E.J. Dionne today put his finger on an aspect of the Obama-Clinton rivalry that’s been percolating under the surface for a while. Noting the similarities between Obama’s frequent beyond-left-and-right talk–and more specifically, the tribute to Ronald Reagan’s leadership qualities that Hillary Clinton’s campaign has been pounding him about–and the 1992 campaign message of one Bill Clinton, Dionne concludes:

In many ways, Obama is running the 2008 version of the 1992 Clinton campaign. You have the feeling that if Bill Clinton did not have another candidate in this contest, he’d be advising Obama and cheering him on.

E.J. might have added another parallel: Bill Clinton’s trump card in the 1992 nominating contest was his overwhelming support among African-Americans.
I’ve written before (as has Matt Compton) that Obama’s “Clintonian” trans-ideological and trans-partisan rhetoric has been a source of considerable ambivalence towards his candidacy by self-conscious Left Progressives in the party and the blogosphere (indeed, Armando Llorens of Talk Left today plays off Dionne’s column to blast Obama for an insufficiently partisan approach). But there’s a little-noticed flip side to this phenomenon. Despite the long association of the Clintons with the Centrist/DLC/”New Democrat” wing of the party, there’s pretty strong pro-Obama sentiment in centrist circles as well (something I first noticed at the DLC annual meeting last summer, where there was quite visible support for Obama among the several hundred state and local elected officials in attendance). Some observers were surprised by the raft of recent endorsements of Obama by red- and purple-state centrist elected officials in recent weeks (e.g., Janet Napolitano, Claire McCaskill, Jim Doyle, Tim Johnson, and Ben Nelson). Less attention has been paid to support for Obama in SC by long-time white centrist Democrats like former Gov. Jim Hodges, Charleston Mayor Joe Riley, and former state party chair Dick Harpootlian.
In general, the early caucus and primary results have shown relatively little consistent correspondence between voter ideology and candidate preference; that’s a key reason that identity factors (age, race and gender) have played so obvious a role. So the “Clintonian” features of the Obama campaign aren’t just a small, ironic quirk. They are part and parcel of a contest where pinning down the candidates on a conventional left-right spectrum is exceedingly difficult.

In SC this week, John Edwards has continued his campaign’s complaint that he would be winning in that state and nationally if it weren’t for the news media’s obsession with his two rivals.
He’s obviously right that disproportionate media attention has been paid to Clinton and Obama, even prior to Iowa, though the historic nature of their candidacies was clearly a factor as much as any bias. Since Iowa, however, the focus on the two national front-runners has been completely natural, if somewhat self-reinforcing.
Moreover, the idea that Edwards’ only political handicap has been media negligence just doesn’t bear much scrutiny. He’s been running a relatively poor third in polls in his native state for many months, mainly because of his longstanding inability to attract much African-American support. And you can at least partially forgive the punditocracy for treating his loss in Iowa–his obsessive focus for years, building on a big head start in popularity and organization, and benefitting from an environment where national media coverage wasn’t that big a factor–as the crushing blow that Edwards supporters had long conceded it would be. Live by Iowa, die by Iowa.
The dispiriting Clinton-Obama slugfest in SC has given Edwards one last chance to significantly exceed low expectations–which he failed to do in NH and NV. If he succeeds, and the media continue to ignore him, then he probably has some right to complain.
But if Big Media probably shouldn’t be blamed for Edwards’ travails, I personally think they have played a major role in the “racialization” of the Clinton-Obama rivalry. It’s significant that all the race-talk began on the night of the NH primary, when the networks gave exceptional (and IMO, unmerited) credence to the “Bradley-Wilder Effect” of hidden voter racism as an explanation for Clinton’s upset win. I know some people blame the Clinton campaign for “racialization,” but it should be fairly obvious that if her campaign wanted to “go there,” it would have done so prior to the vote in the whiter-shade-of-pale states of IA and NH. Maybe the race-talk was inevitable in any contest including Obama, and maybe identity-based voting is higher than it otherwise would be in a competition where actual policy differences were visible to anyone other than the most serious wonks. But Big Media definitely let the race-genie out of the bottle, and it’s unclear when or whether it can be bottled back up.

One of the more interesting subplots in the Republican presidential contest is the attitude of conservative elites towards long-time intraparty nemesis John McCain. Most don’t like him, for a variety of reasons ranging from his sponsorship of campaign finance reform, to his wavering record on tax cuts, his past feuding with the Christian Right, and his habit of cosponsoring legislation with Democrats (most importantly, on immigration reform and global climate change). Sure, he’s flip-flopped at least partially on some of these issues, and has won some conservative brownie points with his championship of Iraq escalation and his frank support for a permanent U.S. military engagement in that country. But many conservatives opinion-leaders still don’t trust him at all, and their views appear to be shared by a significant number of conservative voters in the early primaries.
But results are results, and between McCain’s wins in NH and SC, and his uniquely strong showing in general election polls, conservatives are having to come to grips with a McCain nomination, particularly if he wins in FL.
In general, conservative elites are talking about McCain much as many of their Democratic counterparts talked about Howard Dean during the brief period in the last presidential cycle when his nomination looked “inevitable.” And just as some of those Democrats longed for reassurance from Dean that all his revolutionary rhetoric hid a conventional politician, conservatives are openly asking McCain for a pander or two to make them feel better about succumbing to his nomination.
Here’s an interesting opening bid by the L’Osservatore Romano of conservative opinion, National Review:

McCain will never win over all conservatives, even if he gets the nomination. But he can reassure conservatives if he pledges to name a conservative running mate and identifies respected conservative legal figures to whom he will turn when nominating judges. He can promise to approach immigration reform piecemeal rather than comprehensively. He should say that strong evidence that the illegal-immigrant population is shrinking will have to arrive before he legalizes any large segment of that population. And he can acknowledge that scientific advances have weakened the case for federal funding of embryonic-stem-cell research.

Note the pointed reference to the veep choice, which should pour some cold water on neocon fantasies of a McCain-Lieberman ticket (no career-long supporters of abortion rights need apply), along with the demand for a flip-flop on stem cell research, and a full surrender on immigration reform.
At present, it’s unclear exactly how much leverage conservative elites have with McCain. He’s done pretty well without their support, and the real-world obstacle to McCain’s nomination is Mitt Romney’s bottomless campaign treasury, not conservative hostility. But expect to see more of this bidding for McCain’s allegiance if his electoral success continues.

There is a new and (no matter whom you support) disturbing CW dominating analysis of the Democratic nominating contest at the moment. It’s that Obama is becoming the “black candidate,” repelling the white and brown voters who will determine the ultimate outcome. Indeed, this point of view is feeding the Clinton campaign’s efforts to downplay an expected Obama win in South Carolina this Saturday. After all (suggest the pundits, not the Clintons), SC is just about black folks, who won’t matter down the road. Typically, Dick Morris is the bluntest in publicly presenting this point of view, but I can tell you, it’s endemic in the DC chattering classes.
Totally aside from the corrosive effect of such race-based political assumptions–including the planted axiom that white and Latino voters don’t want to be on the same bandwagon as African-Americans–they strike me as a being over-simplistic from even a cold, amoral perspective. Here’s a new flash for the punditocracy: there are African-Americans who live in states other than South Carolina.
A case in point: the most under-discussed story about the Nevada Caucuses was that (according to the entrance polls) the African-American vote was a large as the Latino vote. Among the latter, it was widely reported that Clinton won by a little better than two-to-one. But among the former, Obama won by better than five-to-one. And lest we forget, Clinton was running even with or even ahead of Obama among African-Americans nationally until very recently.
In the February 5 states, African-American voters will almost certainly outnumber Latinos in a majority of states, will be crucial in quite a few (e.g., Alabama, Georgia, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Arkansas, New Jersey, Delaware, plus Obama’s own Illinois) and will be a significant factor in others, including California. If Obama’s margins among black voters match what he won in Nevada–not a bad bet, given the “racialization” of the campaign–then he can lose white and Latino voters substantially and still be competitive.
In other words, it’s not all that clear which candidate would ultimately benefit from a “racialization” of the nominating contest. And to use Mickey Kaus’ infelicitous term, Obama’s “ghetto” may be bigger than the pundits realize.

The “electibility” argument among Democratic presidential candidates is complicated enough from the get-go, as illustrated by a recent exchange between Jonathan Chait and Ezra Klein about the general election strengths and weaknesses of Obama and Clinton, which pretty much covers the waterfront of informed speculation.
But two new factors are pushing the electibility debate in new directions. The first is the re-emergence of John McCain as the Republican front-runner. He’s the only GOPer in shouting distance of the two Democratic front-runners in general election trial heats, and actually runs ahead of Clinton in some. And there’s a reason for that: aside from his famous appeal to independents, and the media adulation he enjoys, he’s the one candidate hardest to typecast (except on the subject of Iraq) as mired in the same ideological delusions that gave us the Bush administration. His one major electoral weakness, the hostility of movement conservatives, won’t be much of a problem in a general election (and they seem to be coming around; elite conservative attitudes towards McCain at the moment strongly resemble those of establishment Democrats towards Howard Dean just prior to Iowa in 2004–resigned).
The second factor, though, cuts in the opposite direction. It’s now virtually certain that the economy will be in recession during the critical period prior to the general election. This will represent a real anchor on the Republican ticket, regardless of its composition. And this is not a subject conducive to any McCain Magic. The Arizonan’s economic message is basically one of fiscal austerity seasoned with a commitment to heavy defense spending. It’s hard to imagine a prescription less well suited to hard times.
This problem may catch up with McCain in the primaries; Mitt Romney would be insane not to exploit the advantage of being both more knowledgable and more conservative than McCain on economic issues. But if McCain does win the nomination, all the talk about service and courage and straight talk won’t matter much to people who are worried about their jobs, their pensions, and their homes.

Well, what can I say? World financial markets are in an uproar; the Fed has discarded all decorum in issuing a major interest rate cut; the Bush administration, after spending most of the autumn posturing against federal budget deficits, is now in a panic-stricken drive for a “stimulus package;” and the two leading Democratic candidates for president are going after each other like crazed weasels.
I think giving this day a few hours to sort itself out would be a prudent idea.

As a white southerner whose childhood was mostly spent in a Jim Crow society, the life and death of Martin Luther King, Jr., is not something I just read about in history books. I remember the searing challenge he posed to the polite white southern “liberals” who were embarassed by his simple demands for justice, and his direct evocation of the ideals of their country and their faith. And I also remember the incredible hatred his gentle, quintessentially Christian movement provoked in so many of my own “people” (e.g., an aunt who before the apprehension of James Earl Ray said she’d love the opportunity to hide and care for King’s murderer).
Even today, I’d guess a majority of white southerners–and white yankees, for that matter–think of MLK Day as an ethnic holiday that has nothing to do with their own “people.” I recently read a new biography of Jesse Helms that showed pretty convincingly that Helms’ opposition to a federal MLK holiday was the single most important factor in his survival of the toughest political challenge of his life, his come-from-behind victory over Jim Hunt in 1984. Clearly, many white North Carolinians thought of MLK as a man who had helped vanquish their heritage, when in fact he helped redeem it.
More than anyone in recent memory, Martin Luther King, Jr., held up a mirror to the people of this country and asked them to live up to the best of what they believed about themselves. And that’s why this is, and should be, a truly national holiday, for all of us.

John McCain’s narrow win in SC over Mike Huckabee probably dooms the Arkansan and creates an entirely new dynamic in the January 29 FL primary. As you will hear over and over in the next few days, SC was a kind of terrain that was as close to ideal for Huckabee as he could have wanted, a southern state with a heavily evangelical Republican voting base.
But in the end, Huck’s luck wasn’t that good. Fred Thompson’s decision to throw everything into SC, and to go negative on Huckabee, and Romney’s decision to all but bail in the state, almost certainly produced the McCain win. Thompson ran well in Huckabee Country, while Romney ran well in McCain Country. Had Thompson pulled out, and had Romney really competed, it’s pretty clear Huckabee would have had a major advantage.
Now we get to find out if Rudy Giuliani’s decision to concede every state prior to Florida was a fatal mistake. Today Rudy won 4% of the vote in NV and 2% in SC; he was running first in some SC polls less than two months ago.
But more and more, it’s looking like a McCain-Romney contest for the nomination. And despite McCain’s reinforced front-runner status after SC, Romney may have the money and the positioning to overcome him.

As you’ve probably heard by now, Hillary Clinton won the Nevada Democratic Caucuses by a decent if not overwhelming margin. As in Iowa, the results are being reported in terms of state delegates elected. By that measurement, she won by about a 51%-46% margin, with John Edwards finishing a very disappointing third with less than 4%. The entrance polls probably give a better indication of the raw vote, with HRC winning about 46%, Obama about 41%, and Edwards a bit over 8%.
It appears HRC won Las Vegas handily, and at least one report indicates she may have actually won those at-large Strip caucusing sites that her allies tried so hard to shut down.
The most striking finding in the entrance polls (IMHO) was the age composition of the caucus participants: 13% were under 30; 19% were aged 30-44; 34% were 45-60; and 36% were over 60. Unsurprisingly, HRC’s vote rose with each older age group, peaking at nearly a two-to-one margin among the oldest, and Obama’s declined (he won by nearly two-to-one among the youngest group). Income, ideology, religion and union status didn’t seem to matter all that much. And while Obama won handily among independents (51%-33%), they were only 15% of the participants.
Knowing the MSM, however, I suspect their big story won’t be the age composition, but the racial/ethnic/gender breakdown. According to the entrance polls, Obama won a staggering 83% of the African-American vote, while HRC beat him among Latinos 64%-26%, with each group representing 15% of the participants. The former is probably a good sign for Obama in SC, the latter a good sign for Clinton in a number of February 5 states.
And as in NH, the gender disparities were notable. Women outnumbered men by nearly a three-to-two margin, and HRC beat Obama among them 51%-38%.
According to MyDD, total turnout was over 100,000, much higher than anticipated, making this the third straight contest where Democratic turnout set new and high standards.

As a complement to Matt Compton’s essay about the blogosphere and Barack Obama in our Featured Content section, you might want to read a new Chris Bowers’ OpenLeft post, which looks more closely at blog readers’ preferences, and the factors that influence them, including demographics, high information consumption, and hostility to “bipartisanship” and to the Democratic status quo.
While you’re at OpenLeft, you can also read Chris’ predictions for the Democratic caucuses in Nevada. He thinks Obama may eke out a close win over Clinton, and cites the reasons, while acknowledging that all the late polls show Clinton ahead, albeit narrowly.
I think the truth is that we still know virtually nothing about likely turnout in Nevada, so making any prediction–and for that matter, taking any poll–is probably a crap-shoot, if you’ll excuse the gambling reference.