Is this a compliment? From CNN.
Easley, a popular two term governor who is unable to run for re-election because of term limits, also praised Clinton for her persistence.
"I've been accused of being persistent, and down right aggravating…but this lady right here makes Rocky Balboa look like a pansy," Easley said.
From NBC's Chuck Todd
One of the things that both Dem campaigns are always nervous about is defectors. In particular, Clinton is more vulnerable to this problem since she's the candidate that is trailing. Well, NBC News has learned that a major fundraiser for Hillary Clinton, former Amb. to Chile Gabriel Guerra-Mondragon is leaving the campaign to join up Barack Obama's campaign. Officially dubbed a "Hillraiser," Guerra-Mondragon raised nearly $500,000 for Clinton's campaign, according to some estimates. He has been informing people inside Clintonworld this week in what's been described as some tough conversations. A formal announcement of a role for Guerra-Mondragon on Obama's national finance committee will be made next week. Guerra-Mondragon was appointed Amb. to Chile by Pres. Clinton in '94 and served until '98.
Among the reasons for Guerra-Mondragon to defect, according to one informed source, was he was uneasy with the tone of the Clinton campaign and was beginning to worry about what this would mean for the general election.
It's unclear if this defection will lead to others; the Clinton camp has been particularly effective at getting folks to keep their powder dry. For Obama, this comes at a time when his campaign is trying to re-convince insiders that the math indicates he has the nomination virtually wrapped up. In addition, Guerra-Mondragon's defection could serve as a tipping point with some key Hispanic Democratic leaders that Obama is ready to start making a bigger effort to court Hispanics.
Here's hoping. Anecdotally, I'm seeing a ton of Obama commercials and none from Clinton, as Obama puts that money to work. From TPM.
Rasmussen: Hillary Ahead By Just Five Points In Pennsylvania Primary
By Eric Kleefeld - April 1, 2008, 9:02AM
A new Rasmussen poll of Pennsylvania gives Hillary Clinton only a five-point lead in the Democratic primary. Here are the numbers, compared to last week:
Clinton 47% (-2)
Obama 42% (+3)
The poll also shows that 47% of respondents have followed Hillary's Bosnia-Misstatement story very closely, and another 27% have followed it somewhat closely.
Hillary Clinton may not realize it yet, but she’s just endured one of the worst weeks of her campaign.
First, Barack Obama weathered the Rev. Jeremiah Wright affair without serious damage to his nomination prospects. Obama still holds a tiny lead among Democrats nationally in the Gallup tracking poll, just as he did before this whole affair blew up.
Second, Obama’s lawyers successfully prevented re-votes in Florida and Michigan. That means it would be virtually impossible for Clinton to take a lead in either elected delegates or total primary votes.
Third, as Noam Scheiber of The New Republic has reported, most superdelegates have accepted Nancy Pelosi’s judgment that the winner of the elected delegates should get the nomination. Instead of lining up behind Clinton, they’re drifting away. Her lead among them has shrunk by about 60 in the past month, according to Avi Zenilman of Politico.com.
In short, Hillary Clinton’s presidential prospects continue to dim. The door is closing. Night is coming. The end, however, is not near.
Last week, an important Clinton adviser told Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen (also of Politico) that Clinton had no more than a 10 percent chance of getting the nomination. Now, she’s probably down to a 5 percent chance.
Five percent.
Let’s take a look at what she’s going to put her party through for the sake of that 5 percent chance: The Democratic Party is probably going to have to endure another three months of daily sniping. For another three months, we’ll have the Carvilles likening the Obamaites to Judas and former generals accusing Clintonites of McCarthyism. For three months, we’ll have the daily round of résumé padding and sulfurous conference calls. We’ll have campaign aides blurting “blue dress” and only-because-he’s-black references as they let slip their private contempt.
For three more months (maybe more!) the campaign will proceed along in its Verdun-like pattern. There will be a steady rifle fire of character assassination from the underlings, interrupted by the occasional firestorm of artillery when the contest touches upon race, gender or patriotism. The policy debates between the two have been long exhausted, so the only way to get the public really engaged is by poking some raw national wound.
For the sake of that 5 percent, this will be the sourest spring. About a fifth of Clinton and Obama supporters now say they wouldn’t vote for the other candidate in the general election. Meanwhile, on the other side, voters get an unobstructed view of the Republican nominee. John McCain’s approval ratings have soared 11 points. He is now viewed positively by 67 percent of Americans. A month ago, McCain was losing to Obama among independents by double digits in a general election matchup. Now McCain has a lead among this group.
For three more months, Clinton is likely to hurt Obama even more against McCain, without hurting him against herself. And all this is happening so she can preserve that 5 percent chance.
When you step back and think about it, she is amazing. She possesses the audacity of hopelessness.
Why does she go on like this? Does Clinton privately believe that Obama is so incompetent that only she can deliver the policies they both support? Is she simply selfish, and willing to put her party through agony for the sake of her slender chance? Are leading Democrats so narcissistic that they would create bitter stagnation even if they were granted one-party rule?
The better answer is that Clinton’s long rear-guard action is the logical extension of her relentlessly political life.
For nearly 20 years, she has been encased in the apparatus of political celebrity. Look at her schedule as first lady and ever since. Think of the thousands of staged events, the tens of thousands of times she has pretended to be delighted to see someone she doesn’t know, the hundreds of thousands times she has recited empty clichés and exhortatory banalities, the millions of photos she has posed for in which she is supposed to appear empathetic or tough, the billions of politically opportune half-truths that have bounced around her head.
No wonder the Clinton campaign feels impersonal. It’s like a machine for the production of politics. It plows ahead from event to event following its own iron logic. The only question is whether Clinton herself can step outside the apparatus long enough to turn it off and withdraw voluntarily or whether she will force the rest of her party to intervene and jam the gears.
If she does the former, she would surprise everybody with a display of self-sacrifice. Her campaign would cruise along at a lower register until North Carolina, then use that as an occasion to withdraw. If she does not, she would soldier on doggedly, taking down as many allies as necessary.
So why is she staying in and drawing blood from Obama? Ego? Terrible if so. From Politico.
Story behind the story: The Clinton myth
By: Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen
March 21, 2008 03:12 PM EST
One big fact has largely been lost in the recent coverage of the Democratic presidential race: Hillary Rodham Clinton has virtually no chance of winning.
Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates. That means the only way she wins is if Democratic superdelegates are ready to risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party’s most reliable constituency.
Unless Clinton is able to at least win the primary popular vote — which also would take nothing less than an electoral miracle — and use that achievement to pressure superdelegates, she has only one scenario for victory. An African-American opponent and his backers would be told that, even though he won the contest with voters, the prize is going to someone else.
People who think that scenario is even remotely likely are living on another planet.
As it happens, many people inside Clinton’s campaign live right here on Earth. One important Clinton adviser estimated to Politico privately that she has no more than a 10 percent chance of winning her race against Barack Obama, an appraisal that was echoed by other operatives.
In other words: The notion of the Democratic contest being a dramatic cliffhanger is a game of make-believe...
From The Field. Via Andrew Sullivan.
At the end of February, “a Clinton advisor confirmed” for Politico’s Ben Smith that the campaign raised $35 million during the month of February.
The Wall Street Journal reported the same: “Rebounding dramatically from dismal fund-raising in January, Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign raised more than $35 million in February—a record haul for the campaign.”
ABC News reported that Senator Clinton herself made the claim:
Sen. Hillary Clinton said Thursday she was incredibly gratified to learn her campaign hauled in a record 35 million dollars in the month of February, despite losing 11 contests during that time.
“I was sure excited by the generosity of thousands of new donors,” Clinton told reporters in Hanging Rock, Ohio. “It was really heartwarming because a lot of them sent e-mails talking about why they were contributing and it was often five, ten, fifteen dollars and they would write about how they wanted to do for their children.”
I’m not singling out those news sources. In the days before the March 4 Ohio and Texas primaries, virtually every political reporter repeated the claim as fact.
But Houston, we have a problem: it was untrue.
Clinton’s true fundraising take in February was far less, almost by half.
The Los Angeles Times reports, after scouring Federal Elections Commission (FEC) reports that Clinton’s, uh, creative math, included “$10 million from her Senate campaign account and a $5-million personal loan.”
The Associated Press digs deeper into the numbers (the February filing reports came in yesterday) and notes that most of the $19 million that Clinton did raise in February was either offset by unpaid bills or was “general election” money (what big donors, lobbyists and PACs that have already given the maximum $2,300 to the primary campaign then give to a fund that can only be used if the candidate becomes the nominee):
reports filed with the Federal Election commission late Thursday showed that Obama set a single-month fundraising record, with more than $55 million in contributions.
Both Democrats ended up with more than $30 million in the bank, but Clinton can’t use two-thirds of her cash on hand because it’s only for the general election. That and her debt left her with less than $3 million in the black. The debt doesn’t include the $5 million she lent her campaign in January.
The fact that so much of Clinton’s money is in that “general election” category that can’t be spent also betrays the candidate’s claim, above, that her fundraising was boosted significantly by donors of “five, ten, fifteen dollars.” Small donors never give (and are never asked) for the general election campaign: that category is for the fat cats (who can now give to Clinton with increasing assurance that their money will have to be refunded, by law, when she doesn’t win the nomination).
So, what’s really been going on is a big game of mirrors-and-smoke in which unquestioning journalists have played along or been used.
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe accused the Clinton campaign Monday of "shameful offensive fear-mongering" by circulating a photo as an attempted smear.
Plouffe was reacting to a banner headline on the Drudge Report saying that aides to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) had e-mailed a photo calling attention to the African roots of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).
"The photo, taken in 2006, shows the Democrat front-runner dressed as a Somali Elder, during his visit to Wajir, a rural area in northeastern Kenya," the Drudge Report said. The photo created huge buzz in political circles and immediately became known as "the 'dressed' photo," reflecting the Drudge terminology.
From ABC.
There's a Texas-sized stumbling block on Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's comeback trail.
Even Clinton's most devoted surrogate -- her husband, Bill Clinton -- acknowledged the do-or-die stakes on Wednesday in Beaumont, Texas, conceding that a loss in Texas or Ohio would likely doom her candidacy.
"If she wins Texas and Ohio I think she will be the nominee. If you don't deliver for her, I don't think she can be. It's all on you," the former president told the audience at the beginning of his speech...
First, shadiness in the Republican Washington primary.
As you know, here at TPM we've been really curious what happened in the Republican caucus in Washington state. For probably the first time in all the primaries and elections I've ever watched, the folks running the election decided to stop counting the votes with 13% of the votes uncounted. And this wasn't a 70-30 blow out, but a tight race where the two top vote getters were separated by less than 2% of the vote. Then this morning, state party chair Luke Esser decided to declare McCain the winner.
...
In terms of consequence, Bush v. Gore it ain't. This is a relatively small contest in a nomination campaign that appears to be over. But this is something you'd expect either from Soviet history or a farcical passage in a Faulkner novel. And let's not forget the context. Huckabee starts the day with a blowout win in Kansas. That evening he gets the largest number of votes in Louisiana. Then in the third contest he's neck and neck with John McCain and looks like he may win all three contests of the day -- a shut-out for the all-but-declared nominee. Then as it's going down to the wire, the head of the state party decides he's seen enough and calls it for McCain.
...
By Greg Sargent - February 10, 2008, 3:23PM
An Edwards aide confirms to me that John Edwards met privately with Hillary on Thursday to discuss the possibility of making an endorsement, and will meet with Obama tomorrow, as first reported by Mark Halperin.
The Edwards aide gave me a bunch more detail, including this: "There's a greater than 50% chance he will endorse." He also said that he's been talking to both on and off for some time, including since he dropped out.
...
In fact, they agree with the Clinton campaign that Obama is the establishment candidate. Oh well, I guess that endorsement was always a long shot.
The past week has seen a significant intervention by the ruling elite to promote the Obama campaign, acting through its political representatives—particularly Senator Edward Kennedy, longtime leader of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party—and through the corporate-controlled mass media.
...
Obama is not, however, the product of the civil rights struggles against racial oppression, nor is he associated with any popular movement from below. His career has far more in common with those of Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, individuals selected and groomed by the American ruling class to carry out its policies. Like them, he is being used to put a new face on fundamentally reactionary policies and institutions.
...
The Obama campaign is not the vehicle of a leftward movement in the United States—as proclaimed by liberal groups such as MoveOn.org and publications like The Nation. It is a preemptive attack by the ruling class against such a movement. Its function is to delude the American people and divert their growing opposition to war, economic crisis and attacks on democratic rights back into the dead-end of the Democratic Party.
While the American people will cast ballots on November 4, the real decisions are made long before then, in the selection of candidates and framing of the election by the media and the corporate bosses and billionaires who finance and politically screen the candidates.
...
Hillary Pollster Mark Penn: Obama Has Become The "Establishment Candidate"
By Greg Sargent - February 6, 2008, 11:26AM
This one is worth keeping an eye on, because we'll be hearing more of it in the days ahead. In the Clinton campaign conference call I mentioned below, Hillary pollster Mark Penn repeatedly said Obama was becoming an "establishment candidate" -- a rather strained effort to use Obama's high-profile endorsements to weaken his insurgent appeal.
Asked about Obama's loss in Massachusetts despite the Teddy Kennedy endorsement, Penn again reiterated the fact that voters making up their minds on the last day had broken for Hillary, suggesting (without quite saying) that this was somehow catalyzed by Obama's new high-profile support.
"The more that Senator Obama has shifted to becoming an establishment campaign based on endorsements, people said, `You know, it's really Senator Clinton who has the ideas for change,'" Penn told reporters.
Again: Keep in mind that in advance of yesterday's contest, Hillary had a massive lead in Massachusetts for weeks. Anyway, we'll be hearing more of this.
From Talking Points Memo.
There's one guarantee I can make right now about tonight's results. They are going take make either Zogby or SurveyUSA look like complete fools. Which one I'm not completely sure, but definitely one of them.
Consider this spread. Zogby has his final California number as Obama 49%, Clinton 36%. SurveyUSA has Obama 42%, Clinton 52%.
I think that may be the starkest spread; but down the line Zogby has immense momentum behind Obama and a series of results that would bring him in with something between a solid and a smashing win. Meanwhile, SurveyUSA has close to the exact opposite. Comparing these numbers to other polling organizations they're both somewhat outliers, though Zogby's results are closer to the average of other polls than SurveyUSA.
Good luck tomorrow...
"It is time for new leadership that understands the way to win a debate with John McCain or any Republican who is nominated is not by nominating someone who agreed with him on voting for the war in Iraq or who agreed with him in voting to give George Bush the benefit of the doubt on Iran, who agrees with him in embracing the Bush-Cheney policy of not talking to leaders we don't like
...
"We need to offer the American people a clear contrast on national security, and when I am the nominee of the Democratic Party, that is exactly what I will do," he said.
...
This is potentially huge.
Another Rasmussen poll shows Barack Obama making up serious ground in a major Super Tuesday state. In California, Hillary Clinton has a bare lead of 43%, followed Obama at 40% and John Edwards with 9%.
If Obama were to pull off a win in the largest state in the country, it would completely change the dynamics of the campaign. And if Hillary were to come out on top, it could give her a large number of delegates to fend off Obama's advantages elsewhere.
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