The Stump

Edwards and Kentucky

Noam Scheiber — Wed, 14 May 2008 23:11:00 GMT

Pat Buchanan made an interesting point on MSNBC just now: While Edwards's endorsement does ease the sting of last night's West Virginia battering, it probably raises expectations for Obama in Kentucky next week.

It's not like he has to win Kentucky. But, with Edwards at his side, the media probably expects him to get a lot closer than 40 points (last night's deficit)--probably a lot closer than 20. Which is a little tricky, since I don't think Edwards is going to help him that much.

For what it's worth, the few polls out there show Hillary up 25-30 points.

--Noam Scheiber

Dept of Friends Like These

Michael Crowley — Wed, 14 May 2008 21:31:00 GMT

Obama's other major endorsement today comes from the pro-choice womens' group NARAL. It's a major symbolic blow to Hillary. Later in the day, EMILY's List president Ellen Malcolm fired back:

"I think it is tremendously disrespectful to Sen. Clinton - who held up the nomination of a FDA commissioner in order to force approval of Plan B and who spoke so eloquently during the Supreme Court nomination about the importance of protecting Roe vs. Wade - to not give her the courtesy to finish the final three weeks of the primary process. It certainly must be disconcerting for elected leaders who stand up for reproductive rights and expect the choice community will stand with them."

I'm sure Hillary appreciates the support. But as an Obama partisan points out, the message seems more about etiquette and respect than anything else. Malcolm's choise of words--"disrespectful," "the courtesy to finish the final three weeks"--doesn't exactly suggest a conviction that Clinton can or will win.

--Michael Crowley

Edwards Endorses

Michael Crowley — Wed, 14 May 2008 21:21:00 GMT

He's for Obama. Two pretty obvious points: First, Edwards probably would have made a bigger splash had he taken a real risk and endorsed back when the race still hang in the balance.

But , second: Thanks to the fluke of the primary calendar, Edwards has an extra symbolic importance right now. Sure, Obama already has things virtually locked up. But the lingering problem he has right now is weakness with white working class voters--a demographic that favored Edwards back before Hillary reinvented herself as a Pittsburgh steel worker. In that sense, Edwards is a nice balm for the sores left by last night's West Virginia vote.

--Michael Crowley

Would Obama Support Class-Based Affirmative Action?

Noam Scheiber — Wed, 14 May 2008 19:27:00 GMT

I think Matt Yglesias is interpreting me slightly too pessimistically on this subject. He writes:

Richard Kahlenberg observes that it would be politically savvy of Barack Obama to embrace a shift toward class-based affirmative action and that the logic of several things his said over the years seems to point in this direction. I tend to think so as well, and have been hopeful that this might happen at some point, but then I read this Noam Scheiber article focused on another topic and saw this graf:

The run-up to South Carolina was rife with talk that post-racial Obama was morphing into a decidedly pre-post-racial candidate. To reverse the slide, blogger Mickey Kaus suggested he give a speech embracing class- rather than race-based affirmative action, something Obama had flirted with in the past. Kaus had a point: The atmospherics would have been irresistible to ambivalent whites. I pushed a milder form of the idea on my own blog. Not long after, I got a response from an Obama adviser: Never gonna happen. Urging Sister Souljah politicking on him was the surest way to provoke a scowl.

Well that's that. But in the hopes of persuading people otherwise I wouldn't really see this as "Sister Souljah politicking." To me, the defining feature of the S.S. stunt was that, on the merits, it was silly. The point was just to show that Bill Clinton was picking a fight with black people which proved he wasn't one of those nasty ol' liberals. But shifting from the current system of affirmative action to one with a firmer grounded in actual socioeconomic disadvantage would, especially paired to a broader critique of other dimensions of privilege (legacy admissions, etc.), be the right thing to do on the merits.

The adviser and I didn't talk about this at length, so I could be off the mark, but my sense is that Obama might come out in favor of class-based affirmative action at some point. He just wouldn't do it as a direct response to a sudden political problem--like white people worrying that he's "too black" after South Carolina, or whatever. I got the sense that was the Sister Souljah dimension the aide was talking about. Not that he wouldn't propose something he actually believes in because there might be a political upside to it, or because someone somewhere might view it cynically.

I suspect the source of confusion here is the phrase "never gonna happen." By which I meant to convey, "he'd never do something so cynical in that context," but which could easily be interpreted as, "he'd never come out in favor of class-based affirmative action." Apologies for the imprecision there.

--Noam Scheiber

A Final Dagger Through The Unity Ticket Idea

Noam Scheiber — Wed, 14 May 2008 17:30:00 GMT

Dick Morris makes a smart point in between excretions of venom:

There are two kinds of people who backed Hillary in the primaries: her original supporters and those who joined her later in the game. Her original backers are all solid Democrats whose arms would fall off before they would back anyone who is pro-life. They are true believers, feminists, pro-choice advocates, older party loyalists who would prefer Hillary, may have doubts about Obama, but will always fall in line and vote Democratic. The more recent converts are people who are turned off by Obama's connection to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and who worry that he might be a closet black radical. Their latent racial fears were heightened by the revelations about Obama's links with Wright, and they voted for Hillary as the lesser of two evils. Putting Mrs. Clinton on the ticket will do nothing to assuage these fears. One wonders if these blue-collar, downscale, racially motivated voters would actually support Hillary against John McCain if she were to win the nomination. They certainly wouldn't follow her into Obama's camp just because she was on the ticket.

For those who are interested, Mark Schmitt and I chewed over the unity ticket idea in a Bloggingheads discussion we had yesterday. Mark recently wrote an entry for The Plank on the subject, and I weighed in with this item yesterday.

We also waded into the McCain unmoderated debate proposal, Obama and race, Mike's Hillary-impeachment piece, and an interesting post by Matt Stoller about Obama's consolidation of power within the Democratic Party.

--Noam Scheiber

Flag Pin Politics, Seinfeld Edition

Michael Crowley — Wed, 14 May 2008 17:15:00 GMT

Responding to the item below, commenters adaglas and Rhubarbs came up with another great pop-culture reference. Substitute "pin" for "ribbon," Obama for Kramer, and Sean Hannity and Bill Kristol for the two guys at the end.

--Michael Crowley

Did the GOP's Obama Link Backfire in Mississippi?

Noam Scheiber — Wed, 14 May 2008 16:40:00 GMT

An interesting nugget from the Times about the Dems' win in that Mississippi special election last night:

In the end, tying the white Democrat to the black presidential candidate may have helped Mr. Childers more than it hurt him, as campaign aides reported heavy black turnout, heavier than in a vote three weeks ago when he came within 400 votes of winning.

“I like what Childers was saying: he was more truthful and down to earth,” said Mary Shelton, an African-American who had just voted for him at the Yalobusha County courthouse here.

And Mr. Childers’s association with the party that might nominate Mr. Obama didn’t hurt either. “We need a change, we really do,” Ms. Shelton said.

Mr. Childers won Yalobusha, having lost it in the April vote.

And even in this district, it is not difficult to find conservative voters dissatisfied with the administration in Washington. “There’s a lot of people that are mad at Bush,” said Jim Jennings, a retired businessman, sitting at a table with Republican voters at a barbecue restaurant in DeSoto County.

It sounds like Obama helps with turnout more than he hurts with swing voters in a conservative district like this one.

I don't see Obama carrying many Southern states (though making McCain spend time and money defending Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia would be a big plus in itself.) But you can imagine him helping Democrats pick up some Southern House seats thanks to this dynamic.

--Noam Scheiber

Pin the Flag on the Donkey

Michael Crowley — Wed, 14 May 2008 14:56:00 GMT

Obama is back to wearing a lapel flag pin, and conservatives are gearing up a flip-flop attack.

And why not? Last night's Mississippi special election result shows us that some vague ideal of "patriotism" is one of the very few things Republicans have going for them right now.

Update: Via Ambinder, here's a case in point. (Yes, it's just a B-grade county GOP web ad. But it's a sign of things to come.)

--Michael Crowley

Hillary as Dead Parrot

Michael Crowley — Wed, 14 May 2008 14:15:00 GMT

Dana Milbank is merciless today. And yet I couldn't resist looking up the original sketch.

--Michael Crowley

Thanks, But...

Michael Crowley — Wed, 14 May 2008 04:03:00 GMT

My guess is the Obama campaign didn't exactly encourage disgraced former Washington, D.C., mayor Marion Barry to spin for them on The O'Reilly Factor tonight. All things considered, Barry actually conducted himself surprisingly well. Still....

--Michael Crowley

West Virginians Vindicate John Judis

Noam Scheiber — Wed, 14 May 2008 03:58:00 GMT

Two more tidbits from the West Virginia exit polls:

1.) Even in a state Hillary is going to win by 40 points--a state where she's doing very well among groups that generally favor Obama (like college grads and younger voters), where many more people thought she was honest and shared their values than thought so of Obama, and where 70 percent of voters said the campaign should continue--a lot more people thought Hillary attacked Obama unfairly (59 percent) than vice versa (50 percent). That's pretty surprising to me. Could it be the fallout from the "white Americans" comment? A reflection of the Judis thesis (actually, the Tali Mendelberg thesis) that very few people--even people queasy about voting for a black candidate--respond well to explicit racial appeals?

2.) Hillary won 68 percent of people who made their decision before the last month and 63 percent of people who decided during the last month, but only 50 percent of people who decided today. (It's worth noting that Obama only got 27 percent of that last group.) That suggests to me that West Virginians may like Hillary quite a bit, but a lot of them think this race is over.

--Noam Scheiber

The Durability of a Smear

Michael Crowley — Wed, 14 May 2008 03:48:00 GMT

Andrew is right: What's amazing about the end of this clip is that the Hillary voter doesn't just think Obama is a Muslim, as all too many people seem to. She's also aware of Obama's refutation of that claim--but simply doesn't believe him.

I wonder how many people out there are not just ignorant or misinformed on this score but are in fact completely deluded.

--Michael Crowley

What Hillary's Thinking, WV Edition

Michael Crowley — Wed, 14 May 2008 03:02:00 GMT

"I am in this race because I believe I am the strongest candidate... and the strongest president," Hillary Clinton said in her victory speech tonight. Hillary has certainly said things in this campaign that she clearly doesn't actually believe (see the gas tax holiday). But I think this reason, more than any other--more than her campaign debt, or the millions of women invested in her candidacy, or even the Clintons' sense of political entitlement--explains why she stays in the race, even in the face of crushing delegate math. (The pro-Obama Jed Report now calculates that Hillary would need to pick up a ludicrous 93 percent of the remaining available delegates, assuming the self-declared "Pelosi Club" superdelegates who have said they will back the pledged delegate winner stick to that promise.) She may be deluding herself, but Hillary really seems to believe that Obama neither deserves nor can win the White House. And I suppose if that's how she truly feels then it's hard to blame her for staying in the race, so long as she doesn't damage him beyond repair.

The trouble is that, even if her victory speech didn't question Obama's qualifications, Hillary's mere presence in the race on a night like this likely diminishes Obama's standing. It hardly makes him look strong when Hillary is on stage talking about being the best president and Obama is nowhere to be seen. Or Karl Rove is declaring, as he did on Fox News, that "West Virginia is a state that likes regular people. It can smell an elitist coming... somebody who's looking down their nose at them a hundred miles away." Hillary may believe that she is more electable. But if her highest priority is for Democrats to win the White House, a purely rational calculation, given the odds against her, would have led her to drop out last week and campaign with Obama in West Virginia, helping him to avoid tonight's embarassing storyline. (TNR's Josh Patashnik makes a smart and plausible case here for why Obama should be grateful Hillary stayed in. But if she'd dropped out and actively promoted him in WV, things might have been different.)

Ultimately the reason she doesn't, I think, is that Hillary is simply and utterly convinced she is the most electable, most qualified candidate. That may be arrogant, it may be a fantasy. But if it's something she really and truly believes--and I think it is-it must be awfully hard to walk away from.

--Michael Crowley

And the Tabloids Scream: Childers Wins in Mississippi

tnr1.com — Wed, 14 May 2008 02:39:00 GMT

... but the most remarkable thing is that, as I type, the Democratic win in Mississippi is the biggest breaking news story on my CNN page, even above Hillary's win in West Virginia. Shows what a supreme p.r. bummer this is going to be for the GOP. I think you'll see NRCC money dry up further and an every-Republican-for-himself mentality take hold in the House: Who wants to give dollars to an organization that appears to spend it all losing its own safe seats?

--Eve Fairbanks

WV Is Bill Country

Michael Crowley — Wed, 14 May 2008 02:33:00 GMT

Among other things, Hillary benefited tonight from an affinity West Virginia seems to have for Bill Clinton. Thirty-seven percent of WV voters say that Bill Clinton's campaigning was "very important" to them, and 84 percent of them voted for Hillary.

That said, the results so far suggest Bill probably shouldn't have talked about winning 80 percent of the vote.

--Michael Crowley