Completely Unnecessary

From Mark Halperin at Time’s The Page:

• Michigan’s 156 delegates would be split 50-50 between Clinton and Obama.
• Florida’s existing delegates would be seated at the Denver convention—but with half a vote each. That would give Clinton a net gain of about 19 elected delegates.
• The two states’ superdelegates would then be able to vote in Denver, likely netting Clinton a few more delegates.

Everyone’s now looking to Obama, since this is about the best deal Clinton’s going to (should) get.

Last week I was saying that it was too soon for everyone to be clamouring about the end of this primary race. I may have changed my mind on that. It’s after March 9, right?

(Confidential to Barack Obama: please help everyone stop embarrassing themselves on a daily basis.)

[via Wonkette]

Vaguely Related

• Clinton on Florida and Michigan: Totes ‘Fair’
• The Endorsement You’ve Been Waiting For*

Everyone else: ‘Not so much.’

I really hope Clinton realized how ridiculous this sounded as she said it:

Mrs. Clinton, in an appearance before a Hispanic business group in Washington Wednesday morning, argued that the delegates should be seated based on the results of the Michigan and Florida primaries, which were held in January in violation of Democratic Party rules.
…
“The results of those primaries were fair and should be honored,” she told the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce here.

Okay, for those of you who haven’t been following this saga: Florida and Michigan wanted to move their primaries earlier in the year, probably to garner some of the huge amounts of cash that visiting and commercialing politicians leave in their wake.

The DNC told them, ‘don’t do that, or we will strip you of your delegates.’ They did it, and the DNC stripped them of their ability to put up delegates for a candidate at the nominating convention.

Since we were punishing them, all the other (major) candidates removed their names from the Michigan ballot. Except for Clinton. And no one campaigned in Florida. Kind of:

Clinton won after all the Democratic candidates agreed not to campaign in either state because they violated the party rules. Clinton, who flew into Florida on primary eve but did not hold a public rally, tried to argue that Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois had violated the pledge by airing a national ad campaign that also showed on Florida television stations.

Not to mention that this same AP article is mostly about Howard Ickes, now a Clinton campaign delegate counter, arguing that the two states’ delegates should be put back into play. Ickes is one of the DNC members that voted to strip the delegates in the first place.

To be fair, Clinton went on to say yesterday that an alternative to seating the ‘fair’ delegates would be to hold a new primary, probably by mail-in ballot. This is being discussed, but no one seems to think it’ll really work. And is it really fair, they’ve never done a mail-in vote, etc., etc.

Basically, this is really stuffed up. Whether or not Clinton saw this coming months ago - because that Michigan thing is hard to justify - she can’t really think that Obama’s going to say, ‘Oh sure, let’s seat the delegates from a state in which I was not even a choice.’

Clinton won Michigan 55% to ‘Uncommitted’s’ 40% - and you have to assume that many Obama and Edwards supporters just stayed home that day.

Her campaign (and campaign strategy) gets more ludicrous every day. I mean, does no one read these things out loud before talking?

Links:
Clinton and Obama Split Over Florida and Michigan [NYT]
Clinton Aide Changes Mich., Fla. Stance [AP/MyWay]
Fla. Presidential Primary Re-Do Unlikely [AP]

Vaguely Related

• Possible Florida and Michigan Delegates Plan
• The Endorsement You’ve Been Waiting For*

I’ve written what has proved to be a bizarrely popular post about the divided nature of the Mississippi primary - which, as I noted, resulted in a very small division of delegates in Obama’s favor. I thought we should revisit it, given that there are now additional numbers.

The NYT today, perhaps picking up on the sudden injection of race into the debate via Ferraro’s comments, broke down those numbers along racial lines:

The Tuesday primary in Mississippi, a state where the electorate has historically been racially polarized, generated one of the most divided votes. Mrs. Clinton received 8 percent of the black vote, and Mr. Obama received 26 percent of the white vote, according to exit polls by Edison/Mitofsky for The Associated Press and television networks.

The article ends with a further racial breakdown of - well, I don’t think we can say key states (Delaware?) - so, let’s just say ones that the AP had numbers for:

Race has been a defining feature of the primary contests. Beyond Mississippi, Mrs. Clinton was backed by 5 percent of black voters in Illinois, Mr. Obama’s home state; 8 percent in Wisconsin, where black voters made up 8 percent of the Democratic primary vote; 9 percent in Delaware; 10 percent in Virginia; and 11 percent in Georgia, all states Mr. Obama won.

Mr. Obama’s 26 percent support among whites in Tuesday’s primary was one of his worst performances with this group.

He had previously been supported by 16 percent of white voters in Arkansas; 23 percent in Florida, where the candidates did not actively campaign; 24 percent in South Carolina, where John Edwards was still competing; and 25 percent in Alabama.

In the middle, we find this nugget:

Mrs. Clinton’s advisers said Wednesday that they were concerned about her standing among blacks, once a core constituency for her and her husband, but that they also believed that black support for Mr. Obama was a foregone conclusion at this point.

They said they were wrestling with ways to make inroads with blacks in Pennsylvania, which holds the next primary, on April 22.

Does this seem odd? Clearly the AP/NYT have had these numbers for a while, but haven’t brought them to the forefront until now - at least I haven’t seen them gracing the front page of the NYT (I’m sure you can do a google search and find them).

It seems as though the sharp division in Mississippi, coupled with Ferraro’s comments, have allowed the media to ’suddenly’ address this issue. But, as you’ll notice, the larger issue of race is still pretty well tied to the ‘numbers’ and not a deeper discussion, which I think argues somewhat the point I was making yesterday.

Does anyone think this whole debate over which Democrat is getting the black and white Democratic votes is a bit strange? It’s not being addressed in the context of the general at all, which seems to be the more important issue. Will either/both of these candidates be able to hold on to the Democratic base? I think the answer is clearly yes.

This sudden race thing seems more like the press has finally been released on something they’ve been chewing the bit on for some time…

I think we’re going to be seeing more of it now. And that is not a good thing. We need to see less gender in this race, and we certainly don’t need discussion about Obama race. How about some issues, campaigns and media?

Vaguely Related

• NYT’s Clinton Must-Read
• Clinton, the Pundits and the Math

I’m really struck by the differences in this evening’s Mississippi primary. The delegate count wound up being about the same: 17 Obama to Clinton’s 14 or so (there appear to be some yet to be decided).

But looking at the county by county returns, they paint a picture of a state deeply divided on the two candidates.

Tate County (in the northwest) returned 51% for Obama, 46% for Clinton. And that’s as close as it got.

A couple of other counties in the southeast of the state returned similar, though not as close, results. The vast majority of counties, however, reported sharp divisions between the two candidates.

Hinds County, home to Jackson, gave Obama 80% to Clinton’s 18%. Pro-Clinton counties returned similar results - especially the northeast (though they had a much smaller number of voters). Percentages for one candidate in the 60 and 70 percents are the most common, with quite a few counties going to 80% in favor of their candidate (largely Obama).

The delegate count remains fairly stable after this primary (though numbers seem to be changing in California, and Obama appears to have come out ahead in Texas). But, it’s hard not to look at these differences in Mississippi and wonder what’s going on…

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• The Endorsement You’ve Been Waiting For*
• Obama Reponds to Clinton Vice-Presidental Chatter

Geraldine Ferraro’s back in the news, which is bad news for Camp Clinton.

Yesterday’s money quote:

“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position,” she continued. “And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”

There are, of course, parts of her response that are not included in the media’s quote selection. I believe she’s partly attempting to describe (albeit extremely poorly) the fact that ideas about gender and politics are still very stagnant. Let’s look for example at the headline that The Daily Breeze used in its Ferraro piece:

Geraldine Ferraro lets her emotions do the talking

Do we think that would have been the headline if she had been a man?

So, after some kerfluffle between the two campaigns, Ferraro went back to talk to The Daily Breeze. And, the new quote everyone’s talking about:

“Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says let’s address reality and the problems we’re facing in this world, you’re accused of being racist, so you have to shut up,” Ferraro said. “Racism works in two different directions. I really think they’re attacking me because I’m white. How’s that?”

This one can’t be defended quite as much - she was one stronger ground with the gender arguments.

Look, I’m no fan of Ferraro, but, differently worded (especially without the ‘I’m white’ bit), she’s not that far off.

It seems to me - from the hundreds of bookmarks tagged ‘HRC’ and ‘gender’ that I’ve collected over the last few months - that the media treats the issue of gender far differently from that of race.

Not that Obama is getting a free pass because he’s African-American, but that it’s far more acceptable to hit hard on gender than race. For instance, everyone thinks the ‘Hussein’ jabs are slimy (they are), but there’s been far less outcry about the constant discussion (not to mention derision) of Clinton’s appearance. Both of these things are used to undermine the fitness of the candidates to serve as president, yet they are not viewed as equally bad.

American attitudes as they are, the media can’t touch Obama with a ten-foot pole on issues of race. (Remember how well those “is he black enough?” stories went over?) But no one seems to complain about stories questioning HRC’s femininity (or lack thereof), her tearing up (and does this ‘humanize’ her enough to be president or does it hurt her?), and a host of other issues all tied to her gender.

I have no way to test this empirically, but it seems that the media is confronted with two spectacular stories: the first female and the first African-American viable candidates. Since they aren’t allowed to play with the latter, they’re having a field day with the first.

If she loses, Camp Clinton is going to try to spin it as media attacks that lost her the primaries. It won’t be – it’ll be the shoddy campaign she’s put together and the ‘help’ of frenemies like Ferraro.

But there’s no question in my mind that the media is far more willing to throw around gendered terms and stories than ones concerning race. Even if they get spit back in their faces – like some of the comments Chris Matthews has made – the backlash is way less than it’d be if they were racial. It’s the difference between, ‘Booo! You’re a bastard’ and ‘Well, that’s not very nice, is it?’

Ugg, rereading those two quotes it does sound like Ferraro’s just like, ‘Everyone loves him because he’s black.’ But I think she was trying to make a larger point concerning gender and HRC’s experience in the media.

(But… confidential to Hillary Clinton: you need to take her aside and make her stop harming you).

Update: TPM has video of Ferraro on FoxNews tonight. They say she didn’t do Clinton any favors. I think it’s pretty neutral; she makes some good points and then offers to raise money for Obama should he be the nominee… and then threatens him.

Vaguely Related

• NYT’s Clinton Must-Read
• Life Without Hillary Clinton

And he responded in just about the best possible (and worst for her) fashion.

Not only did he do the ‘…but I’m in first place’ line, but he also asked why Clinton would want him as veep if she feels he’s inexperienced:

Now, they have been spending the last two, three weeks — you remember that advertisement with the phone call, telling everybody, getting all the generals to say well we’re not sure he’s ready, “I’m ready on day one, he may not be ready yet.”

But I don’t understand. If I’m not ready, how is it that you think I should be such a great vice president? Do you understand that?

TPM Election Central has the full transcript, as well as the video, which I’m posting below. It’s worth a watch - the man is good.

In other news: Oh, Spitzy…

Update: The Swamp is reporting that Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson has told reporters that Clinton views Obama as unqualified to be veep:

Later, Wolfson added that what Clinton views as Obama’s failure to pass that test would disqualify him as a vice presidential pick, since a vice president must be prepared to step into the presidency at a moment’s notice.

“Sen. Clinton will not choose any candidate who has not at the time of choosing passed the national security threshold, period,” Wolfson said.

But, he added, she wouldn’t rule it out if Obama picks up enough readiness between now and the Convention.

To recap:

Hillary Clinton, 5 March: a joint ticket ‘may be where this headed.’

Bill Clinton, 8 March: a Clinton-Obama ticket would be ‘an almost unstoppable force.’

Barack Obama, 10 March: If I’m so unqualified, why do you want me as veep?

Howard Wolfson, 10 March: Obama is unqualified and is not being considered. (Unless, of course, he crests some undefined readiness threshold in the next four-odd months.)

What? If everyone from the Clinton camp could just stop talking and take a day to regroup that’d be awesome.

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• The Endorsement You’ve Been Waiting For*

I like Hillary Clinton a lot, but you’ve got to be kidding me. On Saturday, Bill Clinton started talking up the idea of Obama as Clinton’s veep, and today they’re both playing this angle.

Reuters’ Thomas Ferraro breaks down possible reasons for this new, unlikely proposition:

In talking up a joint ticket, the Clintons may be seeking the upper hand, attempting to put her in consideration for the top of the ticket when she so far has failed to win the votes necessary to assure that she would face Republican presidential candidate John McCain in the November election.

The maneuver may also be aimed at countering an image in voters’ minds of Obama as presidential material and at helping restore an aura of inevitability as the party’s nominee that Clinton had early in the campaign but lost.

A political maneuver is a political maneuver, but why on Earth would Obama consider this? He’s 100 delegates ahead. Obama’s already categorically denied that’s going to happen.

If Clinton were in the lead this might come off a bit better. A little condescending, but fair enough. Instead, it looks rather silly for the person behind in the delegate count to give the nod to the person currently beating them.

It’s going to be bad for her if Obama turns around and says, ‘Well, since the majority of voters thus far prefer me, why don’t you hang onto my coattails?’

Links:
Bill Clinton: Hillary-Obama Ticket Would Be “Almost Unstoppable Force” [TPM ElectionCentral]
Clinton Team Pushes Obama As Running Mate [Yahoo News/Reuters]
Barack Obama Rejects VP Idea [LA Times]

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Cleveland.com (via TPM Election Central) has reported large numbers of Republicans crossing over to vote in the Democratic primary, for reasons - as they put it - ‘both pure and sinister.’

I thought I’d await the numbers from the TX caucus by doing a completely unscientific comparison of 2004 and 2008.

Guess what I found out? Math is hard! I would so not listen to what I’m about to say because I’m sure it’s really, really wrong. (But I think it’s right.)

Okay. The OH counties that went strongest for Bush in 2004 were Auglaize, Putnam, Van Wert, Mercer and Holmes.

Holmes County (fun fact: has the world’s largest concentration of Amish settlements!), for example, gave 76% of their 11165-odd votes to Bush in 2004. Today, 2553 votes went to Dems (65%-41% to Clinton) and 3536 to Republicans (51%-38% to McCain)

Holmes has 18,206 registered voters, which means - if I’ve crunched the numbers right - they got about 61% turnout for the general in 2004 and about 33% turnout today for the primaries. Given that I don’t know exactly what’s gone on with those numbers of registereds since 2004, I’m going to just call that half. It might be skewing it a bit, but I’m not a pollster, so whatevs.

If Holmes County’s percentages remained the same, you’d expect 4234 Republican votes and 1855 Democratic votes in the primaries today. In reality, only 3536 people voted Republican and 2553 voted for Democrats.

To put that in perspective, though only about half of the Holmes county residents that voted in 2004 voted in the primary today, the Democrats got only about 100 less votes than John Kerry garnered in the 2004 general. Dems got 42% of the vote today, Republicans got 58%. That’s an 18% switch from 2004.

Strange.

Let’s do another county now that I’ve got the hang of this - I started out dividing by the total number of residents (I was like, ‘15%, wtf?’).

I’m choosing Auglaize because it has a larger population and it’s a weird word (fun fact: it’s either a bastardization of the French for ‘clay water’ (yum!) or a Native American word for ‘fallen timbers’).

Alright, about 70% of Auglaize’s voters turned out in 2004, giving George Bush a 74% margin over John Kerry. Today, about 30.4% of their population voted. So, about 43.5% of those who voted in 2004, voted today in 2008, less than half.

[It's time for another beer...]

Again, if we’re going with the percentages from 2004, the Republicans should have had 7385 voters today, the Dems with 2562. In reality, the Democrats got a total of 4954 voters today (49.7%), while the Republicans received 5018 votes (51.3%). Another substantial switch to the Dems - they got 22.7% more primary voters than general election voters in 2004.

I’m going to make a chart:

[Wow. Glad I got that second beer. My favorite part was when it WP decided to delete the two rows of data and I got to recode the whole thing.]

Both counties have percentage splits similar to the statewide results (57% Clinton to 42% Obama). Auglaize’s Obama percentage is a little low (39%), but CNN hasn’t released their full county by county results yet, so I’m not sure why. [Since that's what I chose for 2004, I feel I should be consistent.]

So, something is clearly going on. Cleveland.com has testimonials about some voters just liking Obama or Clinton better than McCain and changing parties for their preferred candidate. There could also be Republicans voting for the candidate they see as weaker against McCain.

As I said, this is pretty unscientific. I should really be comparing it to the 2004 primaries, but a) I can’t find the data for that (if you can, email me) and b) even if I could, Kerry had pretty much wrapped everything up at that point. It’s a different kind of race when there are motivating factors to get people out to the polls. So, with John McCain as the huge front runner, perhaps all these numbers simply represent a larger number of Dems turning out for their own primary and Republicans staying home.

22.7% is a big swing though, I’d be my hat that some of those D votes came from Republicans. Let’s just hope they’re in it for the long haul.

To sum up, if my numbers are right (and again… jesus), it appears there was some crossover today, at least in counties that went strongly Republican in 2004. What that means in terms of a strengthening of the Democratic base or attempted sabotage on the part of Republicans, I’ll leave to the people who are actually getting paid for this sort of thing.

Aww, this is how I spend my free time.

Links:
2004 Ohio Election Results by County [CNN]
2008 Primary Results [CNN]

Vaguely Related

• Clinton v. Obama - Who Cares?
• Obama as Vice President?

Interestingly, TPM is reporting that Obama’s campaign has sued to keep open polls in Cuyahoga and Franklin counties.

I don’t know much about Cuyahoga, but I”d have guessed that Franklin (Columbus) would lean heavily towards Obama.

And they must be doing even better than expected there because they’re already winning Franklin (according to CNN), even without the injunction.

Vaguely Related

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• The Endorsement You’ve Been Waiting For*

What’s that old adage about a seed of truth in every joke?

Joe Scarborough manages to grow an entire tree in this video.

[I'm shamelessly just copying Wonkette posts at this point because I has no teevees for watching...]

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