with cash prize
Camp claims $3.5 million donated following victory over Obama

The Associated Press
updated 1:23 p.m. PT, Wed., April. 23, 2008

WASHINGTON - Turns out Hillary Rodham Clinton 's victory Tuesday came with a cash prize.

In the hours after winning Pennsylvania's Democratic presidential primary, Clinton's campaign said she raised $3.5 million.

By midday Wednesday, the campaign estimated the total haul at $10 million raised online in the 24 hours since Pennsylvania's polls closed, and claimed it was her best fundraising day ever.

Clinton, desperate to fight on against a flush Barack Obama, could certainly use the money.

On Sunday, the campaign revealed that at the end of March it had just over $9 million in the bank and $10 million in debt. Obama had more than $40 million cash on hand at the start of April.

Clinton still trails Obama
Obama has been able to tap a formidable network of donors that now total more than 1.3 million. Clinton has a smaller donor base and only recently has begun to expand it through Internet solicitation. But a greater share of Clinton's donors have contributed the maximum $2,300 to the primary allowed by law. That means that to stay within sight of Obama, she has to find new donors — not an easy task this late in a campaign.

The money disparity has been evident. Obama spent more than $11 million in broadcast television ads in Pennsylvania to Clinton's nearly $5 million. It was the most Obama had spent in any single contest so far.

Both campaigns now hurl themselves into Indiana and North Carolina, which hold primaries May 6. Both campaigns already have been spending money in the state, buying ads, setting up field operations and traveling.

But, as he has in contest after contest, Obama is outspending Clinton on television commercials in those states by a ratio of 2-1. He has been on the air in both states since March 28, spending more than $2 million so far in Indiana and nearly $2 million in North Carolina, according to TNS Media Intelligence/Campaign Media Analysis Group, a political ad tracking firm.

Clinton went up with ads April 3 in North Carolina and April 8 in Indiana.

But if Clinton plans to stay in the contest through June 3, May will be an expensive proposition.

A week after May 6, Nebraska and West Virginia hold primaries. A week later, Kentucky and Oregon have contests.

Money matters
Obama's campaign wealth has allowed him to already look ahead to Oregon, which holds its primary May 20. Obama has spent more than $100,000 on television ads in Oregon, where residents have until April 29 to register as new voters. To add to the pressure, Oregon voters cast their votes by mail and ballots will begin arriving in households after May 2.

Election night successes have stimulated donors before. Clinton took in $1 million online during the 24 hours following her New Hampshire primary victory in January. She also raised more than $6 million in the three days following the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday elections, when more than 20 states were in contention.

Still, every time Clinton hits a high water mark in fundraising, Obama manages to best her. She recorded a high of $35 million in February only to see Obama hit a record of $55 million. Last month, bound to be slow after such a fundraising frenzy in February, generated a respectable $20 million for Clinton. Obama raised twice as much.


While Clinton has been outspent on ads, both have spent similar amounts on travel. In March, both posted about $5 million in travel expenses. Clinton has to foot the bill for two active surrogates — her husband, the former president, and their daughter Chelsea — have maintained breakneck schedules campaigning for her.

Obama has forced Clinton to chase him with spending, forcing her hand early by eroding her leads in public opinion polls. Clinton once led in Indiana, but Obama now holds a narrow edge in some polls. Depending on how well she can parlay Tuesday's victory into cash, some Democratic Party strategists believe Clinton may have to shift her money out of North Carolina and into Indiana in hopes of staving off two losses in one day.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.

 

[Edward Campbell]

A couple of recent articles in the Globe and Mail and in the National Post make the same point: race maters and it could matter more in the main event.

As I read the data:

• Few working class white males will agree to vote for a black man – but relatively few working class white males were going to vote Democrat anyway. They may be registered Democrats; they may vote Democrat for the Senate, House of Representatives, State House or state legislature but they are Reagan Democrats and will vote for John McCain in November.

• If, and it’s still a Big IF, Clinton manages to win the nomination few blacks will vote for her because it will be assumed that she used guile to overturn the will of the people and stole the nomination from Obama.

Thus, the Democrats have the most to lose by selecting Clinton but that does not prevent her from playing the race card again.

For those of us who prefer John McCain – in my case because I think he will be the best choice for Canada’s interests – the never-ending campaign is a godsend. Clinton is playing dirty and some of the dirt is bound to stick. But everyone can see she’s practicing dirty politics and so her negatives, already above 50% and already greater than those of McCain and Obama combined, continue to rise. The Democrats get either a charismatic, attractive but damaged Obama or a thoroughly disliked Clinton: both are ‘good’ for John McCain.

I still think Obama is the harder to beat. He is charismatic, he is attractive, he is new, Americans, broadly, do want change  - from George Bush, to be sure, but from the Clintons, too. I think Clinton’s anti-Obama campaign can and will be turned against her (if she becomes the nominee) because whenever she compared Obama to herself, to her advantage, McCain can say “Obama was, indeed, a bad choice but I’m the best choice in that situation.”


Edit: typo