A number of commentators are arguing that Mitt’s victory in Nevada yesterday can be discounted because of the heavy turnout of coreligionist Mormons who voted almost unanimously for Romney. But as our numbers maven Eric Kleefeld pointed out to me last night, even if you exclude all the Mormons who caucused in Nevada, Romney still would have had more than twice the support of the candidate who came in second, Ron Paul.
The Hartford Courant has a new poll out of Connecticut voters. And John McCain is, well, crushing Rudy Giuliani — 39% to 16%. Hillary’s solidly over Obama, but not by as big a margin — 41% to 27%.
Special thanks to TPM Reader CM for the tip.
Yesterday I wrote that I was troubled by the intensity of Bill Clinton’s attacks on Barack Obama. A number of readers thought I meant that I didn’t like seeing bare-knuckle politics. But that’s not it. What troubles me is seeing the man who is in many respects still the de facto leader of the Democratic party, certainly its elder statesman, inject himself as an attack dog into a intra-party contest. I think it’s damaging to him and more importantly I think it’s damaging to his party.
Yes, the bind is inseparable from the novelty of having the spouse of a former president run for president. But that doesn’t make it less of a problem.
With a day to think about it though I think he’s actually hurting her more than he or perhaps she realizes. Narrowly speaking, in the zero sum context of her battle with Obama, he’s probably helping her. You can’t deny that Hillary is back in a strong position. But here’s the thing. In the week or so leading up to the Nevada caucus I feel like I heard more from and about Bill Clinton than I did about Hillary Clinton. Is that the media’s doing rather than the campaign’s? Maybe. But I don’t find the argument convincing and I’m not sure it would matter if it were true. What seems difficult to deny is that his rising profile is threatening her position as the dominant force in her own campaign.
The Israeli press picks up on Maureen Dowd’s faux dateline.
Freedom’s Watch, the billionaire-funded “grass-roots” effort, looks to change the landscape of the ’08 elections with a paltry $250 million.
A couple of TPMCafe posts worth your attention:
Marshall Ganz, on King as a model for “Understanding Leadership and Organizing for Change.”
Steve Clemons, on getting “Beyond King.”
Bill was the big topic on the Sunday shows this weekend. I shared my own views yesterday evening. I must confess that when the Sunday yakkers say X I pretty much always think it must really be Y. But here I think I have to continue saying X in spite of the fact that the yakkers are saying it too.
Seriously, why should John Edwards drop out of the race? I think his chances of winning the nomination at this point are quite slim. And I could understand if he wanted to drop out. But is there some reason he should? Is he under some obligation?
It’s not clear to me which candidate his withdrawal would help most at this point. And depending on what your judgment of that question is, I can see supporters of Hillary or Obama wanting him to get out. That makes sense to me.
But I don’t see any reason that Edwards is under any obligation to get out of the race as long as his supporters are willing to fund his campaign.
And in the case of Edwards specifically, I would say two things. First, as others have noted, his campaign has had an effect on this race out of proportion to his poll support in as much as he’s forced the two other leading candidates to grapple with issues they would not have otherwise. And in this race specifically, there is at least a chance we could come into the convention with neither candidate having a majority of the delegates, in which case he might play the kingmaker. Not likely, but not impossible.
Just to be clear, I don’t have any brief for Edwards campaign. I think it’s clear his support is falling off now as the race becomes more and more a Clinton/Obama race. The result in Nevada must have been a sobering wake-up call. But I don’t see where insider know-it-alls get off saying he’s under some sort of obligation to ‘do the right thing’ and pack it in.
Todd Gitlin bemoans the political press: “[N]o pundit, no vicar of vicariousness, no phony insider, ever suffers for fatuousness or bad prophecy ⦔
The Heritage Foundation’s ‘blog’ indicts the “moral bankruptcy of Talking Points Memo.” It seems to be a rearguard action expressing some hurt feelings about the right-wing failure to substantiate any of their bogus election fraud charges, which they have used to suppress voter turnout by minority and low-income voters as well as provide fodder for Voter-ID laws and sundry other voter suppression tactics.
(ed.note: The direct link to the post seems to keep coming down. So here’s the link to the blog itself, which still seems to be working. It’s bad enough these jokers can’t hack it out in the market economy. At least they could use all the foundation money to power up some reliable servers. Sheesh.)
Late Update: I am offended that Heritage is slyly using their server reliability as a metaphor for modern conservative governance. Earlier I linked to the main blog to try to give people a working link. But now it seems that your visits have brought down the entire blog section of the Heritage website. Then momentarily the direct link worked. But then it went down again too. If someone from Heritage would be willing to walk a paper copy to TPM headquarters we would be happy to scan it and post it directly on our site.