I had occasion to stumble on a post from the OTB archives, “Democrats Threaten to Filibuster Unnamed Court Nominee,” written on September 25, 2005.  What’s interesting in hindsight is how fundamentally the landscape has changed.  Not only is it Republicans now about to be in a position to try to avert a person they deem too ideological from getting on the Supreme Court but the general situation the two parties occupy have almost flipped.  Here’s part of my analysis:

The notion that the Democrats need to make a stand or risk losing their base is a recipe for continued minority status. Kevin Drum makes the case in a lengthy post, which I commend to my readers. He points out E. J. Dionne’s latest column which notes, “According to the network exit polls, 21 percent of the voters who cast ballots in 2004 called themselves liberal, 34 percent said they were conservative and 45 percent called themselves moderate.”

[...]

Now, unlike Kevin, I don’t want this to change. But the country needs two viable parties to maintain a healthy political system. Without constant fear of losing the next election, a party becomes lazy, if not corrupt. It happened to the Democrats not so long ago and there are too many signs that it’s happening to the GOP now.

For the Democrats to be a viable alternative, though, they need leaders who are more representative of the mainstream of their own party–much less the American electorate– than Howard Dean or Nancy Pelosi. Even rank and file Democrats think they’re shrill and unsteady.

Less than fourteen months later, the Democrats had re-taken both the House and the Senate.  Two years after that, the Republicans had lost the White House and genuinely seem to be a party in the wilderness.

The liberal/conservative/moderate numbers, however, haven’t changed much.  While I don’t see a lot of great Republican candidates on the horizon, there’s every reason to think that the current situation is anything but permanent.

German Bundeswehr army soldiers of the ISAF monitor a valley during a mission near Kunduz, Afghanistan on September 26, 2008. (REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch)

Over at New Atlanticist, I discuss “Obama’s Afghanistan Plan,” noting that actually achieving results will prove far more difficult than criticizing the Bush administration.

My main criticism is of his continued harping on catching Osama bin Laden:

[I]t would be ironic indeed if a Democratic successor to Bush seriously made tracking down a single terrorist a high priority.  Outgoing Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean caught a lot of flack when he said that the capture of Saddam Hussein would have little practical impact on our success in Iraq, he turned out to be absolutely right.  Putting bin Laden’s head on a stick — or capturing him and subjecting him to the indignity of an international criminal tribunal — would be enormously satisfying but have approximately zero impact on either stabilizing the region or combatting international terrorism.

The main cause for hope:

The good news, though, is the talk of a “regional approach.”  While it’s just silly to say that the Bush administration is still treating Pakistan and Afghanistan as separate issues, they certainly seemed to do that far too deep into this process.  Certainly, Obama will be much more likely to bring Iran and Syria into the mix.  Whether he can ultimately be successful is another question entirely.  But it’s certainly worth trying.

The bottom line:  “Will Obama make the same mistake as the current president in not setting achievable goals for the mission?”

DNC Chairman Howard Dean’s “50-state strategy” has been controversial but Barack Obama is going to attempt to test it this fall, Sam Stein reports.

Obama will likely start the general election with 180 or so “reliably Democratic” electoral votes. With the goal of getting to 270, the DNC believes it could play a role in carrying the rest of the burden. The party already has more than 200 field staffers on the ground, and grassroots training programs in all fifty states. In addition, new Internet and communications operations have been started with the goal of facilitating participation in, and donations to, Democratic causes.

These might seem like ad-hoc measures. But if Sen. John Kerry had received ten additional ten votes per precinct in 2004, he would have won Iowa, Ohio, New Mexico, and, subsequently, the White House.

But that’s a lot of votes! Presumably, it would have been a Bush landslide had he won 10 additional votes per precinct in states that he narrowly lost.

Still, Obama is a particularly attractive candidate, it’s an unusually bad time to run as a Republican, and there are a lot of open Republican seats, and Obama has a huge fundraising advantage over John McCain. So, if ever there was a time to try to expand the coalition, this would seem to be it.

To the extent that Obama remains relatively popular and a big draw, it’s certainly a good strategy down-ballot, regardless of whether it helps him get past 272 Electoral Votes. If the election is looking tight after the conventions, though, expect to see Obama revert to a more traditional swing state strategy.

Barack Obama moved to within 200 delegates of securing the Democratic presidential nomination yesterday, scoring a 56-42 blowout in North Carolina while narrowly losing, 49-51, in Indiana. Barring revelations that would make the Wright affair look insignificant in comparison, the race is all over but the shouting.

Obama Wins the Night

AP’s Calvin Woodward:

On the rebound, Barack Obama left Hillary Rodham Clinton with fast-dwindling chances to deny him the Democratic presidential nomination after beating her in North Carolina and falling just short in an Indiana cliffhanger. Obama was on track to climb within 200 delegates of attaining the prize, his campaign finally steadying after missteps fiercely exploited by the never-say-die Clinton. His campaign dropped broad hints it was time for the 270 remaining unaligned party figures known as superdelegates to get off the fence and settle the nomination.

[...]

Clinton vowed to compete tenaciously for West Virginia next week and Kentucky and Oregon after that, and to press “full speed on to the White House.” But she risked running on fumes without an infusion of cash, and made a direct fundraising pitch from the stage in Indianapolis. “I need your help to continue our journey,” she said.

And she pledged anew that she would support the Democratic nominee “no matter what happens,” a vow also made by her competitor.

Polarizing, protracted and often bitter, the contest is hardening divisions in the party, according to exit polls from the two states. A solid majority of each candidate’s supporters said they would not be satisfied if the other candidate wins the nomination. Fully one-third of Clinton’s supporters in Indiana and North Carolina went beyond mere dissatisfaction to say they would vote for Republican John McCain instead of Obama if that’s the choice in the fall.

[...]

In both states, Clinton won six in 10 white votes while Obama got nine in 10 black votes, exit polls indicated. It was a slightly better performance than usual by Clinton among whites, while Obama’s backing from blacks was one of his highest winning percentages yet with that group.

Adam Nagourney of the NYT:

Despite narrowly winning Indiana, while losing North Carolina, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton did not fundamentally improve her chances of securing the Democratic presidential nomination. If anything, Mrs. Clinton’s hopes for overtaking Senator Barack Obama dwindled further on Tuesday night.

For Mr. Obama, the outcome came after a brutal period in which he was on the defensive over the inflammatory comments of his former pastor. That he was able to hold his own under those circumstances should allow him to make a case that he has proved his resilience in the face of questions about race, patriotism and political mettle — the very kinds of issues that the Clinton campaign has suggested would leave him vulnerable in the general election.

Beating Mr. Obama in Indiana, a state he had once been confident of winning, was an achievement for Mrs. Clinton. But it was hardly the kind of strong victory she posted in Pennsylvania and Ohio. And when paired with his comfortable victory in North Carolina — which Mr. Obama pointedly described in his victory speech as “a big state, a swing state” — it hardly seemed enough for Mrs. Clinton to convince so-called uncommitted superdelegates to rally around her candidacy.

While it remains all but impossible for Obama to win enough delegates to secure the nomination before the convention, Clinton has no chance of overtaking him in the delegate count or the (meaningless, mathematically flawed) popular vote. Mike Allen notes that she’s trying to move the target.

The campaign of Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) has begun urging party officials and news organizations to include the disputed Florida and Michigan delegations when figuring the number of delegates needed to win the nomination. That unorthodox approach could put her in striking distance of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) over the next month.

Harold Ickes, Clinton’s chief delegate strategist, said in a telephone interview that the senator is likely to finish the primary and caucus season on June 3 “substantially less than 100 delegates behind” Obama’s total if those two states are included. “We don’t believe that this party is going to go forward into a presidential race without seating both Florida and Michigan,” Ickes said.

Clinton has thus far been unsuccessful in her attempts to include those states, stripped of their delegates, into the mix. It’s unfathomable that Howard Dean and the Democratic Powers That Be would change their mind at this late stage, in effect handing it to Clinton, barring some monumental scandal hurting Obama.

Indeed, both Tim Russert and Matt Drudge have proclaimed Obama “the nominee.”

The Popular Vote

To the extent that the argument that superdelegates should obey the “will of the voters” as reflected in the popular vote — which pretty much anyone who isn’t a die-hard Clinton supporter agrees is absurd — it looks as though Obama will win that, too. Here’s the latest estimate by the folks at RealClearPolitics:

No matter how you slice it, it’s razor thin. There’s simply no reason for either candidate to think they have some great “mandate” if these numbers mean anything (which, by the way, they don’t). Still, the only way Clinton has a shot at taking the lead is with the inclusion of Florida and Michigan.

Does Hillary Finally Quit?

Several commentators think Clinton may finally have seen the light last night. TNR’s Michael Crowley asks, ” Does Hillary Know It’s Over?” He thought Clinton sounded “dispirited” last night. And Josh Marshall muses,

NBC just reported that Hillary Clinton is holding no public events tomorrow. We’d earlier reported that she’d cancelled her morning show appearances. But that’s not that surprising. There’s not a lot good to talk about. But canceling all public appearances, if that’s what they’re saying, is a different story.

So, obviously, she’s going to pack it in and graciously concede, right?

Not bloody likely. This is a Clinton we’re talking about here. Hillary Clinton, no less. While candidates always say they’re going to keep campaigning until it’s pried from their cold, dead hands right up until the point when they drop out, it’s simply not in this woman’s DNA to concede defeat.

We’ll be hearing murmurs from the Clinton camp for years to come about how this was stolen from her and that, if only Florida and Michigan had counted, it would have been hers. That’s doubly true if Obama loses to John McCain in November.

The Limbaugh Effect

The most bizarre question going around is the degree to which Rush Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos” influenced this thing. “Not enough,” would seem the obvious answer given that Clinton underperformed the polls in both states.

ABC’s Jake Tapper reports having met one voter who was heeding Limbaugh’s commands and, if he could find one, there must be thousands! millions!

There were anecdotal reports of big turnout in Republican precincts in Indiana – with, presumably, Republican voters asking for Democratic presidential ballots.

Were they Republicans swept up in Clintonmania or Obamamania? Or did they have something more devious on their minds?

Most of the Republicans voting for Clinton or Obama this election season have been voting sincerely for those candidates – or so they told us, at any rate.

Jonathan Chait thinks he’s found a proxy for measuring the “Limbaugh Effect.”

One exit poll question asks Indiana voters who they would support in a Clinton-McCain contest. 17% of them say McCain. Of those voters, 41% say they would vote for McCain over Clinton. In other words, these voters, 7% of the Indiana electorate, voted for Clinton in the primary but have no intention of supporting her in the fall.

Now, this isn’t a precise measure of the “Limbaugh effect” — no doubt there are some Republicans who backed Obama in the primary out of anti-Clinton sentiment, but plan to vote for McCain in November. But it is a good place to start when making a ballpark estimate. And it’s a sizeable number — 7% may wind up being as big as her margin of victory.

HuffPo’s Sam Stein adds more fuel to this fire:

Thirty-six percent of primary voters said that Clinton does not share their values. And yet, among that total, one out of every five (20 percent) nevertheless voted for her in the Indiana election. Moreover, of the 10 percent of Hoosiers who said “neither candidate” shared their values, 75 percent cast their ballots for Clinton.

These are not small numbers. By comparison, of the 33 percent of voters who said Sen. Barack Obama does not share their values, only seven percent cast their ballots in his favor. Basically, more people who don’t relate to Clinton are, for one reason or another, still voting for her. These are not likely to be loyal supporters.

On a broader level, among the 17 percent of primary goers who said they would choose Sen. John McCain over Hillary Clinton in a hypothetical general election match-up, 41 percent of that group came from Clinton’s own camp. In essence, roughly seven percent of Clinton support in Indiana (40 percent of 17 percent) said they would defect to the Republican should she end up the nominee. That would be a difficult punch to stomach in November. In 2004, nearly 1 million Indianans voted for John Kerry. A seven percent defection rate would have meant 70,000 less votes.

Did these Limbaugh people lie to pollsters, too, convincing them that they were likely Democratic voters? Otherwise, we need to account for the fact that fewer Clinton voters showed up at the polls — despite huge turnout — than in the polls.

Prediction Games

In our predictions yesterday morning, Dave, Alex, and I all picked the outcomes correctly. Alex came closest on the margins, picking Clinton to win Indiana by 5 points and Obama to win North Carolina by 10 points. SoloD was even closer, guessing 4 points and 10 points, respectively.

John Zogby, whose polls I dismissed as an outlyer in that post, got it pretty close, it turns out. He had a 14 point gap in NC but, alas, had Obama winning Indiana by 2. He missed that one.

The Needling and the Damage Done

The biggest concern for Democrats — and, indeed, much of the impetus for “Operation Chaos” — was that a prolonged nomination fight would bloody the eventual winner, damaging his chances against McCain in the Fall. The exit polls would seem to provide some evidence that this has happened.

Marc Ambinder worries about a ” Democratic Party crack-up.

Forget the horse race numbers for a moment: if the surveys are accurate, the polarization within the Democratic Party has reached critical levels. Nearly six in ten Obama supporters in Indiana say they would be dissatisfied if Clinton were the nominee — that’s (I believe) the high percentage of Obama supporters who have ever said that.

In both IN and NC, two thirds of Clinton supporters say they’d be dissatisfied if Obama were the nominee — I believe that’s the highest number recorded for that question, too.

The percentage of Clinton voters who say they’d choose McCain over Obama in a general election is approaching 40% in Indiana. Put it another way: in North Carolina, less than HALF of folks who voted today for Hillary Clinton are ready to say today that they’d definitely vote for Obama in a general election.

But this is just a furthering of existing trends, with partisans of each candidate digging in their heels. Remember all those Republicans who said they’d never vote for McCain? Or would vote for Hillary rather than McCain? Where are they now? Sure, some of them will never come home and that’s likely true for some Clinton voters, too. But history tells us that people get over these things and revert to form come election day.

The racial gap, which actually widened last night, is a legitimate concern. Blacks rallied to Obama in even greater numbers than previously and Clinton got slightly higher white support, especially among the “working class” (a term I truly despise, as it implies that those putting in 60 hours a week at high paying jobs don’t work).

Then again, Obama is almost certainly going to get the nomination. Which means the black base isn’t going to be alienated.

The question, then, is whether white Democrats are going to stay home in November — or even vote for McCain — in significant numbers. Why would they do that? Are we to believe that 40-odd percent of Democratic primary voters simply won’t vote for a black man? Or that the seemingly paper thin ideological differences between Clinton and Obama loom so large that her supporters will abandon the party in droves? That just doesn’t make sense.

Race and the Race

Interestingly, Andrew Sullivan — who yesterday was fearful that race would be a big factor in the postmortems — couldn’t be more pleased with the way things turned out.

Here’s what now seems obvious: African-American voters killed the Clinton candidacy. It is a fitting end to the Clintons’ campaign and an almost Shakespearean coda to their career. The Clintons were exposed in their long-running exploitation and reliance on minority votes. No group was more loyal to them than African-Americans; and in the end, like everyone else, African-Americans realized that the Clintons are frauds, disloyal to the core, cynical to their finger-tips, and finally, finally, returned the favor.

[...]

After what the Clintons did in this campaign, and what they’ve revealed about themselves, and their alliance with Fox News and Bill Kristol and Pat Buchanan, this couldn’t be more appropriate.

This will be history’s verdict: in the end, the Clintons were defeated not by Republicans, but by African-American Democrats. How wonderful. How poignant. In the end, the karma gets you. Maybe it had to be this way. But this final coup de grace against these awful, hollow, cynical people is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

It’s a good thing those African-Americans showed up! (Although, for the life of me, I’m not sure what Fox News, Bill Kristol, and Pat Buchanan have to do with anything.)

It’s doubtless true that black voters were decisive, propelling Obama to a huge win in North Carolina and making it close in Indiana. Indeed, there were so many absentee ballots in Gary that they were up late at night counting them.

On the other hand, let’s not forget that Obama got a handful of white votes, too. Like, 40 percent of them in these two states. And that he won numerous primaries and caucuses in states with negligible black populations.

Indeed, if Obama has been somehow transformed by this process into “the black candidate,” he’s doomed. Even presuming that he’ll energize that bloc like no candidate in recent decades, driving out turnout to record levels, we’re still talking about 12 percent of the population and less than that of the eligible voting population. Remember, too, that 90 percent of blacks routinely vote for the Democratic nominee anyway.

Fortunately for his party, though, Obama is far more than the Great Black Hope. He’s energized the youth vote and seems to have turned that phrase into something other than an oxymoron. A goodly number of Republican-leaning moderates have found him appealing. He’s going to be a very formidable candidate in the fall in a country that’s 74 percent white and where the voters will likely be closer to 80 percent white.

Race is going to be a factor in the election, of course, just as it always is. The “race gap” has always been much greater than the vaunted “gender gap.” But the contest will ultimately be decided on issues, personalities, charisma, trust, fear, and the same litany of intellectual and visceral issues that always decides these things.

DNC chairman Howard Dean is tired of the democratic process and wants the superdelegates to decide who the Democratic nominee will be now.

An increasingly firm Howard Dean told CNN again Thursday that he needs superdelegates to say who they’re for – and “I need them to say who they’re for starting now.” “We cannot give up two or three months of active campaigning and healing time,” the Democratic National Committee Chairman told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

“We’ve got to know who our nominee is.”

Why? There’s a primary schedule. It has yet to conclude.

The most significant of the early contests, which got incredible amounts of media attention, were in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. Those states awarded 57, 30, and 54 delegates, respectively.

Next Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary has 188 delegates at stake. That’s followed on May 6 with Indiana (84) and North Carolina (134); May 13 with West Virginia (39); May 20 with Kentucky (60) and Oregon (65); and June 1 with Puerto Rico (63). All those states (and territory) award more delegates than New Hampshire and all but West Virginia award more than Iowa.

What’s so all-fired important that it can’t wait for six weeks?

Barack Obama is ahead of Hillary Clinton, 1644 delegates to 1498. The eventual nominee will need 2,025 delegates. Someone will be much closer to that number six weeks from now. So, what’s the hurry? It’s not as if the Democratic nominating electorate has expressed an overwhelming preference for one candidate and the other is just a nuisance, as Mike Huckabee was toward the end of his run.

Surely, the people of the remaining states deserve a chance to weigh in? Most of them will be competitive in the fall and Oregon is a key Democratic state. If Dean’s goal is to make sure Democratic partisans think the outcome is fair, what could be better than letting the process take its course?

And, isn’t this position ironic from a man who famously vowed, after being defeated in the Iowa Caucuses, “Not only are we going to New Hampshire, Tom Harkin, we’re going to South Carolina and Oklahoma and Arizona and North Dakota and New Mexico, and we’re going to California and Texas and New York … And we’re going to South Dakota and Oregon and Washington and Michigan, and then we’re going to Washington, D.C., to take back the White House! BYAW!!!”

Eric Kleefeld reports that, while Democratic candidates are beating their Republican counterparts by embarrassing margins at fund raising, the reverse is true at the national level.

The Republican National Committee has announced that they have $31 million cash-on-hand at the end of March, money that can be used to assist John McCain as well as down-ballot races this Fall.

Quarterly figures aren’t available yet for the DNC, but it’s likely they’ll be way behind — at the end of February, they only had $4.8 million on hand, with $250,000 in outstanding debts.

This is essentially a tradeoff that comes with Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy — if the DNC’s primary mission is to act as a financial and organizational clearinghouse for state parties and candidates, it ends up not raising very much money for itself. We’ll find out in the months to come whether the Republicans can successfully exploit this weakness.

Indeed. My strong guess is that a lack of money won’t be an issue in any significant race this year. Whatever advantage Obama has over McCain, say, will be offset by party money and independent expenditures. Similarly, there will be plenty of money to go around for competitive gubernatorial, Senate, and House races.

The optics, however, might be quite different. With so many Republican incumbents retiring and the difficulty of finding serious Republicans to challenge in a lot of contests, there may be a lot of non-competitive races. But any candidate, of either party, given a serious chance of winning will be able to run all the ads they need.

Jake Tapper, notes the contrast between DNC chair Howard Dean’s statements about John Kerry’s military service in 2004 and McCain’s in 2008.

Commenting on John McCain’s new “The American President that Americans Have Been Waiting For” ad yesterday, Dean said, “While we honor McCain’s military service, the fact is Americans want a real leader who offers real solutions, not a blatant opportunist who doesn’t understand the economy and is promising to keep our troops in Iraq for 100 years.”

Tapper reminds us that, in March 2004, Dean said, “The real issue is this. Who would you rather have in charge of the defense of the United States of America, a group of people who never served a day overseas in their life, or a guy who served his country honorably and has three Purple Hearts and a Silver Star on the battlefields of Vietnam?” Tapper observes, “McCain, by the way, has been awarded the Silver Star, the Legion of Merit, two Bronze Star Medals, a Purple Heart and the Distinguished Flying Cross.”

Of course, the notion that military heroism in one’s youth automatically qualifies you to be president later is life — let alone settles the issue if one’s opponent never wore the uniform — is silly. That Kerry and McCain served when others didn’t and that they acquitted themselves well under extreme stress redounds to their credit and earns them a certain amount of respect and deflects some lines of attack. But it’s not the end of the discussion.

The first presidential election in which I was truly engaged was the 1980 contest between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter. On the merits of their military careers, re-electing Carter would have been the obvious choice. He was, after all, an Annapolis grad and had been a rising star in the Navy’s nuclear program under Admiral Rickover. Reagan, by contrast, made propaganda films for the Army. Reagan was nonetheless my choice (although I was not yet eligible to vote for him) and he turned out to be better on foreign and military affairs than his rival.

In 1984, the first election in which I was old enough to participate, Reagan ran for re-election against Carter’s former vice president, Walter Mondale, who served as a corporal at Fort Knox during the Korean War. Let’s just say their respective military careers didn’t factor into my calculations.

In 1988, we had George H.W. Bush, who earned a Distinguished Flying Cross as the Navy’s youngest pilot in WWII, and Michael Dukakis, who had two years of peacetime service in Korea but looked very funny driving a tank during the campaign.

In 1992, Bush was defeated by artful draft dodger Bill Clinton. The contrast in their military service was an issue in the campaign, to be sure, but obviously not a decisive one. In 1996, Clinton handily defeated Bob Dole, who can’t use his right arm because of wounds suffered in WWII.

The 2000 election pitted George W. Bush, who was trained to fly an obsolete fighter jet during the closing days of Vietnam and sort of served in the National Guard afterwards, against Clinton’s former VP, Al Gore, who served as an Army photojournalist in Vietnam. Bush won re-election against Kerry, who served gallantly as an officer with the Swift Boats.

As James Taranto notes, “You have to go back to 1988 . . . to find an election in which the winner clearly had a more impressive military record than the loser.” Depending on your politics, you might think we’d have been better off if some of them had gone the other way. Likely, though, not because of the military service issue.

If, as seems likely, John McCain faces Barack Obama in the fall, he’ll have an easier time making the “ready on day one” argument. He’ll have a credibility advantage in talking about military affairs. But the election, ultimately, will turn on their competing visions of the future and whether Americans trust them at the controls.

The Democratic National Committee is trying to work out a means for Florida and Michigan to stage delegate selection contests within the rules but there has thus far been no plan that’s acceptable to the states and both campaigns. Meanwhile, some supporters of Hillary Clinton are arguing that the DNC should simply seat the delegates from the previous round of “voting,” despite no alternative candidates on the ballot in Michigan and a pledge by the candidates not to campaign in Florida.

Jeralyn Merritt contends that it’s not Clinton’s fault that Barack Obama and the other candidates took their names off the ballot in Michigan, since it wasn’t technically required by their pledge, and that said pledge never specifically said the delegates wouldn’t count.

The exclusion of Michigan and Florida was a penalty imposed by the DNC. In my view, it was an unfair one and should be lifted. The votes should count as is, the delegates should be awarded and seated.

Big Tent Democrat favors a re-vote of some sort. Hillary appears not to be opposed if that is the will of the party. The party appears to be leaning towards a mail-in revote. When will Obama get on board?

Publius, rightly in my view, says this is “simply legalistic parsing” that ignores the spirit and context of the agreement. He’s willing to accept any outcome and support the winner “so long as the ending is legitimate – i.e., is consistent with ex ante rules.”

For instance, let’s say that Obama holds a majority in elected delegates (and popular vote), but Clinton pulls it out with superdelegates. I won’t like that, but that’s a perfectly legitimate result. The ex ante rules (however silly they may be) incorporate superdelegates, so I’m not going to march off sullenly if Clinton wins through rules that everyone agreed to going in. In fact, I’m going to go out and work for her.

At the same time, however, I would not accept a Clinton victory that depended on seating the Michigan and Florida delegates (assuming no re-vote, etc.). That’s breaking the rules, pure and simple, and the Clinton campaign should understand in no uncertain terms that the “nuclear strategy” will drive away supporters for the fall and leave lasting damage.

Meanwhile, Al Sharpton is jumping into the fray, providing further evidence that George Will’s famous quip that “Nowadays no diplomatic farce is complete without a cameo appearance by Jesse Jackson” is desperately in need of an Al Sharpton corollary.

Laying the groundwork for a court battle that could divide the Democratic Party, the Reverend Al Sharpton is threatening to sue the Democratic National Committee if it counts Florida’s primary results in the official presidential delegates tally.

Rev. Sharpton is traveling to Florida today to compile lists of residents who skipped the January contest because they thought their votes would not count. He plans to have those residents sign affidavits saying they would be disenfranchised by the seating of the Florida delegation, in the event the Democratic Party allowed that to happen.

Just as a stopped clock is right twice a day, Sharpton would seem here to have a solid argument. Whether he has standing to sue is another question, of course, but it’s hard to argue that the dynamics of the race would not have been radically different had Obama been campaigning and the potential participants under the impression that showing up to vote actually mattered.

Fortunately for Clinton, two of her more prominent backers are making an offer that’s going to be hard for the other parties to refuse: A revote paid for with someone else’s dime.

Gov. Jon S. Corzine of New Jersey and Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania said Sunday that they would be willing to raise half the $30 million it would take to run new contests in those two states. Mr. Corzine and Mr. Rendell submitted their proposal to The Washington Post.

The two governors argue that the Democratic National Committee, and not taxpayers in Florida and Michigan, should pay for a re-election in those states.

Democrats have been struggling to find a way to seat the delegates from Michigan and Florida, who were excluded when those states held primaries in January, violating national party rules.

If someone comes up with a way to raise the other $15 million — and, frankly, it’s not clear to me that the Clinton and Obama camps couldn’t simply pitch in the money themselves — this could have some legs. Howard Dean has, rightly, said that the DNC is not going to pay to run these elections; after all, the states violated the rules with full knowledge that they were doing so. But the taxpayers of those states aren’t going to be willing to pay more money to stage Democratic Party elections, either. Outside financing would seem to be the only solution.

Publius’ main point, though, is the bottom line: The rules must be observed. Simply handing the delegates to Clinton based on sham races would be a travesty. But disenfranchising two of the most populous states in the country as punishment for the gamesmanship of their political leaders won’t do, either.

The DNC is making it very hard for Hillary Clinton to win Florida and Michigan’s delegates through the back door, Marc Ambinder reports.

Howard Dean will not bend the party rules to grandfather in the disputed delegates from Michigan and Florida, the Democratic party chairman said in a statement today.

Instead, he put the state parties on notice: either they can wait and allow the credentials committee to decide whether to seat their delegates, or submit to a re-vote sanctioned under DNC rules. “We look forward to receiving their proposals should they decide to submit new delegate selection plans and will review those plans at that time,” he said in the statement.

“Everyone seems to be asking what the DNC will do,” a Democrat close to Dean said. “But the question is: what will the state parties do.”

This is a dangerous stand for the Democrats politically, in that it threatens to disenfranchise two states that will be important in November and could well artificially decide the nomination in favor of Barack Obama. I commend Dean for sticking to his guns in enforcing the rules despite the enormous pressure to do otherwise.

The Florida Dems, especially, are in a pickle. A caucus would not only be expensive but, as state chair Karen Thurman notes, exclude its large contingent of military members serving overseas — even in combat zones. But it’s a mess of their own making.

Photo credit: Esoterically

Jim Henley makes the case that, if he were a Democratic superdelegate, he would want the campaign to move on to Pennsylvania.

In a “marriage-length” campaign window, the Obama campaign has time to work its magic, then the magic has time to work off. That may be what we saw in the interminable two weeks between Wisconsin/Hawaii and Texas/Ohio. In particular, Obama’s failure to win Texas after at least a brief time even or leading in the polls, and his lopsided loss in Ohio, would scare me.

The general-election campaign will be marriage-length. By November, America will have a chance to be heartily sick of both major-party contestants. So I want to know Obama has staying power. Pennsylvania should provide a great test of this. Let the yinzers and Iggles fans and hicks endure both candidates for six weeks. See if Obama’s appeal endures. If it does, he’s your guy. If not, and you’re an organization Dem, you really have to be leery of giving him the nod. If he can’t overcome Sekrit Muslim Communist Agent smears and pseudocontrarian jibes about cultism in the primary of the somewhat liberal party, how is he going to beat the same tactics in the general election?

I think that, from a Democratic perspective, there’s a certain amount of truth to this. If Obama were to lose Pennsylvania, I do think that that would be a large blow to his campaign, and if he only maintains a small delegate lead, I think the Ohio-Texas-Pennsylvania loss trifecta would make a “superdelegate victory” for Clinton a little more bearable. As a consequence, it looks like the superdelegate race is going to be a big deal after all.

Let’s be honest about what a Democratic primary victory means for the general. No matter how hard John McCain tries, the odds of him picking up California are negligible, so Clinton’s win there doesn’t have much meaning. And New York and Massachusetts are Democratic gimmes as well. Folks, let’s be honest about something else, too–does anybody seriously believe that Texas is in play? Especially with immigrant-friendly John McCain as the GOP nominee? Ohio’s win for Clinton, on the other hand, does matter–especially since it was an open primary where the GOP nominee was pretty much a lock. A Pennsylvania win is a big win, too. Even though it decidedly went for Kerry last time, McCain’s nomination puts it back into play.

On the other hand, Obama picked up the crucial swing state of Missouri (which usually picks the winning presidential candidate in the general), and has a lot of appeal in traditionally Republican states–he won by huge margins in a lot of red states. Indeed, recent polling in my state of Kansas show that Obama is much more popular in the general than Clinton, which I can attest jives with my own anecdotal experience. I know quite a few folks around here who would vote Obama over McCain and McCain over Clinton, which is another crucial consideration. Of course, despite all that, let’s not forget that Obama’s wins were, in the end, in mostly GOP states. No matter how much Howard Dean might hope for it, Obama isn’t going to win Nebraska, Oklahoma, Utah, etc. (I will say honestly, though, that Obama would put Kansas in play, if my feel for state politics is correct–but Kansas is starting to trend purple, and I’m not sure if “red state” is going to apply to it a decade from now.)

Throwing a bigger monkeywrench into the works would be if Michigan and Florida opt to submit plans to the DNC to seat their delegates via another primary or caucus–which looms as an ever-real possibility. I know that conventional wisdom says that Clinton won them once, she can win them again, but I’m not as convinced of that. But if they were to vote again, and Clinton did pick them up again, however narrowly, I think that the ultimate winner of the Democratic nomination would be tough to predict.

If Clinton were to pull out wins in Pennsylvania and keep Florida and Michigan the second time around, Obama’s claim that she would be “stealing” the nomination with superdelegates after losing the pledged delegate total would be a lot harder to spin. On the other hand, Obama victories in any one of these states and a lead in the pledged delegates would probably be a good argument for the superdelegates to side with Obama.

The bottom line, though, is that the superdelegates are increasingly likely to decide the DNC nomination after all, no matter what some fancy pants, ivory tower pundits have had to say about it.

Jonathan Martin and Mike Allen of The Politico have a story entitled, “Fred Thompson may drop out, back McCain.”

Several Republican officials close to Fred Thompson’s presidential campaign said they expect the candidate will drop out of the race within days if he finishes poorly in Thursday’s Iowa caucus.

Thompson’s campaign, which last spring and summer was generating fevered anticipation in the media and with some Republican activists, has never ignited nationally, and there are no signs of a late spark happening here in Iowa, where even a third-place finish is far from assured.

This strikes me as right and comports with predictions I’ve made in recent weeks. Not only does Thompson’s campaign appear to be faltering, he doesn’t strike me as a bitter ender. And, certainly, McCain is the guy he’s most likely to endorse.

Amusingly, however, NRO’s Peter Robinson reports a “Late-Breaking Surge for Thompson.”

The latest news from Iowa? According to Zogby’s latest—and I quote: “Sen. Fred Thompson…has seen a late-breaking surge.”

It should be noted that Thompson’s “surge” is well within the margin of error. This doesn’t stop speculation that it is based on the good people of Iowa finally recognizing what a gosh darned good fella Thompson is.

The Iowa Caucuses are sufficiently unpredictable that a third place finish by Thompson — or, heck, Ron Paul — wouldn’t surprise me. I do think, however, that if Thompson doesn’t make a respectable showing in Iowa or New Hampshire, he’ll call it quits and back McCain. Obviously, for McCain’s sake, it would be preferable if it happened before New Hampshire but, given that only five days separates the two contests, there’s not much incentive for Thompson to do that.

Via Memeorandum

UPDATE: Fred Thompson denies this rumor, calling it “absolutely made up out of whole cloth” and speculating that a rival campaign had planted the rumor. Of course, what else is he going to say?

UPDATE: Thompson was interviewed by Tim Russert on this topic today. Here’s the video:

Josh Marshall’s assessment: “Fred Thompson about as enthusiastic about saying he’s staying in the race as he has been about running his campaign …” Actually, though, it strikes me as a perfectly solid answer to the question — albeit a bit too honest about the legitimate possibility that he’ll get “shellacked” and have to reassess things. Whether one finds that candor refreshing or a sign of apathy likely depends one one’s predisposition towards Thompson.

John Zogby asks, “Can the Iowa caucuses be polled accurately?” and then more-or-less answers the question.

The premise is straightforward enough:

The Iowa caucuses require voters to go to a local school, church basement, private home or similar meeting place to spend between 90 minutes and two hours to register their preference. The process is a mixture of discussion, debating, a little horse-trading, and some consensus-building between neighbors. Anything can happen.

Not to mention that the Democrats and Republicans have very different processes for winnowing down the vote. Given, then, that intensity matters much more so than in standard primary contests and that people wind up voting for their second or third choice candidate after the initial balloting, isn’t standard polling meaningless?

Yes and no.

Zogby does a detailed analysis of his firm’s polling for the 2004 Democratic caucuses, which went in a span of ten days from a two-way race between frontrunner Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt to finishing off both men’s chances of getting the nomination.

When the final results of the caucuses were known, the four candidates finished in exactly the order indicated by the Zogby polls before the caucuses, though the percentages were different because undecided voters had finally made up their minds.

Can we predict the exact results of the Iowa caucuses ahead of time? The answer is simple: no. But that is not the purpose of political polling. As I mentioned earlier, there is no way to predict the neighbor-to-neighbor dynamic inside a caucus setting, and especially the effect that setting will have on those caucus-goers who show up to the events yet undecided.

But broad contours of the political landscape in Iowa can be determined by pre-caucus polling – the rest is up to the voters.

Of course, there’s also more than a bit of luck involved. Zogby’s final pre-caucus poll had John Kerry, Howard Dean, and John Edwards in a statistical dead heat (25-22-21). While he got the order right, he certainly could not predict it with any confidence whatsoever with those numbers.

So, yes, polling the Iowa caucuses provides some valuable insights into what the voters are thinking and what trends we’re likely to see. But, unless it’s a blowout, the polling isn’t particularly helpful in handicapping the horse race.

Two reports out today offer hope to those for whom the notion of a Hillary Clinton presidency is unbearable.

First, a new Zogby poll shows Clinton losing in a general election matchup against the top five Republican contenders — and her chief rivals, Barack Obama and John Edwards, winning those races.

Second, Mike Allen and Carrie Budoff Brown are getting traction with a piece, strangely lacking in facts, arguing that Clinton and Obama have switched roles in Iowa, with the former displaying “a front-runner’s swagger” while the latter “scrambles like an underdog.”

Meanwhile, virtually every other poll shows Clinton winning every primary and caucus state handily and with a lead over every potential Republican challenger. Indeed, with the exception of Iowa, where her average lead is a mere 2.3 points, she’s blowing out her challengers in all states by margins reminiscent of the New England Patriots.

It’s true that an Obama upset in Iowa could shatter the sense of inevitability that surrounds Clinton and blow the race wide open. Still, that seems incredibly unlikely. She’s not Howard Dean, after all. She’s been in the national spotlight for sixteen years and has the support of the Democratic Establishment. Nor is she prone to unscripted public screams.

On the other hand, her incredibly high negatives — and the fact that something like 40 percent of the electorate will vote for the Republican nominee regardless — put the general election up for grabs. It’s quite conceivable that, even with the wild unpopularity of President Bush, the Iraq War, and the Republican Congress, the GOP nominee could pull out a victory. It’ll be an uphill fight, though.

Photo credit: Politico

John Derbyshire and Andrew Sullivan see great similarity’s between Ron Paul and a young William F. Buckley, Jr. John Podhoretz and Richard Fernandez, though, see more similarities between Paul and Ralph Nader. Ed Morrissey, meanwhile, thinks he’s this years’ Howard Dean.

To the extent he’s following any of those parallels, I’d go with Dean.

As Derbyshire notes, Buckley’s conservatism was founded on anti-Communism as a principle that united otherwise disparate ideologues. Paul’s brand of libertarianism is relatively isolationist and lacks a unifying principle to rally the different parts of the Republican constituency.

Nader ran as an independent to the left of Al Gore and cost his erstwhile party the presidency. I take Paul at his word that, should he not win the Republican nomination, he’ll bow out of the 2008 race. Were he to nonetheless run as an independent, though, it’s far from clear to me that he draws more Republicans than Democrats. While there has been a strong libertarian strain in the GOP since at least Barry Goldwater, there has been a social libertarian strain in the Democratic Party even longer.

Dean, though, strikes me as the likeliest analog. Both raised wild sums of money from a highly energized online constituency and seemed to be the only candidate in their party’s field that sparked genuine excitement. Neither, though, seemed to have the experience or disposition to pass the “gravitas” threshold expected of those who would be president.

The difference between Paul and Dean is that Paul’s campaign is still active and he therefore still has a theoretical chance. He’s got the deepest support of any candidate in the Republican field. Until he wins a primary, though, I’m not likely to be convinced that his support is very broad.

Yesterday’s bid to raise $10 million in one day for Ron Paul fell well short. Paul’s campaign will happily settle, I’m sure, for the $4.2 million they brought in, which is easily the most brought in on a single day of online fundraising. He’ll also gladly take the outpouring of media attention.

“Ron Paul Raises More Than $4.2 Million,” Jim Kuhnhenn, AP:

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, aided by an extraordinary outpouring of Internet support Monday, hauled in more than $4.2 million in nearly 24 hours.

Paul, the Texas congressman with a libertarian tilt and an out-of-Iraq pitch, entered heady fundraising territory with a surge of Web-based giving tied to the commemoration of Guy Fawkes Day. Fawkes was a British mercenary who failed in his attempt to kill King James I on Nov. 5, 1605. He also was the model for the protagonist in the movie “V for Vendetta.” Paul backers motivated donors on the Internet with mashed-up clips of the film on the online video site YouTube as well as the Guy Fawkes Day refrain: “Remember, remember the 5th of November.”

Paul’s total deposed Mitt Romney as the single-day fundraising record holder in the Republican presidential field. When it comes to sums amassed in one day, Paul now ranks only behind Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton, who raised nearly $6.2 million on June 30, and Barack Obama.

Paul spokesman Jesse Benton said the effort began independently about two months ago at the hands of Paul’s backers. He said Paul picked up on the movement, mentioning in it speeches and interviews. “It’s been kind of building up virally,” Benton said.

The $4.2 million represented online contributions from more than 37,000 donors, fundraising director Jonathan Bydlak said Monday night.

Paul has been lagging in the polls behind Republican front-runners. But he captured national attention at the end of September when he reported raising $5.2 million in three months, putting him fourth among Republican presidential candidates in fundraising for the quarter. Paul as of Monday had raised more than $7 million since Oct. 1, more than half his goal of $12 million by the end of the year, according to his Web site.

Paul advocates limited government and low taxes like other Republicans, but he stands alone as the only GOP presidential candidate opposed to the Iraq war. He also has opposed Bush administration security measures that he says encroach on civil liberties.

“Ron Paul Raises More Than $4 Million in One Day,” David Kirkpatrick, NYT.

Historians and British schoolchildren remember Guy Fawkes as the Roman Catholic, anti-Protestant rebel who on Nov. 5, 1605, tried to assassinate King James I by blowing up the Parliament. Supporters of the Republican primary campaign of the libertarian Representative Ron Paul may remember Fawkes as a wildly successful fund-raising gimmick.

[...]

Mr. Benton clarified that Mr. Paul did not support blowing up government buildings. “He wants to demolish things like the Department of Education,” Mr. Benton said, “but we can do that very peacefully, in a constructive manner.”

Thanks for clearing that up!

“Ron Paul says he’s broken one-day online fundraising record,” Mark Memmott and Jill Lawrence, USA Today OnPolitics.

Rep. Ron Paul, the libertarian Republican presidential candidate from Texas, says today that he’s broken a record: the record for online fundraising in a single day during the pre-convention primary process.

According to Paul’s campaign, he raised more than $2.7 million online in 16 hours that ended at 4 p.m. ET. The campaign called that “the largest single-day online primary fundraising effort by a presidential candidate in United States election history.”

“Ron Paul’s ‘money bomb,’ records and lessons,” Mark Silva, Chicago Tribune’s The Swamp blog.

That so many people have invested so much in someone who stands such little apparent chance of winning his party’s presidential nomination, let alone the White House, speaks volumes about alienation in modern American politics.

It is the same alienation that once handed H. Ross Perot close to 20 percent of the presidential vote. It is the same alienation that handed Ralph Nader just enough of the vote to deny Democrat Al Gore an Electoral College victory to accompany his popular-vote majority.

It is people voting for someone other than the establishment, odds be damned.

[...]

In one day, the Paul campaign asserts, about 25,000 supporters had contributed to the building of the “money bomb.”

This is the bombshell which Paul suggests he needs to convince “the mainstream media’’ that he is a real candidate.

There’s one problem with this financial calculation. There are only so many times that the same 25,000 people can contribute – an equation which Democrat Howard Dean encountered, in somewhat larger numbers, albeit with the same ultimate result, in 2004 — and it’s unlikely that all of them live in Iowa, or in New Hampshire, where money might translate into the votes necessary to catapult someone into the second stage of the primaries.
.
Dean ran up record-breaking fundraising tallies in his upstart — and also anti-war — campaign for president. But his campaign was undone literally overnight by an under-performing turnout in the Iowa caucuses, and finished off with his own scream heard ’round the world.

“Ron Paul’s Cash Flow,” Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times:

At this point, Paul’s ability to raise money is not in question. But his skill in translating that sizable campaign treasury into voters at the caucuses and primaries still is.

Rasmussen Reports’ seven-day tracking poll ending Nov. 4 shows Paul garnering 3 percent of likely Republican voters, the same as fellow Rep. Tom Tancredo. Paul’s campaign says polls are a poor predictor of his voters’ support.

“Another Ron Paul Surge,” Dave Weigel, Reason :

Even if you don’t like Paul, you have to gasp at what’s happening in the GOP race. There are three phenomenons running in tandem: Paul’s fundraising, Huckabee’s cash-strapped poll surge, and McCain’s running-on-fumes poll comeback. Anybody working for the Rudy-Fred-Mitt power trio has to wonder why the Republican base is so hungry for these other choices. (Also, more reason to ignore the campaign finance reformers who whine about big money trumping ideas and good people in politics.)

“Ron Paul’s Record Online Haul,” Jose Antonio Vargas, WaPo’s The Trail blog:

Today, Nov. 5, marks not only Paul’s best fundraising haul in a single day — approximately $3.75 million by 11 p.m. EST — but online observers say it’s also the most money raised by a candidate on the Web in a single day. And the day’s not over yet. “Damn. Wow. Um, that’s pretty awesome,” said a stunned Jerome Armstrong who served as Howard Dean’s online strategist. Armstrong, the founder of the popular blog MyDD, said Dean raised as much as $700,000 in one day toward the end of the primary race. “But not a million,” Armstrong added. “What Paul is doing — or what his supporters are doing — is really impressive.”

Paul supporter Avery Knapp Jr., guesting at TechPresident, explains “The Power of Flashmob Fundraising.”

People respond well to seeing their names up in lights on their hero’s campaign website and getting immediate feedback about their contributions. At a recent lecture showing the rolling names of donors projected behind the lecturer, the author and his girlfriend were tempted enough to donate using a blackberry and cheer in the back; the lecturer mistakenly thought the cheers were for his speech. Perhaps this feedback is a reason the open-source approach to presidential fundraising is likely to continue and increase. Perhaps one day the Federal Election Commission monitoring of election finances won’t even be necessary as campaigns will make all fundraising data public.

I tend to agree with Silva that, as impressive as it is to harness to thrill of a focused event and the enthusiasm of a hard core of supporters, it’s unlikely that this haul will catapult Paul into serious contention for the Republican nomination. There just aren’t enough people who truly want to do things like shut down the Department of Education. Still, the viral nature of this will at least allow him a window for making that case.