What are they up to?

[sensitiveguy]

May 12, 2008
by Daniel W. Reilly

Terry McAuliffe, campaign chairman for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), admitted Sunday that “something big would have to happen” for his candidate to overtake Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

However, McAuliffe vowed that the campaign would press on, despite increasing calls for Clinton to step aside.

Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” McAuliffe acknowledged that it was “highly unlikely” that Clinton could catch Obama in elected delegates but reminded viewers that neither candidate has reached the “magic number” of delegates necessary to lock up the nomination.

Just what constitutes that “magic number” was a topic of debate Sunday, as McAuliffe pressed for delegates from Michigan and Florida to count.

Meanwhile, Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod sought to portray the race as all but over on “Fox News Sunday.”

“We are coming to the end of the process,” Axelrod said. “I think you're going to see [uncommitted superdelegates] making decisions at a rapid pace from this point on.”

When asked if Obama would unveil a “flood” of superdelegate endorsements in the coming days, Axelrod said that a flood was probably overstating the case but that the campaign would continue to “unfurl these endorsements on a regular basis.”

Former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards agreed with Axelrod’s analysis of the race, saying during an appearance on "Face the Nation" that it would be “very hard” at this point for Clinton to secure the nomination.

“You can no longer make a compelling case for the math,” said Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina. “The math is very, very hard for her.”

Edwards continued to tease supporters with talk of an endorsement, telling host Bob Schieffer that he “might” still endorse, though he held back from making his preference known.

Back on “Meet the Press,” Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) sought to tamp down any talk of a joint Obama-Clinton ticket.

“These are two great candidates who fought very hard, but my sense is today that that probably won't be the ticket,” he said.

The Sunday talk shows were also abuzz with comments Clinton made on Thursday, when she told USAToday that Obama’s “support among working — hardworking Americans, white Americans, is weakening.”

Edwards said Clinton probably did not choose her words carefully enough and urged her to be careful. McAuliffe defended the remarks, insisting she was only paraphrasing an earlier story by the Associated Press.

“What Hillary was talking about is the coalitions that she has put together, that [have] allowed her to win Texas and Ohio, [where] a lot of working-class folks have come out,” he said.

While some Democratic Party elders have been concerned by the length and tone of the campaign, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” urged Democrats to “relax," saying the nomination will be decided soon and the party will coalesce around the winner.

Instead, Reid focused on the temperament of the presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

“I have said that John McCain is a flawed candidate,” Reid said.

“Everybody knows that he has a real unusual temper,” he added, although Reid declined to discuss any specific “flare ups” he has had with McCain.

Reid also criticized recent comments by McCain highlighting the fact that a spokesman for Hamas had expressed support for Obama, saying comments like those were “more Karl Rove than the real John McCain.”

However, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) defended McCain, whom Lieberman has endorsed.

“When it comes to dealing with enemies … Sen. McCain has more experience, more balance, and he knows when to be tough, knows when to be soft,” Lieberman said on CNN’s “Late Edition.”

[sensitiveguy]

She’s $20 million in debt so they must have something up their sleeve. LOL

[sensitiveguy]

May 14, 2008
by Jonathan Alter

What is the game they're now playing? The math is clear: Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee for president unless he's caught on tape taking cash from Tony Rezko or vacationing in Hawaii with Louis Farrakhan. But the only thing dependable about the Clintons is that they never quit. Hillary has more than enough delegates to hassle Obama with the threat that she'll go all the way to the Denver convention or otherwise jeopardize party unity if he doesn't seat Florida and Michigan exactly as she wants. And she may rally her millions of supporters to demand that Obama offer her the No. 2 slot. Don't put it past her.

Before getting to Hillary's game, let me introduce a new ace in the hole for Obama. For all the talk of numbers, there's one that will be most important for superdelegates: 1.5 million. That reflects the 1.5 million names of donors that the Obama campaign has on file. Because no contribution below $200 is publicly reported, the vast majority of those names are in Obama's exclusive possession, to be shared as he wishes. As Graham Richard, the longtime mayor of Fort Wayne, Ind., explained it to me last week, it's all about the Benjamins. Local officials (that's who most superdelegates are) need the tens of thousands of Democratic donors on that list who come from their states. Their re-election depends on successful fund-raising. No Obama at the top of the ticket, no list. No list, and you may be back selling insurance after November.

Another hidden factor pushing superdelegates away from Hillary is "Florigan" or "Michida"—or whatever we should call these scofflaw states that moved up their primaries in defiance of party rules. Out of desperation, Hillary is putting all her chips on the injustice done to Floridians and Michiganders, even though she said early in the process that their votes "shouldn't count." Never mind the hypocrisy here. Never mind that Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe was the one who first insisted the rules be enforced. (When Michigan Sen. Carl Levin wanted to move up that state's primary in 2004, McAuliffe, then party chairman, screamed at him: "If I allow you to do that, the whole system collapses! The rules are the rules." This is from McAuliffe's own memoirs.) The problem for Hillary is that party officials in the other 48 states don't give a rat's patootie about seating Florida and Michigan. In fact, they're angry at those states for jumping the line, then whining about it. The whole imbroglio, says Simon Rosenberg of the New Democrat Network, has been "instrumental" in driving superdelegates to Obama.

With big wins in West Virginia and Kentucky, Hillary will likely hang on for at least a month. She can keep campaigning with a bare-bones, McCain '07-style operation and, despite some legal impediments, pay off debts with huge fund-raisers after the election. One key moment will come at the May 31 meeting of the rules committee of the Democratic Party, which is packed with Clintonites. She could likely manipulate the committee to push the Florigan question to the floor of the Denver convention in late August. That doesn't guarantee a floor fight, but the threat of one gives Hillary a weapon to use both in private and in public.

In private, negotiations will open between the Clinton and Obama forces. Even if Obama has reached the magic number of 2,025 delegates needed to nominate (Clinton is now claiming the real number is higher), the Clintonites will have plenty to talk about that relates to the management of the convention. And Hillary has the wily and heedless Harold Ickes on her side. In the past, Ickes has caused big problems for the eventual nominee, and in those days he held fewer cards than he does this year. In 1980, Jimmy Carter led Ted Kennedy by more than 700 delegates at the end of the primaries—but Ickes, representing Kennedy, created a series of procedural obstacles that turned that year's convention into a sour mess and helped doom Carter in the fall. In 1988, Michael Dukakis had sewn up the nomination but needed to deal with the complex question of what Jesse Jackson wanted. Ickes, representing Jackson, made Dukakis look weak, which softened him up for George H.W. Bush in the fall. Obama has said he would negotiate with Ahmadinejad, but he'd be smart not to extend the same courtesy to Ickes.

Publicly, Hillary may hint that she is interested in the vice presidency. This is what I've picked up from some of her friends in recent days. Even if she decides against it, keeping the option alive gives her political leverage through the spring and summer. Her legions of backers will clamor for Obama to name her, and he'll look bad if he excludes her from his shortlist. This could force him to name a running mate sooner than he would like. He could even get caught in a jam like John F. Kennedy's in 1960. That year, JFK offered the vice presidency to Lyndon Johnson, who was the powerful Senate majority leader. Bobby Kennedy thought LBJ would say no, but he didn't. JFK and LBJ were forced into a shotgun marriage that left neither of them happy. Is something similar in store for 2008? It all depends, as Bill Clinton once testified, "on what the meaning of the word 'is' is."