At The Huffington Post, veteran political reporter Tom Edsall has an interesting take on the early general election positioning of the two candidates for president. Sure, it looks like a close race at this point, but John McCain has another problem beyond the strongly pro-Democratic political landscape: his candidacy, so far, appears based on raising doubts about Barack Obama rather than touting his own credentials.
Edsall quotes a number of observers who see the same problem:

Tom Mann of the Brookings Institution argues that “McCain continues to embrace Bush policies on the most important issues, relying on a reputation for independence and moderation that could be lost in the heat of battle with Obama and the Democrats…. At the end of this long interlude, the only rationale for his election that has emerged is that Obama cannot be trusted to lead the country at a time of great danger because he is too inexperienced, naïve, liberal, elitist, and out of touch with American values. ‘Elect me because the other guy is worse.’ Not much of an argument in the face of gale-force winds blowing against the Republican Party.”
Along similar lines, Norman Ornstein, of the American Enterprise Institute, questioned whether McCain and his aides have “spent enough time and effort developing themes for why he should be president, not just why Obama should not– especially themes that address the deep-seated anxiety voters feel that goes beyond current economic conditions.”
Arch-conservative Bay Buchanan suggested that it may not matter what McCain does. Writing in Human Events on June 4, she declared:
“In reality there is only one candidate. Barack Obama. In November he will win or he will lose. John McCain is relevant only in so far as he is not Barack Obama. The Senator from Arizona is incapable of energizing his party, brings no new people to the polls, and has a personality that is best kept under wraps.”

It’s not unheard of for candidates to win on purely negative characterizations of their opponents, but it doesn’t happen that often, particularly in the kind of political environment we are in at present. More importantly, if these analysts are right, the election is literally Barack Obama’s to win or lose.

Bad news for the GOP seems to be the common denominator as the one-on-one race for the white house opens today. Some examples:
Apparently John McCain hasn’t made much headway since he clinched the GOP nomination, at least in the Buckeye state. L.A. Times reporter Peter Walsten writes on the inept McCain campaign in Ohio.
Ditto in S.C., says MyDD‘s Jonathan Singer.
Jim Turner of TCPalm reports voters are bailing from the GOP on FL’s ‘Treasure Coast.’
The Southern Political Report‘s Hastings Wyman’s “The rise and fall of the Virginia GOP” reports on the “precipitous decline” of the “once-GOP stronghold into the Democratic column.”
Paul Rosenberg’s Open Left post “The Making of A Landslide–A Progress Report” sees huge Dem gains in party i.d., based on the latest Rasmussen polling data.
And Rosenberg flags a DCORPS study indicating significant Democratic inroads in 45 GOP-held districts.
Obama is taking his campaign into the belly of the GOP beast, report Adam Nagourney and Jeff Zeleny in The New York Times.
GOP luminary Bill Kristol, says the McCain campaign “dog-paddles along.”.
Evangelicals are also unimpressed by the McCain campaign, reports Robert Novak.
And The Politico‘s Jonathan Martin catches “straight-talk express” McCain on a whopper.

In case you missed it live, here’s the transcript for Sen. Hillary Clinton’s speech in Washington today suspending her campaign and endorsing Barack Obama for president. You couldn’t ask for a more thorouhgoing commitment to support the ticket, and the speech will be well-received in all sectors of the Democratic Party.
It’s been five months since the nominating process formallly began, and the general election is still five months away. We’re halfway home.

My contribution to the aforementioned New Republic colloquoy on Obama’s general election strategy is now up on their site, along with Bill Galston’s, and another by Jon Chait. (Others will eventually be published as well).
Aside from agreeing with Galston’s assessment, my piece focuses on three issues: (1) how Obama can win the war of “meta-message” with McCain; (2) what Obama needs to do to beef up his credibility on national security; and (3) why Obama should ignore the occasional mockery of bored and cynical pundits and make full, abundant use of his rhetorical skills, especially during his crucial convention acceptance speech.

The New Republic has organized a colloquoy beginning today involving “friends of the magazine” who have been asked to offer succinct advice to Barack Obama and his campaign on how best to win the general election. First out of the box is TDS Co-Editor Bill Galston, who with his characteristic analytical precision, makes seven specific suggestions to Team Obama:
(1) Introduce yourself to the American people on your terms.
(2) Establish clear priorities for what you will do as president.
(3) Focus more specifically on what you’d do for the economy.
(4) Cross the threshold of credibility as commander-in-chief.
(5) Reach out to Catholics.
(6) Empasize moderation and open-mindedness on social issues.
(7) Make the electorate understand that on the issues they care about the most, John McCain is no moderate.
Bill provides detailed advice on all seven of these topics, and also emphasizes the fundamental advantages Obama will enjoy in the general election, and the terrible consequences of losing. You should read it all.
As it happens, I’ve also been asked to participate in this TNR colloquoy, and while I agree with virtually everything Bill has said, will try to offer some supplementary thoughts in short order.

Yesterday J.P. Green did a post discussing the legacy left by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, focusing on her glass-ceiling-battering example to women in politics and government.
While that’s probably her most important legacy, there are others. And today the American Prospect has published a colloquoy on Clinton’s contributions to the progressive cause, featuring essays by feminist blogger K.A. Geier, Prospect Co-Editor Paul Starr, Chris Hayes of The Nation, Salon‘s Rebecca Traister, author Kai Wright, Moira Whelan of the National Security Network, and yours truly.
I focused (rather counter-intuitively) on HRC’s positioning on Iraq, which helped resolve what looked, a year ago, like a horribly corrosive intraparty disagreement over withdrawal plans and appropriations cutoffs. Others talked about Clinton contributions ranging from health care policy to the politics of gender and race.
Check it out.

As we all anticipate Hillary Clinton’s speech tomorrow suspending her campaign and endorsing Barack Obama, the immediate challenge that she and her former Democratic rival face was helpfully underlined by John McCain in media interviews yesterday. As Michael D. Shear and Jon Cohen explain in the Washington Post, McCain has “set his sights” on wooing disaffected Clinton supporters:

“There’s a lot of Senator Clinton supporters who would support me because of their belief that Senator Obama does not have the experience or the knowledge or the judgment to address this nation’s national security challenges,” McCain told reporters Wednesday.

In other words, the McCain campaign is going to mine Clinton’s comments about Obama–not to mention exit poll findings–during the nomination contest for arguments to her supporters that he’s a safer bet in November.
Such arguments, of course, will have to overcome the vast gulf of policy differences between Clinton and McCain:

On the issues, it is unclear how McCain would appeal to Clinton’s female or working-class voters. McCain’s record is not much like Clinton’s, as the Republican repeatedly pointed out during his primary battles. He opposes government-run health care [sic], supports continuing the war in Iraq, wants to extend President Bush’s tax cuts and is a committed foe of abortion rights.

That’s why McCain’s wizards are already placing heavy emphasis on Obama’s alleged “elitism,” and the Republican’s alleged “maverick” credentials:
McCain strategists predict their candidate will do a better job of siphoning away Democratic votes because of two factors: what they say is Obama’s inability to connect to some key parts of the Democratic coalition, and McCain’s reputation as a maverick.

Republicans plan to describe Obama as an elitist from the Hyde Park section of Chicago, where liberal professors mingle in an academic world that is alien to most working-class voters. They plan to make sure Clinton’s voters do not forget about Obama’s comments that working-class people are bitter and cling to their guns and religion as a way of dealing with the economic uncertainty they face.
“The cling-to part about religion and guns is where the McCain campaign is going to hammer home on,” said Kevin Madden, a GOP analyst who was the spokesman for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s presidential bid.

If, indeed, the two most important McCain talking points to Democrats involve a single, out-of-context quote from an Obama fundraising event, and a grossly exaggerated “maverick” reputation that’s about eight years out of date, then the Democratic rebuttal shouldn’t be that hard to develop.
But it definitely needs to begin tomorrow with Hillary Clinton’s speech.

Readers of this and other political websites can be excused if they don’t feel like reading yet another post on what Dems can do to win more white working class votes, so numerous are published opinions on the subject in recent weeks. But Mark Schmitt nevertheless has a worthy read on the topic at The American Prospect. Schmitt’s post, “Did Hillary Crack the Working-Class Code?” makes the case that HRC’s messaging tone in speeches and ads later on in the primary season was exceptionally well-crafted for winning working-class votes. As Schmitt explains:

Where she won with a wide margin, her speeches and ads positioned mostly unsurprising policy proposals in the context of an argument about economic opportunity and fairness…If Clinton’s advantage did not come from what she said, it must have come from how she said it… I found two salient features: balance and modest aspirations. “I still have faith in [the American] dream. It’s just been neglected a bit,” Clinton said in a Pennsylvania TV ad. “They’re not asking for anything special,” she said of working-class voters in Zanesville, Ohio. “They’re just asking for a fair shake. They’re asking for a president who cares about them.”
Her language created a sense of order in the world, which she described in terms of mutual responsibility, symmetry, and a return to a better past: “We’re going to say, ‘Wait a minute Wall Street; you’ve had your president. Now we need a president for Main Street,'” she said on April 14 in Pittsburgh.

Schmitt posits her messaging in sharp contrast to Edwards’ harsher tone:

Note how different this language is, not just from Obama’s, but from the hard populism of John Edwards. Edwards depicted a permanent struggle against a relentless enemy: the corporate special interests themselves, who “will never give up power without a fight.” For Obama, there is a similar permanent challenge but also the hopeful idea that a lasting grand breakthrough might be possible.
For Clinton, the hurdles are lower — there’s a fight but no enemy. She argues that government has had its finger on the special interests’ side of the scale for seven years, so change is merely a matter of moving the weight over to the other side. Hence her constant theme, used in almost every ad and speech since March 4, of returning to balance — seven years of this, now seven years of that. Fairness for Clinton is not about resentment, equality, or even equality of opportunity. It’s about a return to an imagined normal order, where individuals’ thrift is matched by a comparable sense of responsibility on the part of their government. At other times, she uses the metaphor of a recent “detour,” arguing that we need to get back onto the “main road” of economic policy.

Although Edwards may have overemphasized the rhetoric of class conflict, I felt that Obama’s message tone was generally in the same ballpark as Clinton’s. Obama’s campaign can profit, however, from understanding the more nuanced messaging that characterized Clinton’s successful appeals later on in the primary season. Although a quick stop in any gas station can provide evidence that there is rising anger among working people, it hasn’t yet morphed into full-blown rage at U.S. corporations. It’s not to say that Edwards was wrong about the destructive impact of corporate abuse and corruption; he was stone cold right. it’s that voters seem to be looking for a more positively-stated, solution-oriented message. Thus Schmitt contrasts Clinton’s nostaligic “millworker’s grand-daughter” ad in Scranton with Edwards’s angrier “milworker’s son” pitch as a good example of her more positive tone in message-crafting. There seems to be a subtextual theme here of “hey, we don’t need an all-out class war here. But we urgently need some critical reforms to restore America’s greatness.”
As media coverage of the Iraq war receded during the primaries, the revealed differences between the social and economic policies of Clinton, Obama and Edwards were comparatively small. The Obama campaign’s challenge is to adapt some of Clinton’s successful messaging approaches to working people, while drawing sharp contrasts with the policies of McCain.

After reading a dozen post-mortems on Senator Clinton’s historic presidential candidacy, which granted, aint over until the lady in the pantsuit says so, the one I would recommend to future generations trying to understand the impact of Clinton’s run is Katha Pollit’s “Iron My Skirt” in The Nation. One of the venerable Nation‘s strongest voices for both feminism and peace, Pollitt offers one of the more insightful graphs on Clinton’s run yet published:

Some think Clinton’s loss, and the psychodrama surrounding it, will set women back. I think they’re wrong. Love her or loathe her, the big story here is Americans saw a woman who was a serious, popular, major-party candidate. Clinton showed herself to be tough, tireless, supersmart and definitely ready to lead on that famous Day One. She raised a ton of money and won 17.5 million votes from men and women. She was exciting, too: she and Obama galvanized voters for six long months–in some early contests, each of them racked up more votes than all the Republican candidates combined. Once the bitterness of the present moment has faded, that’s what people will remember. Because she normalized the concept of a woman running for President, she made it easier for women to run for every office, including the White House. That is one reason women and men of every party and candidate preference, and every ethnicity too, owe Hillary Clinton a standing ovation, even if they can’t stand her.

Hillary-haters — and there are many — probably won’t get this. But Clinton’s campaign may indeed have a profound and enduring legacy, equal in the long run to Obama’s.
Pollitt rolls out a very disturbing litany of media sexism directed against Clinton, and it was more widespread and appalling than I had realized. (Pollitt names the women perps, as well as the men). Yet Pollitt doesn’t attribute Clinton’s loss to vicious sexism. Instead she cites Clinton’s Iraq policies, strategic blunders and Obama’s remarkable political skills as pivotal factors. Pollitt nonetheless concludes with the warning that future women candidates for high office “better have the hide of a rhinoceros.”
To put Clinton’s candidacy into context, it may help to consider a recent Brookings study “Why Are Women Still Not Running for Public Office?” conducted by Jennifer L. Lawless and Richard L. Fox. The study, based on surveys conducted in 2001 and 2008, concluded that the gender gap in political office-holders in the U.S. has more to do with with women’s lower levels of political ambition than discrimination-related factors. Reading between the lines, however, it’s hard to dismiss pervasive societal sexism as a potent force behind what the authors call “the gender gap in political ambition.”
The authors acknowlege that HRC’s candidacy, along with the examples of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other women office-holders may yet shatter the political glass ceiling. Pelosi had a tough time of it, but what she experienced was a cakewalk, compared to what Clinton has endured. My hunch is not many male politicians could have run that guantlet of personalized attacks and emerged standing, dignity intact. And that example alone may empower women candidates for decades to come.

Much of the political news over the last few days has involved a tide of endorsements of Barack Obama for president by Democratic superdelegates, and increasingly, by previous supporters of Hillary Clinton. The big endorsement is due on Saturday, by Clinton herself.
But one bit of news concerns a de-endorsement of Obama that will be greeted with considerable joy in the presumptive Democratic nominee’s HQ: by the Palestinian group Hamas, motivated by Obama’s speech yesterday to a gathering of the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC). Breaking no new ground, Obama repeated his support for a Palestinian state but only on condition of maintaing Israel’s character as a Jewish state, within “secure and defensible borders.” His exact language, however, seemed to enrage Hamas:

“Obama’s comments have confirmed that there will be no change in the U.S. administration’s foreign policy on the Arab-Israeli conflict,” Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters in Gaza.
“The Democratic and Republican parties support totally the Israeli occupation at the expense of the interests and rights of Arabs and Palestinians,” he said.
“Hamas does not differentiate between the two presidential candidates, Obama and McCain, because their policies regarding the Arab-Israel conflict are the same and are hostile to us, therefore we do have no preference and are not wishing for either of them to win,” Zuhri said.

The earlier “endorsement” of Obama in April by Hamas “adviser” Ahmed Yousef has been a staple of Republican attack emails and McCain fundraising missives. It will be interesting to see if these attacks now stop.
Meanwhile, Obama’s nomination victory was greeted with considerable excitement just about everywhere else on the planet. Karl Blumenthal has a good sampling of the global reaction at OpenLeft.