2008 Democrats

A Kos commenter notices that Ted Kennedy, among other leading Democrats, is denounced in strong terms in this post from a Clinton supporter on Hillary Clinton’s campaign web site.

The notice, posted earlier in the month for a demonstration at D.N.C. headquarters when the Rules and Bylaws Committee meets over the fate of the Florida and Michigan delegates, includes this line:  read more »

John Edwards’ endorsement of Barack Obama matters because the media is treating it like it does. Twenty-four hours after Hillary Clinton celebrated a 41-point landslide victory in West Virginia, the press now has fresh reason to speculate about a final death blow to her campaign, creating a narrative that could unleash the decisive superdelegate flood the Obama campaign has been waiting for.

But, really, is this huge—or even surprising—news? Obama was going to win the nomination with or without Edwards’ backing.  read more »

Barack Obama's campaign just released the remarks he's prepared for tonight's primary night rally in Raleigh, N.C., in which he said his campaign stands "less than two hundred delegates away from securing the Democratic nomination ...."

He called Hillary Clinton a "formidable opponent," and congratulated her for her victory in Indiana, and expressed confidence that the party would be united come November.

The full speech follows:  read more »

Barack Obama is winning. North Carolina is his, comfortably, and his delegate-count continues to climb ever closer to a requisite primary-ending majority.

So why has his campaign felt like a long march over broken glass?

“It is painful to watch,” said an influential Obama supporter and delegate in an interview the day before the North Carolina and Indiana primaries. “It’s exhausting for everyone involved. It’s exhausting for Barack and Michelle. It’s exhausting for all the campaign staff, and I know it’s exhausting for the supporters.”  read more »

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the pandering Presidential politics of Clinton, McCain and Obama. McCain pandered on the gas tax and Hillary and Barack pandered on trade.  read more »

Superdelegates are generally seen as seasoned elected officials or as the kind of party apparatchiks whose natural habitat is the figurative smoke-filled room.

Not everyone fits the stereotype. Among those who will help decide the Democratic contest is a 51-year-old office administrator and piano teacher in Dublin, Ireland, who has not lived in the U.S. for more than two decades and follows the race in large part through coverage in the Irish and British media.
Liv Gibbons, a native of Los Angeles, will cast her vote at her party’s convention in Denver for Barack Obama.  read more »

The Massachusetts Democratic primary, along with nearly two dozen other primaries and caucuses, was held on Feb. 5. Hillary Clinton won it by 15 points, one of her best showings anywhere this year, and Michael Dukakis voted in it—but he won’t say for whom.

“I voted for a candidate, yeah,” is about all Mr. Dukakis, the state’s former governor and a lifelong resident of Brookline, will say.

Mr. Dukakis has maintained an adamantly neutral public stance throughout the campaign, hoping instead to sell both candidates and their campaigns on the need for assembling a massive grassroots organizing effort—a captain and six block leaders in all 200,000 precincts in the country—for the fall. But he also said that Barack Obama will probably be the nominee and the race decided by early June, and possibly much sooner, with primaries in Indiana and North Carolina on tap next week.  read more »

Not only will David Shuster, the MSNBC talent who got into trouble over claiming the Clinton campaign had "pimped out" former first daughter Chelsea on the hustings, be returning to the network; his suspension will have lasted two weeks, and he'll be back in time for the NBC-sponsored debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama Feb. 26. Broadcasting & Cable reports:  read more »

Legendary novelist and editor Toni Morrison's endorsement of Barack Obama is obviously not significant for her ability to move voters at the polls, which is not proven and probably not likely to be proven. But given her perceived attachment to the Clintons—Bill, she famously once called America's first black president; and Hillary she has been close to in the past—we thought it worth printing in full the letter of endorsement she sent to the Illinois senator, as released by the Obama campaign. Follow the jump to read it.  read more »

COLUMBIA, S.C.—John Edwards arrived on the small stage here at Jillian's eatery at 9:30 on the dot with his family. (I think he got a haircut! When did he have time for that?) "The three of us move on to February 5th," he said. Okay then! On the TV, which is playing him with a delay (what, is he going to suddenly start swearing?), it looks like he's in a big hall just like Barack Obama! But he's not!  read more »

This statement came out about an hour ago from the Clinton campaign:

“I have called Senator Obama to congratulate him and wish him well.

“Thank you to the people of South Carolina who voted today and welcomed me into their homes over the last year. Your stories will stay with me well beyond this campaign and I am grateful for the support so many of you gave to me.

“We now turn our attention to the millions of Americans who will make their voices heard in Florida and the twenty-two states as well as American Samoa who will vote on February 5th.  read more »

In an email to reporters, Obama press secretary Bill Burton writes that "based on exit polling in South Carolina, we are currently projecting that we will win 25 delegates, Clinton will win 12 and Edwards will win 8. This means that the total pledged delegates from Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and now South Carolina combined will be, we estimate: Obama-63, Clinton-48 and Edwards-26."

And this dig.

"Another note – below are the real vote tallies from the precincts that former President Bill Clinton visited tonight:  read more »

Barack Obama is about to deliver his South Carolina victory speech, and here is the text of his remarks as prepared.

Over two weeks ago, we saw the people of Iowa proclaim that our time for change has come. But there were those who doubted this country’s desire for something new – who said Iowa was a fluke not to be repeated again.

Well, tonight, the cynics who believed that what began in the snows of Iowa was just an illusion were told a different story by the good people of South Carolina.  read more »

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The Clinton campaign spent the last week frantically inveigling the media to attach an asterisk to the South Carolina results.

And it just blew up in their faces.

Right up until the very end, just hours before the polls closed, Bill Clinton—the same Bill Clinton who had previously summoned all the righteous indignation he could to proclaim his campaign's innocence in encouraging a racial divide—sought to chalk up his wife's looming defeat to identity politics.  read more »

There’s a sense of inevitability around the Clinton brand, and Hillary Clinton has been cashing in on it.

She advertises herself as “vetted,” promises there will be “no surprises” with her as the party’s nominee, and brags that she and her husband have been fighting—and defeating—the Republicans for 15 years running. And it’s working: Even though surveys show Barack Obama (and even John Edwards) faring markedly better against the likely Republican nominees, Democratic voters continue to tell pollsters that they believe Hillary is the most electable candidate.  read more »

As expected, this morning at 8:03 a.m (PST), Judge Charles Thompson of Clark County District Court in Nevada signed an order forcing MSNBC to include Dennis Kuncinich in tonight’s Democratic debate.

Citing the “timing” of Mr. Kucinich’s exclusion, the “importance of the caucuses,” and the “obligations of the media,” Judge Thompson ordered MSNBC to include Mr. Kucinich or face a shutdown of the debate:

“[T]he Court finds that the harm to Plaintiff and the public if this Order is not granted outweighs any conceivable harm to Defendant from granting the Order.”

The judge also ordered NBC Universal to pony up a $1,000 bond.

Follow the jump to view the original document.  read more »

This morning, the Media Mob caught up with William McGaha, who is serving as Dennis Kucinich’s lawyer in his battle to be included in tonight’s MSNBC debate at Cashman Center in Las Vegas.

Mr. McGaha said his client’s case was based, in part, on two e-mails the Kucinich camp had received from Jennifer Backus, a political consultant for NBC Universal. The first e-mail, according to Mr. McGaha, spelled out the criteria by which candidates would quality for the debate.  read more »

A Nevada judge ruled yesterday afternoon that MSBNC will have to include Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich in tonight’s debate—or face a possible injunction halting the televised event from occurring.

“The judge called it a matter of fairness and said Nevada voters will benefit if they hear from more than just Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards,” the AP reported Monday afternoon.  read more »

Are the Clintons really in any position to lecture Democratic voters about how irresponsible of them it would be to nominate Barack Obama?

For months, that's the game they've been playing -- warning, in ways subtle and overt, that Obama is a novice candidate who will be mercilessly chewed up by the big, bad Republicans.  read more »

NASHUA, N.H.—The rushed primary schedule gives reporters only five days in New Hampshire, with virtually no sleep since they finished up in Iowa late last night. This morning in New Hampshire, they were feeling it.  read more »

Earlier today Dennis Kucinich sort of endorsed Barack Obama by encouraging his supporters to choose Obama as a second-place candidate on caucus night in Iowa, should Kucinich not make the "15 percent threshold."

The Obama campaign just responded with a statement that says in part:

“I have a lot of respect for Congressman Kucinich, and I’m honored that he has done this because we both believe deeply in the need for fundamental change,” said Senator Obama.

Both statements in full after the jump.  read more »

Here's Barack Obama's campaign bus, seen from inside the Hillary Clinton campaign plane, according to Jason Horowitz, who sent this picture from Iowa.

Both campaigns were leaving Des Moines, bound for Sioux City, at the same time

In the midst of increasingly frequent rumors about a presidential bid, Michael Bloomberg held his annual prayer breakfast at the New York Public Library this morning, giving Democratic Mayor David Dinkins a shout-out from the podium.

Afterwards, I asked Dinkins about his feelings about a Bloomberg run.

"I'm a big fan of the mayor, I like him a lot," he told me. But he added, “I stay with my friends. Hillary and Bill Clinton supported me, and I will support them."

I asked him what he would do if she wasn’t the nominee.

"Then, that's a whole other question," he replied.

Les Gelb, the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, thinks that the assassination of Benazir Bhutto is hugely significant for American national security, but not for domestic politics.

"It really is a big deal," said Gelb in a telephone interview. "I think it is a bigger deal, more dangerous for us than Iraq or Afghanistan because she [Bhutto] represented really the best chance that Pakistan had, and we had, of putting together a coalition government with the majority of Pakistani people against the extremists, and of a coalition government that had a chance of working."

"The fact of the matter is that if Pakistan goes south," he said, "it's far more dangerous for us than Iraq or Afghanistan."

More after the jump.  read more »

Hillary Clinton is a human being.

That may sound like an oddly obvious message for a presidential campaign, but for Clinton, who has faced six weeks of bad press coverage and 15 years of cartoonish characterizations from all across the political spectrum, it is an essential point that she is now emphasizing in an attempt to right the direction of her presidential bid with three weeks before the Iowa caucuses.

“Here in Iowa I want you to have some flavor of who I am, you know, outside of the television cameras when all the lights and cameras disappear,” Clinton said softly, in an unprecedentedly personal speech in Johnston this morning to announce a new web site called TheHillaryIKnow.com. “What I do when nobody is listening, taking notes or recording. Because it’s hard in public life to have that kind of sharing experience.”  read more »

DUNLAP, IOWA, Dec. 16—Hillary Clinton badly needed to change the narrative.

She kicked off a five-day sweep through Iowa yesterday by rolling out a new, more personal stump speech, pushing her freshly acquired endorsement by The Des Moines Register and introducing a campaign helicopter.

She is, she said, “pumped up.”  read more »

A voter torn between Barack Obama and John Edwards just asked Edwards why he was the better choice.

Edwards, speaking at the Cedar Lodge Steakhouse in Manchester, Iowa, said there were two reasons. First, he said, he was alone amongst the candidates willing to fight to take power from the entrenched Washington lobbyists and corporations and give the power back to regular Americans. Then he presented what he described as the political reason.  read more »

Last night, the entire Edwards family showed up for a campaign event in Indianola, Iowa. Edwards gave a stump speech and answered some questions, while his wife and parents sat behind him and his kids watched a movie on the campaign bus.

At one point, a man in a blue jacket, who identified himself as a former legislator and Kucinich supporter, asked a long question about health care in which he basically lamented the fact that none of the candidates—except Kucinich—advocated a single-payer health care system.

Edwards then gave a long, detailed answer about his plan. He argued that part of it was set up as single-payer, but that it also gave Americans, many of whom did not want a single-payer system, more of a choice. He kept repeating that basic point in different ways, being careful not to offend any given side, when his wife stood up behind him.  read more »

Dec. 13—There are a few ways of judging the “winner” of a presidential debate.

If one candidate blunders egregiously—think of Bob Dole’s refusal to sign a “no new taxes” pledge in the final pre-New Hampshire debate in 1988—then that candidate’s main rival (or rivals) wins.

Likewise, if one candidate breaks through the on-stage clutter with a catchy sound-bite or memorable bit of theater that will be replayed endlessly in the media—like Ronald Reagan’s “I paid for this microphone” dramatics in 1980—then that candidate is the winner.

And if nothing particularly noteworthy transpires, then the front-runner wins by default.

But it’s tough to place today’s Democratic debate—the final encounter between all of the candidates (minus Dennis Kucinich) before the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses—into any of these categories.  read more »

Fresh from a weekend of Oprah Winfrey-related hysteria, Barack Obama took to the West Coast last night for a Los Angeles fundraising rally.

The event, held in the Gibson Amphitheatre amid the garish neon of Universal City, was aimed at a youthful audience, with student tickets available for $25 and the rock band The Goo Goo Dolls being the main attraction, Mr. Obama aside. Organizers estimated attendance at around 5,000.

Mr. Obama departed from his standard stump speech several times during a 37-minute address.  read more »

So what if Hillary Clinton loses in Iowa?

A new conventional wisdom is taking hold that Barack Obama beats her there, he could run away with the nomination.

It’s a line of thinking the Clinton campaign should encourage.

The reason is simple: If the Clinton Machine has a firewall anywhere, it’s in New Hampshire, where the combination of her husband’s lingering sentimental appeal and an unprecedentedly relentless and well-organized pursuit of the Democratic establishment gives her a considerable leg-up on the competition.  read more »

In a chaotic scrum with reporters just now at an announcement in the Bronx about energy efficency for public housing, Bill Clinton said Michael Bloomberg was "a good man and a great mayor."

When asked (by Rafael) if Bloomberg is "presidential timber," Clinton said, "I don't know if he has presidential aspirations," and that Bloomberg, who was at the announcement with him, is an "extraordinarily able mayor."

Clinton added, "And you know, no one knows, until you get to be president. I think Hillary does and that's the only thing I'm concentrating on now."

I would have had better audio and video of the event, but Clinton aides physically tried blocking some reporters from approaching the former president. At one point, New York Post city hall bureau chief David Seifman shoved his way past a Clinton aide, clearing the way for everyone else.

UPDATE: An attendee at today's announcement had me replay my recording of the event, where, it sounds like Clinton is heaping some unprecedented praise onto Bloomberg. "Obviously I hope he doesn't wind up being an opponent just because I like him so much," the former president says.  read more »

Not huge, but this is a good pick-up for Obama in New Hampshire:

Gary Patton, the Democratic municipal chairman in Hampton, New Hampshire and the husband of the Rockingham County Democratic chairwoman, had been grappling with a choice between Hillary Clinton—who has a long list of official endorsements in the area—and Barack Obama. He's chosen Obama. Patton uses his column in the latest edition of a local newspaper, The Atlantic News, to explain his endorsement. He defends Hillary against suggestions that her personality is "unpleasant," but then writes:  read more »

Al Gore, along with the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, it was announced late yesterday.

And now, speculation (and, in some quarters, hope) that he will throw his hat into the 2008 presidential race is rampant. (Our own canvas of people close to Gore, as of yesterday afternoon, made the prospect sound dim.)  read more »

Lefty bloggers sell the Democrat's Iraq policy—but not his candidacy—in a new web video.  read more »

Former 2008 presidential contender Mark Warner has been flirting from the stump these days. But with whom?  read more »

At the second Democratic presidential debate, Hillary Clinton demonstrated perfectly why she is so well-positioned in the Granite State – and why she’s lagging in Iowa.  read more »

On May 19th, commodity trading billionaire Paul Tudor Jones II will host a fund-raiser for Barack Obama, according to a knowledgeable source. The event will be held at Jones' oceanfront Greenwich mansion, which reportedly sits on top of a 25-car garage.  read more »

Carl Bernstein's next book: A biography of Hillary Clinton.

The deal is with Alfred A. Knopf, according to a press release issued this morning.

The title, A Woman In Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton, seems a rather hopeful one given her current presidential bid.  read more »

Hillary Clinton's speech at Al Sharpton's convention in midtown this afternoon was tamer than her previous appearance alongside the Reverend.

But she did manage to get a rise out of the audience on a couple of occasions.

On the need for a new energy policy, Hillary said that there were "diseases moving north; the desert spreading, more intense storms; we need to face up to the fact that we're stewards of God's creation and we have an obligation to make sure we don't pass on this wonderful world that we did nothing to create in worse shape than when we found it. That is a call to action for people of faith and people everywhere."

She also talked about ethics.

"We have to reform our government," she said. "The abuses that have gone on in the last six years -- I don't think we know the half of it yet. You know, when I walk into the Oval Office in January of 2009, I'm afraid I'm going to lift up the rug and I'm going to see so much stuff under there."

Big applause.

"You know, what is it about us always having to clean up after people?" she asked. "But this is not just going to be picking up socks off the floor. This is going to be cleaning up the government."

Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson doesn't want to peak too soon.

"Well, I can't compete Senator Clinton and Obama. I don't think anyone can," he said during a round-table with reporters after he spoke at the National Action Network this afternoon in midtown. "But I don't believe money or rock-star status is going to win this election."

He added, "I don't want to surface to the top right now. This race is 10 months away. All of you are obsessed with these numbers. On fund-raising, I did respectably well. Any other year, without these rock-star fund-raising figures, my figure would have been considered impressive. Now, it's just respectable."

I asked Richardson to compare his foreign policy experience to that of Rudy Giuliani, who is selling himself as the security candidate.  read more »

A new Quinnipiac poll of New Jersey voters has Rudy Giuliani beating all of the leading Democratic presidential candidates in head-to-head match-ups:

• 49 to 40 percent over Hillary Clinton
• 48 to 38 percent over Barack Obama
• 48 to 41 percent over John Edwards

By contrast, the Democrats all come out narrowly ahead of John McCain and miles ahead of Mitt Romney:

• Clinton beats McCain 45 - 41 percent;
• Clinton beats Romney 50 - 31 percent;
• Obama beats McCain 43 - 41 percent;
• Obama beats Romney 50 - 26 percent;
• Edwards beats McCain 42 - 41 percent;
• Edwards beats Romney 51 - 26 percent.