"Because it insults my intelligence"

Here are the corresponding numbers for New Hampshire, as reported by the AP:

Belknap - $6.6M total / $ 109 per person

Carroll - $63.1M / $1,334pp (!)

Chesire - $1M / $13pp

Coos - $2.6M total / $81pp

Grafton - $36.7M / $429pp

Hillsborough - $56M / $139pp

Merrimack - $21.1M / $143 pp

Rockingham - $48.4M /$163 pp

Strafford - $6.2M / $51pp

Sullivan - $2.7M / $61pp

"Only don't tell me that you're innocent."

The Associated Press has mapped stimulus dollars to each county in the United States. Here's how the county-by-county breakdown went in Massachusetts:

Barnstable - $17.4M total / $78 per person

Berkshire - $20.7M /$160 pp

Bristol - $100.3M / $184 pp

Dukes(*) - $4.1M / $268 pp

Essex - $50.5M / $68 pp

Franklin - $26.3M / $366 pp

Hampden - $8.9M / $19 pp

Hampshire - $20.3M / $132 pp

Middlesex - $100.1M / $68 pp

Nantucket - $7.7M / $733 pp

Norfolk - $24.8M / $38 pp

Suffolk - $108.6M / $151 pp

Worcester - $78.8M / $101 pp

(*) Dukes County is comprised of Martha's Vineyard.

Not About "Revenge", Exactly...

The loss of the Democratic nomination has probably not yet set in for Hillary Clinton, and she is likely looking at a period of 'decompression' or worse.

As George McGovern responded to Walter Mondale's question of when a presidential defeat 'stops hurting': "When it happens, I'll let you know."

While Hillary's psyche may take some time to heal, the Clintons are apparently still focusing on who 'betrayed' them during the primary battle. Terry McAuliffe insists that it's not about 'revenge', but rather just keeping track of who helped you and who didn't.

Thank goodness all those fears of reprisals in the event that Hillary squeaked out the nomination (and/or the presidency) were unfounded.

Down 12 with 0:05 left

Yesterday on CNN Hillary Clinton said that she would stay in the Democratic race until the end. "You don't walk off the court before the buzzer sounds. You never know, you might get a three-point shot at the end."

A three-pointer? Try hitting one, stealing the inbounds, hitting another, and then a steal...

Or perhaps just try to channel UCLA's Kevin Love:


Hat-tip: BM

"Did I Hit Something?"

With the John Edwards and NARAL (insert your own ironic expression here) endorsements yesterday, here's what the current state of the Democratic race looks like, as imagined by Martin Scorsese in 1:55:

The End of the Beginning?

Democrats hoping that the primary race will end soon would do well to focus on this map:


















(Courtesy: Jay Cost and Sean Oxendine.)

The area outlined is "Appalachia", which will vote today (in West Virginia) and in one week (in Kentucky).

Fill in the remainder of the outline in dark blue, and one might expect +30 point wins tonight and next Tuesday. And if those wins materialize, is that likely to allow Hillary to make a graceful exit (as some suggest) from the race, or only embolden her and her core supporters to make the argument that the Democratic "base" -- personified in Appalachia -- is not supporting the presumptive nominee?

While Obama is already moving (based on his campaign schedule) to a national calendar (he's in Cape Girardeau, MO, today), how does he explain the drubbing that he seems likely to receive as the end of the primary calendar draws near?

Obama is still in position to win the nomination, but it seems likely that there will be at least one more plot turn before it's all over.

Nothing is Over...Until We Decide It Is

For the third straight Primary Day, the press (and to some extent the Obama campaign), are buying into the construct: "If he can just win ________ [Ohio/Pennsylvania/Indiana/West Virginia] then this race will be over."

Unfortunately, such wishful thinking has prevented the Campaign from thinking strategically over the past six weeks (since Ohio/Texas on March 4th).

Obama's campaign needs to confront the unstated truth: Hillary is likely to stay in until the only vote that matters -- the one in Denver at the DNC (traditionally, in 'uncontested' conventions, this vote would be choreographed for Wednesday night; this year, with both candidates likely to arrive in Denver looking for the nomination.)

If the Clintons want to fight past June 3rd -- and don't forget, Bill Clinton popularized the concept of fighting "until the last dog dies" -- who's going to stop them? DNC Chair Howard Dean? Speaker Nancy Pelosi? Leader Harry Reid?

And what if Hillary listens politely and say, "No"?

Then what?

But if you assume she's in until August 28th -- the last day of the DNC Convention -- and work backwards, you might make different choices than spending a day in Altoona bowling a 37.

Meanwhile, John McCain -- despite the difficulties that any Republican would have in being elected at a time when the two-term incumbent's popularity is in the low 30s -- has open field in front of him as he tacks to the center.

Former DNC Chair Joe Andrews -- an erstwhile Hillary supporter -- wrote last week as he announced his switch from Hillary to Obama:

I ask the leaders of our Party to come together after this Tuesday's primary to heal wounds and unite us around a single nominee. While I was hopeful that a long, contested primary season would invigorate our Party, the polls show that the tone and temperature of the race is now hurting us. John McCain, without doing much of anything, is now competitive against both of our remaining candidates. We are doing his work for him and distracting Americans from the issues that really affect all of our lives.

How does the process end?

Great Moments in Campaigning...

Looking at what seems to be a big night for Hillary's campaign tonight (Zogby(*) -- has the overnight margin increasing from 48-42% yesterday to 51-41% today), get prepared for more about how she 'connects' with regular voters while Obama-is-an-elitist.

Exhibit A is Hillary's recent 'shot-and-a-beer' night out (albeit in Indiana, not Pennsylvania):


But the moment is reminiscent of then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin at the end of his final campaign:


Even more direct was Hillary's late ad (went up yesterday, apparently), which seems to be aimed more at post-Pennsylvania pundit-analysis rather than actually moving voters in the state (putting it up less than 24 hours before the polls open makes it unlikely to be seen by a significant number of Penn. voters). You can almost hear the CNN team now: "Hillary won because she raised questions about whether Obama is up to protecting the country, as evidenced by this video:"



(*) - Zogby is admittedly not the most accurate of pollsters, but is widely reported.

Say Goodbye to Mark Penn?

Everyone's favorite Clinton 08 whipping-boy, Mark Penn, appears to have (finally) overplayed his hand. On Friday news broke that Penn had met with the Colombian ambassador and other representatives (Penn's lobbying firm represents the South American nation) over strategy for a NAFTA-like deal for Colombia.

While that wouldn't necessarily be unusual (i.e., a lobbyist meeting with a client), but the timing couldn't be worse -- Penn's highest profile client -- the Clinton Campaign -- was publicly opposing the proposed deal, expected to be submitted to Congress by the White House this week.

So after being fired by the Republic of Colombia on Saturday, Penn was pushed out by the Clinton campaign itself yesterday: a rare "two-fer."

But interestingly, Penn apparently will hold on to the polling work, according to Maggie Williams' statement:

Mark, and Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates, Inc. will continue to provide polling and advice to the campaign.

More Sniper Fire

CBS continued with the landing-in-Bosnia story yesterday, complete with a short clip from Hillary's 'explanation' of stopping to accept flowers from an 8-year-old girl. What is most striking, however, is the parallelism of her language from March 17th and yesterday:

March 17th speech: "We basically were told to run to our cars. Now, that is what happened."

Yesterday (via philly.com): "I was also told that the greeting ceremony had been moved away from the tarmac, but that there was this 8-year-old girl and I said, well , 'I can't rush by her -- I have to at least greet her.' So I greeted her, I took her stuff, and I left. Now, that's my memory."

She DOES Call Herself a 'Fighter', After All...

ABC's Jake Tapper reports that an anonymous DNC staffer coined a new metaphor for the 'kitchen sink' strategy that the Clinton campaign is falling back on in order to try to deny Obama a nomination victory:

"Her securing the nomination is certainly possible - but it will require exercising the 'Tonya Harding option.'" the official said. "Is that really what we Democrats want?"

Harding, of course, conspired with her ex-husband to hire thugs who took down Nancy Kerrigan in the weeks leading up to the 1994 Winter Olympics; more recently she ended her professional boxing career with a 3-3 record.

Sniper Fire from the MSM

The Obama campaign has been trying to get observers in the MSM to unpack Hillary Clinton's 'experience' argument for the past few weeks -- ever since the aftermath of Texas/Ohio -- without much success. Greg Craig's memo was not really echoed, and even Sinbad's (the comedian) comments on the USO trip to Bosnia was pretty much ignored.

But when the MSM went back and reviewed its own video of the then-First Lady's trip to Bosnia in 1996, which she recounted in a speech last week, the proverbial 'worm' has turned. While the Clintons had a sketched out a path to the nomination (albeit risky), the press this week has been writing the it's-all-over-but-the-margin-of-victory stories.

After a bad week for Barack Obama and Rev. Wright, it's Hillary's turn to be roasted in the YouTube universe. And the Clintons' argument that she is getting a raw deal from the press can't stand up to the video.

As Richard Pryor once said, in a different context: “Who you gonna believe, baby — me, or your lyin’ eyes?”

More Greg Craig

Greg Craig sat down with National Journal today to further discuss his "Hillary-Clinton-is-overstating-her-foreign-policy-experience" memo (blogged previously here).

Craig covered much of the same ground in the NJ interview, although he is careful in his use of language:

Q: So let's just put this on a scale of one to 10 here. Are we talking exaggeration, or are we talking about something more serious, such as not being truthful?

Craig: Well, I think it's exaggeration. It's inflated résumé. It's in that category. I think she is misleading the American public on the nature of her experience.

But again, no one is seeming to pick up on the full Craig resume. The NJ interviewer describes him as follows:

He is a Washington attorney and a senior adviser to the Barack Obama campaign. And he was, back in the Bill Clinton administration, the assistant to the president and special counsel and at that time a senior foreign policy adviser to President Clinton's administration.

But here's what the New York Times wrote in 1998:

Mr. Craig knew President Clinton from his days at Yale, and was close enough to Hillary Rodham Clinton that she turned over space in her suite of offices to him when he agreed to join the defense team.
A criminal lawyer and onetime Hill staff member who was most recently a senior State Department official, Mr. Craig bargained hard for authority before he accepted the White House job, insisting that he would report directly to the President, White House officials said.

THAT Greg Craig?!?!

A new Obama-campaign memo has been getting a lot of attention this morning, with a step-by-step refutation of Hillary Clinton's assertion that she has been in key foreign policy decisions, such as Northern Ireland, Rwanda, and Bosnia.

The Northern Ireland summary from the memo closes with this:

Brian Feeney, an Irish author and former politician, sums it up: “The road to peace was carefully documented, and she wasn’t on it.”

The memo is written by Greg Craig, who is described as a Obama foreign policy advisor, and the "former director, Policy Planning Office, U.S. State Department" during the Clinton Administration. And Craig did serve in that capacity.

But Greg Craig also has some other connections to the Clintons. He is a partner at Williams & Connolly, where his bio includes this tid-bit:

In September 1998, President Clinton appointed Mr. Craig to be Assistant to the President and Special Counsel in the White House where Mr. Craig served as quarterback of the President’s team that was assembled to defend against impeachment. Mr. Craig was also a member of the President’s trial team in the United States Senate and presented the President’s defense with respect to Count One during that trial.

Finally, in a stranger coincidence, Craig, Hillary, and Bill Clinton were contemporaries at Yale Law School in the fall of 1971, when he sublet his apartment in New Haven to Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton for $75 per month.

Code: Red

Hillary's 'red telephone' ad clearly moved voters, and helped change the tone of the race.

It also reinforced the message that she was delivering on the stump, in some cases fairly explicitly: Obama's not qualified to be commander-in-chief.

'I think you'll be able to imagine many things Senator McCain will be able to say,' she said. 'He’s never been the president, but he will put forth his lifetime of experience. I will put forth my lifetime of experience. Senator Obama will put forth a speech he made in 2002.'

Meanwhile, Jack Nicholson 'endorsed' Hillary over the weekend with a montage of scenes from his films over the years, and which included a short clip from "A Few Good Men," but not this one:

The Big Winner

The undisputed winner last night was John McCain.

McCain wrapped up the nomination last night. He will receive the formal endorsement of the President this morning at the White House.

Meanwhile, the Democratic race will now go on for at least six more weeks. And the possibility that the single most unifying figure for the GOP -- Hillary Clinton -- may be his fall opponent has significantly increased.

And yet the speech McCain gave was a pivot to the...right.

McCain gave his conservative audience red-meat, from his discussion of the two-front war, to his promise to lower taxes, to this remarkable paragraph about the health care cost crisis:

I will leave it to my opponent to propose returning to the failed, big government mandates of the sixties and seventies to address problems such as the lack of health care insurance for some Americans. [Note: emphasis as delivered, see 9:13 of clip] I will campaign to make health care more accessible to more Americans with reforms that will bring down costs in the health care industry down without ruining the quality of the world's best medical care.

But with at least six more weeks -- and a Democratic race that will likely get uglier -- McCain may have time to repair his image with moderates and independents.

Landslide Lyndon and Landslide Hillary?

As we await results from both the primary and caucus in Texas, one can't help but think of Robert Caro's massive 3-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson, serialized (in part) in the New Yorker, was centered around the seminal election of the young LBJ's career: a statewide race.

Like Hillary, LBJ had staked his political career on the Senate race. He gave up his seat in Congress, and had told friends, according to Caro, that he would leave politics forever if he lost to the popular former two-term Governor. (LBJ actually did lose to Coke Stevenson once, in the first primary with three candidates, held on July 24, 1948; but this was the run-off, between just the two men.)

LBJ had actually run previously, in 1941, and lost by a total of 1,311 votes to Pappy O'Daniel, despite leading by more than 5,000 votes with 96% of the vote counted. The last 4% didn't go LBJ's way.

Like Hillary's strength in the current race, LBJ put his faith in the "Valley" -- counties like Webb, Zapata, Brooks, and the rest. Many of these counties were under the control of party bosses, who could -- in Caro's delicate phrasing -- "control" the primary process. In Duval County, the votes came in on Election Day (Saturday, August 28, 1948) with LBJ out-polling Stevenson 4,195 to 38. 99.1%

The race was close and hotly-contested statewide, but the former Governor clung to a small lead. Stevenson's statewide margin as reported at 1:30am on Saturday night/Sunday morning, was 854 votes.

But Duval County was not done. The day after the election (Sunday, August 29, 1948), an additional ballot box was found, surprisingly enough in the very precinct where Duval boss George Parr voted. The box was opened, and added 110 votes to the LBJ column, against just 1 for Stevenson.

The various precincts checked their results, and Stevenson's aides (who had incredibly cancelled scheduled primaries in some Stevenson-friendly counties because of over-confidence (according to Caro)). By the following Friday, six days after the election, Stevenson's lead had been whittled to a mere 157 votes.

But in checking and re-checking the ballots, Duval County found an error. Precinct 13, which had previously reported 765 votes for LBJ, found an error. In Caro's words:

The figure for Johnson, which was reported as 765 on Election Night, was now 965 -- because since Election Night, according to testimony given later, someone had added a loop to the "7" to make it into a "9". Johnson had 200 more votes.

The legend of "Landslide Lyndon" -- winning a 1,000,000 person primary by a mere 87 votes was born.

A few weeks ago, Hillary compared herself to LBJ. We may find another reason to compare them tonight.

Or maybe in a few days.

Fuzzy Math in Texas?

At 9:48pm ET, CNN is reporting the following results in Texas:

Obama: 579,152
Clinton: 506,197

Total votes: 1,085,349

Yet, only 6% of precincts have reported results.

By that math, more than 18 million Texas Democrats would be voting in today's election.

The total population of Texas is 23 million.

Hmmmm...

Update: The consensus is that the early numbers reflected "early voting." Late deciders broke overwhelmingly to Clinton (61-38%).

It's Time for the Feats of Strength

As we await results from Ohio and Texas, the mood among the "Gang of 500" is that the Clinton Machine has found its footing. She has held an "Airing of the Grievances" against the press, and now it's time for her to win the feats of strengths (a.k.a. the Texas Primary (not the Texas Caucus) and Ohio Primary.)

If Clinton can win both states, preferably impressively, the new MSM line has it, she can turn this race around and restore order in the universe.

The reality is that Hillary will wake up tomorrow either (i) facing calls for her to get out of the race (in the worse case, if the polls turn against her), or (ii) facing a virtually insurmountable deficit of 125-150 pledged delegates. Assuming that ratio holds, Hillary will end the primary contests with about 1,552 pledged delegates to Obama's 1,702.(*)

Her only realistic chance to the nomination is to swing close to 500 of the 795 super delegates (or 59.4%) to her side.

How can she do it? Not by competing in every state.

Like in 1960, the remainder of this primary battle (if it goes past tonight) will be fought on 'battleground' states where the Clintons will perform, as the saying goes, additional 'Feats of Strength.'

(In the 1960 primaries, Kennedy was not challenged in every state, but rather a select few, like Wisconsin and West Virginia. By winning those specific battles, JFK was able to convince the other appointed (i.e., super) delegates that he would be the strongest national candidate. In the years since 1960, the Democratic nomination has approached a marathon of states, culminating in 1992 when Bill Clinton bled Paul Tsongas dry over the spring primaries. In 2000 and 2004, the party effectively short-circuited the lengthy primary process by declaring the winner of the Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire Primary, effectively, the nominee.)

The balance of this calendar this month is Wyoming (caucuses on March 8th) and Mississippi (primary on March 11th), with nothing thereafter until April 22nd (Pennsylvania).

With such a sparse calendar, and with Obama having historical advantages in caucuses and primaries in the South, Hillary will likely 'shut down' if she survives tonight, picking Pennsylvania as her next battleground.

Happy Festivus.

(*)- Delegate estimates calculated as follows:
(1) 4,049 total delegates minus 795 superdelegates = 3,254 pledged delegates.
(2) Splitting the balance of the 3,254 pledged delegates (based on proportional apportionment) such that Obama maintains his 150 delegate lead would result in 1702 pledged delegates for Obama, and 1,552 pledged delegates for Hillary.
(3) In order to get to 2,025, Hillary would need 473 of the 795 supers, or 59.4%.

Super-Delegate-dom

Although a win tomorrow by Obama in both Ohio and Texas will make the point moot (and don't think for a minute that the Clintons won't try to fight on if they win one of the two states, and lose the other narrowly), Geraldine Ferraro's op-ed last week about the role of super-delegates is worth revisiting.

Ferraro served on the Hunt Commission, which in 1982 revised the manner in which the Democratic Party chose its nominees. Last week in the NY Times, she wrote that "[T]he superdelegates were created to lead, not to follow," after many of them "walked away" from the party's nominee (President Jimmy Carter) in 1980.

In 1984, these superdelegates stuck with former Vice President Walter Mondale when he was in trouble, having lost 16 of 26 primaries or caucuses to Senator Gary Hart. But the core group of 700 or so superdelegates stuck with Mondale (many had committed before the primary season even began), and as Hart later said, "I got almost none of them, because [Mondale] was considered inevitable."

But whatever happened in the general election in 1984?

If you listen to Ferraro, it was a deus ex machina that caused the general election defeat:

We lost in 1984, big time. But that loss had nothing to do with Democratic Party infighting.

But while the loss may have not have had anything to do with 'infighting', the record reflects that Mondale lost 49 of 50 states (he also won the District of Columbia, along with his home state of Minnesota.)

The superdelegates helped Mondale on his way to a record matched only by George McGovern in 1972, who won just Massachusetts and DC.

Perhaps the 1984 voters, like those in 2008, had a better sense of who could challenge Ronald Reagan in the fall. After all, it's hard to argue that Gary Hart would have fared worse.