Steve Kornacki

For most of the summer, Biden contracts were trading at around 10 on the Intrade political market, while Evan Bayh contracts traded much higher – peaking at 40 about 10 days ago. But look at what’s happened in just the last day, as the media has begun portraying Biden as the most likely selection.

Other notable values on the Democratic V.P. market: Tim Kaine is now trading at 15.4, which is actually up slightly from yesterday, and Kathleen Sebelius is at 14.8 – almost a five-point jump for her from yesterday. Hillary Clinton is at 9.3, unchanged from yesterday. But maybe we shouldn’t read too much into this: Wesley Clark is at an absurdly overvalued 13.8.

On the Republican side, Mitt Romney is top at 31.1, followed closely by Tim Pawlnety at 29.9.

Not surprisingly, a column in Sunday’s Washington Post by Deborah Howell, in which the paper’s ombudsman (ombudswoman?) wrote of the considerable disparity in the volume of her paper’s coverage of Barack Obama and John McCain, is causing a stir on the right.

Conservative media watchdog groups like the Media Research Center and NewsBusters have hyped Ms. Howell’s column, particularly her conclusion that the disparity in the Post’s coverage of both candidates “is so wide that it doesn’t look good,” as have numerous conservative cable and talk-radio shows. It’s all further proof, in their minds, that the liberal media is in the tank for Mr.  read more »

Evan Bayh has now been a serious vice-presidential contender for three consecutive elections. In 2000, he was one of Al Gore’s four finalists (Joe Lieberman, John Kerry and John Edwards were the others), in 2004 he was given a serious look by Kerry’s campaign, and this year he is – by most press accounts – on Barack Obama’s very short list.

Maybe three times will prove the charm, and maybe not. Certainly, this story – which raises all sorts of conflict of interest questions about the seven corporate boards on which Bayh’s wife serves – won’t help his chances.

If Obama doesn’t pick him, Bayh will probably just go through this whole process again in four years or eight years or whenever a Democratic presidential nominee next needs a running-mate.  read more »

Maybe it will be Joe Biden after all. The buzz around him is only increasing. Here’s what Howard Fineman reported just a few minutes ago:

Within the last few hours I've spoken with two of the finalists for the role of Barack bama's running-mate, and to two other sources who are close to the process.

My bottom line is this: Barring a big surprise or last-minute change of heart, the choice is likely to be Sen. Joe Biden of Deleware (sic) chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee….

"If I had to bet my life on it, I'd bet it is Joe," said one of the other contenders.

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John McCain isn’t the first presumptive presidential nominee to announce ahead of time when he will announce his running-mate.

Just as speculation over Barack Obama’s imminent V.P. selection reached fever pitch yesterday, McCain’s campaign not coincidentally leaked to the Politico news that the G.O.P. candidate will make his own choice public on August 29 – the day after Obama’s acceptance speech (and McCain’s 72nd birthday). The goal is to shift the focus away from Obama as soon as his speech ends, denying him (in theory, anyway) a post-convention bounce.

Actually, the announcement-of-an-announcement strategy has been used before – by Al Gore in 2000. Lagging behind George W.  read more »

I can’t help but think of Bob Kerrey right now. In 1992, the then-Nebraska senator (and current New School president) was one of Bill Clinton’s two vice-presidential finalists, and conventional wisdom strongly suggested Kerrey would get the nod.

The reason was simple: Clinton was an inexperienced small-state governor whose Vietnam draft avoidance would be a major issue in the fall – especially since he was running against a World War II hero, George H.W. Bush. The presence of Kerrey, a decorated Vietnam combat veteran widely celebrated for his sacrifices, would inoculate Clinton against the G.O.P.’s ugly attacks, just as Kerrey’s Senate experience would complement Clinton’s gubernatorial resume.  read more »

When it comes to Barack Obama’s running-mate search, the question of “when?” is now being asked just as often as “who?”

The Politico is reporting that Obama’s decision is expected this week – but that it also might come “as late as this weekend,” or even “the beginning of next week” at the Democratic convention. Which doesn’t really narrow it down at all. Marc Ambinder, meanwhile, notes that Obama is scheduled for a down day in Chicago this Friday and that “Democratic advance folks are being called to Chicago,” suggesting an end-of-week announcement could be in the works. Or maybe not.

It’s worth noting that the last time a VP choice was announced during a convention was in 1988, when George H.  read more »

The New York Times has endorsed city Councilman Michael McMahon over lawyer/'06 (corrected) nominee Stephen Harrison in the 13th District Democratic congressional primary.

Scott Stringer has endorsed Dan Squadron in his Democratic primary challenge to state Senator Marty Connor.

And pictured above is none other than the vacationing Azi Paybarah, who had this photo snapped earlier today when – on his way to Alcatraz – he ran into former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown.

O.K., so this may prove to be one of those flare-ups that’s extinguished and forgotten before anyone really notices, but there’s plenty of chatter in the blogosphere today about the striking similarities between the moving personal anecdote from his Vietnamese captivity that John McCain recounted at Saturday’s Saddleback forum and one that the late Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn told from his gulag days.

Here’s what McCain said on Saturday night, to a question about what his faith in Christ means to him personally:

It was Christmas Day. We were allowed to stand outside of our cell for a few minutes, and those days we were not allowed to see or communicate with each other, although we certainly did.

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I alluded to this in today’s Morning Read, but if common sense hasn’t already killed them, maybe we can use this tidbit from the Associated Press to put an end to the absurd John Kerry-for-VP rumors that proliferated last Friday and over the weekend.

Democrat Barack Obama met yesterday with Texas oil baron and longtime conservative activist T. Boone Pickens to discuss strategies for developing alternative energy.

The presidential hopeful praised Pickens, a native of Oklahoma, as a "legendary entrepreneur" and deflected a question about the billionaire's role in helping to fund a television ad campaign that undermined John F. Kerry, the 2004 Democratic nominee.

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There’s plenty of of noise coming from the right these days, dire warnings to John McCain about the terrible consequences that will befall him if he fails to appease the Republican Party’s base with his VP selection. These voices come in response to McCain’s apparent openness to choosing a pro-choice running mate – possibly Tom Ridge, but more likely Joe Lieberman.

His dilemma calls to mind the one faced by George H. W. Bush 20 years ago. Bush, much like McCain now, was not particularly liked or trusted by the right (although, unlike McCain, he had spent the previous eight years bending over backward to alter this reputation).  read more »

The problem with the post-season in most sports is that one league or conference is often much stronger than the other league or conference. When this happens, the playoffs become anticlimactic, with the actual championship series or game becoming a foregone conclusion once the stronger conference crowns its champion.

A good example of this came in 2004, when the Red Sox and Yankees slugged it out in seven memorable games in the A.L.C.S. They were clearly the two most talented teams in baseball and massive audiences tuned in for each game, knowing that it was the de facto World Series. Which it was.  read more »

There’s really no other way to put it: John McCain stole the show at the Saddleback church.

He was quick, confident, and often funny, even if most of his seemingly off-the-cuff quips are staples of his stump speech. He connected effortlessly with the live church audience, to judge from their loud and sustained ovations, and evidently with the media, which has largely pronounced the event a win for Sen. McCain.

To considerable effect, McCain also mixed heavy doses of patriotic and religious themes, twice invoking, in some detail, his experience as a prisoner in Vietnam. The crowd ate it up.

Barack Obama, by contrast, was treated politely by the crowd, but not much better than that.  read more »

You may have seen that Barack Obama and John McCain will both participate in a presidential forum on Saturday night at an evangelical conference in California. It’s receiving heavy publicity and will be televised live by CNN and MSNBC, but it is not actually a debate.

McCain and Obama will be interviewed separately by Rick Warren, each for one hour. Warren is promising wide-ranging discussions and tough questions but is also stressing that the tone will be civil (perhaps why both candidates were so agreeable to taking part). Actually, the most interesting moment will probably come in the middle of the broadcast, when both McCain and Obama will briefly share the stage – one coming, one going – a scene that should evoke memories of the in-between moments of the back-to-back Democratic and Republican debates in New Hampshire back in January, when ABC's Charlie Gibson invited all of the candidates to mingle together onstage (although Ron Paul ended up standing by himself for much of the time).

Earlier this week, I wrote about the recent history of Democratic convention keynote speakers and how many had gone on to national prominence, and even – in the case of 2004 keynoter Barack Obama – to a future Democratic nomination. This track record is partly attributable to the actual speeches that were delivered (particularly in the cases of Obama and Mario Cuomo), but also to common sense: The keynote slot tends to go to promising leaders who are seen as representing the future of the party.

Not surprisingly, then, the man who is scheduled to deliver this year’s keynote address, former Virginia Governor Mark Warner, now finds himself  read more »

The prospect of Joe Biden joining Barack Obama’s ticket, which seems to have grown more real in recent days, raises an interesting possibility: another Biden presidential campaign.

Given how his campaign turned out this year, the idea of Biden ever seeking the White House again seems (and probably is) unlikely. But, at least in theory, a tour de force performance as the VP nominee – think Lloyd Bentsen in 1988 – could spark popular interest in a future Biden presidential campaign that was missing in this past one. If Obama were to lose, Biden (again, theoretically) might then have a shot at the 2012 nomination (much the way the ’92 nomination was essentially Bentsen’s for the taking after his ’88 performance).  read more »

I promise I’ll let the Lieberman/V.P. angle go after this, but I can’t resist pointing out the kooky logic employed by Newt Gingrich earlier this week in an effort to shoot down the Lieberman talk. In an appearance on Hannity and Colmes, the former Speaker said:

I like Senator Lieberman a great deal. I admire him a lot. I think he'd be a great secretary of state. I think he would be terrific as an attorney general, but I think the idea of him being the Republican vice presidential nominee would split the convention, would probably mean that Bob Barr would get about 15 percent of the vote.  read more »

NBC’s First Read claims that Joe Lieberman’s chances of landing on the G.O.P. ticket effectively ended yesterday, when the leaders of various social conservative groups reacted with fury to John McCain’s suggestion that a pro-choice stand wouldn’t disqualify any potential running-mate. According to First Read:

That thud you just heard was the Ridge/Lieberman VP trial balloon that social conservative activists quickly popped. They couldn't find reporters fast enough to denounce the prospect of McCain adding a pro-choice pol to his ticket.

I disagree.

First, of course social conservative “leaders” are going to react this way. Their status in the world of Republican politics (i.  read more »

In an interview on Fox News today, Mike Huckabee registered his objection to the idea of Mitt Romney joining this year’s Republican ticket.

“Mitt Romney has had very definite swings of positions— not just one or two little things, but on many of the issues,” Huckabee said.  He later added: “I think that there are better choices for Senator McCain, that would have the approval of values voters.”

Huckabee’s concerns, it’s probably fair to assume, have a lot more to do with 2012 then with 2008. Both Huckabee and Romney saw their reputations enhanced by their campaigns this year, and each now has high name recognition and a sizable following within the G.  read more »

If, as I have argued relentlessly that he should, Barack Obama decides that an established reputation for national security and foreign policy expertise is a prerequisite for any potential running-mate, the question then becomes: Who passes the test?

Tim Kaine, eight years removed from a then-weak mayoralty and just 32 months removed from a lieutenant governor’s office, clearly doesn’t. (Maybe this is why, besides today’s two-weeks-too-late New York Times profile, the Kaine chatter has mostly vanished, especially after Russian tanks rolled into Georgia.) Neither does Kathleen Sebelius, who’s also seen as one of Obama’s personal favorites. If Obama were now leading John McCain by ten points, it’d probably be fair to assume he’d pick one of these governors.  read more »

Per Marc Ambinder, we now have formal word of an agreement between the Clinton and Obama campaigns that calls for both candidates’ names to be placed in nomination at the convention in order to “honor and celebrate” all of their supporters, according to a joint statement.

As I wrote yesterday, the Obama campaign didn’t have much choice here. The official purpose of a convention is to nominate a presidential candidate, and that can only be done two ways: by acclimation or by a roll call of the states.

If the Obama campaign had gone the acclimation route (as a way of avoiding a formal vote in which hundreds of Clinton delegates might dissent), the protests from Clinton’s die-hard delegates (there are many of them) would be deafening and would produce video clips that would be played over and over, completely defeating the purpose of an acclimation motion.  read more »

John McCain campaigned in Michigan on Wednesday, which probably makes this a good time to examine just how crucial the state is to his fall prospects. Michigan hasn’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1988, and if McCain doesn’t break that streak it will be very difficult for him to assemble 270 electoral votes.

The basic problem for McCain is that there aren’t many real opportunities for him to expand the electoral map, meaning that the 286 electoral votes that George W. Bush racked up in 2004 essentially represent his ceiling. By contrast, Barack Obama has multiple opportunities to flip over states that voted for Bush in both 2000 and 2004.  read more »

Tim Kaine’s stock as a potential running-mate for Barack Obama has dropped markedly in the last day, with the news that Mark Warner, Kaine’s predecessor as Virginia’s governor, will be the keynote speaker at the convention in Denver.

The thinking, widely repeated in the media yesterday and this morning, is that Warner’s selection effectively excludes Kaine from the V.P. hunt since the Obama campaign wouldn’t want two Virginians occupying the featured speaking roles on two consecutive convention nights. As Keith Olbermann put it on his MSNBC show last night:

Warner's rising star might actually dim the VP chances for Virginia's current governor, Tim Kaine on this simple theory.

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The bottom-line of the rather extensive survey released on Wednesday by the Pew Center for the People and the Press is no different from that of just about every other poll released this summer: a slim (three points in this case) lead for Barack Obama.

But a few of the specific findings of the Pew survey would seem to offer guidance to Obama and John McCain as they make important strategic decisions for the fall.

On the whole, the poll is better news for McCain than it is for Obama, as is any poll that has the race within the margin of error right now (since the expectation at the start of this summer was the Obama would be nursing a healthy lead by mid-August).  read more »

Marc Ambinder has an interesting post about the debate within Hillary Clinton’s campaign over whether to pursue a formal roll call vote at the convention. After noting that some advisors oppose the idea because there would inevitably be slippage (perhaps considerable) between Clinton’s primary season delegate total and her roll call total, Ambinder writes that:

Other Clinton aides note that Bill Clinton was generous enough to give Jerry Brown a roll call vote in 1992 even though Brown had been sharply and personally critical of Hillary Clinton during the primary campaign. Indeed, symbolic roll call votes are regular parts of conventions.  read more »

Earlier today, I took issue with “the August rule” – that is, the idea (proposed by the Politco today) that polling at the end of August is a reliable historical indicator of whether the November result will be a landslide. The Politico’s story used a very narrow reading of past elections to make it seem like the overwhelming weight of history supports this theory, which it doesn’t.

There are lots of simple theories like this out there. For example, New Hampshire residents used to crow that, since the inception of their primary in 1952, no one had ever been elected president without winning it.  read more »

Ricki Lieberman is one Hillraiser (the designation for those who raised over $100,000 for Hillary Clinton) who’s not ready to give up the fight. Responding to Jason Horowitz’s story in this week’s Observer – in which Jason detailed the “Electability Watch” newsletter that she’s been sending out every night since the Democratic primaries ended – Lieberman has written in to make it clear that her efforts are aimed at one goal: securing the Democratic nomination in two weeks for Hillary Clinton, who formally conceded the race on June 7.  Lieberman’s full email follows:

To the Editor,

Jason Horowitz is correct in saying that coordinating the Electability Watch (EW) takes time.  read more »

With his selection as the keynote speaker at this month’s Democratic convention, Mark Warner is stepping into an opportunity to significantly raise his political profile. Traditionally, the keynote slot has served to promote a rising or overlooked star in the party, and the past six keynote speakers all saw their political fortunes improve – sometimes radically – after their turns in the spotlight. They include:

2004

Barack Obama: You know how this one turned out.

2000

Harold Ford, Jr.: Then a 30-year-old from Memphis, Ford was fellow Tennessean Al Gore’s handpicked choice to keynote the Los Angeles convention. Ford has been elected to the House in 1996, succeeding his father, Harold Ford Sr.  read more »

You’ve probably seen the news that Mark Warner, the former Virginia governor and the odds-on favorite to replace John Warner in the Senate next year, has been tapped to deliver the keynote address at the upcoming Democratic convention.

It’s causing a mild stir because many believed that the keynote slot had already been given to Hillary Clinton, who is slated to speak on the same night (Tuesday) as Warner. So is this a slap in the face to Clinton and her supporters?

Probably not. The fact is that Clinton’s speech, whether it’s marketed as the keynote address or note, will be delivered in the plum 10:00 P.  read more »

I was trying to figure out where to lead things off today, and then I saw this Politico piece by David Paul Kuhn, which is already getting heavy play across the web. The main idea: Barack Obama will not win a landslide because history says that landslides are evident in polling by the end of the summer. Writes Kuhn:

In five of the six post-war landslides (defined as a victory of 10 percentage points or more) the eventual winner was ahead by at least 10 percentage points in the polls at the close of August, according to a Politico analysis of historical Gallup polls.  read more »

The satirist Ambrose Bierce memorably described war as God’s way of teaching geography. And so when Russian tanks rolled first into the disputed territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia over the weekend and then into Georgia proper, it marked the first time many Americans had heard anything at all about the people, places and politics of this particular corner of the Caucasus.

For now, the conflict between Russia and Georgia, a country with five million fewer residents than the U.S. state of the same name, isn’t likely to play a major, direct role in the race between Barack Obama and John McCain. Few Americans live in the area (and those who do are being evacuated as this is being written), no American troops are on the ground, and there are no significant ethnic or emotional bonds between most U.  read more »

A weekend report in the Financial Times stated that Joe Lieberman is being vetted as a potential running-mate by John McCain's campaign and is now on the Arizonan's "short list."

Still, conventional wisdom says this has a snowball's chance in hell of actually happening. Lieberman is pro-choice, still pro-gay rights and votes with the Democrats on more issues than not in the U.S. Senate. How could any Republican nominee, least of all McCain, motivate the conservative base to place him a heartbeat away from the presidency?

Even if this weekend's report actually is an intentional leak from the McCain campaign- a questionable assumption to start with - it could easily be a simple thank you gesture to Lieberman, a staunch and valued McCain ally, and not a real trial balloon.  read more »

In the three national campaigns he has run - two for the Democratic presidential nomination and one as the party's vice presidential nominee - John Edwards won a grand total of one contest as an active candidate*: the South Carolina primary in 2004. But amazingly, he managed to emerge from each losing effort with his political standing not only unharmed, but actually enhanced.

His 2004 primary bid, which peaked with his strong second-place showing in the lead-off Iowa caucuses, ended with wide agreement among activists and party leaders that his Southern roots, working-class appeal, and powerful communication skills would make him the ideal running mate for John Kerry, who finally gave in and offered Edwards his No.  read more »

With all of the talk about what roles Hillary and Bill Clinton will play at the upcoming Democratic convention – and whether Clinton will allow her name to be placed in nomination for a roll call vote – it's probably worth looking back to the 1992 convention, when the Clintons dealt with similar issues, but from a much different perspective.

Back then, they were the winners, with Bill emerging from the Democratic primaries with more than enough delegates to secure a first-ballot nomination. But as the July convention in New York approached, two of his primary-season opponents – Paul Tsongas and Jerry Brown – each stubbornly clung to their large delegate blocs (more than 500 each), attempting to use threats of rules fights and roll call votes as leverage.  read more »

The notion that Barack Obama would ask Hillary Clinton to join him on the Democratic ticket was something between far-fetched and delusional when it was introduced months ago. And it remains problematic now, weeks (or maybe even days) before Obama at last reveals his selection. Still, something significant has changed since early June, when the Democratic race ended and Obama set off to unify the party and reintroduce himself to the broader November electorate.

Back then, an air of supreme confidence – if not outright hubris – surrounded his campaign, and for good reason. Every historical and statistical indicator pointed to a Democratic victory in the fall, and turnout in the party’s primaries – nearly 40 million voters – had shattered all previous records.  read more »

Conventional wisdom holds that members of the House of Representatives, many of them elected by just a sliver of their home state's electorate, are too anonymous, too untested, and just too risky to warrant serious vice-presidential consideration. A running mate, especially with the suffocating media scrutiny that defines politics these days, needs to bring a higher profile and deeper resume to the table.

In many ways, this is true. As anyone who's spent more than a few minutes in the Speaker's Lobby of the U.S. House can attest, the average House backbencher is less suited to and equipped for the national stage than even Dan Quayle was in 1988.  read more »

The Democrats are supposed to own the issue of energy, if only because they've mastered the art of tarring Republicans as the party of Big Oil. It's a caricature that the G.O.P., with its mocking scorn for conservation, addiction to corporate tax cuts and unkickable habit of nominating oil men for national office, has done nothing to refute.

Of course, the Democrats are also (supposedly) the masters of the blown political save, experts at devising new and ever more elaborate means of snatching electoral defeat from the jaws of victory. So it's only fitting that now, just as energy assumes unprecedented prominence in a presidential campaign, they've gone and adopted a maddeningly incomprehensible message that threatens to forfeit the powerful emotional advantage they've enjoyed on the subject for decades.  read more »

It’s long been obvious that Bill Clinton believes he was wronged in this year’s Democratic primary campaign, his words and actions deliberately twisted and distorted by his enemies and their accomplices in the press to turn him into someone and something he is not.

Two months after his wife formally conceded to Barack Obama, the former president is still pouting in full public view. In an interview with ABC News last weekend, he was noticeably stinting in his praise of the presumptive Democratic nominee while making it clear that he has some primary-related grievances to air just as soon as this election is over.  read more »

Every four years, just as the speculation over potential running mates reaches a fever pitch, contrarian voices speak up to dismiss it all as much ado about nothing. They are wrong.

Take, for example, this Sunday’s Meet the Press. After discussing this year’s usual VP suspects with the shows’ other two panelists, moderator Tom Brokaw turned to Judy Woodruff, cited the example of 1988 – when the Democratic ticket received no tangible Election Day boost from Lloyd Bentsen’s utter dominance of Dan Quayle in the VP matchup – and asked: “In the final analysis, Judy, how much difference does it make?”

Woodruff took the cue.  read more »

John McCain seemed like anything but a typical politician when he burst onto the national scene eight years ago in a campaign that transformed him into the most popular public figure in America (if not in his own party).

But now, less than 100 days before the 2008 presidential election, he's running a full-blown attack campaign, disparaging Barack Obama on both philosophical and personal grounds, and taking a few liberties with the truth while he's at it. In response, many of his old allies in America's op-ed and editorial pages, not to mention within the Republican Party, are warning that the presumptive G.  read more »

For all anyone besides Barack Obama (and maybe a confidante or two) knows, the media buzz may be accurate and Tim Kaine could soon be introduced as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee’s running mate.

But this is not at all what the prelude to an announcement is supposed to feel like.

It all started late Monday afternoon, when several credible publications – hours after Obama’s top campaign strategists met with his running-mate selection team in Washington – suggested that the 50-year-old Virginia governor had emerged as the leader among a select group of running-mate finalists. Kaine “ranks very, very high on the short list,” a source told the Politico, while The Washington Post reported that Kaine had had “very serious” conversations with Obama about joining the ticket.  read more »