Hillary Clinton was embarrassed today after an ‘ignore Iowa’ memo was leaked to the media Americas. Her super-organised, impeccably on-message campaign for the White House has suffered a first embarrassment with the leak of an internal memo that urges her to skip the key early caucuses in Iowa - on the ground she has better places to spend money than on a contest she may well lose. I had no idea that early polls have her running third there. It’s kind of the reverse of the rest of the country. They have it Edwards, Obama, Clinton. We’ll see how it shakes out but they are certainly downplaying the importane of Iowa.
Yesterday, Clinton aides were playing down the memo as the unsolicited musings of a minion, which had never been seen by the lady herself and her most senior advisers. They insisted she would make a major effort in Iowa, whose caucuses - set for 14 January next year - traditionally kick off the primary season.
“It’s not the opinion of the campaign,” Ms Clinton herself said in response to a question about the memo, and “It’s not my opinion.”
Barack Obama is barnstorming the nation this week, hoping to secure exclusivity as the anti-war candidate get republicans to vote to end the war. I think his sentiment is sincere, but I doubt his behavior would be the same if he wasn’t running for president. In an email to supporters this week, he directs them to a form on his site to email republican senators to get the votes override a veto. He says:
Barack has been traveling across the country asking people to speak out and let their Senators know that it’s time to end the Iraq war.
One Republican colleague has already called this “not Senatorial.” But this isn’t about Washington etiquette, it’s about bringing our troops home.
This isn’t a game. We need just 16 additional votes to override the president’s veto and bring to a close this sad chapter in American history.
It’s going to take some convincing, but Senators need to hear from people in their states that they can join us to bring a responsible end to the war.
That’s where you come in. In your state, an incumbent Senator who voted against ending the war will face a re-election battle in 2008. They will have to make clear very soon whether they will continue to block efforts to bring the troops home.
Will you speak out now and add your voice to the growing public pressure to end the war?
For those myopic souls wanting an immediate pullout, it seems that they’ve found their man. Edwards is talking almost exclusively about domestic issues (not really but as far as his press goes, he might as well be); Hillary is the conservative of the bunch (not surprising to anyone other than Fox News viewers) leaving the popular position for the main issue on voters’ minds for Obama to champion.
It’s been a while since I posted. Romney is surging, making the election odds page out dated. He’s on the cover of time this week thanks to Slate saying we can’t elect a candidate that follows a conman (per the article, Mormonism is Scientology + 150 years). More recently, the Good Rev. Al “Rhyme Master” Sharpton told a local debate audience:
“As for the one Mormon running for office, those who really believe in God will defeat him anyways, so don’t worry about that; that’s a temporary situation,” Sharpton said during a debate with Hitchens at the New York Public Library.”
It’s one thing to say Romney believes something silly (Slate)… it’s something else to say that he doesn’t really believe it. I don’t quite understand Mr. Al (Let’s all eat some cake).
It turns out Rudy does consulting on the side more those Oxy-moron drug liars. McCain sent out an email this week:
“What does that mean for our strategy? It means that the early states: Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina will become more important. These contests will set the stage and establish momentum going into Florida on January 29 and then very quickly into the February 5 contests.
As of today, Senator McCain has built a tremendous organization in those states. And, the state by state polling reveals voters in these states have heard his message and are moved by it. The American Research Group released a handful of statewide polls this week showing Senator McCain leading in the key early states: Iowa (+7), New Hampshire(+5) and South Carolina(+13). “
Anyone not employed by his campaign is coming to different conclusions, but to each his own I suppose. The democrats have been pretty boring. Obama picked up donations from 50,000 new donors last month. That’s pretty impressive. That’s about how many the next closest competitor had in Q1. Nobody else releases info like that… he just does it for the hans and frans show off / intimidation factor. Populist Edwards has introduced a number of new, detailed policy proposals, address health care, energy, education and poverty reduction. He’s proposed undoing Bush tax cuts and raising social security tax to pay for the estimated cost of $199 Kajillion / year.
Fred Thomas has preannounced his candidacy, probably eliminating Gingrich from consideration unless his sizable ego gets in the way of his reason and desire to save face. Clinton hasn’t done anything much lately. Nothing noteworthy, good or bad…. kind of a nutshell critique of her candidacy.
That’s all folks. And remember, vote early and vote often!
Here’s an overview of the first quarter spending is in Clinton is the head and shoulders winner in both cash raised and cash on hand.
Party
First Name
Last Name
Money Raised
Money Spent
Cash on Hand
Just for the Primary
Net Contributions
Democrat
Joe
Biden
$4,013,090.00
$1,174,174.00
$2,838,916.00
$3,690,008.00
$2,110,990.00
Democrat
Hillary
Clinton
$36,054,569.00
$5,079,789.00
$30,974,780.00
$19,100,000.00
$26,041,109.00
Democrat
Chris
Dodd
$8,795,706.00
$1,313,239.00
$7,482,467.00
$7,754,658.00
$4,043,757.00
Democrat
John
Edwards
$14,031,663.00
$3,299,782.00
$10,731,881.00
$13,064,804.00
$14,021,504.00
Democrat
Dennis
Kucinich
$344,891.00
$194,217.00
$163,887.00
$-
$344,651.00
Democrat
Barack
Obama
$25,797,722.00
$6,605,201.00
$19,192,521.00
$24,800,000.00
$25,665,688.00
Democrat
Bill
Richardson
$6,249,355.00
$1,226,882.00
$5,022,473.00
$6,230,357.00
$6,236,557.00
Republican
Sam
Brownback
$1,871,058.00
$1,064,432.00
$806,626.00
$1,257,171.00
$1,257,171.00
Republican
Jim
Gilmore
$203,897.00
$113,790.00
$90,107.00
$174,790.00
$174,790.00
Republican
Rudy
Giuliani
$16,623,410.00
$5,688,208.00
$11,949,735.00
$13,579,900.00
$14,731,897.00
Republican
Mike
Huckabee
$544,157.00
$170,239.00
$373,918.00
$544,157.00
$544,157.00
Republican
Duncan
Hunter
$538,524.00
$265,972.00
$272,552.00
$457,643.00
$499,874.00
Republican
John
McCain
$13,087,560.00
$8,379,215.00
$5,180,799.00
$12,965,055.00
$12,992,655.00
Republican
Ron
Paul
$639,989.00
$115,070.00
$524,919.00
$639,989.00
$638,389.00
Republican
Mitt
Romney
$23,434,634.00
$11,570,981.00
$11,863,653.00
$20,737,149.00
$20,737,149.00
Republican
Tom
Tancredo
$1,256,090.00
$711,012.00
$575,078.00
$1,000,000.00
$1,185,536.00
Republican
Tommy
Thompson
$391,628.00
$252,405.00
$139,723.00
$308,029.00
$315,036.00
Fun Raising Trivia
Trivia
Both McCain’s and Obama’s reports showed large numbers of small donors, meaning they can return to those donors for more money. Giuliani’s and Clinton’s reports show donations from large numbers of donors who have maxed out, meaning the candidates must find new sources of cash. Romney and McCain raised less than half of their funds from those large-dollar donations.
Hillary Rodham Clinton raised $26,041,109 from 70,300 contributions.
Barack Obama raised $25,665,688 from 104,000 contributions.
Mitt Romney raised $20,737,149 from 32,074 contributions.
A sizable segment of Romney’s haul came from Utah, suggesting that fellow Mormons were significant contributors. Four of the 10 Zip codes from which Romney received the most money are in Utah, and the leading Zip code is home to Brigham Young University, which Romney attended. He raised $2.8 million in the state, more than one-tenth of his total.
In the Los Angeles area, where Obama and Clinton have waged a high-profile battle to capture the support of big donors and celebrities, particularly in traditionally liberal Hollywood, Clinton collected $892,950 to Obama’s $713,142. The other contenders from both parties raised a combined $1.2 million in that region.
Dennis Kucinich is the only Democratic candidate to have not raised any funds for the general election (that doesn’t mean he isn’t in it to win though).
There’s a great article in the Washington Post called The Decoy Effect, or How to Win an Election that speaks to the effect a 3rd candidate can have on the 2 front runners. I found it quite illuminating.
Huber told some people there was also a choice of a four-star restaurant that was farther away than the five-star option. People now gravitated toward the five-star choice, since it was better and closer than the third candidate. (The three-star restaurant was closer, but not as good as the new candidate.)
Another group was given a different third candidate, a two-star restaurant halfway between the first two. Many people now chose the three-star restaurant, because it beat the new option on convenience and quality. (The five-star restaurant outdid this third candidate on only one measure, quality.)
What the decoy effect basically shows is that when people cannot decide between two front-runners, they use the third candidate as a sort of measuring stick. If one front-runner looks much better than the third candidate, people gravitate toward that front-runner. Third candidates, in other words, can make a complicated decision feel simple.
How would this work in the context of the current political race?
Let’s say you are a centrist Democratic voter who cannot decide between Clinton and Obama because you want a candidate who is strong on national security but also someone fresh. You like Clinton on one measure and Obama on the other. Enter Edwards, whom you see as more dovish than Obama but part of the same establishment as Clinton. Obama looks better than Edwards on both counts, whereas Clinton beats Edwards on only the national security issue.
The riveting “Big Sister” YouTube ad, a take off of the ad that launched the Macintosh, attack Hillary Rodham Clinton — produced by an anonymous creator to benefit Barack Obama — launches a new chapter in presidential campaigning. “This will be the political phenomena of 2008,” said Democratic consultant Steve Jarding.
The Hillary spot is a produced piece — a takeoff on George Orwell’s “Big Brother” 1984 theme used in an Apple ad — complete with zombies rescued by a woman running in a tank top with the Obama logo who smashes a screen where Hillary is droning on. The graphic at the end directs traffic to Obama’s presidential campaign Web address.
Obama said on CNN’s “Larry King Live” that “people generate all kinds of stuff” on the Internet. “In some ways, it’s the democratization of the campaign process, but it’s not something that we had anything to do with or were aware of, and that frankly, given what it looks like, we don’t have the technical capacity to create something like this.”
Obama finally paid his late parking tickets two weeks before he launched his presidential campaign, thus ending parking ticket-gate before it even got started. He paid parking tickets he received while attending Harvard Law School, more than a decade ago. Aparently, Obama received 17 parking tickets in Cambridge between 1988 and 1991, according to the city’s Traffic, Parking & Transportation Department.
Of those tickets, he paid only two while he was a student and paid them late, said Susan Clippinger, the office’s director.
In January, about when the Boston Globe began asking local officials about Obama’s time at Harvard, including any violations of local laws, someone representing the senator called the parking office to inquire about the decades-old tickets. Obama then paid the $375 with a personal credit card.
No big deal. Except that it demonstates an incredible arrogance to repeatedly park illegally and then only pay your fine when it becomes a campaign issue decades later. I guess it isn’t a big deal… but it’s the type of thing someone who things they are better than everyone else would do.
I determined in 1996 that I was going to vote from here on out based on the character of the candidate (as best I could determine it). It’s hard to glean much from people in the public eye so I feel like I have to try to glean from character tid bits like this. It’s a shame because I sure wouldn’t want someone judging me on this sort of basis, but it’s all I got. McCain and Obama have been cast by the media as the “high character” candidates in either party. We’ll see how they hold up to this continued scrutiny.
The past two presidents have spoiled Americans with their boomer-era energy and (relative) youth. We expect to see our president’s out jogging or biking or clearing the endless quantities of photo-op-ready brush on their ranch. As JFK knew well enough four decades ago to hide his own infirmities, we like a president with vigor.
Complicating McCain’s quest, he’s facing competitors in both the primary and the general election that positively ooze health and youth. On the Democratic side, Barack Obama and John Edwards both qualify as eye candy. As for Republicans, Giuliani, while not exactly centerfold material, is still a reasonably youthful guy with a carefully cultivated tough-guy persona. And Mitt Romney? Dear god, if the man’s hair were any bigger or his teeth any more gleaming he’d be Tony Robbins.
I was reading this: NPR : Obama to Attend Selma March Anniversary and was struck by Obama’s willingness to answer questions rather than weasel his way out of them. I’ve hightlighted some of the questions it seems that politicians usually avoid somehow:
Do you try to talk in the same way to a black audience as a white audience?
I think that the themes are consistent. It think that there’s a certain black idiom that it’s hard not to slip into when you’re talking to a black audience because of the audience response. It’s the classic call and response. Anybody who’s spent time in a black church knows what I mean. And so you get a little looser; it becomes a little more like jazz and a little less like a set score.
I don’t know what I would have said, but not that. And could a white person even say that? Also a question about him not being black enough:
There’s no doubt that in the history of African American politics in this country there has always been some tension between speaking in universal terms and speaking in very race-specific terms about the plight of the African American community. By virtue of my background, I am more likely to speak in universal terms.