Confused by the conflicting claims over the current and future status of the cumulative popular vote in the Democratic presidential contest? Take a look at Steve Kornacki’s methodical deconstruction of the issue in the New York Observer.
Fair warning: Kornacki’s account is framed in a way that expresses considerable hostility to the Clinton’s campaign’s arguments. But his math is solid, and does fairly explain the various methods of counting this or that state in or out.

For all those Democrats who are worried, or, worse yet, depressed about the likely performance of our presidential nominee in November, the Doctor–Dr. Alan Abramowitz of Emory University, that is–makes a house call this morning to lift some spirits.
In The New Republic, Abramowitz patiently goes through the math and science of why Democrats are likely to win the general election, and why analogies that depend on a large defection of Democrats to the GOP candidate are simply anachronistic. It’s worth a careful read.

You knew it would ultimately happen, right? Now that Hillary Clinton’s survived another round of the presidential nominating process, we’re suddenly hearing once again about Florida’s demands that its delegates be seated.at the Convention. Indeed, Floridians are getting testy about it:

Florida Democrats — led by Hillary Clinton supporters — are turning to public protests to keep the pressure on the national party.
Rallies are planned Saturday in seven Florida cities, including Miami and Fort Lauderdale, to demand that the national party count Florida’s delegates. Hundreds of activists are also expected to ride buses to Washington to rally Wednesday.
”This has to do with our civil rights,” said Millie Herrera, a potential Clinton convention delegate and the president of the Hispanic Democratic Caucus of Florida. “No one has the right to invalidate our votes.”

Sorting out the “civil rights” issues from those that are strictly related to Hillary Clinton’s candidacy won’t be easy. Most national Democrats hoped that Florida and Michigan could be dealt with discreetly after a nominee was selected. But the longer the contest goes on, the harder that becomes.

The record turnout in the PA Democratic primary is not without problems. Every time a state votes, we hear stories about voter intimidation, misprinted ballots, and equipment failures. Most of these issues turn out to be inconsequential.
But if you like hearing about them anyway, check out Elections Journal. A team of activists (led by a Republican named Mike Roman) is on the ground in the Keystone State using web tools like Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and Google Maps to document alleged abuses.
And lest we forget, there is a reason that Democrats organize voter protection teams on Election Day.

For you serious political junkies, The New Republic‘s Noam Scheiber has published a fascinating profile of David Plouffe, Barack Obama’s publicity-averse campaign manager. You’d be excused for forgetting that Plouffe’s the top guy, given the high visibility of “strategist” David Axelrod (Plouffe’s colleague in pre-Obama political consulting); this inside-outside division of labor is a deliberate arrangement they worked out in advance.
Scheiber’s take on Plouffe’s key role focuses on the Obama campaign’s success in organizing caucus states from Iowa on, and also on its efforts to make “pledged delegates” the key media optic for measuring success in the Democratic contest. There’s not anything about Plouffe’s general election strategy if Obama wins the nomination, but you have to give Scheiber a lot of credit for getting any sort of coherent profile done of an operative who refuses to be interviewed.

With Pennsylvania’s Democratic presidential primary on tap for tomorrow, all attention has been focused on the relative strengths and weaknesses of Hillary Clinton–the consensus front-runner in the state, who needs as large a win as possible–and Barack Obama, who once appeared poised for an upset win that could have more or less ended the nomination contest.
But there’s been a secondary “story” in the Keystone State which may or may not have an impact on the Democratic outcome, but will definitely matter in November: a big surge in new Democratic voter registrations accompanied by another big surge in re-registrations into the Democratic column.
Jeanne Cummings has a good write-up of the phenomenon for The Politico. Here are her main findings:

According to the Secretary of State’s office, since January about 217,000 new voters have registered for the April 22 primary, the vast majority of whom signed up as Democrats….
That statewide Democratic surge has been accompanied by a flood of party-switching. More than 178,000 voters have changed their party status since January — and the Democrats have captured 92 percent of those voters.

Cummings quotes some speculation that this accretion of new Democratic voters–which is especially heavy in the Philadelphia area and in college towns–could help Obama outperform poll ratings tomorrow. But she really focuses on the possibility that we are witnessing “an ongoing partisan shift in Pennsylvania that could soon move it out of the battleground presidential states and ripple across congressional races this fall, as well.” That’s particularly true if you view the current spike in party-switching as a continuation of the realignment begun by Ed Rendell’s 2002 gubernatorial campaign, which arguably contributed to the big Democratic wins in the state in 2006.

No matter what happens in the presidential elections, Democrats are very optimistic about increasing their margins of control in both the U.S. House and Senate. In the House, one reason for optimism is a continuing wave of Republican incumbent retirements in potentially vulnerable districts.
Stuart Rothenberg of Roll Call maintains a “Dangerous Dozen” list of the twelve open House seats most likely to produce a change in party control. His latest edition, out today, shows ten of the twelve as currently in Republican hands.
As Rothenberg notes: “A significant number of retirements since my last Dangerous Dozen (Oct. 25, 2007) has shuffled the list and shows why the fight for the House is a one-sided battle, with Democrats having most of the targets.”

A lot of Democrats groaned when Ralph Nader announced he was running for president yet again. But he’s not the only minor party candidate who could make a splash. Former Congressman Bob Barr of GA, who formally left the GOP for the Libertarian Party two years ago, is mulling a run for the presidency on that party’s ticket.
If he runs, he would draw on the celebrity he gained as a prominent media critic of the civil liberties abuses of the Bush administration. He’d probably attract much of the following of Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, without bearing the burden of Paul’s unsavory association with racists.
Here’s what an anxious Washington Times piece said about Barr’s prospects:

“Barr obviously is dangerous. At least he negates any possible Nader benefit,” said David Norcross, a New Jersey member of the Republican National Committee and its Rules Committee chairman, arguing Mr. Barr would hurt Republicans at least as much as Ralph Nader, who has announced his own independent presidential bid, would hurt Democrats.
Republican campaign pros said a Barr bid could range from causing them some damage all the way to being the equivalent of Ross Perot’s 1992 presidential bid, which many Republicans think split their party’s voters, unseating then-President Bush and electing Democrat Bill Clinton.
“Sure, it will hurt. We’ll just have to see how much. Will it be like Perot’s run? Always that chance,” said South Carolina Republican Party Chairman Katon Dawson.

We’ll know soon enough. Barr may announce his candidacy as early as this weekend, and the Libertarian presidential nominating convention will be held Memorial Day weekend in Denver. At this point, Barr’s best-known rival for the bid would be the eccentric ex-Democrat Mike Gravel.
UPCATEGORY: Democratic Strategist

For much of the last month, we’ve been treated with a series of polls showing Hillary Clinton blowing out Barack Obama in Pennsylvania.
This week, that started to change:
A survey from Rasmussen yesterday showed Clinton leading Obama by just five points, 47% to 42% — down from 10 a week ago;
A poll from Survey USA yesterday showed Clinton leading 53% to 41% — down from 19 the month before;
A survey from Quinnipiac University today shows Clinton leading by nine points, 50% to 41% — down from 12 points two weeks ago; and
A survey from Public Policy Polling today shows Obama actually taking a lead, 45% to 43% — that’s a shift of 28 points from the last time PPP polled the state two and a half weeks ago.
There is definitely movement in this primary, so how does this change expectations? Does HRC no longer need to win by double-digits?
Interesting question. But remember there’s another twenty days to go.

(NOTE: This guest post, by Dr. Stephen Medvic, Associate Professor of Government at Franklin & Marshall College, addresses claims that superdelegates threaten to overturn the “popular will” of Democratic voters.)
During this presidential cycle, criticism of the Democratic Party’s superdelegate system has been widespread and, at times, vociferous. Much of it has emanated from supporters of Sen. Barack Obama’s candidacy, who fear a superdelegate “coup” on behalf of Hillary Clinton to “overturn” the pledged delegate results from primaries and caucuses. But there’s a legitimate and important debate over the institution of superdelegates above and beyond their impact on this particular contest, and that’s what I will address in this essay.
There is no doubt, as many knowledgeable observers have pointed out, that the creation of superdelegates in the early 1980s was a move by party insiders to enhance the power of the party establishment. But the arguments made against their role in the process are a bit misguided.
First, today’s superdelegates are hardly the party bosses of yesteryear. Prior to 1972, the party establishment did wield considerable power in selecting the party’s nominee and that establishment did consist, for the most part, of older white men. Taken as a group, these men were certainly less progressive than the reformers who changed the party rules following the 1968 election. It is a mistake, however, to think of them as a homogenous cadre of conservatives. As Byron Shafer noted in Quiet Revolution, his history of the post-1968 Democratic Party reforms, the “orthodox Democratic coalition” was essentially blue-collar and included not only organized labor but civil rights organizations as well. It was replaced, incidentally, not by the rank-and-file, as is often suggested by opponents of the superdelegates, but by an “alternative Democratic coalition” of elites that was thoroughly white-collar.
Nevertheless, today’s establishment – embodied by the superdelegates – is extremely diverse, especially when compared to party insiders circa 1968. It is true that over 60 percent of the superdelegates are men, but that is the result of the fact that elected officials continue to be disproportionately male. Among the roughly 400 superdelegates who are not elected officials this discrepancy virtually disappears because party rules produce a significant level of gender balance on the Democratic National Committee (and members of the DNC serve as superdelegates). And while I am unaware of the precise demographic make-up of the superdelegates, it is safe to assume that minorities are represented in proportion to their numbers among Democratic Party constituencies. Indeed, party rules for DNC membership encourage “representation as nearly as practicable of minority groups, Blacks, Native Americans, Asian/Pacifics, Hispanics, women and youth, as indicated by their presence in the Democratic electorate.”
Furthermore, the notion that nearly 800 party leaders might coordinate their decisions in some sort of modern day smoke-filled room is laughable. The superdelegates cannot even be accused of group-think, since they are currently split almost evenly between support for Hillary Clinton and for Barack Obama. And because half of them are elected officials, they are likely to consider their constituents’ preferences when they determine their own. The charge against them, then, must simply be that they weren’t chosen in primaries or caucuses. But is that process worthy of the devotion that critics of the superdelegates appear to afford it?
Craig Holman of Public Citizen recently complained that superdelegates are “a device to try to reduce the influence of one-person, one-vote,” as if the non-superdelegates (or pledged delegates) represent equal numbers of voters. Of course, they don’t and there are numerous ways in which they fall short of that standard. The most obvious is the use of caucuses to allocate pledged delegates in some states. In Nevada, more people turned out in support of Clinton and, yet, Obama received more delegates. To be sure, most of those critical of superdelegates are also likely to oppose caucuses for selecting delegates. But are primaries considerably more democratic?

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