A lot of useful, interesting ideas have been expressed here and elsewhere regarding Sara Palin and this race. It is often times difficult to keep our biases at bay in such matters. As a lifelong Democrat and political junkie, my biases are strong. As a budding social scientist (Ph.D. candidate in International Studies), my desire to keep my biases out of it are also strong. And as a 43-year-old American, my desire (if not ability) to use the Force to avoid going over to the Dark Side, also strong, it is.
So this is my attempt to divide this campaign into the Good (optimism), the Bad (Pessimism) and the Ugly (things we don't want to admit to.)
According to First Read(http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/03/21/794670.aspx),
Bill Clinton said the following today in reference to a potential McCain v. Clinton matchup:
I think it would be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country. And people could actually ask themselves who is right on these issues, instead of all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics.
The clear implication is that Obama does not love his country. Or am I missing something? These guys don't know when to stop. This will not look good in light of the emerging Enough Already of Kicking Our Frontrunner When He's Down memes that are multiplying.
Update: Okay, Firstread has updated the report to include this:
Update: Bill Clinton spokesperson Matt McKenna clarifies the former president's comment: "Actually, as is indicated by the quote itself, President Clinton was talking about the need to talk about issues, rather than falsely questioning any candidate's patriotism.
He was lamenting that these kind of distractions 'always seems to intrude' on political campaigns. This consistent with his criticism of the 'politics of personal destruction,' which dates back 16 years."
This was not clear from the original but it could be a matter of Clinton just misspeaking a bit. The face that they clarified this so quickly would seem to support this more benign explanation.
Obama should choose and announce his veep now (assuming obviously it's not somehow technically against the rules.)
Before you ask me what I'm smoking, let me put forth the reasoning behind it.
First, Obama is in a problematic position because of the results of 3/4. Although he hasn't lost any of his pledged delegate lead over the last week, the losses on Tuesday ended his super delegate momentum and allowed the majority of them some breathing room. The remaining super delegates are much more likely to let this thing play out. And after Mississippi there will be nothing but talk of Pennsylvania, a state which favors Clinton. None of which means Obama won't come out on top in the end but he could certainly use an external shock between now and Pennsylvania to get those super delegates to come over to his side.
Choosing a VP would allow him to take charge and fight back at the same time. It would make the argument that Obama's in the driver seat. It would allow him to have his cake and eat it too by sticking a hardy shiv into Hillary without going negative. It would be a new and unusual political move. It would change the media narrative in the run-up to Pennsylvania.
It would give him an advocate who he gets to use against both HRC and McCain. Maybe that advocate would be a bulldog (Webb); maybe that advocate would have national security expertise to take on the current two-against-one he's getting from McCain and Hillary (Zinni, Webb, Clark); maybe that advocate would be from a battleground state (Kaine or Sebelius); maybe that advocate would be from a big, important state that HRC has won (Brown or Boxer); maybe that advocate would be an advocate for the working class (Brown, Feingold); maybe that advocate would be a female who would greatly help raise his electability against McCain(Sebelius or Boxer). There's obviously a lot of overlap and obviously a lot of pros and cons to be made about the above examples. And there are no doubt a lot of missing names. It's not intended to be comprehensive.
There are any number of ways a good veep pick could positively alter the media CW now. Of course, people would say it's a cocky, premature, insulting thing to do. It's certainly against tradition. Whatever. Unless it's against the rules, I say do it.
Not sure what to make of this but CBS' super delegate margin has dropped all the way down to 35. This indicates significant recent pro-Obama movement. Their count stands at 232 Hillary - 197 for Obama.
Here is the latest info from DCW (http://demconwatch.blogspot.com/2008/02/superdelegate-history-tracker.html) regarding super delegates:
Clinton's SD margin has dropped from 77.5 on 2/17 to 64 on 2/24 to 54 yesterday (2/28).
And this number is consistent (even a bit higher) than the other media keeping track of super delegates. AP has the margin at 50, CBS at 49 and CNN at 51.
Bottom line: we're seeing significant daily movement away from Hillary/toward Obama.
I have been keeping an eye on the super delegate data at DCW (http://demconwatch.blogspot.com/2008/01/superdelegate-list.html) since the afternoon of 2/12 and reporting back here occasionally on the movement.
Exec summary of this update: After a few days of relatively static data (when I last checked on 2/19, I didn't even bother updating the data as there had been such minor changes), Obama is again gaining. This is due presumably to his big wins in WI and Hawaii. Before Tuesday, his margin was about 71.5. Then yesterday it had fallen to 68.6 and today it stands at 65.4. It will be interesting to see what happens to this rate over the next few days.
I have been keeping an eye on the super delegate data at DCW since the afternoon of 2/12 and reporting back here occasionally on the movement.
Exec summary of this update: Obama continues to close the SD gap. Clinton's margin has dropped steadily from 86 on the afternoon of 2/12 to 80 that same evening, to 75 on the evening of 2/14 to 71.5 this morning (2/16). Generally, Clinton's SD numbers have risen modestly while Obama's have gone up quite a bit.
Methodology: For each date, I observed the SD numbers available at the DCW site. They list the SD estimates for 4 organizations: their own, CNN, CBS, and AP. I simply took their data for each, computed the margin, and averaged the margins.
Based on nothing more than a hunch, I decided to double check the data from DCW. As a community, we seem to have decided en masse that these are the best numbers and left it at that. I found some interesting discrepancies. First, when you check the actual MSM sites from the links listed at DCW, we get some different numbers even though the data was supposedly updated today.
This is from the DCW site (http://demconwatch.blogspot.com/2008/01/superdelegate-list.html):
Superdelegate Comparison
Candidate DCW CNN CBS AP
Clinton 226 223 211 243
Obama 135 131 137 156
Updated 2/12/2008
Now here is the real data from the 3 MSM websites:
Candidate CNN CBS AP
Clinton 234 210 242
Obama 156 141 160
Immediately we can see a few things. First, there are modest differences between the DCW data and that for CBS and the AP. DCW has CBS at 211-137, a margin of Clinton +74. CBS' website has it as 210-141, a margin of Clinton +69. Either this website hasn't actually been updated today or there has been some pro-Obama movement. It's a similar story for the AP. DCW has the AP at 243-156, a margin of Clinton +87. But the AP site puts it at 242-160, a margin of just 82. Again, either DCW has gotten something wrong or there has been a +5 move for Obama in less than one day.
The difference for CNN is stark; explanations here are harder to imagine. DCW pegs CNN at 223-131 for a margin of Clinton +92. It should be noted that this number itself has come down from over 100 as recently as about a week ago. But CNN's actual numbers are much different: 234-156, which is a margin of just 78. Obama has apparently narrowed the CNN gap by 14 in a very short period of time.
Lessons? #1: Let's keep an eye on these DCW #s. #2: This is further evidence of my snowball theory, which I have been pushing since before 2/5. This is just one more sign that the Obama snowball is rolling down the hill.
Folks, this thing is just about over. The dam is breaking and only our (understandable) twin fears of being seen as one-sided and/or repeating the mistakes of NH and elsewhere are preventing us from recognizing and pointing out the obvious. So I'm going to ask you to forget the minutia of pledged v. super delegates, MI and FL, brokered conventions, etc. Although these discussions are important, if this dam really is breaking, they will quickly cease to be.
In absolute terms, Super Tuesday was close. In relative terms, HRC got trounced. Her campaign strategy, in retrospect, was predicated on winning Super Tuesday by a large margin. She underperformed by at least 150 delegates. This was bound to have strongly negative consequences for her.
The following is a list of signs that the dam is breaking. We should continue to see these indicators increase in the near future as February marches on. To the extent that we don't, that will be evidence that HRC does still have some life in her.
1) She loses more states than she wins and by larger margins. This was certainly the case on 2/5 and it looks to continue through February. Even were she to pull off 3 victories in the remainder of February, that would still leave her with 6 losses, most likely by much larger margins. The chances of her winning Ohio and Texas by large enough margins to offset all of these other losses does not seem high and will likely decrease over the next few weeks as the losses accumulate. The MSM has never figured out the strategical importance of Obama's many one-sided victories on 2/5.
2) Financial struggles: she clearly wasn't planning on having to fight on after 2/5. Granted she raised a lot of money (apparently) online since 2/5 but it remains to be seen how well she will be able to continue as losses stack up in February.
3) She has plummeted on the prediction markets.
4) Relatively reliable pollsters, such as Survey USA, show her dropping. Just today two polls came out showing Obama way up in Virginia (http://www.raisingkaine.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=5563DF5342B7B779096A4DD214FE0A4A?diaryId=12756), her February firewall of sorts.
At 10:24 p.m. EST on 2/5 I sent the following twitter: "Cnn apparently entirely unaware that obama is winning a lot of states."
This serves to highlight and sum up my frustration with MSM coverage during and after Super Tuesday. The sad thing is that there wasn't much hyperbole involved in that message. CNN with all of its resources, including 'the best political team on TV', was unable to -- at any point in time as memory serves -- point out that Obama was trouncing Clinton in several contests across America, much less drill down for the implications. Had they been able to notice this fairly glaring trend and connect the dots, they might have been prepared later to more logically answer the question of who won the race. Hint: if the Clinton team was expected to win by +150 delegates on 2/5 and then they tied and then their campaign was reeling and the prediction markets had their 'stock' plummeting, then the Clinton team lost badly.
