When I went to the Neighborhood Team leader training at the Obama campaign office a few months ago, one of the things that the campaign trainers were at pains to express was that they did not want this team to be a merely provisional arrangement to last just until Nov 4.  They wanted this to be part of an attempt to organize to effect changes in our city and state even after the election was over.  With that in mind, I have already mentioned to the others on our team that once this election is over and Obama is in office, we need to start beating the bushes to find a really strong candidate to run against Kit Bond in 2010.  As far as I am concerned, we cannot be rid of him soon enough, and 2010 is our next chance.

So, who do you think would be well positioned to make an effective run against him?  I am listing a few possibilities below, simply to see what other folks think, but this should not be regarded as an exhaustive list, especially because I live in St Louis and have little idea about possible strong contenders from the western part of the state.  If you live in KC or thereabouts and know of a democrat you think could make a strong bid against Bond in 2010, I would be interested to read about him or her.

1) Jay Nixon - the advantages of this pick are obvious as he is surely the most popular democrat in this state.  The disadvantages, however, are equally obvious.  For one, Nixon already lost to Bond back in 1998.  More to the point, however, to take him out of the governor's mansion and turn it over to Peter Kinder would be a very steep price to pay for the good of unseating Bond.  Indeed, I think it would be too steep a price to pay, but I list him simply because one cannot fail to mention him when talking about democrats to run against Bond.

2) Jean Carnahan - obviously Sen Carnahan did not fare so well against Talent in 2002, but that was a fairly Republican friendly year.  On the other hand, 2010 may well be more favorable to us, and she has good statewide name recognition.  Moreover, the Carnahans were all big Obama backers, so he would likely return the favor in a big way, and if Obama is riding high in 2010 (who knows at this point), his help might be a big plus.  Her other disadvantage, however, is that she is 74 years old know and may not really wish to come out of retirement.

3) Robin or Russ Carnahan - the Carnahan name is a reasonably popular brand in Missouri, so perhaps one of these two would be able to capitalize on it to win against Bond.  The same upside vis-a-vis Obama would also apply in the case of these two.  On the other hand, I am not sure whether Robin would be up to the effort of running for senate while continuing her breast cancer treatment regime.  Also, Russ Carnahan is presently a congressman from St Louis, and democrats from St Louis tradtionally have a hard time winning state-wide races.

4) Sara Lampe - on the plus side, she is from Springfield, so she has zero "big city elitist" pushback to overcome.  She has also sponsored several popular bills (such as the one to allow professional scientists to teach science in high schools).  Her role as the House minority caucus chair gives her some reasonable name recognition, although definitely not anything comparable to Bond.

5) Rachel Storch - to my mind, this is a very attractive choice.  Storch is progressive, aggressive and very good looking.  What she lacks in name recognition she would make up for in youthful energy and the contrast between the red-nosed, bloated, grey haired bond and the trim, elegant Storch would play well on television.  On the other hand, if Russ Carnahan would have a hard time on account being from St Louis, she would have an even harder time of it, because she has been a very effective representative for her urban district in the state legislature, and that voting track record might be used against her in the outstate precincts.

These are just my ideas.  I will be interested to see what names others might have to suggest.

Much was made during the primary of Clinton's regular lead over Obama among Hispanic voters in large swing states.  Given that McCain is one of the few Republicans not to run on  a platform of explicit xenophobia, it was therefore put forward that McCain's appeal to Hispanics combined with Obama's (putative) lack of appeal among Hispanics could amount to a real problem for Obama in the GE.  So, today's NBC/WSJ poll offers the first real post-primary look at that question and what do they find?  Obama leads McCain among Hispanic voters 62% to 28%.  That is to say, Obama is winning this demographic by more than 2 to 1.

He is also winning women voters 52 to 33, Catholic voters 47 to 40 and blue collar voters 47 to 42.  In other words, all of those supposedly problematic demographics are coming together behind him.  For all of the hand-wringing ballyhoo, it seems that the fact that certain democrats would not vote for Obama in the primary did not imply that they likewise would not vote for him in the GE.  Just thought that you might like to know that...

I have a theory.  I am no genius and have no special connections to either campaign or the DNC, so my theory is nothing more than my own interpretation of the same data available to all of us.  In other words, if it seems implausible to you, please do not think "on the other hand, he might know something that I do not."  I assure you, I know nothing more than you do, whoever you are.

I am, however, perplexed by the sight of a high-level Clinton surrogate floating a trial balloon concerning a unity ticket at a time when 1) Sen Clinton is obviously in such a weak state that such an overture cannot be understood as an invitation to a Clinton/Obama ticket and 2) Clinton is simultaneously still making arguments suggesting that she plans to beat Obama.  This is a strange and paradoxical state of affairs.  One does not ordinarily bid for the VP's slot by attacking the candidate with whom one hopes to run, and yet McAuliffe's "what a great idea" can hardly be seen as anything but a bid for just that.  What is going on?

Here is my theory: Clinton wants to be president.  This is hardly a shocking insight.  If she did not want to be president, she would not have run.  She is faced with a real difficulty in attaining that goal, however, by this point.  It is clear that she will not win the nomination in 2008, and it equally clear that she would fare no better as a 3rd party candidate than any other 3rd party candidate has ever fared.  As such, she has no realistic path left to the presidency in 2008.

2016, however, is a long ways off.  Countless precedents have shown that her odds would be long if she were to wait those eight years (remember Dick Gephardt?).  Far better if she could make another go of it in 2012.  Much talk has been given to the idea that she is running so as to weaken him enough to ensure his loss this time around, so that she might run against McCain in 2012, but this is rather problematic.  She would alienate a lot of people whose support she would need by adopting that strategy (even more than she already has), thus weakening, not strengthening, her present position.

What if, however, she could create a situation now which would ensure that Obama would have to choose her as his running mate.  If she could plant enough fears of a party schism in the minds of the remaining super delegates such that they would precondition their support of him on his taking her as his VP.  Because he would need her, instead of merely wanting her, she would be in a strong bargaining position.  She could use this position to insist on concessions from him.  The more dire the prospects, the more strongly the supers would insist and thus the more drastic the concessions she could extract - up to and including the concession that he agree only to run for the one term and then cede the way to her in 2012 and promise to campaign on her behalf.  This is the end-game which explains the paradoxical mix of full-throttle campaigning for the top of the ticket and overtures for the bottom position.

Why do I write this?  Well, for what else does the internet exist except to document the random musings of every nitwit's idle mind and (if lucky) engage feedback on the same.  So, what do you think?  Does this theory seem a plausible hypothesis to account for the observed data which we have at hand?  If you do find it plausible, does it fill you with admiration, or foreboding, or any other particular response?  I am interested to read what others think.

1) Either Barack Obama's or Hillary Clinton's presidency would represent a historic first.  As such, the odds are pretty good that either would end up on the money.  Which denominations of bills/coins should each one get?

2) Gary Trudeau used a blank space to indicate George H.W. Bush, a white quail feather to indicate Dan Quayle, a waffle to indicate Bill Clinton, a bomb with a lit fuse to indicate Newt Gingrich and a Roman centurion's helmet to indicate George W Bush.  What should Trudeau use to indicate McCain?  Obama?  Hillary Clinton?

Remember, if you enjoy chewing the fat over questions as trivial as these, be sure to click the "recommend" so that this post lasts long enough for others to be similarly afflicted.

A few penséss that have come to mind as a result of the exchanges of the last few days:

1) When did "limosine liberals" become an epithet on the tongues of democrats?  I can understand why a republican like Spiro Agnew might use this sort of language, but what is this sort of rhetoric meant to achieve in the mouth of a democrat?

2) How is Clinton (or her supporters like Terry McAuliffe or Joe Wilson) any less a "limosine liberal" than Obama or (his supporters like Ted Kennedy or John Kerry)?

3) When did the Teamsters, the Boilermakers, the Service Employees, the Culinary Workers and the Food and Commercial Workers become something other than salt-of-the-earth blue collar types?  I can tell you that I have played bagpipe gigs at Teamster meetings and at Yacht clubs, and the two fora are not especially similar to each other.

4) If Clinton really does represent "the common man" while Obama stands only for "the liberal elite," then why is Clinton the one parrotting McCain right now?  Is McCain also the defender of the common man?  In a similar vein, why are the republicans training so much fire on Sen Obama but ignoring Sen Clinton entirely?  Are we seriously to understand that the Republican Party is become the party of the proletariat?

Well, everyone knows how I will answer this question.  I am a Kool-Aid drunk Obamabot.  Of course I think that Clinton is the bigger gamble.  It seems to me, however, that the "Obama cannot win" line is only half the story.  What about Clinton's prospects.
Recent poll results serve to confirm the anecdotal storyline that Clinton's support among black voters is soft and getting softer.  First came the Quinnipac study from last week which showed her favorable ratings among black voters down to 52% and her unfavorables up at 42%.  Now today brings us tidings from Rasmussen that Clinton only wins 59% of black voter support in a hypothetical match-up against McCain.
In other words, two independant lines of evidence suggest that Clinton can only expect to bring in about half as many black votes as democrats count on to win.  So, imagining that to be the case, what are the implications of such a hypothetical development.
According to CNN's results and exit polls from 2004, Kerry lost OH by ~119K votes. Black voters are estimated to have cast ~484K votes for Kerry in that election. In other words, Clinton would have enough trouble coming up with the 120K necessary to turn OH around if one assumes that every last Kerry voter shows up to vote for her. Assume, however, that only 60% of Kerry's black voters are inclined vote for Clinton.  Suddenly she needs not ~119K, but 409K to flip this state blue.
Kerry won PA by only ~144K votes. Black voters are estimated to have cast ~630K votes for Kerry in that election. Once again, imagine that just 40% of those voter decide to sit this one out and all of a sudden Clinton needs to replace ~108K voters in order to hang on to that which Kerry carried in 2004.
Kerry lost FL to Bush by ~381K votes.  Black voters are estimated to have cast ~785K ballots for Kerry in that election.  If only 60% of those voters show up this time around she needs 695K more voters than Kerry was able to dig up in order to flip this state into the blue column.
Even IL, a solid blue state, went for Kerry by only ~546K votes.  Black voters are estimated to have cast ~469K of those Kerry votes.  If 60% of those voters (and remember, IL is Obama's home state, so the folks in IL are disproportionately more likely than the national average to be upset by a hypothetical Obama primary loss) that would put McCain theoretically within ~734K of stealing IL from us, far closer a margin than any democrat ought to feel smug about.
With that in mind, does Clinton really look like more of a sure thing than Obama?

This is a question for those who think that the popular vote ought to count for something - should non-states count in that popular vote tally.  I notice that, at present, RCP is including the totals from places like the Virgin Islands and American Samoa in their popular vote totals, although these numbers amount to very little.  I notice, however, that Greg Sargent was tossing around the figure of ~900K voters expected in the PR primary in June.  That is a significant chunk of votes.  Given that these folks get 0 electoral votes, however, I am given to wonder whether it makes sense to count them in the popular vote totals.

What do you think?  Should it be counted?  If so, why?  If not, why not?

Much ado has recently been made about Sen Obama's demonstrated inability to win over certain important segments of the democratic base, viz. blue collar whites, older voters (especially older women) and hispanics.  These exit poll trends have given rise to a particular argument about Sen Obama's electability that runs to the effect that, because he will not be able to energize important segments of the democratic base, he will not be able to win critical swing states like PA & OH in November.

As Mr Marshall points out on the front page, this argument is problematic.  It is premised on the unspoken assumption that because a given voter votes for X instead of Y in a primary, said voter will be unwilling to vote for Y in the GE despite the fact that this voter shares a party affiliation with Y; the truth of this assumption is far from intuitively obvious.

For present purposes, however, I am not interested in exploring the accuracy of that premise.  Let us grant it arguendo.  It seems to me that observations about Obama's ability to rally parts of the traditional democratic base are true as far as they go, but they only go halfway to where the Clinton supporter making the pitch described above needs to go.  Such a person needs not only to prove that Sen Obama cannot win the votes of certain core constituencies in November, but also that Sen Clinton can win the votes of all democratic core constituencies.

With that in mind, I would like to turn the readers attention to the recent series of exit polls conducted in PA by the good folks at Quinnipac.  I pay specific attention to these because they treat of very recent data, and thus can be expected to give us information about how voters are feeling right now, after several weeks of bitter, internecine struggle.

It appears that as the months of March and April wore on, African Americans have begun to sour on Sen Clinton rather remarkably.  By the end of the poll (Apr 21) her favorable rating was at only 52% and her unfavorable rating at 42%.  In other words, the historic good will of African Americans towards the Clintons has given way (at least in PA) to a distinct ambivalence.  Moreover, it seems that she has not hit bottom yet; between Apr 13 and 21 (the end of the tracking period), her favorables fell 6 pts and her unfavorables grew 12.

African Americans are just as important an element of the democratic base as are blue-collar whites.  No democrat will be able to carry swing states like OH, MI or FL without strong turnout among black voters in those states, and favorability ratings like those do not augur well for Sen Clinton's ability to achieve a strong turnout.  In other words, if we really care to play the game of extrapolating from present day primary results to results in November, Clinton is no stronger by the "electability" measure than is Obama.

Not really, but I notice that with each passing minute the legend of her victory-in-the-face-of-unprecedented-obstacles seems to grow in the writings of Gotalife, RStephen, Matthew Weaver, & al.  By the end of the day I fully expect to read that she won despite being outspent 100:1.

So, might I ask where you folks making this claim are getting your numbers?  The published reports that I have been able to dig up with a quick google search claim that Obama spent $11,246,573 in PA while Clinton spent $4,852,541 on the same race.  That comes to a margin of 2.3 to 1.

Mind you, that is still an impressive margin of outspending.  Her victory in the face of that sort of disadvantage really is impressive.  As such, why the need to exagerate it?  You simply make her accomplishment look smaller by comparison to the mythic narrative you are crafting to replace the reality of the race.

So said Sen Clinton this morning in an interview with Matt Lauer.  But is it true?  Who knows?

Sen Clinton's claim is based upon a popular vote tabulation which includes MI & FL but omits IA, NV, ME & WA.  That is because those last four states do not release vote totals, just totals of delegates elected for each candidate.  Because no totals are released from those states, there are no numbers to compute in the popular vote calculations.  That said, some number of people did actually vote in those states, and Obama won three of those four.  As such, and given the very slim margin of Sen Clinton's hypothetical popular vote lead (only ~122K), it is entirely possible that even with MI & FL included and even in light of the PA votes, more people have voted (to date) for Sen Obama than for Sen Clinton.  Indeed, when RCP sets down to estimate the vote totals in IA, NV, ME & WA and includes those estimates in the count, Obama is back on top by ~317K.

Is it squirrley to include those estimates?  Sure, but no more squirrley than including FL & MI.  In other words, Sen Clinton's assertion is more spin than substance.  Given that the popular vote only matters as a means of convincing super-delegates to support one candidate or the other, I am not especially impressed that this is going to make much of an impression on the supers.  If you were a superdelegate, would you be much impressed by a number which is only sustainable if you include two highly irregular elections but ignore four perfectly honest ones?

... to Sen Clinton's latest ad. I leave the reader to draw his/her own conclusions.

I have been confidently predicting for weeks now that Indiana would go for Obama.  I thought that even before I made the trip to canvas there a few weeks back, but getting out and knocking on doors in Indianapolis only made me even more convinced of the claim.  As such, I was pleased but not surprised to see that Survey USA has just released a poll showing the state flipping over to an Obama lead.  My track records as a prophet is rather spotty, but I am going on record now to say that this will be the new trend in IN polls and that Obama will go on to win Indiana on May 6, albeit only by single digits.

Evidently this is something that one needs to establish with certainty if one wishes to run for president, so I thought that I would just get out ahead of the curve here in preparation for my candidacy in 2016 and say that I believe in the American flag.  I have seen it with my own eyes and will swear on a stack of Bibles that it exists.

I also believe in mom, the flag (well, that is redundant I suppose, given the first paragraph) and apple pie - somewhere between 32% and 56% more than my opponents believe in those things.  And Jesus really is my co-pilot (seriously, Jesus Moreno down the street and I carpool together all the time).

All right, I hope that is settled now.  When Charles Gibson cuts to the videotaped question (or hologram, or whatever they are using at that distant date in the future), I am going to reference this blog post, and I hope that all of you will call in to back me up - Greg DeLassus believes in the American flag, and all of that other jazz.

I notice that the bulk of the recommended posts right now consist of essays penned by my fellow Obama supporters criticizing Sen Clinton (often in rather harsh terms).  I would submit that this sort of thing is really not helpful.  Obama is a democrat; Clinton is a democrat.  We are on the same side here, and we really should not be attacking each other.  The last thing that we need in November is a bitter schism in the party.  I think that one of the surest ways to achieve that severely undesirable split, however, is to antagonize Sen Clinton's supporters.  There is much to be lost and little to be gained in that course of action.  As such, I am going to post a few things about Sen Clinton and her campaign that I have come to admire. I invite my fellow Obama supporters to do the same.  I would ask, however, that you keep it sincere; no backhanded compliments on the order of "you don't sweat much for a fat guy."

1) Sen Clinton has done a remarkable job of increasing democratic turnout this season.  This is surely a good thing for the party overall, and Sen Clinton should be commended for it.

2) I am much obliged to her for bringing up the subject of crime.  I was rather surprised that the issue had not been much discussed sooner in the campaign season, but better late than never and we have her to thank for it.

3) I think that she would make an excellent president.  I think that the large number of people who are obviously inspired by the idea of her candidacy (as evidenced by the extreme closeness of this race) stand as a testament to her abilities.  We are lucky to have her in this party.

I plan to come back to this later with more specific points, but at the moment I need to get back to work.  Meanwhile, I hope that others among my Obama supporting fellows will leap in with contributions in the meantime.

This seems like such an obvious topic that I find it hard to believe that no one has blogged on it yet, but I do not find any such post in my (rather brief) search of the archives, so I thought that I would write a post myself.  One way or another, there is going to be an empty senate seat in Jan 2009.  Whether McCain, Clinton or Obama wins, somebody who is in the senate now will not be in the senate then.  As such, a new senator will have to be chosen to fill that slot.  We are fortunate in that all three states in question (NY, IL and AZ) have democratic governors, so that seat will almost certainly be filled by a democrat.

With that in mind, who would you like to see fill that seat?  More to the point, whom do you <i>expect</i> to be selected?  Here is your chance to make a prediction and enjoy the glory of bragging rights if you get it right next Jan.

My picks:

1) AZ - I predict that Gov Napolitano will pick Rep Gabrielle Giffords (this is a complete guess; I know nothing about AZ, and while I would like for Gov Napolitano to appoint herself, that seems unlikely, so I just reached for the name of the only other AZ democrat in my memory).
2) IL - I predict that Gov Blajoejvich will appoint Atty Gen Lisa Madigan because she is 1) very popular statewide and 2) a possible primary rival to himself next go around.  Also, I rather like Lisa Madigan myself and think that she has proven a rather capable and intelligent public servant.
3) NY - I predict that Gov Paterson will appoint Andrew Cuomo (this, like my AZ pick, is mostly an uninformed guess).