The Politico gets the announcement email heralding Rudy’s return to the lecture circuit. Here’s the Rude-man’s page at Washington Speakers Bureau. “One of the World’s Most Respected Leaders,” says the headline.
I understand that Rudy will now speak on running the biggest presidential campaign train wreck in American history. That and transformative leadership.
MSNBC and Fox calling Virginia for McCain
Breaking: Brokaw declares Obama buzz “almost nuclear.”
The cable nets just caught maybe the first ten minutes of Hillary’s speech tonight in El Paso, Texas. Not a single mention of the night’s results. (Unclear whether she mentioned after they cut away.)
From the tomorrow’s Times on the Rudy’s sub-prime campaign …
A half-dozen senior officials of the Rudy Giuliani Presidential Committee conferred this week on how to wind down their affairs, and at least one piece of their correspondence painted what appeared to be a bleak picture of the dormant campaignâs financial situation.
âWe are deeper in the hole than I thought we would be,â John Gross, the campaignâs treasurer, wrote in an e-mail message to several senior campaign aides that was obtained by The New York Times.
âWindown is likely to be less than projected, but travel expenses are higher,â Mr. Gross continued. âWe cannot prefer any one creditor. We probably could make a 10% payment to all qualified creditors at this point, but probably not much more.â
As you’re watching the returns come in, you might want to check out the conversation at TPMCafe’s Book Club about E.J. Dionne’s new book, Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics after the Religious Right.
In his latest post, Dionne contemplates the challenges facing Democrats:
As a practical matter, the Democrats have a more complicated task on questions of religion: theirs is simultaneously the party of secular voters, who make up an important minority of its supporters, and religious voters. The political task of creating harmony among these groups is formidable.
Lots of great folks are participating in the discussion.
Rudy’s campaign manager praises Hillary’s wait for Ohio and Texas strategy …
Mike DuHaime, a Republican consultant who managed Rudolph W. Giulianiâs campaign, said Mrs. Clinton was making the right decisions in trying to make the most of her strengths.
âClearly, she has had success in larger states and there are a whole bunch of delegates at stake on March 4,â Mr. DuHaime said. âThey are not trying to figure out who can win the most states; they are trying to figure out who can win the most delegates.â
Special Thanks to TPM Reader SN for this chilling catch.
Howard Fineman just did a brief segment on MSNBC gaming out the delegate count and where it’s likely to end up when the last primaries and caucuses are over. He said he based his comments on conversations with people in both campaigns. And the gist of it was that both sides agree that it’s highly unlikely that Clinton can end up with more pledged delegates than Barack Obama. And the issue now is how close she can keep the margin.
If she can keep it within a couple dozen delegates, he argued, it would be credible to try to make up the margin with super delegates. On the other hand, if Obama’s ahead by 100 or 200, the pressure against trying to make up the margin with non-elected delegates would just be too great.
Now, Fineman is something of a paragon of the mainstream media. So his comments probably raise some suspicion among some readers. But this is a pretty straightforward mathematical question. Doesn’t really matter what Fineman or either campaigns say. Folks paying close attention are as likely to accurately predict the outcomes as the folks in the campaign. So is this true? Is a pledged delegate win for Clinton no longer a realistic possibility?
Share your thoughts by email or in this discussion thread we’ve set up at TPMCafe.
Here’s Fineman …