In all the early speculation about the contours of the general election campaign, one factor that surprisingly gets little attention is another historic aspect to Barack Obama’s candidacy: he will be the first Democratic nominee since LBJ to enjoy a major financial advantage over his GOP opponent.
And the word “major” may significantly understate that advantage.
In the Politico today, Jeanne Cummings puts it bluntly:

With Hillary Clinton’s campaign coming to an end this weekend, Barack Obama’s rise as the Democratic nominee brings serious bad news to a new group: John McCain’s finance team.
A review of campaign finance data offers not one ounce of good news and barely any hope for the McCain campaign’s ability to compete with Obama’s fundraising prowess.

The numbers are indeed daunting for McCain. Assuming he carries out his pledge to accept public financing for the general election campaign, that will give him a budget of about $85 million between now and November. The Republican National Committee has raised another $40 million, much of which will be spent to promote the presidential ticket.
As for Obama:

[C]ampaign finance experts and Democratic fundraisers say a conservative estimate of Obama’s general election fundraising potential hovers around or above $300 million.

Cummings underscores the conservative nature of that estimate by noting that if two-thirds of Obama’s existing donor base of 1.5 million were to “max out” with a $2,300 contribution, he could raise $2.3 billion.
Moreover, the Obama campaign now has five months to tap a vast new fundraising source: Hillary Clinton’s contributors.
The conventional wisdom is that a presidential general election is the one contest where “earned media” is typically more important than paid media. But the size of Obama’s money advantage is such that it may become very meaningful, particularly in terms of enabling the Democrat to effectively respond to attack ads and generally control the tone of the campaign. Moreover, there’s no substitute for money in setting up a general election infrastructure around the country, and Obama is also likely to have a big advantage in the other leading factor, enthusiasm.
As Cummings puts it:

In the general election, Obama could afford to set up large operations in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, New Mexico and a host of other states — maybe even McCain’s own Arizona.
That would force McCain to pick the midsize-state battles he could afford while also trying to hold off a free-spending Obama in essential big states such as Ohio, Missouri and Florida.
“McCain has to make every dollar count in the general election, and Obama will have money to burn,” said Evan Tracey, co-founder of Campaign Media Analysis Group.

So in assessing a general election campaign that currently looks like a cliffhanger, add financial resources to partisan identification trends, the issue landscape, and the mood of the country, as factors that should give Obama an edge. These factors do not in any way guarantee a Democratic victory, but it sure doesn’t hurt to have so many aces in the hole.

While some Obama supporters thought it should have happened weeks or even months ago–or certainly night before last, when Obama was able to claim victory–Hillary Clinton has now make it abundantly clear she’s suspending her campaign on Saturday and acknowledging her rival as the Democratic nominee.
“Suspension” rather than withdrawal (a fairly common step among losing candidates) means she can keep raising money to retire her substantial debts. It also means, though you won’t hear much about it publicly, that in the unlikely event of some catastrophic blow to Obama’s general election prospects, she could reactivate her candidacy before the convention.
Expect a few days of careful maneuvering by the Obama camp to let Clinton wrap things up, amidst hopes that she will endorse Obama in a manner that will quell most of the pro-McCain talk you hear from some of her core supporters.

I’m not terribly inclined to weigh in on the controversy over Hillary Clinton’s non-concession-speech last night, for the simple reason that we won’t understand what it portended until she announces her next steps, which might well include precisely the kind of gracious concession she withheld at Baruch College.
To be sure, some of HRC’s supporters don’t seem interested in folding the tent, including those who chanted “Denver! Denver!” when she alluded to her future course of action.
And then there’s the always-hard-to-over-the-top Terry McAuliffe (per Michael Crowley):

When asked about the reality outside the bunker—that Obama supporters were in a minor rage over Hillary’s speech– McAuliffe looked at me incredulously. “Tonight was Hillary’s night!” he exclaimed. “We won tonight! We won in South Dakota! We keep winning!”

But aside from what she left unsaid, the only thing HRC actually said last night that needs to be questioned at this point is her final, triumphant claim that she won the total popular vote during the nominating process.
The short answer is “Nobody knows,” followed by a quick “It really doesn’t matter.” Nobody knows because four states did not report popular votes, and because one primary–Michigan–was set up in a way that obscured candidate preferences, and also disallowed a significant number of write-in votes for Obama. It really doesn’t matter because the nominating process was set up to choose delegates by a pretty close approximation of popular votes, but according to an allocation system that is not perfectly efficient. Had it been set up as a popular vote contest, then it’s reasonable to assume that the Obama campaign might have followed a different strategy.
But for those who insist on an answer to an essentially unanswerable and irrelevant question, there are some estimates out there. One last night by Chris Bowers concluded that Obama had narrowly won the popular vote based on a very inclusive definition of “popular votes.” One today by the site FiveThirtyEight reviewed eight different ways of answering the question, and concluded that Obama was the winner in seven of those eight scenarios. And pretty much everyone agrees that the only kind of count that gives Clinton the nod is one that either denies Obama any votes in Michigan, or refuses to use estimates for the four non-popular-vote-tabulating Caucus States.
Even if you accept the narrowest pro-Clinton perspective, the total popular vote was, in reality, about as close as you can get to a tie this side of a Florida 2000 situation. So for either prospective or historical reasons, the Clinton camp really should stop talking about the popular vote “victory.” All that can do at this point is to stir up pointless and destructive grievances.

Democratic consultant Robert Creamer, author of this campaign’s political strategy “it” book, has an insightful HuffPo article, “Ten Key Steps to Put Obama Over the Top In November.” In one of the most interesting steps (#5), he urges:

…we also need mass mobilization that relies on “chain reaction contact” — where campaign activity explodes virally — geometrically — to involve millions and millions of self-initiating campaign activists. We need a campaign where millions of Americans wear Obama buttons, where people self-report to walk precincts and use online voter contact tools in droves.
Obama’s primary campaign provides a model, but now that model needs to explode into a social movement that defines the identity of its participants in the way the civil rights and anti-war movements did for an earlier generation. When they consider their role in this campaign, activists need to think about their participation the way volunteers in the civil rights movement thought about their roles at Selma — that they will proudly tell their kids and grandkids that they were there — that they played a part — in the transformational 2008 presidential election.
Obama has an inspirational message, and his campaign has a culture that could actually seed that kind of movement. And it is that kind of movement that could change the electorate so fundamentally that it makes states that are unthinkably Red into Blue states this fall.

A provocative idea, and one which plays to a unique Obama strength — and to a huge blind spot of our adversaries, as James Vega pointed out in a recent TDS post. Creamer’s article has several other ideas that merit support.

When I got my “stimulus” check from the federal government, like any good American, I decided to do my patriotic duty and buy something. I am now the proud owner of a 40 inch, 1080p Samsung HD-TV. It’s beautiful.
But there are a couple of funny things about watching television in high definition. First, you can’t really hide anything in HD — the wrinkles, blemishes, age spots, and scars all seem too vivid. Second, you start paying attention to those imperfections whenever you watch video — whether its on HD or not.
That’s especially true if you’re John McCain. This technology is just so unkind to him.
This being the Internet, I’m not the first person to make this observation.
But seeing McCain tonight offset by Barack Obama was almost painfully jarring. From the content to the venues to the sheer physical presence of each man, the two speeches could not have been more different. And I was watching MSNBC’s standard feed. When these two men debate in the fall, on the HD channels of each network, the visual contrast will positively pop off the screen.
There’s no way to deny that McCain wears a lifetime of hardships on his face, and I don’t write this to make light of his well-documented and often-heroic times of suffering. The man is former prisoner of war and a cancer survivor — he’s earned his scars and wrinkles. But the image that they create is a hurdle his campaign must now overcome.
I’d love to see some consumer data outlining the penetration of high def televisions among likely voters. Maybe the campaigns have those numbers, and that is why the Republicans aren’t scared. The prices of these televisions, however, keep coming down, and people keep buying them.
That fact makes it awfully hard for me to picture eight years of a McCain presidency, with everyone watching him age before our eyes in 30,000:1 contrast ratios.

In case you made an early night of it, Barack Obama won MT, wrapped up a majority of delegates, and claimed the nomination at a festive, SRO event in MN. Hillary Clinton won SD, claimed a total-popular-vote victory, did not acknowledge Obama’s delegate count, and said she’d decide next steps later, at what can only be described as a defiant event in NY. The TV networks spent a lot of time debating the meaning of HRC’s actions, with interpretations ranging from a short-term facing-saving measure to a power play to compel Obama to ask her onto the ticket.
We’ll have a lot more later today.

Since my earlier post today, a lot has been happening in the Democratic presidential contest. The cascade of superdelegate endorsements of Barack Obama that a lot of observers expected for tomorrow or later in the week is happening right now, and having already bagged more than twenty today, Obama now appears in excellent position to claim victory tonight.
Meanwhile, there’s mass confusion in media reports on Hillary Clinton’s plans for tonight, with some saying she’ll acknowledge Obama as the nominee, and others saying “Hell, no!” she won’t. To top it all off, there’s another report that HRC told a group of NY legislators today that she’d volunteer to form a “Unity Ticket” with Obama.
All this turmoil suggests that Obama’s going to have quite a party in MN tonight, and that HRC’s speech in NY will get a lot of attention. The poor voters of SD and MT, meanwhile, will have a hard time getting their primaries noticed.

It’s hard to believe that Sen. John McCain used to known as a champion of campaign finance reform.
Back in February, he used some questionable legal maneuvering (and the complete helplessness of a quorum-lacking Federal Elections Commission) to wiggle out of his previous commitment to accepting public matching funds for the presidential primary.
Now the Washington Post reports that the Republican nominee may have used a nonprofit to provide some serious public relations support to his presidential bid: :

For weeks, Republican presidential candidate John McCain had been hammered for supporting the Air Force’s February decision to award a $40 billion contract for refueling tankers to Northrop Grumman and its European partner. Democrats, labor unions and others blamed the senator for a deal they say could move tens of thousands of jobs abroad.
McCain’s advisers wanted to strike back against key Democratic critics. But they did not mount an expensive advertising campaign to defend the candidate’s position. They called a tax-exempt nonprofit closely aligned with the senator from Arizona, seeking information and help.

Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) immediately came to the senator’s aid — working with Northrop to organize a multi-faceted public relations campaign which just happened to support McCain’s position.
Both the nonprofit and McCain’s campaign maintain that no election laws have been broken, but of course, this isn’t all that CAGW has done to support the Arizona senator. Its political arm endorsed McCain in February, and its lobbying organization has given more than $11,000 to the Republican since 2004.
And if that wasn’t enough, CAGW is also tied to Jack Abramoff.
Two years ago, staffers for the Senate Finance Committee investigated the nonprofit and concluded that the organization’s emails “show a pattern of CAGW producing public relations materials favorable to Mr. Abramoff’s clients.”
Delightful.

If you are a hard-core fan of Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, or of the Detroit Pistons, you might want to stop reading right now. But for purely aesthetic reasons, we’re passing along a link to a savagely funny piece by TNR’s Christopher Orr, speaking in the voice of Pistons’ GM Joe Dumars, demanding a seventh game against the Boston Celtics for the NBA Eastern Conference championship. You don’t have to accept the accuracy of this “sports parable” to appreciate the craftmanship.

Today marks the final two primaries in the Democratic presidential nominating contest (we can pause here for a final horselaugh at those, myself included, who spent months last year deploring the “front-loaded” primary/caucus calendar, and predicting a too-early conclusion). But as the votes are counted in SD and MT, most of the action will be elsewhere: in MN, where Barack Obama is planning a victory rally tonight in the very venue of the Republican National Convention in September; in NY, where Hillary Clinton’s immediate plans will be revealed; and in DC, where we can expect a steady series of superdelegate announcements in Obama’s favor.
Those last voters out west could complicate things a bit. For weeks, it’s been assumed that MT and SD are Obama Country. But the entire Clinton family has been relentlessly campaigning in SD during the last couple of weeks, and a rare poll of the state (from that frequent outlier-producer, ARG) has Clinton ahead there by an astonishing 26 points. MT may be closer than earlier expected as well.
But the real issue for Obama is how rapidly he gains the superdelegate endorsements that will certainly, within a few days if not tonight, put him across the threshold of the 2,118 delegates needed to claim a majority. According to a good Washington Post summary of the state of the race, Obama’s also planning a big northern Virginia rally for Thursday night, where he can show off some new big-name superdelegate supporters, and formally claim victory if he doesn’t do so tonight.
The Clinton camp has put out a variety of mixed signals about what she plans to say and do tonight, and in the days just ahead: she can stay in, withdraw and endorse Obama, or (and I’ve thought for a while this was where she was heading) “suspend” active campaigning while keeping her options open for Denver. There’s no particular reason to think she’ll do anything until Obama’s nailed down a majority, but at that point, a suspension would enable her to keep up a quiet but intense campaign among superdelegates; consider support for a MI or FL Credentials Committee challenge of the DNC decision to halve their voting strength; and most of all, hope for a raft of polls showing Obama in deep trouble in the general election. She could also, of course, withdraw at any point between now and the Convention, particularly if Obama’s general election prospects actually rise, and pressure from party poohbahs for a unity gesture and a “healing” interval become intense.
It’s not at all clear what impact HRC’s immediate plans will have on her core supporters, particularly those who have become convinced of late that she’s been unfairly denied the nomination by media bias for Obama and/or premature pressure to end her campaign. But the signals both candidate send tonight and over the next week or so will be carefully watched by the considerable array of party leaders who want the competition to be over, and any competitor to the putative nominee out.