For all those Democrats worried to distraction about the tone and duration of the Clinton-Obama contest, there was a timely reminder in Illinois over the weekend of the fundamental advantage Democrats may enjoy in November. In a special election to replace former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, Democrat Bill Foster won a solid victory over Republican Jim Oberweis, a self-funding candidate who also benefitted from a million dollars in RNC expenditures (roughly a third of the national committee’s cash-on-hand).
This is a strongly though not overwhelmingly Republican district won ten times by Hastert, and carried by Bush with 55% of the vote in 2004. Foster ran about ten percent ahead of John Kerry’s 2004 performance there.
You can read about the special election at just about every site in the progressive blogosphere. But you might also want to check out John Fund’s assessment in the Wall Street Journal today, which suggests the results might well be a November harbinger similar to those of special congressional elections prior to the “wave” elections of 1974 and 1994.

It’s not much of a secret that if Democratic primary and caucus participants don’t, as appears almost certain, give any candidate the delegates he or she needs to win the presidential nomination without superdelegates, there will be a big battle over the question of whether superdelegates should be truly free to express their preferences, or should defer to the “will of the people.”
While Hillary Clinton’s campaign has officially argued for the former, “free will” interpretation of the superdelegate role, it’s doubtful that position will be politically tenable if the “will of the people” clearly favors Barack Obama.
But ah, there’s the rub. How does one measure the “will of the people?” Pledged delegates? The popular vote by state? The popular vote by congressional district? Or the total national popular vote?
Over at DailyKos, Markos Moulitsas does a useful estimate of how superdelegates would, roughly, break if they vote according to the primary or caucus winner of the state to which they are assigned. Turns out they wouldn’t help HRC much if at all.
But is that the right measurement of the “popular will?” Who knows?
I agree with Markos that the only “popular will” measurement that HRC has a decent if uphill chance to win is the total popular vote. That measurement is complicated, not only because of the Michigan/Florida problem, but also because some caucus states (typically won by Obama) have not reported their actual raw vote.
But I don’t agree with him that the burden of proof for HRC is to establish that she’s the “people’s choice” that all superdelegates should be constrained to support. Her goal is to cast just enough doubt on the “popular will”–i.e., the results of the entire nominating process up until the convention–that superdelegates will feel morally and politically empowered to choose on different criteria, such as general election strength. It all the votes are perceived as adding up to a tie, then complicated schemes for “binding” superdelegates may amount to nothing, particularly since some of them (e.g., Virginia superdelegate Terry McAuliffe, whose district and state went for Obama) ain’t budging and there’s no mechanism for actually enforcing popular-will obeisance, even if advocates for that approach could agree on the right measurement. And for the same reasons, I wouldn’t expect the two campaigns to argue for any particular “binding” theory, which could produce perverse results if one candidate’s “supers” complied and the other one’s didn’t.
There’s an interesting discussion of this general issue up on the New Republic site between Jon Chait and Jon Cohn, but it’s more about the theory of superdelegate independence than the question of how to limit it.
Meanwhile, also at TNR, Michelle Cottle has a post about the awful but increasingly realistic specter of small groups of superdelegates peddling their votes for parochial interests.
None of this is going to be easy or clear, folks, unless one candidate or another gains massive momentum in the rest of the primaries and caucuses. Without question, Barack Obama still has the clear advantage, but it could get crazy down the stretch.

My post yesterday suggested that a lot of the negative posturing over a “re-do” plan for Democratic delegate selection in Michigan and Florida was just Kabuki Theater formalism that hid a powerful momentum towards a compromise solution. But June Kronholz has a good article up for the Wall Street Journal today that explains why it may just not happen.
She reports that Michigan Democrats seem to be pulling back from a reported decision to go ahead with a “firehouse caucus,” mainly on cost grounds (though such caucuses are relatively inexpensive). And HRC’s campaign also appears to have gone back to its pre-March 4 “seat them all” position, after briefly hinting at support for a do-over.
Complicating the whole thing is the fact that many of the decision-makers on the ground in MI and FL are backing a candidate (typically HRC), and won’t make a move without the high sign from their champion. And then in FL, a genuine state primary “do-over” would require cooperation from Republican Gov. Charlie Crist and Republican legislative leaders, who are unlikely to go along with any plan that involves significant costs for the state itself.
Kronholz also alludes to another solution: doing what the Republicans did with Florida, and letting the results stand but reducing the number of delegates. That would avoid the “do-over,” but it doesn’t deal with the unique MI problem, where Obama wasn’t on the ballot and would get skunked in pledged delegates. So maybe one possibility is a firehouse caucus do-over in MI, and then a reduced delegate seating in FL. This might be tempting to HRC, since it would leave in place her large popular vote margin in FL. If by the end of the nominating process she’s passed Obama in the total popular vote, that would give her an argument that Obama’s almost certain lead in pledged delegates should be disregarded by superdelegates. But any solution that’s tempting to HRC might well be rejected by Obama on mirror-image grounds.
Aside from Howard Dean’s deal-making and arm-twisting ability, the real issue may be if the two campaigns are willing to live with the default “solution:”

If neither state comes up with a new delegate-selection plan by mid-June, the issue will be tossed to the party’s credentials committee. But a resolution there seems likely to continue the stalemate: The committee will have about the same proportion of Obama and Clinton supporters as the convention does.
In any event, credentials-committee decisions must be ratified by the entire convention, which could result in a televised floor fight and a public-relations nightmare for the party.

Moreover, not to be a broken record about this, but leaving FL and MI to be resolved at the convention itself also means that no candidate will be in charge of convention planning. And that’s a recipe for some real excitement, to be sure, but also chaos.

Democratic oppo researchers should clip Maeve Reston’s La Times article “McCain’s team forged loyalty in collapse,” a revealing profile of the inner circle of Team McCain. Reston’s article focuses on “The Sedona Five,” key McCain insiders Rick Davis, Mark Salter, Charles Black, Steve Schmidt and Mark McKinnon, who shaped and implemented McCain’s nomination-winning strategy at a time when most pundits believed he was toast. Reston provides this succinct description of the group:

Davis, a calm and efficient lobbyist who impressed everyone with his budgeting skills, manned the northern Virginia headquarters. Salter, 53, who in his younger days spent four years as an Iowa spiker laying railroad tracks before becoming McCain’s speechwriter, was most often at McCain’s side.
Black, a lobbyist who initially signed on as debate coach, was drafted onto the Straight Talk Express bus by McCain as his tactician and, at 60, as the “wise elder of the group.” Schmidt, 37, a strategist who ran the 2004 Bush campaign war room, and McKinnon, a one-time songwriter who served as media strategist for President Bush’s White House campaigns, parachuted in from their respective bases in California and Austin.

Reston rolls out an illuminating account of McCain’s comeback and image-tweaking, as told from the inside. Her article also has some interesting detail about the McCain campaign’s ad-buying strategy and McCain’s trust of the ‘Sedonas,’ apparently well-placed.

Lest anyone entertain delusions about the GOP taking more of a high road in campaign ’08, The New York Times has an instructive article by Kitty Bennett, “R.N.C. Snaps Up Domain Names“. Bennett explains:

At least 25 domain names related to Hillary Rodham Clinton have links to the Republican National Committee: the names were either registered by the R.N.C. last year or showed up on servers the committee uses…The party has also begun preemptively registering domains that could be used to attack John McCain, like mccainamigos.com, voteagainstmccain.com, flipflopmccain.com and hatemccain.com.

Bennett notes the GOP’s edge in ‘cybersquatter’ warfare:

The Democratic Party and the campaigns have shown little of the verve and creativity of the R.N.C. …The party has been focused more on the national convention, registering variations of denverdemconvention08.com in February, but so far apparently no domains related to Mr. McCain.
The election has “triggered an avalanche of cybersquatter activity,” according to NetNames, a domain name management service. Speculators have registered nearly 2,000 domain names related to presidential candidates as of last week. Names related to Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy made up over half of the registrations, followed by Mr. Obama with 635 and Mr. McCain with 269.

It would be a mistake to overstate the importance of hogging domain names as a political tactic, and it’s hard to see how it will affect many votes. But it does show that there is not much the Republicans won’t fund to help muzzle Dems’ messaging resources.
Although it’s a stretch to attribute all of the tactical lag to the Democrats superior moral ground, no one should be surprised that the GOP has a stronger proclivity for purely obstructionist tactics (some history here) and an edge in deploying them. The DNC might benefit by setting up an internet-savvy task force to anticipate such shenanigans and respond accordingly.

Yesterday I suggested that there was growing and probably irresistable momentum towards a “do-over” of the Michigan and Florida Democratic presidential primaries whose results are not, under present rules, being rewarded with actual pledged delegates (MI and FL’s superdelegates, BTW, aren’t being offered seats, or even hotel rooms, at the Convention either).
That’s still true, but the events of the last 24 hours have shown that arranging a “do-over” is pretty complicated. Yesterday MI and FL Democratic leaders issued a manifesto demanding that their delegates be seated. DNC Chairman Howard Dean quickly responded that it ain’t happening, and that Democrats in the two states needed to come up with a “do-over” plan to pick recognizable delegates. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fl) fired off an open letter to Dean saying that the national party needed to pay the substantial (as much as $20 million in FL alone) costs of any “do-over” primary. Dean responded that it wasn’t his problem. And today, reports emerged that MI Democrats are considering a caucus to elect delegates.
A lot of this is pure Kabuki Theater designed to establish the high moral ground on this controversy. MI and FL Democrats want the national party to acknowledge their primaries were legitimate expressions of popular opinion. The DNC wants MI and FL to acknowledge they broke the rules, and agree to a do-over of their own initiative, without massive DNC subsidies. And the Clinton and Obama campaigns obviously have a big stake in the outcome, and will probably have to agree to any proposed resolution.
A caucus in MI makes a lot of sense; the party’s done them before, and would probably hold so-called “firehouse caucuses ” that are basically closed primaries with very limited numbers of polling places. Florida’s a tougher place to hold caucuses, since they don’t have any experience with them, and participation might be down sharply from the earlier primary.
More importantly, the candidates have variable interests in the structure of any do-overs. Obama has done famously well in caucuses. And aside from the impact of caucus do-overs on the delegate count, lower participation would almost certainly reduce the impact of both states on the total popular vote for the overall nominating process, in which HRC is, by some assessments, getting close if the FL results are included, and could actually be ahead if the more tainted (because Obama was not on the ballot) MI results are included.
The most likely compromise would be for MI to hold caucuses, and FL a primary, with some but not total DNC and/or candidate subsidies. Aside from the equitable argument that the two states should pay some price for their scofflaw behavior, the reality is that both would benefit from massive candidate spending, and would, assuming their contests are scheduled for May or even June, play the kind of crucial role in determining the nomination that far exceeds what they hoped to accomplish by breaking the rules in the first place.
But that’s all easier said than done, and given the complex number of players in this decision, and their Kabuki Theater positions, this will ultimately be a big test of Howard Dean’s leadership abilities.

If you like political “insider” stories, there are two of them creating a big buzz in Washington this morning that touch on the Democratic presidential contest.
First up is a big Washington Post front-pager by Peter Baker and Anne Kornblut that details the much-rumored infighting within Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The lede pretty much summarizes the whole piece:

For the bruised and bitter staff around Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Tuesday’s death-defying victories in the Democratic presidential primaries in Ohio and Texas proved sweet indeed. They savored their wins yesterday, plotted their next steps and indulged in a moment of optimism. “She won’t be stopped,” one aide crowed.
And then Clinton’s advisers turned to their other goal: denying Mark Penn credit.

Much of the story is about Penn, HRC’s pollster and sometimes “chief strategist,” who vocally and successfully urged the candidate to go after Barack Obama’s credibility as a potential commander-in-chief, encapsulated in the now-famous “3 a.m. ad.” Penn has some personal issues with other HRC staffers that go back to his days advising Bill Clinton. And according to the story, he’s come within inches of getting fired on a couple of occasions during this campaign.
The most interesting revelation in the article may have been this tidbit about HRC:

One of Clinton’s favorite books is “Team of Rivals,” Doris Kearns Goodwin’s account of Abraham Lincoln’s Cabinet, and she assembled her own team of advisers knowing their mutual enmity in the belief that good ideas come from vigorous discussion

An example of this “vigorous discussion” is a pithy exchange between Penn and long-time “rival” Harold Ickes during a campaign conference call:

“[Expletive] you!” Ickes shouted.
“[Expletive] you!” Penn replied.
“[Expletive] you!” Ickes shouted again.

Nice.
Meanwhile, in other obscure but politically significant news, there’s been a strange new twist in the so-called “NAFTA-Gate” saga.
Ian Brodie, chief of staff to conservative Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, has been a prime suspect in the leaking of a memo by Canadian conciliar officials discussing a meeting with Obama economic advisor Austan Goolsbee in which the Canadians were allegedly reassured that Obama’s candidate’s attacks on NAFTA were “political positioning,” not an indication of future policy.
Nobody’s yet documented this claim about Brodie, but now it transpires that he told a group of reporters back on February 26 that the Canadian diplomats had been approached by someone from Hillary Clinton’s campaign with reassurances similar to those Goolsbee’s accused of offering. Meanwhile, Brodie has ordered an investigation of the leaks of the memo about the Goolsbee meeting. Lord only knows where this story’s going next.

Jay Cost at RealClearPolitics has a typically lucid analysis of how HRC won Ohio and Texas, and how the results compared with previous primaries. His bottom line is that Obama was showing some momentum in Wisconsin, but it’s now gone for the moment.

It should be clear that Texas and Ohio performed in a manner roughly consistent with the states prior to Wisconsin. From this, we might infer that any momentum that Obama developed after the Potomac Primary was not carried through yesterday. Wisconsin did not help him in Texas and Ohio – as Virginia, Maryland, and DC seemed to help him in Wisconsin. The states voting yesterday seemed to vote “normally.”

In other words, the Democratic contest is still dominated by demographics, though as Cost notes, HRC is currently making a few gains in “Obama categories” of the electorate, partially reversing the gains Obama made in the “Clinton categories” in the Potomac Primary and more clearly in Wisconsin.
On another front, there’s growing speculation that the contest at present creates a lot of momentum for the idea of a “do-over” of Michigan and/or Florida. As J.P. Green suggested earlier on this site, this may be the only way to resolve the “people’s choice” argument. HRC supporters Ted Strickland and Terry McAuliffe seemed to be hinting at that last night, and Obama’s already on record supporting a “do-over” if it’s done right. It may be the only way for HRC to get close to Obama’s totals in pledged delegates, and to get close or take the lead in the total popular vote–a big deal in terms of the moral and psychological case for letting superdelegates decide the whole contest.

Hillary Clinton accomplished exactly what she needed to accomplish yesterday, winning the popular primary vote in Ohio and Texas (plus Rhode Island), breaking Barack Obama’s winning streak, beating the expectations as of about a week ago, and re-exposing the weaknesses in Obama’s voter appeal that the post-Super Tuesday contests seemed to have repaired.
But in the ultimate measurement, pledged delegates, HRC will probably wind up with a pretty small net haul of around 15. In part that’s because Obama seems to be narrowly winning the strange Texas Caucuses that convened after the polls closed last night (the results will take a couple of days to finish trickling in), which will determine one-third of the state’s pledged delegate total. It should be noted, however, that she did make some progress in reducing Obama’s overall popular vote lead for the entire nominating process,which could become an important psychological factor in determining superdelegate support. And the TX and OH wins might well slow or stop the drift of superdelegate support towards Obama that’s been evident in the last few weeks.
Finallly, March 4 showed she could beat Obama in large, expensive primary states where he’s outspending her heavily.
The exit polls for OH and TX showed HRC posting her usual big wins among white women, self-identified Democrats, and less-educated and lower-income voters. But she made improvements elsewhere, especially in Ohio, where she won white men by 19 points, and ran even with Obama among voters with some college education, and those earning over $100,000. In both the big states, she reduced Obama’s lead among independents to single digits. And in TX, she got the two-to-one win among Latinos she needed, along with a big turnout.
Age continued to be the sharpest differentiator of candidate support; in OH, Obama won 70% of the youngest cohort, those under 25, while Clinton won 72% of those over 65.
Flipping all this around, Obama’s clearly got some problems with white working-class voters that lose him primaries in states where his margins among younger and highly-educated voters, including independents, aren’t overwhelming and African-American voters make up less than 20% of the Democratic electorate. If PA shows the same patterns next month, there will be some seriously worried talk among Democrats about his ability to win midwestern industrial states in November.
The other source of concern for the Obama campaign is the already-heavy media belief that he “can’t take a punch”–that negative campaining gave HRC the boost she obviously got from late-deciding voters.
We’ll see what happens next, but it’s certainly beginning to look like the contest will go past the primaries and caucuses and be determined by such factors as the Florida/Michigan issue and superdelegates.
In the meantime, I recommend Chris Bowers’ take on the delegate situation after yesterday, and John Judis’ analysis of the March 4 exit polls.

Even if Obama is your candidate, Hillary Clinton’s Texas and Ohio victories may be a good thing. Sure, he would have preferred to put it away yesterday. But a closer race keeps interest and turnout high. The fact that our two candidates who are locked in a high turnout race are an African American and a woman underscores the Democratic Party’s creds as the Party of hope for the disempowered and gives campaign ’08 an aura of heightened historical significance.
The narrowing race also keeps both candidates sharp and forces McCain to split his attacks, while getting hammered by both Dems. When we get to the convention, Clinton and Obama will be more seasoned and better prepared to rumble with the Republicans’ toughest front-man. Because of the extended campaigns, Obama, Clinton and their troops will have learned more about the political arts of self-defense, ad-making and buying, media interviews, speechmaking, targeting demographics, GOTV, leveraging issues, strategy and tactics etc.
That’s the good news.
There are, however, a couple of ways the aforementioned scenario could sour. Badly. Despite the media emphasis on delegate-counting, the popular vote is the key to claiming the moral high ground. If Super-D’s give the nomination to the loser of the popular vote, it won’t be worth having, and most of them, one hopes, are smart enough to know that and to do the right thing. But what if the popular vote totals going into Denver are so razor-close that neither candidate can convincingly claim the moral high ground? Imagine the deal-making and bitterness of the loser’s supporters. Imagine the field day McCain could have in mocking the Democrats’ commitment to “democracy.” A near-tie in popular vote totals would be less of a problem if ALL delegates were allocated by popular votes in their districts.
I get it that the super-delegate idea was conceived to check convention delegates on occasions when they don’t reflect the popular vote. But the potential for abuse is just too high. May the genius who cooked up the super-delegate scheme go join the GOP and let them benefit from his sage advice.
The other booby trap now looming larger is the Michigan-Florida mess. After last night, Obama still leads in the popular vote tally of all the primaries except MI and FL thus far by 582,718, while Clinton leads by 40,363 when MI and FL are included in the count (Obama wasn’t on the ballot in MI). It’s a little more difficult to assign blame here. But changing the rules without an agreement from both Clinton and Obama would be an equally-disastrous response. If they are not both on board with whatever is decided, expect mayhem.
Both of these obstacles can be overcome — the first by either candidate getting a clear majority of the popular vote and the second by Clinton and Obama reaching agreement on what should be done about FL and MI, sooner, better than later.
Looking toward the future, Democrats have a big job ahead in adopting reforms to insure that the popular vote total always prevails. The focus should be on dismantling the super-delegates and other vestiges of Party elitism, and moving in the direction of direct popular election of our nominee, so it becomes clear to all that we are the party that champions the will of the people.