I watched This Week yesterday morning, and former Bush advisor and now Obama supporter Michael Dowd made a comment that rubbed me the wrong way. He said that if Hillary Clinton manages to get this nomination, the young people will feel very discouraged. He said he has three sons between the ages of 18 and 22, and it would take a lot to get them involved in politics again if Barack Obama doesn’t end up getting the nomination. My response to them is people you might like lose elections all the time. Grow up!

If Hillary Clinton manages to pull off an upset for the Democratic nomination, it will be because she has gone ahead of Barack Obama in the national popular vote and polls also show her doing better against McCain. If she is both behind in the popular vote and in pledged delegates, the superdelegates, many of whom don’t much care for the Clintons anyway, will overturn both the national popular vote and the pledged delegates. This is very clear since Obama has gotten far more superdelegates in February, March, and April than she has.

As far as I’m concerned, if any injustices have been performed in this campaign, they have all been to the benefit of Barack Obama, not Hillary Clinton. Two large Clinton-inclined states, Florida and Michigan, did not have their delegates count. Just who is the DNC to say that it is alright for Nevada and South Carolina to be in January but Florida and Michigan cannot? Clinton got more votes in Nevada and Texas, yet Obama got more delegates. Clinton got more votes in New Hampshire, but both candidates got the same number of delegates. If the New Hampshire Edwards delegates go to Obam Obama will have more delegates from New Hampshire also. If Clinton gets the nomination, she will have earned it fair and square.

Many conservatives do not want young people to vote because we fear they will not vote our way. I am not one of those people. I want everybody, young and old, to take the concept of a democracy seriouslyand cast an informed vote, whether it is a vote I agree with or not. However, it is not up to politicians to inspire young people to vote. It is up to young people to take their civic duty seriously enough to vote. I once heard saw a DNC member speaking to a group on TV, and he said, “Our voters are generally lower income voters, and they don’t show up at the polls unless they are encouraged a little, so we owe it to them to make sure they get to the polls.” NO! They owe it to THEMSELVES to make sure they get to the polls.

I have more than my share of shortcomings, but failure to be civically involved is not one of them. I have voted in every primary, general election, and special election since I turned 18. When a candidate I supported lost, I did not say, like Mr. Dowd expects his sons to, that I would not be involved in politics again because I was discouraged. And I have had a good many people I supported who did not succeed. Unlike those people who have never voted and came out for the first time because they were inspired by Barack Obama, I have voted in every election whether I was inspired or not. I make the best of the choices I have. Therefore, I do not have an ounce of sympathy for those young liberals who say they will not vote again if Obama does not get the nomination anymore than I have sympathy for conservative blowhards who say they are too discouraged to vote because they don’t like John McCain. Welcome to politics. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you don’t. Most of these young Obama supporters do not even know why they like him. If they knew why they liked him, they would like Hillary Clinton almost as much since her views are 90% identical to his. I talked to one young Obama supporter who was a college graduate who said, “I don’t want some 71 year old dude telling me what to do. I want change.” Are any of you going to lose sleep if deep-thinkers like that gentleman get discouraged and shy away from politics?

Ever since being upset in Iowa, the primaries have been like the NCAA tournament for Hillary. Her mantra has been “survive and advance.” She knows that if she loses a game, she is out. Thus far she has been very successful at surviving and advancing. She barely won in New Hampshire, when a loss could have spelled the end for her. She hung on in Nevada, and then won all the Super Tuesday states that she was “supposed” to win. After a string of losses in unfriendly states, including a blowout loss in Wisconsin that seemed to signal a momentum shift, she fought back in Ohio and Texas, and then went on to win Pennsylvania by just enough to move on and not be written off.

Next Tuesday, she has an opportunity to do more than merely to survive. A win in Indiana and a close showing in NC could significantly change the narrative against her, especially if followed by expected 30+ point wins in West Virginia and Kentucky. More importantly, a win in Indiana and a loss of less than ten points in North Carolina would put her in an excellent position to win the popular vote under any iteration of the vote count.

On a visceral level, we would expect for Obama to do well in North Carolina. After all, he has dominated the South in his previous primaries. The only exceptions are Texas and Tennessee, which he lost, and Alabama, which he “only” won by 14.

But looking at North Carolina, it’s 20% AA poulation is much lower than, say, MS’s 36%. His really big wins have been in states like SC, GA, MS, and LA, which all have AA populations of around 30%.

Now VA has an AA population of around 20% as well. But it has Fairfax County, as well. Charlotte is a big area, as is RTP, but they are more on the order of Hampton Roads and Richmond than NoVa.

In other words, just looking broadly at the state, we should expect something somewhere in between Tennessee and Alabama. Let’s see if the data bear this out.

Polling Analysis

So can she perform well in North Carolina? The superficial answer is “yes.” The trend in recent states has been that Obama tends to be a WYSIWYG candidate: What you see in the polls about a week out from the election is what he gets. This has been his trend in states like New Hampshire, California, and more recently, in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. He is getting very few undecideds.

So we can look at the RCP history of polls. His average is 51%. Only two polling companies have showed him above 52%, one of those is PPP (which had him winning PA by 3), the other is Rasmussen, which once put him at 54%. Then again, PPP is a North Carolina polling company, so perhaps they know something there that we do not, much like they did not in Pennsylvania. Regardless, history would predict that he would get around 54-55% of the vote: A win for Hillary, all things considered.

If only it was that easy. You see, Obama does overperform polls in some states. They happen to almost all be Southern states. Consider the following states (the Southern states that have voted, minus Florida), and how Obama performed versus the final RCP polling average spread:

SC: +17
AL: +15
TN: -.3
GA: +27
LA: N/A
VA: +11
TX: -2
MS: N/A

Clearly he has a history of overperforming. Then again, that history has faded over time. Perhaps pollsters are modeling African American (“AA”) turnout in the later contests better. Or perhaps states like TX and TN (and NC), which have lower AA turnout, are easier to account for, since the surge in AA turnout doesn’t affect the totals as much.

First Regressions

Regardless I’m not comfortable deducing anything from the polls, for obvious reasons. So I started noodling around. The first thing I thought was: “What if I take the Southern states where they have faced off, and see what I can learn and apply to North Carolina?” Ten Southern states have voted, but it seems obvious that Arkansas and Florida should be excluded from the dataset, since one is Hillary’s “home state” (along, to hear her tell it, with New York, Illinois, and Pennsylvania), and the other is a state where no campaign occurred, and which is much more heterogenous than most other Southern states. I also divided Edwards’ vote share equally in SC, which probably isn’t right, but because he only got around 18 percent of the vote, splitting it 60-40 or 50-50 doesn’t make a huge difference.

The first thing I decided to try was to see how the AA population of a state matched up with the result. Amazingly, comparing the states to the AA population gives an r-square of .42. The residuals show that only two states were more than six points off, and half the states the model was within three. To put it differently, if you take the AA population and multiply by .838, and add 38.34 on top of that, you will come within 3 points of Obama’s vote share in AL, LA, SC, and TX, and within 6 in GA and MS. If we try that with North Carolina, we end up with Obama getting 55% of the vote, which is right within our wheelhouse.

So I decided to pile on some other variables. I added in the median age for the state, the AA %, the percent in poverty, the % of blue collar workers, the percent in college, and the percent in rural areas.

The results here were astounding. My adjusted r-square was .944444, and all the variables were significant. This predicted that Obama would get 50.3%. I was ready to break all kinds of laws to place a big bet on Tradesports.

The problem is that, for reasons I won’t go into here, regression doesn’t work well with a high number of variables relative to the number of observations. Here I had six variables for eight observations, which is never a good thing.

So I settled on two: The AA %, and the % college educated. For those statistic geeks out there, the correlation between my independent variables was .13, and the residuals are evenly distributed at all values of my IV.

I got an adjusted r-square of .898. Which is pretty darned good. For every % increase in the AA vote in a state, Obama’s percentage increased 1.29 points, and for every % increase in the college-educated population, he went up 1.67 points. This model predicted all eight states within 3.6% of his actual outcome.

Now remember, the spread is twice as much, which can be significant. In other words, the model predicted he would get 44% of the vote in TX and lose by 10; he got 47% and lost by 4. Had he actually lost TX by 10, it would be a very different race right now.

Regardless, applying this to North Carolina, he gets a predicted outcome of 56. This is outside what we would call a “win” for her, but is not as catastrophic as the 20+ loss that PPP is predicting. That is still less than his current RCP average, but remember, if the model is understating his outcome by two points, that relatively small error would hide a 16-point drubbing for Hillary.

Regression 2

But I still didn’t like the regression results. Eight observations is just not enough for a great regression analysis. So I decided to break things down by Congressional district. This gave me 44 observations. This is also good because it increased the variety of observations that I got, because there is often more difference between Congressional districts in a state than between states. I also, unfortunately, had to eliminate TX and GA because I don’t have post-mid-decade redistricting info. BTW, a friend suggested doing this on the county level, which would solve the redistricting dilemma; I may do this later, but for now, I just don’t have the time (nor do I have the full dataset I’d need).

So we start with our basic regression: African American population only. Result: Adjusted r-square of .46. Again, this is amazing when you think about it. 46% of the difference between any two districts’ (on average) vote share going to Obama can be explained on the basis of race alone (in the South). For every percentage point increase in the African American population of any given district, you can increase his vote share by .63%.

Applied to NC, that would give him more than 55% of the vote in districts 8, 13, and 2, and close to 70% in 12 and 1. On the other hand, he ends up below 45% in 5, 6, 10, and 11, which includes the Piedmont and North Carolina’s portion of Appalachia. On average, he ends up with 53%. This isn’t all that useful, since there will be many more Democrats and Independents voting in the twelfth district than in the tenth.

But looking at the residuals (which is just how far off the equation is with respect to each observation), we can see some trends. Eight districts underestimated his performance by 11 points or more: Seven are Virginia suburban districts. On the other hand, districts like TN 1,4,6, and 8 grossly overestimated his percentages.

Clearly, we need something else to really explain this remaining variance. The difference, as you may have suspected, has something to do with class among whites. We have seen this cleveage elsewhere, most recently in Pennsylvania. Let’s try the “big” regression, with AA%, poverty%, Blue collar%, College Degree%, and Rural%.

The results are improved. We have an adjusted r-square of .75. Now there are only a handful of districts that are more than ten points off. But surprisingly, the only variables that are significant are %poverty and %AA. As the AA% increases, his % increases sharply, but as the poverty increases, his % decreases.

When applied back into the model, this breaks down completely. It has him winning every NC district by more than 60%. This is unlikely as well.

Ultimately, I eliminated the “poverty” and the “rural” variables, because neither one seems like it would explain the variance that AA% doesn’t explain. We’re looking for something that helps us explain the variance from the white vote. That leaves us with %blue collar and %college degree. I ultimately went with “college degree,” mainly because this is what we used above. Between the two variables, we should be able to explain most of the variance here. In counties with low AA populations, the college/non-college divide in whites should provide an explanation for the variance. In counties with low college-education, the AA/white divide should provide the explanation for the variance.

We get an r-square of .7, which is pretty good for two variables attempting to explain forty+ observations (especially when each observation consists of thousands of individual decisions). The average residual error is zero.

.7 isn’t enough to do great prediction, but we should try it anyway for grins (both variables are significant, with t-stats of 9 and 5.6, respectively). Obama starts with a base of 19.9 (intercept), then adds .75 for every AA voter and .77 for every college-educated voter. Given this, his results are as follows:

District 10 (Hickory/Mountains): 37.2%
District 11 (Appalachia/Asheville): 39.4%
District 5 (Winston-Salem, North Piedmont): 40.2%
District 6:(Greensboro, central): 44.9%
District 3 (Greenville, outer banks): 47%
District 7 (Wilmington/Fayetteville): 49.99%
District 8 (Charlotte/Kannapolis): 52.49%
District 2 (Raleigh, Fayetteville): 54%
District 9 (Charlotte/Gastonia): 55%
District 13 (Raleigh/Greensboro): 60%
District 1 (majority black for rural E. NC): 65%
District 12 (majority black for urban centers): 66%
District 4 (Durham, Chapel Hill): 72%

Note that district 4 is Obama’s strength, with college towns, Research Triangle, and high black populations. Note that Appalachia and a few white rural districts in the East (represented by conservative Democrats in Congress still) are his weakest districts.

It is difficult to weight this, again because different districts will have different numbers of votes cast. There should be lots of Dem votes in districts 1, 4, and 12. This will help him. But there are plenty of Dems in the 11th, 7th, and 8th, which hurts him. Moreover, many of the college-educated Republicans here (unlike Northern Virginia) will be voting Republican, so his percentages in the 9th may be somewhat dampened.

Regardless, the raw average projects an Obama win of 52.5%. Even weighting for Gore’s raw vote in 2000, he comes out with a 54% turnout. Again, the major caveat is that there is a reasonable high error margin here.

But regardless, we have a number of different models of varying strengths, all of which predict Obama wins of between 50% and 56%. Going back to our initial question, it seems the answer is “Yes, she can.” She is unlikely to win. But she may be able to keep his results under 10%, perhaps under 8%. Combined with a win in Indiana (up in the air also), she could come away, not only surviving, but with a real win. And that could keep the supers quiet for a long, long time.

LJ, you get your props down here for directing me to my dataset, since you already have frontpage rights.

We ain’t in Kansas anymore.

The advantage of growing up in the heart of the Rust Belt on the Michigan/Indiana border was that I could inhale the political climate of both states, and absorb the vast differences that come with a man-made state line. Indiana, like Michigan, was one of the original Republican states that coalesced around Mr. Lincoln and the Union. It was part of the old school, Midwestern, empirical Republicanism of men like William McKinley of Ohio and Everett Dirksen of Illinois. But while Michigan became light blue, Illinois became dark blue, and Ohio became purple, Indiana remained an ebullient red — the only solid red state left north of the Ohio River.

That is, until now.

A shock poll has just been released showing that the GOP’s Indiana performance in 2006 — when the party lost several congressional seats — may not have been a fluke. Witness the Hoosier State’s wrath on an increasingly embattled Republican Party:

PRESIDENT – INDIANA – GENERAL

Barack Obama (D) 49%
John McCain (R) 41%

Hillary (D) 46%
John McCain (R) 46%

It’s tempting to say that we’ve nothing to worry about, and that Indiana will come back to the fold by Election Day. And that may be true. But the fact that we’re even talking about Indiana being in play should be setting off alarms everywhere.

The Republican Party has failed to learn the lessons of 2006. And it’s about to be driven into the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. The once-Republican West is becoming increasingly blue, electing pro-market, low-tax Democrats in Goldwater country. The Northeast remains blue, unless the Republican candidate is moderate enough and the Democratic candidate is leftist enough for the Republican to claim victory. The Upper Midwest seems to be returning to its leftist roots, with Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa embracing Obama. And the Rust Belt, while open to the renegade Republican McCain, gave the GOP a thrashing in ’06 and appears poised to do the same in ’08. Republicans have retreated to the solid South, only to find insurrection, such as in the recent special election in Mississippi-1, a red congressional district in one of our reddest states, where Democrat Travis Childers received a 49% plurality in a multi-candidate field and is now headed for a run-off.

Republicans’ dilemmas have been exacerbated by a Democratic Party that increasingly stands for everything and anything. Bill Richardson, a pro-market social liberal, is now in the same party as Bob Casey, a union-friendly social conservative. Neither is given a back seat because of any of their views. And the Democratic frontrunner for president, Barack Obama, epitomizes this approach. He believes whatever you believe. He’s either a member of the religious left or thinks religious people are bitter. He either supports free trade or he doesn’t. It all depends on who he’s talking to. And like the Democratic Party as a whole, Obama exists solely as a mechanism for the removal of Republicans from power. Get that party out of power, say Americans from east to west, from north to south, and then the rest of us can fight over what we believe and in which direction we’re going to take the country.

One of the silver linings of a massive Democratic victory this fall in which Democrats end up controlling all branches of the government is that the Democratic Party can no longer simply stand for opposition to all things Republican. Instead, it will have to stand for, well, something. And that will naturally lead to intra-party fights, with the losers as potential defectors to the opposition, which would infuse the GOP with new blood and lead to a reorganization of our party into something electable. It would also give Republicans an opportunity for a fresh start. Freed from power, Republicans on the ground will be able to spew their pent-up venom regarding the policies of the last eight years, from the Bush Doctrine, far from a traditional Republican foreign policy, to the nanny-state conservatism that has enveloped the party that once dominated the Live Free Or Die state of New Hampshire, and has since been removed from power by its electorate.

Of course my preferred option isn’t President Obama. My preferred option is a President McCain who tells the folks who have poisoned the Republican Party where to go. A John McCain who speaks to the disgruntled American middle class, which just wants to be able to live like a middle class again and otherwise wants to be left alone by the state and its busybodies, is a John McCain who can beat Barack Obama. Otherwise, be prepared for 58 Democratic senators, 250 Democratic congresspersons, and a Democratic president. I know many of our readers think that we’re on the verge of taking back the House, or that a Democratic victory in 2008 means that a candidate to the right of Rick Santorum will be elected by acclamation in 2012. But let me assure you that such ideas are beyond nonsensical when the data is examined. Put simply, when Indiana and Mississippi are turning blue, it’s time to ask who’s going to shut the door on the way out.

I’m working on a theory that NC will be significantly closer than the polls are showing. I have some decent support for it. But to really make it stick, I need one (or even better, both) of the following: (1) The Democratic primary results by Congressional District for Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas (Dave Leip has the remaining states that I need); or (2) The percentage of blue collar workers by county nationwide (Census quickfacts has the other data I need by county).

Your reward for coming up with any of this data will be a front-page thanks from me!

Two months ago, McCain and Obama got into a bit of a argument over whether Obama would stand by the pledge he made last year to take public funding for the general election campaign if he was the nominee. McCain accused him of being a hypocrite for attempting to renege of the agreement and Obama noted that with over 1,000,000 individual donors, his campaign is essentially the definition of being publicly funded.

Since that time the conventional wisdom was that McCain would ultimately take the guaranteed $85 million for the general election (September through November) as well as rely on the fundraising of the RNC and state GOPs while Obama would be able to raise a couple hundred million for the general election on his own.

Well, earlier today Obama sat down with Fox’s Chris Wallace and talked about his current thinking as it regards to the situation. He had some very interesting things to say:

WALLACE:  The Wall Street Journal says that you are prepared to run the first privately-financed campaign – presidential campaign since Watergate.  True?

OBAMA:  Look, we’ve done a wonderful job raising money from the grassroots.  I’m very proud of the fact that in March, in February for example, 90 percent of our donations came over the Internet.  Our average donation is $96.  And we’ve done an amazing job, I think, of mobilizing people, to finance our campaigns in small increments.

I have promised that I will sit down with John McCain and talk about, can we preserve a public system, as long as we are taking into account third party, independent expenditures, because what I don’t intend to -

WALLACE:  If you could get that agreement you would go for a publicly financed campaign?

OBAMA:  What I don’t intend to do is to allow huge amounts of money to be spent by the RNC, the Republican National Committee or by organizations like the Swift Boat organization and just stand there without -

WALLACE:  If you get that agreement?

OBAMA:  I would be very interested in pursuing public financing because I think not every candidate is going to be able to do what I’ve done in this campaign and I think it’s important to think about future campaigns.

Now, if I understand that correctly, Obama is essentially saying that if he and McCain could sit down and hash out an agreement regarding 527 groups that he would be “very interested” in taking the $85 million for himself. Quite frankly, that’s stunning. Here’s a guy who could very well outspend his opponent by 2 to 1, or even 3 to 1 in the general election (which would be a significant advantage for Obama – enabling him to run a 50-state campaign), but now he says that he might voluntarily level the playing field. If I were John McCain I would make a deal right away. If they can fight the general with the same amount of money, that will give McCain a much better chance to win, especially if Obama isn’t drowning him out with ads.

To be sure, I think it would be complete insanity for Obama to actually take public funding in the end. I’m sure his advisers would never let him go through with it, but he’s really not leaving himself much wiggle room. What if McCain accepts to take the money while coming down hard on the third party groups?

[This blog is an addendum to my Reality: McCain Thru a Glass, Darkly; North Carolina Face to Face.]

It takes a lot of self confidence and courage to stand up to the PC police in the MSM, so when I declare that Linda Daves has it and John McCain doesn’t, it is more to praise Daves than to condemn McCain.

McCain proved his courage in service to our country in a foreign venue and proves everyday how that courage is not necessarily transferable in domestic venues.

Linda Daves is exhibit “a” for my oft confessed “Southern superiority complex”. Linda is humble, as you will see below. I am not.

I developed this complex here at Redstate upon discovering not too few anti-Southern bigots, self-loathing ex-patriots of Dixie, and/or (and this often applies to the formers) cowards in the face of the PC police in the public that fear being deemed a racist more than having their cell phone rendered inoperable.

I found it quite telling that John McCain used the phrase “out of touch with reality” to “explain” his denunciation of a totally factual ad run by the North Carolina Republican Party questioning the judgment of two Democrats running for Governor based on their endorsement of Barack Obama for President.

I was not surprised that McCain refused to state explicitly why he deemed the ad, featuring Obama’s pastor and mentor of 20 years, Jeremiah Wright preaching “God Damn America” to be “unacceptable.” In fact, I am never surprised when captives of the Beltway are lukewarm, when hot or cold or yes or no is called for, unless said yea or nay concerns an already watered down bill, the passage or rejection of which will matter not a whit to We the People. Like God, I spue tepid water (and rhetoric) fed to me by others, out of my mouth.

Vague statements allow a politician to pretend they did something, and then when someone attempts to decipher the musing, they can deny any but the most favorable of interpretations. The problem is that more and more Americans have watched more than enough episodes of this Washington game.

Gamecock can’t be fooled, never will be, and long ago determined never to surrender to the glazed over eyes game of ignoring elephants in rooms.
Especially when that elephant is a clear and present danger to free speech and ultimately the right of We the People to maintain the Miracle at Philadelphia and govern ourselves.

Some here at Redstate and in the media think McCain’s denunciation was brilliant in that it enabled him to appear “above it” while benefiting from the endless showings of same in the context of his denunciation. I have suggested here at Redstate today (Suggested, as if! It is damned obvious to the non-glazed over eyes crowd.) that McCain obviously intended to have his vague (thereby ensuring deniability) denunciation to be seen in the context of the standard, voluminous knee-jerk “Willie Hortonesque” without merit denunciations of the ad as either “racist” per se or as “playing on the fears” of racist viewers.

After all, the ad depicted an angry black man.

Never mind that even erudite liberals in the MSM have been waxing 24/7 that Obama’s 20-year pew parked butt in Wright’s church raises questions about his judgment. That’s all fine. It’s also fine for McCain surrogates to opine (opine being given a very broad definition in this context) that being mentored by a God Damn America-n “raises questions.”

Lukewarm spue alert.

Raises questions? As if.

Does anyone else but me determine that their intelligence is being insulted every time a politician speaks of obvious disqualifying outrages as “raising questions.”?

But just for the sake of argument and reaching the glazed over eyes crowd (a crowd, I might add that I thought I was leaving behind when I left the Democratic Party eight years ago) let’s agree that Obama’s relationship with Wright raises questions. It obviously follows that many of the same questions are raised about the judgment of others that endorse Obama knowing of Wright and especially knowing that Obama’s race speech equated Wright, in his mind, with all black people, and specifically his grandmother, as those in a category of the un-denounceable.

So, 72 hours post-McCain brilliant maneuver, an assumption of which is that the showing of said ad will drive home Obama’s negatives, how are those that were the target of McCain (not the racist Wright or his sycophant Obama) fairing in the wake.

It seems, incredibly, that the largest newspaper in the Carolinas is not hounding the Democrats that endorsed Wright’s disciple. Instead, they are cross-examining the sweet lady dared air an ad critical of Obama with, God forbid, dark pigmented people in it.

What McCain wrought?

GOP activist stays calm in storm over ad

N.C. Republican chairwoman Linda Daves of Charlotte said Friday that she heard only parts of a Rev. Jeremiah Wright sermon before deciding to use a sound bite in an advertisement.

“I didn’t read the whole sermon,” she said, “but I’ve heard parts of it.”

Daves also said Wright, who was Barack Obama’s minister, should have urged his church to pray for America, not to condemn it.

Her comments came in an interview about her role in the GOP ad she released Wednesday, and the national clamor that followed.

Daves, a longtime conservative activist, said she’s been interviewed more times than she can remember. Her e-mail inbox is too overwhelmed with thousands of messages to accept new ones. And for security reasons, her staff locked the front door of party headquarters in Raleigh.

She said she didn’t expect so much national attention, didn’t see herself as standing up against presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain and “didn’t think about” the substance of Wright’s sermon.

What possible “substance” (As if the lines quoted are not “substance”?) could ameliorate the complete sentences we have all heard that assert the U.S. government invented HIV AIDS and intentionally infected black people with it; batted no eyes before dropping the Atom bombs on Japan; and deserved the damnation of God on 911?

The MSM is vile. McCain fears them. Daves does not.

“I’ve been beat up on a few times in my life,” said Daves, 62, “and it’s not anything new.”

Take notes war hero. This gal knows how to fight the war at home.

The ad criticizes Obama as “just too extreme for North Carolina” and takes aim at Democratic candidates for governor Richard Moore and Beverly Perdue, who have endorsed Obama for president.

Daves said she wanted to challenge Moore and Perdue to condemn Wright’s comments.

“It has been a historic practice, I think, probably on both sides of the aisle, that you do tie local and state candidates to national candidates,” Daves said. “That’s not something new.”

Democrats say the ad is irrelevant to North Carolina and plays on racial fears.

By “out of touch with reality”, did McCain refer to the above reality? The one that deems the exposers of racism to be racist, while giving the vile bigots a pass?

We may never know. McCain lacks the courage to let his yes be yes or his no be no.
Lukewarm spue alert.

The latest defense of Wright came Friday from the Rev. William Barber, president of the N.C. chapter of the NAACP.

“This ad is a snippet of a very thoughtful and profound sermon,” he said. “Rev. Wright’s messages are not much different from the messages being preached in many North Carolina churches — black and white.”

Focus on sound bite

Wright’s sermon focused on slavery and touched on mandatory prison sentences and alleged CIA drug trafficking to black drug users. Daves said she didn’t need to hear more than the most extreme sound bite and the parts “leading up to it a little bit, and a little bit thereafter.” She said it would be impractical to include more of Wright’s sermon in the GOP ad. Asked what she thought of the parts of the sermon she heard, she replied, “I didn’t think about it.”

When pressed, Daves added, “I think the extreme part was that quote. That was the extreme.

“And it would have been really nice if the pastor had said, `God bless America, pray for America, but don’t curse America. Don’t damn America.’ ”
Hal Jordan, a Charlotte Republican Daves recruited to run for the N.C. House in 2006, said some have treated her unfairly.

“Linda is not a racist,” Jordan said, “but she does think that people’s associations and the ideas that they pick up from other people do matter.”

There you have it. Thanks to McCain the MSM gets to focus on Daves rather than the racists she exposed and have a story that frames the issue as whether Daves is a racist.

But Daves, gamecock and most Americans don’t live in what passes for reality to McCain and the leftists he has ceded control over same to.

We live in the face to face world. The ultimate in reality.

The South, tested and forged by the scrutiny and crucible of the Civil Rights movement, with its citizens, black and white standing next to each other in large numbers during the process. Seeing into each others’ eyes and souls amidst the flames.

Black and white people in the South, to use a Fred Sanford analogy, living in the same neighborhood, same house, same bed, same underwear!

Each day for 40 years we have been up close and personal witnesses as we watch each other treat others based on reality. We have seen the white man fire the white man on the word of Blacks, and vice versa. We judge others face to face, rather than gotchas that pass for sine qua nons in the MSM and on Capitol Hill. Witness Trent Lott’s treatment at McCain’s hands. Lott has done more for black people that most every person in Washington, as evidenced by the people he knew face to face in Dixie.

The Dixie of 2008 benefits from the suffering that produced it. Much of the North never had that “luxury” and so is ignorant.

Others, both the ignorant and the informed, long ago surrendered to a Walter Cronkite that’s the way it is fake world of Stalinist like speech codes. The kind of codes that would eventually enslave the adherents to same.

Many Americans were freed from the PC police after 1988 thanks to Rush Limbaugh who dared to espouse ideas millions shared but which had been discredited daily for 30 years by elitists that lived in the flickering box in their living room.

But the beltway is still in bondage.

I’ll never forget an interview with John Boehner before the 2006 election in which Hugh Hewitt asked him where he got his news. He said “The Washington Post.”

Nothing else.

That is a window into McCain’s reality. The reality that is seen very darkly thru the Washington Post.

This Sandlapper among Tar Heels prefers the face to face kind and will fight to keep it till my eyes are darkened for good.

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson
Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns
The HinzSight Report
The Minority Report
Race 4 2008

Call it, Lincoln-Douglas version 2.008. Will Obama accept it? Of course not. But after all, that’s the Clinton campaign’s entire purpose for suggesting it in the first place. Once Obama declines, they will have yet another piece of evidence to add to their “Obama’s a wimp” narrative. If, by chance, Obama does accept, the debate could very well be the political equivalent of Thunderdome. The awesomeness of this primary never ceases to amaze me:

 Hillary Clinton challenged Barack Obama to another debate today, and this time she says they should ditch the moderators. “Here’s my proposal,” Clinton said. “I’m offering Senator Obama a chance to debate me one-on-one, no moderators. Just the two of us.”

Ever since Obama took repeated hits at an ABC News debate in Pennsylvania over a week ago, his campaign has been claiming that the moderators unfairly targeted him, possibly costing him votes there. “You know, after the last debate in Philadelphia, Senator Obama’s supporters complained a little bit about the tough question,” Clinton said. “Tough questions in a debate are nothing compared to the tough questions you get asked when you are president.”

Over the last few days, Clinton has challenged Obama to debates in North Carolina, Indiana and Oregon. She said she would like to see an Abraham Lincoln-Frederick Douglas style debate, where the two traveled around Illinois debating one-on-one.

Clinton said the people of Indiana deserve a debate because they have been “wandering in the wilderness of American politics for 40 years,” referring to the last time Indiana had a say in picking a presidential nominee.

I apologize for my lack of posts in the last couple of weeks as I have been actually been fulfilling my duties as a college student. This past Tuesday, I took a break from end-of-semester papers and finals to make the hour drive from Steubenville to Youngstown to see John McCain. Once I got there, I ran into a good problem: the fire marshal closed the event because the room was filled to capacity, which I told was over 600 people. Fine with me, better for an independent or Democrat to hear him then me, an already convinced McCain supporter. So myself and some friends went outside to greet McCain when he arrived. We were joined by scores of others who were also turned away at the door. I had some good conversations with the locals as I waited. Most were independents who were very surprised McCain was visiting Youngstown and were very open to voting for him.

As the time drew closer for McCain to arrive, the police of course pushed us further and further back from the entrance. People got nervous thinking that they had taken their lunch break off to hear McCain and wouldn’t even get to at least greet him. Knowing McCain’s style, I knew he would take time to come see us. Sure enough, he did, despite 20 or so anti-war protesters right next to us. They were visibly upset when McCain came over and greeted them with smiles and waves. McCain really knows how to handle his adversaries a lot better then Bill Clinton does.

Luckily, as students had to leave the event to return to class, the police allowed those of us waiting into the event. I missed a good amount of the event, but I think the defining moment was when the event was over, literally everyone in the room was cheering wildly for him. Knowing Youngstown, I am sure most of the people in the room weren’t Republicans. He got the rock-star treatment as he made his way through the crowd. My friend Mary got some great pics from the event below. She had a nice camera so she was able to sneak in with the press for a press conference. Enjoy the pics.

I am more and more impressed with him every time I see him. I have seen him several times in other states, but those were all victory parties. This was the first time I’ve seen him town-hall style. He is very accessible to the voters and is able to connect with them, which is a vital key to their success. McCain clearly passes the beer test. The DNC knows this, which is why they are going to try and paint McCain as a wealthy elitist. I think such attacks won’t work the way they did against Kerry in ’04 and will backfire against the Dems. Also, the McCain campaign is really getting organized here in Ohio, especially in the last month. The campaign is really getting off the ground, and I am sure will really start rolling now that McCain has hired all 11 regional campaign managers.

I hope to bring more coverage to R4’08 this summer, as I’ll be working on a Congressional race in New Jersey starting in early May. I am sure McCain will be there quite a lot given the recent polling coming out of Jersey.

Me and McCain shaking hands:

This is a cool pic:

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1 Corinthians 13: For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

Gamecock will be voting for a leader of the free the world that is one bout of laryngitis away from the lead in The Who’s “Tommy”.

John McCain is blinded by the PC speech police glass and deaf to the din of the 20-year pew-parked butt.

If only he were mute and couldn’t orally insult Republicans that can see and hear in Dixie.

The North Carolina Republican Party ran an ad suggesting that two Democratic Party candidates for governor should be opposed since they endorsed Barack Obama, i.e. possessor of the 20-year pew-parked butt that insisted his children endure the anti-white people, conspiracy kook musings of the Reverend Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright in the church that celebrates the achievements of America’s number one racist, i.e. Louis Farrakhan, or, as Obama refers to him with the honorific, “Minister Farrakhan.”

The deaf and blind Maverick denounced the NC GOP thusly:

They’re not listening to me because they’re out of touch with reality and the Republican Party. We are the party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan and this kind of campaigning is unacceptable,” McCain told NBC’s “Today” Show.

Would that McCain had listened to: Lincoln’s “divided we fall” speech and consider if Lincoln would fear a media’s scorn for questioning the judgment of an opponent’s alliance with “God Damn America” indifference; TR’s scorn for immigrants that weren’t all in for these United States or Reagan’s impatience with liberals that know so many things that aren’t so, e.g. the AIDS is a US government invented disease conspiracy to kill blacks, comes to mind.

[I hope everyone appreciates how difficult it is to critique McCain's denunciation of the NC GOP ad given that McCain never says WHY the NC GOP is "out of touch with reality" nor why the ad is "unacceptable".]

But DeVineLaw knows, because we see the world face to face, i.e. we see reality. In fact, please pray for the rooster and the sin of pride, because this episode reinforces Gamecock’s Southern superiority complex. More on that later, but a hint is the ubiquity of the PC speech police in McCain’s version of reality.

McCain has run numerous ads recounting his character building experiences in Vietnam. McCain has called into question Obama’s judgment in associating with an unrepentant terrorist when appearing as a co-star on Sunday talk shows (see free advertising under McCain’s anti-free speech law that makes him and NBC the arbiters of same sans First Amendment.)

In short, McCain’s actions (see analogous pew-parked butt with a venue in the Beltway Church of glorified yea/nay voters called the US Senate) declare that character and judgment are acceptable issues in “reality.” However, Obama enjoys two layers of prior restraint in McCain World before he can be criticized. Obama is, after all, one of McCain’s 99 honorable friends (see de facto patriots and, of course “honorable” at all times no matter the bushlied spue) and is Black, I mean, African-American.

The Dukakis rule proscribes any ad against a Democrat from depicting a “scary” Black man. In fact, to run such an ad is de facto racist, unless you are Al Gore or Hillary, i.e. a Democrat.

Given that McCain has waxed often in denouncing Obama’s associations with a white terrorist, we can only assume that he means to imply that Tar Heel Republicans are racists for running an accurate ad, especially when, on this very day he also blamed every stressful moment suffered in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina leveled a levee for the first time in 300 years, on Bush, thus mimicking the Bush is racist meme of the left in the MSM and their Dem Party.

I converted to the GOP in 2000, partly because I resented how my then fellow Democrats unjustly demonized Republicans as racists. I witnessed the SC GOP primary up close, personal, and as an objective observer. I saw our President win the character primary with actual straight talk, as opposed to the McCain, PC, MSM, head up Chris Matthew’s un-reality talk, defined as self-righteous moral denunciations of republicans.

Gamecock will cast an unobstructed nose vote for McCain. I consider it very important that McCain be the next President, given the choices.

But there are two things more important than the above, from a political standpoint.

One, that the radical Barack Obama not be elected President; and
Two, that critics of Obama not be intimidated into silence by the PC police for fear of being called a racist by the media.

As bad as Hillary is, she is more better than Obama than McCain is better than either of the Democrats.

Obama is dangerous in the extreme.

North Carolinians see the danger. They have seen it face to face for over a century. They have heard the din of the Pew-Parked Butt. They spoke on it prior to the impending may 6 primary.

They are not qualified for the Tommy lead. Roger Daltry’s role is safe from Tar Heels.

The Maverick is the threat.

Funny thing, though, about Mavericks. Mavericks beget Mavericks. Why would the begotten deny their nature?

Rush says we are all Mavericks now.

Maverick prefers a “reality” that grants Maverick and NBC a free speech monopoly.

To borrow a phrase from Maverick’s protected Rev:

Naw, naw, naw (now that would be a) God Dam**d America.

We vote. Nose unobstructed. But with eyes wide open so as to squelch any Maverick usurpations of the self-governing rights of We the People. The people that live in Reality.

This includes North Carolina.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns
The HinzSight Report
The Minority Report
Race 4 2008
“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Obama supporter Andrew Sullivan has apparently had enough of the white ethnics that are somehow unable to see that Barack Obama is Messiah (does that make Andrew John the Baptist?) and has thus issued a Rollins-esque statement. Earlier in the primary season, Huckabee surrogate and former Reaganite Ed Rollins issued a declaration that the old GOP coalition was dead and that it was time for a new coalition, minus the fiscal conservatives. Today, Andrew seems to be making the same sort of declaration about the Democratic coalition. Andrew’s solution: it’s time for the white ethnics to go. As he would say, money quote:

White Ethnics Or Independents?

In some ways, that’s the electoral question for Democratic super-delegates. The Clintons have managed to create something like the dynamic of previous red-blue general elections within the Democratic base itself. But that makes the base of their support white working class ethnics – the Reagan Democrats. But how would those voters lean if asked to pick between McCain and Clinton? Surely a Scots-Irish veteran hero is more competitive with them than Ms Wellesley. But in the other key swing group – independents – Obama and McCain are much more evenly matched. Moreover, Obama brings a massive advantage among the young and African-Americans and among Republican-leaning well-off independents.

…

Minnesota, Virginia, Colorado: these states may be where the real battle will lie.

Oh how silly. There are so many problems with this analysis that I don’t know where to start. First of all, a choice between white ethnics and independents is a false one, especially since a good number of white ethnics ARE independents. Does Andrew really think that all of the white ethnics of Ohio and Pennsylvania are registered Democrats, cackling aloud as they voted for Hillary while hordes of latte-sipping independents watched helplessly from the Scranton Starbucks, powerless to assist Barack Obama due to the closed nature of the state’s primary? Please. The simple fact of the matter is that white ethnics and working class voters constitute a disproportionate amount of the electorate of states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, and this likely cuts across party lines. I suspect that an examination of Pennsylvania independents would reveal demographics no more friendly to Obama than the state’s registered Democrats, and possibly less amenable to the senator from Illinois.

But Andrew seems to intuit that his initial reasoning involves the suspension of reason, and we can see that as he continues to work out his thoughts. Andrew’s assertion that states like Minnesota, Colorado, and Virginia will matter more in the fall than the aforementioned Ohio and Pennsylvania demonstrates just how confident Andrew is that Obama can carry the Rust Belt in November. But again, Andrew is just plain wrong. Minnesota is already a blue state inasmuch as it voted for John Kerry in 2004. McCain doesn’t need it to win the election, and if I were McCain’s campaign manager (and perhaps I should be), I wouldn’t spend one red cent in the tundra against Obama given the tendency of the state to swoon over leftist politicians. And while Colorado and Virginia could go for Obama given the high concentration of upscale white collar professionals in these states, the two states together sport only 22 electoral votes. A McCain win in Pennsylvania would neutralize his losses in those states. And in Pennsylvania, white ethnics are key.

About all that remains to be refuted in Andrew’s statement is that Obama’s massive advantage among black voters will help carry him to the White House. But given that blacks already vote Democrat by a 9 to 1 margin, this hardly seems plausible.

Look, I’m an educated, secular white collar professional. My Republican Party is one that would attract more of these types of voters. But to embrace Obama simply because of his strength among such voters, and to demonize white ethnics and working class voters because they refuse to come along for the ride, is not only electorally insane, it’s just wrong. As both FDR and Ronald Reagan showed, a true majority party is able to cut across class and ethnicity in this country in order to speak to broad swaths of Americans. The fact that Obama is unable to do that is nobody’s fault but his own.

London’s Financial Times is reporting:

The Democratic party’s “superdelegates” have every right to overturn the popular vote and choose the candidate they believe would be best equipped to defeat John McCain in a general election, according to Howard Dean, chairman of the US Democratic National Committee.

He said there was nothing in the DNC’s rules that would prevent the party’s unelected superdelegates, who make up about a fifth of the overall delegate tally and who will ultimately pick the winner, from “doing what they want”.

Mr Obama maintains a slim lead in the popular vote with just nine nominating contests left to go concluding on June 3 in Montana and South Dakota.

“If it’s very very close, they [the superdelegates] will do what they want anyway,” said Mr Dean.

“I think the race is going to come down to the perception in the last six or eight races of who the best opponent for McCain will be. I do not think in the long run it will come down to the popular vote or anything else.”

However, he added that it was highly unlikely that the superdelegates – of whom roughly 300 out of 800 remain undecided – would go against whichever candidate was ahead on the popular vote and among pledged delegates in practice. “I think it is very unlikely – I have never seen it happen. In fact it has never happened. But it is possible and they have every right to do it.”

Some commentators have speculated that if the race remains deadlocked after June 3 then a senior figure such as Al Gore, the former vice-president, or Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, could prevail on one of the candidates to withdraw – with most people focusing on Mrs Clinton.

But Mr Dean, who some have criticised for allegedly mismanaging the drawn-out primary calendar, dismissed that scenario as “total bullshit”.

Mr Dean said the Democratic party’s chances of regaining the White House would be badly damaged were the race to continue up until the party’s nominating convention in Denver in late August – as many now fear it will. “If we go into the convention divided, we will come out of it divided,” he said. “Somebody is going to lose this race with 49 per cent of the delegates and we can’t win if we’re divided.”

He said it would take at least two months for the supporters of the losing candidate to get over their “grieving” and unite behind the winner, which meant the nomination had to be decided by the end of June. He said most of the remaining uncommitted superdelegates were either in the DNC, the House of Representatives or the Senate and that he, Mrs Pelosi and Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, all agreed on the end of June deadline.

Mr Dean appeared confident that the uncommitted superdelegates would know what to do in early June even if he could not specify which yardstick they would use to select the winner. “Politics is a herd mentality,” he said. “There is a gestalt in politics when suddenly people see things in a synchronous way. Politically there will be some feeling at the end of this process that somebody is better than the other person in terms of taking on John McCain.”

In related news, Hillary Clinton’s chances of securing at least a split decision with a popular vote victory may have increased dramatically.

ABC’s Teddy Davis and Talal Al-Khatib report:

The Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws Committee will meet on Saturday, May 31 in Washington, D.C., to consider whether the DNC panel exceeded its authority when it stripped Florida and Michigan of all of its delegates for holding their primaries before Feb. 5th, 2008.

The Michigan and Florida challenges are trying to get all of the superdelegates plus half of the two states’ pledged delegates seated at this summer’s Democratic National Convention.

The challenges, which will be watched closely by the Democratic presidential candidates, do not stipulate how the pledged delegates should be split between Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.

Getting the Florida and Michigan delegations seated is a top priority for Clinton not only for the additional delegates it could yield but also as a way of getting more superdelegates to pay attention to the votes she garnered in the two states when assessing which candidate has more popular support.

Rest assured, the Clintons will soon be reminding the American people of this February 23rd quote by Barack Obama:

“I’m the challenger, I’m the upstart, I’m the insurgent. She’s the champ, she’s part of the Democratic network in Washington, and if you’re the title holder then you don’t lose it on points. You’ve got to be knocked out.”

John McCain spent all of today campaigning with Huckabee in Arkansas. Huckabee has committed to helping elect McCain. There are certainly a few states where Huckabee can effectively campaign for McCain.

I’d like to see McCain use his ALL opponents in the primary. Let’s put Rudy on the ground in New York and New Jersey. Let’s put Romney on the ground in Nevada and with movement conservatives. Let’s put Huckabee on the ground to energize social conservatives and secure Arkansas. Each candidate has their own areas of strength to lend to McCain’s campaign.

We’re going to be running in this election at a money handicap. I think we can remedy that by having 3 top flight surrogates out there helping McCain.

The first interview back.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7PlDy9bemM[/youtube]

I saw little of Fred’s supposed “charisma” and “gravitas”  during the first 75% of the campaign, but he absolutely oozes it in this interview.  He seems incredibly comfortable.  I’ve reconciled myself to McCain, but I’m getting a Fred! nostalgia here.

Indiana will possibly be the most important state in the Dem primaries… who would’ve thought? The Pocono (PA) Record, the Guardian, and most recently Barack Obama himself predicted Indiana could be the “tiebreaker” in this contest. It’s the only state that both candidates really have an honest shot at winning, unlike every other state left (PA, WV, KY are/were all supposed to go to Hillary; NC, OR, MT are all Obama strongholds).

After a strong finish in Pennsylvania, Indiana was supposed to get easier for Hillary. In fact, after her win in PA on Tuesday, Intrade had her up more than 65-35 in the state. Since that time, however, there has been a 26 point swing in Obama’s favor, and Hillary now leads by just five points: 55-50.

Two new polls out today might have influenced the markets: Research 2000 shows Obama up 1 on Hillary, 48-47; an Inday Star/WTHR poll shows Obama by 3 over Clinton 41-38.

Since we pretty much know how all the rest of the states from here on out will vote, Indiana does seem like the natural “tiebreaker” in this cycle. And it’s shaping up to be an incredibly close fight. My prediction: Hillary pulls out a very close win by less than 2%.

I’ve been looking at these numbers for a while, and I think there might be a trend in the approval ratings of Governor Beshear in Kentucky. I’m not sure what it is though, so I’m firing up Excel to run some regression analyses. I’ll be back to you in an hour or so.

At RealClearPolitics

A lengthy but interesting way of coming to the conclusion that Obama actually overperformed expectations in counties in Central PA — just the type of area where his “bitter” comments would hit the hardest.

They also happen to be the most Republican counties in the state. Jay wonders why Obama tends to do well in heavily white, Republican areas of the country. An interesting question.

Rasmussen Pennsylvania General Election Poll, conducted April 24th, 2008

• John McCain 44%
• Barack Obama 43%

• Hillary Clinton 47%
• John McCain 42%

This telephone survey of 500 Likely Voters was conducted by Rasmussen Reports April 24, 2008. The margin of sampling error for the survey is +/- 4 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.

Inside the numbers:

Who do you trust more on the Economy- Democrats or Republicans?

• Democrats 48%
• Republicans 40%

Who do you trust more on the Economy- John McCain or Barack Obama?

• John McCain 46%
• Barack Obama 39%

Who do you trust more on Iraq- Democrats or Republicans?

• Democrats 45%
• Republicans 43%

Who do you trust more on Iraq- John McCain or Barack Obama?

• John McCain 48%
• Barack Obama 39%

Who do you trust more on National Security- Democrats or Republicans?

• Republicans 47%
• Democrats 42%
• GOP +5

Who do you trust more on National Security- John McCain or Barack Obama?

• John McCain 52%
• Barack Obama 39%
• McCain +13

This is a series I’m going to start so we can all help better inform each other, get to know the other readers of the blog, and gain a better sense of perspective on the issues. I’ll pose a question each Friday, and you can leave a response in the comments section.

The first question, since I know many on this site, like me, are habitual readers, will be: What five political books would you recommend to others seeking to understand your worldview? This includes books on subjects such as economics, political philosophy, religion in politics, etc. Think of these five books as a set that would spell out, most clearly, why you believe what you do in the realm of politics.

Mine, in no particular order:

1. Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal by Ayn Rand

Still the most brilliant moral defense of capitalism ever devised.

2. The Vision of the Anointed by Thomas Sowell

A stunning deconstruction of the mindset behind liberal policy.

3. Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris

Yes, yes, many of you will hang me for this, but it’s a brief, cogent statement on why I, as an atheist, embrace secularism in public life.

4. The al-Qaeda Reader, edited by Raymond Ibrahim

Actually reading what Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri have written will revolutionize your thoughts on the War on Terror.

5. The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History by Thomas Woods

Though not without its flaws (anecdotal evidence in an early chapter is most striking), it’s an invaluable guide for understanding some of the major issues of American history.

Changed my mind. The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism is a much better read. I gave the American History one far too much credit because it was one of the first politically-minded books that I read, and it got me interested.

Your turn! Feel free to leave other recommendations as ‘honorable mentions.’

One of the things that annoys me most is when otherwise intelligent people draw absurd conclusions due to a lack of a sense of history. As someone very wise once said, even those of us who learn from history are surrounded by those doomed to repeat it. This is unfortunately a very true statement. And it was illustrated today by two politicos who should know better, one an Obama opponent and the other a proponent of the senator from Illinois.

Over at the Daily Dish, Andrew Sullivan waxes optimistic about a poll from Minnesota showing Obama decimating McCain:

The candidate the Clintons and Rove say is weak has a 52 – 38 percent lead over McCain. Clinton’s lead is 5 percent. There’s a reason the GOP establishment wants Clinton. And the “he’s a commie leftist God-Hating racist” line of attack hasn’t worked too well

Well, except in New York and Massachusetts, where several recent polls show McCain trailing Obama by single digits. Or in Pennsylvania, where Obama outspent Clinton by some ridiculous margin or other and was still obliterated. In fact, pointing out that Obama is a political leftist and a cultural elitist who is unnervingly comfortable in the company of racists is working quite well I would say. And there’s nothing Rovian about pointing such things out if they are true, which they are. Would it be the politics of division to point out the leftism of Candidate Marx or the bigotry of Candidate Sharpton?

But I digress. The point is that Andrew is pointing to Minnesota as proof that Obama is decidedly electable in the fall. The reasoning is that since Bush only lost to Kerry by 3 in Minnesota in 2004, and since Hillary is only beating McCain by 5 in the state this year, the fact that Obama leads McCain by double digits means that Obama is the stronger Democratic candidate this year and portends an electoral blowout if Barack is the nominee. After all, if you shift the entire 2004 map 11 points to the left, what you get is a Bill Clinton style victory. Such reasoning is, of course, absurd to those who know their political history. Speaking of which, David Freddoso of The Corner falls into the same trap:

Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) hits 50 percent. John McCain does not look so good.

A reader wonders:

If Minnesota is not in play at all, the Pawlenty VP slot makes less sense than some of the other choices.

Could be. I cannot pretend to understand what is ailing McCain in Minnesota (ethanol, perhaps?), although polls at this stage should always be taken with a grain of salt.

Freddoso, like Sullivan, seems to think that the electoral map is far more static than it actually is. What neither seem to realize is that the electoral maps of 2000 and 2004 were based on a) a Republican nominee who sported all of the qualities and flaws of George W. Bush, b) a white male center-left Democratic candidate who ran on, and did not repudiate, the legacy of Bill Clinton, and c) a set of issues and priorities that has since made way for an entirely different set of issues and priorities. As none of these factors are present in a McCain/Obama race, there is no reason to think that we won’t see an entirely new electoral template this year. That’s especially true due to the number of new voters who have come out of the woodwork for Barack and due to the sheer volume of angry Hillary supporters who hate Obama and angry former Bush voters who now hate Republicans.

But back to Minnesota. Both Andrew and David should be well aware of the strength of liberal politicians in the Upper Midwest in general and in Minnesota in particular. This was the region that gave us a host of “progressive” politicians throughout the 20th Century, after all. Far from the Rust Belt pragmatism and centrism that characterizes Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, the states of Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin have long swooned over leftist politicians who seem to be able to win these states even while they lose the rest of the country. Just look at Michael Dukakis, who won the Upper Midwestern trio in 1988 while losing California and while just barely holding onto the Empire State and his own Bay State.

Consequently, Obama’s strength in Minnesota says absolutely nothing about his overall chances against McCain in the fall, nor does it prove that he would be a stronger opponent against McCain than Hillary Clinton. To the contrary, I continue to assert that Hillary would be the stronger of the two, as she can actually win electoral prizes like Ohio, Missouri, and Florida, while taking out of play states like New York and New Jersey. About the only thing that the Minnesota poll does suggest is that Pawlenty may be McCain’s John Edwards if nominated, i.e., a candidate who isn’t actually able to help McCain carry his home state or region due to the disproportionate strength of the opposition candidate in that region.

As for Sullivan and Freddoso, both are exhibiting the sense of history of one Homer J. Simpson, who, when reminiscing over Walter Mondale’s use of the line, “Where’s the beef?” in reference to Gary Hart in the 1984 race for the White House, remarked satisfyingly, “No wonder he won Minnesota.”

Michelle Cottle over at The New Republic takes issue with the “let’s count Michigan” arguments from the Clinton camp. She offers a truly bizarre analogy to illustrate her point.

As you know, left up to me, neither Michigan nor Florida’s delegates would be seated. Those states knowingly and flagrantly broke the rules. They knew what the penalty would be, and they did it anyway. Fine. But don’t come whining to us now about how, “Oh, we didn’t know that it would really matter or we wouldn’t have done it.” Well, cry me a river. I’m sure there are thousands of teenage girls out there who, if only they had known that they’d get knocked up by letting Bobby or Ricky or Darryl do it to them without a condom just that once, would have made a different choice. Behaving rashly has consequences (unless you’re a high-ranking member of the Bush administration). If we all could run around doing stupid things with the assurance that, whenever our actions wound up having a negative impact, we could beg for a do-over, the world would be a much different place.

I’m inclined to agree with her point on Michigan, but….comparing Michigan to unwanted pregnancies? Umm…has Michelle Cottle forgotten that this is the Democratic primary? You know, the party that supports the right to do-overs in pregnancy. The party of the sexual revolution? The party of “safety nets” and “social welfare”, and “free health care”; all designed to absolve people of responsibility. Any of this ringing a bell? Hil fits right in. This primary seems to be slowly unraveling the minds of Democrats.

Over at TNR, Jon Chait has a lengthy article that purports to rebut John Judis‘ comparison of Obama to McGovern. Many of Chait’s points are being made throughout the leftosphere, and they deserve some rebutting. Before I begin, I should reiterate my view that I come down somewhere near Chait: I actually think Obama is still the favorite for the fall, if for no other reason than the Republican brand is so tarnished by Bush that Dennis Kucinich would probably be good for about 45% of the popular vote this year.

Nonetheless, I think Chait severely misunderestimates the dangers presently facing Obama. I’ll respond to his most salient points in turn:

John’s assumption that a candidate’s primary base will be the same as his general election base strikes me as seriously flawed. If Hillary Clinton wins the nomination, will her electoral base consist of blue-collar whites? No, it will be highly similar to Obama’s, with a major reliance on minorities and white liberals. As my colleague Chris Orr has just burst into my office to point out — don’t be alarmed, he does this several times a day — right now Obama is having a hard time winning blue collar whites on the economy in large part because he has an opponent with a virtually identical economic platform. When he has an opponent who’s tethered himself to President Bush’s highly unpopular economic policies, winning over blue collar whites on the economy will get a lot easier. Extrapolating from primary dynamics to general election dynamics is very dicey business.

This is true. If Hillary wins the nomination, her base will be African Americans, yuppies, and working class whites. A Democrat needs all three, though. But groups one and two are the most loyal and liberal (in the case of yuppies) Democratic constituencies out there. Some may stay home if she is the nominee, but they aren’t going to add to McCain’s vote total.

Working class whites, by contrast will absolutely defect, and have shown a willingness to do so. in the past. The problem isn’t so much working class whites who vote in the Democratic primary, it is the possibility that these voters are proxies for what is going on in the minds of working class whites who do not vote in Democratic primaries — soft Democrats, independents, and even Republicans.

Remember, these voters didn’t oppose Obama. They rejected him. By like 3-1. That is not just a sign of a small problem. That’s a real danger. That the margin of working class whites’ opposition to Obama in the primaries, combined with their history of willingness to vote Republican, displays an innate opposition for Obama that just isn’t felt toward Hillary.

To put it differently: McCain has his problem with the right, but they have nowhere to go. He’s had a fairly easy time consolidating the Republican coalition. Hillary would ultimately have similar luck with the most loyal Democratic constituencies.

Obama is like Huckabee (who I thought was in many ways an underrated candidate). His weakness is with the most fragile members of the coalition. Just as Huckabee would have difficulty keeping suburban Republicans in the party, so too will Obama have problems with working class whites.

As for the Bush thing, and the economy thing, that is true, and its why I still think he’s the favorite. But that’s not been Obama’s message. Obama’s message is Hope/Change. Yuppies love that. Heck, I love it, or at least loved it until Wright came along and I found out that he wanted to change the s/s earnings cap. But good government doesn’t set aflutter the hearts of Joe Sixpack, who is really more concerned about food and healthcare and stuff than dreaming of a post-racial tomorrow.

More importantly, Obama has only been attacked from the left. Hillary has softened him up on the economy, on elitism, and on race. She’s done some real dirty work on him. But he hasn’t been hit particularly hard on his stances on abortion, guns, and a host of other liberal stances on social issues that working class Americans bitterly cling to. There’s been some discussion of these stances, but the thirty-second ads haven’t rolled in yet. That’s just as much a cause for concern for him as the economy is for McCain.

Second, while John compares Obama’s coalition to the George McGovern coalition, this may not be as deadly a comparison as readers might believe. John himself is the co-author of a book which argues that the elements of the McGovern coalition have expanded to the point where they can form the base of a politial majority. On page 37 of that book, he writes (with co-author Ruy Teiziera), “Perhaps it is time to reappraise the McGovern campaign — not as a model of how to win presidential elections, but as an election that foreshadowed a new Democratic majority in the twenty-first century.”

This is almost too easy. Teixiera and Judis argue that the McGovern coalition can provide a new base for the Democratic party. They don’t argue that the white working class can be ignored, they just say that at this point, it is no longer the be-all-end-all for the Democrats. Which is true. It will be even more true 50 years from now when whites, at least as presently defined, will be a minority. But for today, it is not the case, and Dems still need working class whites to win.

Third, John does not address the corrollary question of Obama’s electability problem: compared to what? The media has been obsessing over Obama’s electability problem in a vacuum. But the Real Clear Politics poll average still has Obama performing a bit better than Clinton versus McCain — and this is after several weeks when Obama suffered his worst two moments of the campaign, and the Republicans have been concentrating all their fire on him.

The problem is that national polls are meaningless. At My Election Analysis, I never cited to them. This is because we don’t have a national plebiscite for President. And working class whites are distributed in critical states for the electoral college: MO, PA, OH, MI, NJ. In THOSE states, plus Florida, Hillary runs ahead of Obama. Sometimes by substantial margins. In Missouri she is within McCain’s error margin. Obama is 14 points behind. In Kentucky she is ten points behind, just outside the MOE. He trails by 40 points.

It doesn’t do Obama any good to win CO, NM, or even the Dakotas and Alaska and Wyoming if he loses Pennsylvania. And quite frankly I think all it will take is a week of gun ads to bring him down to earth there.

Also, her argument is that he presently polls well among Independents and Republicans because they haven’t fully tuned in. After he is defined by the Republicans (see previous paragraph), those groups will reject him as well as much as they presently reject her. He’ll need every Democratic vote he can get in the end, she argues, and if he can’t pin down a critical component of every winning Democratic campaign of the last seventy years, he’s toast.

The other cause for concern for Obama is that he has currently run an effective national campaign. He spent $14M in PA. He spent millions of dollars in Virginia. I saw his touchy-feely happy ads almost constantly while watching Jeopardy. He got a big win here. But he trails McCain in the polls here.

What is Obama going to do now? He’s already introduced himself. He’s already run a ton of ads about how great he is. Sure he’ll outspend McCain 3-1, but given the results in PA, I think that and a nickel will buy him a very small cup of coffee. Go negative? He’s not particularly good at that, and it cuts against the central thrust of his candidacy.

Finally, Chait talks about Obama having the worst couple weeks of his campaign. This is true. But this is the problem. Obama is being brought down to Earth. The hagiographies are over. He built his win when the press stories were about people fainting at his rallies and such. No more. I remember after the TX/OH primaries an Obama supporter saying that he was glad that was over with because he had survived the worst with NAFTAGate and PowersGate. This was the day before the Wright story broke. Since then, there has been very little about Obama’s campaign that has impressed me. I think he is trading on a vast reservoir of goodwill that he built up from August of last year through February of this year, when the press gave him a pass. I think that reservoir is pretty well depleted.

According to The Politico’s Ben Adler, Obama may have some problems with his targeted demographic – younger voters.

The article discusses issues with the PA primary, but it will be interesting to see how this dynamic plays out in the General Election. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section.

Excerpts below. Click above link for the full article.

The weakness in Barack Obama’s support among older white voters appears to have trickled down to younger ones, at least in Pennsylvania, according to exit polls from the state’s primary this week.

While Barack Obama carried voters under 30 years old on Tuesday by 20 points – 60 percent to Hillary Clinton’s 40 percent-he narrowly lost whites in the same age group by four points, 48 percent compared to Clinton’s 52 percent.

Young whites were the only white demographic that Obama carried in close primaries leading up to Pennsylvania’s, as he did in the Clinton stronghold of New York, and in states with racially polarized voting among older voters, such as South Carolina.

Normally Clinton only wins the white youth vote in states she totally dominates, such as Arkansas – not ones where she won by 10 points or less overall as she did in Pennsylvania.

Note: Click on the images to see a clearer picture.

I’m a well-known member of the “Pawlenty for VP” brigade, but I believe in intellectual honesty, so I’ve been examining polls, maps, etc, to get a realistic sense of how likely Pawlenty would be to bring in his home state. We have two new polls that give us some sense of where we are in the state without Pawlenty, and the numbers aren’t encouraging. We have a SurveyUSA poll that shows McCain trailing by 6%. Today’s Rasmussen poll has Obama leading McCain by 14%. The Upper Northwest is a strength of Obama’s, so McCain’s bound to struggle here. First let me show you a map of the 2000 election in Minnesota, as a sort of baseline.

The bluer the county, the more Republican it is. Notice that the vast majority of the states counties are heavily blue. How is it, then, that Bush lost the state by 3 points in 2000? To answer that, I’ll direct you to another map, of the same election.

I’ve now highlighted two regions of the state; the areas enclosed by red are counties bordering Hennepin and Ramsey counties, the two largest counties in the state (and the two light blue or Democratic counties within the region). Roughly 50% of the state’s population is enclosed in this region. The green areas surrounding the red, are those additional counties which comprise the broader Twin Cities. Including these counties, you’re now closer to 60% of the state’s population. Moving on, let’s look at a map from the 2004 election, with the same counties encircled.

It’s a virtually identical map, as you can see, and again Bush lost by 3%. Now let’s look at how Bush actually performed in these regions. In 2004, Bush lost Hennepin (the largest county) by 20%, and Ramsey (the second largest county) by 28%. He lost the entire red region by 137k votes. He won 45.8% of the two person vote here (-8.4% relative to Kerry). Expanding into the green region, the greater Twin Cities, and more burby Republican areas, Bush cut his loss to to 117k votes, winning 46.8% of the two person vote (-6.4% relative to Kerry). Bush lost in 2000 and 2004 because he lost the Twin Cities, by far the state’s greatest population center, by serious margin. If Bush had broken even in the red region in 2004, he would have won the state by 38k votes, and about 1.5%. Now let’s flash backwards to 2002. Here’s a map of Tim Pawlenty’s first gubernatorial election.

Now, if you hadn’t followed my population center explanation, it would look like Pawlenty did considerably worse then Bush. But, this misleading. First of all, the light blue areas in the lower right hand corner are areas won by independent candidate Tim Penny. They’re still Republican regions in a two-person race (as you’ll see when we look at the 2006 map). The only areas of the state where Bush ran genuinely ahead of Pawlenty, are a few deeply rural (10 people per square mile rural) counties in the upper northwest. This is understandable given Bush’s electoral strength with rural voters, but almost none of Minnesota’s population is concentrated in this region. Again, we must look to the highlighted areas. Notice the now blue Hennepin County, which Bush lost by 20%; in 2002 Pawlenty lost here by about .5%. Moving over to Ramsey County, which Bush lost by 28%, we see a similar shift; Pawlenty lost by a mere 7%. In the red region, rather then losing by 8.4% (as Bush did), Pawlenty won the two-person vote with 55.5% (+11%). In the greater Twin Cities, Pawlenty won with 56.1% of the vote (+12.2%). On the whole, the 2002 version of Pawlenty ran 20 points better then Bush in the Twin Cities generally. This is almost entirely responsible for his 7 point victory. Now, let’s fast-forward again to 2006.

This looks more like the 2004 and 2000 maps, though Pawlenty still runs a little behind Bush’s totals in the upper-northwest. The independent candidate in 2006 also wasn’t nearly as strong as Tim Penny in 2002, thus making most of the lower-northeast Republican again. But, let’s take a look at our counties of interest. In Hennepin County, which Pawlenty lost by .5% in 2002 and Bush lost by 20% in 2004, Pawlenty lost by 10% in 2006. In Ramsey County, which Pawlenty lost by 7% in 2002, and Bush lost by 28% in 2004, Pawlenty lost by 17% in 2006. In 2006 Pawlenty won the red region by a mere 5k votes (essentially 50-50) and in green region (the greater Twin Cities) Pawlenty won by 27k votes (51-49). All in all, Pawlenty gained 20 points on Bush in the Twin Cities in 2002, and gave back around 11% in 2006. At first glance, this seems like a serious loss, and a deep blow to his strength in the state.

But, there are a few things to consider here; first of all, once again, his victory in the Twin Cities accounted for almost the entire margin of his victory in the state generally. He won the Twin Cities by 27k votes, and he won the state by 21k votes. And he still ran 9 points ahead of Bush in the region, despite only running 4 points ahead of him in the state generally. Even in 2006, Pawlenty was inordinately strong in the major population center. It’s also worth considering what sort of voters generally accounted for Pawlenty’s gains in 2002 in this region, and what sort of voters abandoned him in 2006. I don’t have any exit polls from 2002, but based on anecdotal evidence, and knowledge of the demographics, it seems likely that Pawlenty won a colossal number of urban and suburban blue-collar Democrats/Independents in 2002, and only won an impressive number in 2006.

But, again this is somewhat misleading. Looking back to 2004, we’ll notice that Bush won non-college educated voters (probably the best correlater to blue collar) by 6%, and essentially split college educated voters. Fast forward to 2006, and we notice that Republicans lost non-college educated voters by 8% and only lost college educated voters by 6%. Now let’s look at the urban/suburban/rural gains and losses. Bush lost urban voters by 9% in 2004, and he won suburban voters by 5% and rural voters by 15%. In 2006, Republicans lost urban voters by 24%, suburban voters by 2% and won rural voters by 2%. Republicans lost the most ground in the cities (-14%) and in rural areas (-13%). Where blue-collar voters most heavily concentrated? In the cities and in rural areas. In other words, Republicans across the country lost the most ground among blue collar voters between 2004 and 2006. They were the folks most broadly suffering from Bush fatigue. In this context, it’s very likely that Pawlenty’s losses in the Twin Cities had almost nothing to do with any decreased Pawlenty-fever, and everything to do with a paralyzing Bush fatigue among blue-collar voters. What’s remarkable is that Pawlenty STILL ran so far ahead of Bush here.

But, you ask, isn’t 2008 likely to be just as bad in this respect? Not quite. First of all, John McCain is quite explicitly NOT Bush. Second of all, we’ll be facing Obama, who has failed miserably to win blue collar whites in both rural and urban areas. These folks aren’t going to reflexively vote Democratic in 2008. They’re open to voting Republican. Obama might make up these losses with gains among upscale whites, but I think, given what we know about the state, the answer to our original question “Can Pawlenty Bring Minnesota”, is a big “Maybe”. But, we have almost no chance in the state without him. I’ll leave you with one last bit of data/trivia. The last time a Republican carried Hennepin County (the largest county in the state) was 1972. Richard Nixon carried it by 5%. That was also the last time the Republican Party carried the state (again by 5 points). As I mentioned before, in 2002, Pawlenty came within .5% of winning the County. Food for thought.

Jerome Armstrong makes some pretty good points here:

The real popular vote is very close. Clinton leads by just 12,506 votes, a lead of .04 percent. The numbers I passed on in a post yesterday about Clinton’s lead in the popular vote excluded estimates from 4 caucus states, which I didn’t realize until being able to check in later (and updated the post). I see that Markos flipped out with a tirade about it.

But, rather than be content with calling out a math error, Markos has to up the ante audacious to demand we “count the count the Michigan “uncommitted” votes for Obama”. Ah, well, John Edwards was still in the race at the time and was surely in the same boat, having also pulled his name off the ballot in Michigan. At least Markos isn’t calling for Texans that caucused to have their votes counted twice, or that Puerto Rico votes won’t count… yet.

No one but Obama is to blame for his having no votes in Michigan. His campaign came up with the gambit to take his name off the ballot in MI to score cheap points in IA, and his campaign took the lead in convincing Edwards and Richardson to follow along and remove their names from the MI ballot to try and force Clinton to follow suit (my sources are from top people in the Edwards campaign). it didn’t work, Clinton took the hit of the political stunt and kept her name on the ballot in Michigan.

I get the idea that Markos is talking about with the uncommitted votes, and believe that they will represent themselves in delegates. Chris Bowers has a couple of posts up about this here and here. The allocation of the MI vote that went for Obama, 72%, should translate into his getting at least that many of the uncommitted delegates from MI. Obama will get delegates from MI. The uncommitted delegates can move to Obama. MI has already begun the process of selecting the delegates, and its probable that Dean is favorable to backing the half-delegate vote solution (as thats what the rules support). I’m not sure about how Florida will be solved. They may not go along with a half-vote delegate solution, but they may not be given a choice. On the other hand, if Dean thinks he has to get candidate approval for a FL and MI solution, then nothing is more likely to happen anytime soon.

Regardless, the next time you are accused of being a hack for counting MI, here is your response.

UPDATE, lifted from my comments:

Personally I don’t think that you count MI; at best you re-allocate according to exits. My point is just that it ain’t just the right-o-sphere that thinks these arguments are valid.  But I do think that Armstrong does make some reasonable points in there, that I will admit I never thought of.  And you won’t hear me admit that every day.

There was never an agreement to remove names from the ballot. Dean told them to, Edwards and Obama said “sure,” and Hillary did not.  I can see the argument that Hillary is making:  They made their choices in the hopes of getting a bump in Iowa and New Hampshire by maintaining their special status.  She did not.  She probably took a bit of a hit in both states because of it.  I can see the p.o.v. that says it is now Obama’s turn to take the hit.

I also feel less than sympathetic toward Obama given that his surrogates were actively opposing a re-vote in MI for obvious reasons (even more obvious given Ohio and PA), something that Armstrong doesn’t touch.

Ultimately, Jay Cost is correct: There are about 16 different ways to count the popular vote for the Dems, ranging from not using any caucus estimates for the four states that didn’t keep count but using MI and FL, to using caucus estimates for those state, plus counting the TX caucus, but not counting MI/FL. And there is the question whether to use the WA caucus estimates or the non-binding WA primary estimates. Do you allocate uncommitted votes to Obama if you count MI? Or use the exit polls to approximate? Or not give him any?

There are straight-faced arguments that can be made for any result with either of those. I think Hillary probably has to win the popular vote without counting MI, and with the caucus estimates (not double-counting the TX caucus or using the WA primary), and with FL, to have an argument that will sway many superdelegates. I think if she wins the popular vote without using FL, MI, or the caucus estimates/guesses, she will have a very strong argument.

Of course, it doesn’t matter what I think or what you think. It matters what the super-delegates think.

Give Michael Barone his propers. Back in February, the day after Super Duper Tuesday, he wrote that “The Democratic nomination may be determined by the delegation from Puerto Rico.”

Too true. By my calculations, absent the Not-A State, she will trail in the popular vote from around 200,000 to 600,000, depending on how you count (I don’t include scenarios where you count MI). My assumptions include a 5-point win in IN, a 15-point loss in NC, 30-point wins in KY and WV, a 5-point loss in OR, and 10-point losses in SD and MT. So the question is, can she pick up 200,000 to 600,000 votes in Puerto Rico?

There are two variables to determining a vote margin: The size of turnout, and the percentage margin. Let’s tackle these in turn.

The turnout margin is, I think, the easier measure to get one’s head around. While it is true that we don’t have a precedent for a Democratic primary of this importance on the island, we have some other signposts. In 2004, in the race for Resident Commissioner, which is a non-voting member of Congress, over 2,000,000 people voted. Now this is probably in part because there was a competitive race for Governor as well, but it is a decent benchmark. Remember that in Puerto Rico, the Democratic and Republican parties don’t exist. The two major parties are the PNP and the PDP, which parties revolve around Puerto Rican statehood versus moves toward independence or enhanced Commonwealth status. The PPD is strongly aligned with the Democrats, the PNP has members of both Republican and the Democratic party.

Regardless, given the opportunity to play a major role in naming the next President of the United States — something that does not happen every day, or even every century in Puerto Rico — and the fact that this is an open primary, I think turnout is likely to resemble 2004 turnout. It might be higher, might be lower, but I think the 2 million number is a good midpoint. Plug that in.

Which brings us to the vote margin. Here we have less to go on. In Texas Hillary won about 65% of the Hispanic vote. In Arizona it was around 55%. In California it was 67%. New Mexico was 62% for Clinton, though it is probably not the best analogue given that it was a caucus rather than a primary.

Moreover, Puerto Ricans are different than Mexican-Americans. While there are similarities in Hispanic Puerto Rican culture from Mexican culture, there are still major ethnic, linguistic, and cultural differences. Puerto Ricans are more likely to share a phenotype with Obama. That said, Puerto Ricans also share a bond with New York, and Bill is supposedly popular on the island. Moreover, Obama’s big appeal is his ability to deliver a speech. But 3/4 of the islands inhabitants do not speak English. This neutralizes his greatest appeal.

The most recent poll showed a 15-point lead for Hillary. That would not be enough to overtake Obama in every category. She would lead if you counted FL, but did not count MI or the caucus estimates. I tend to think that is a fair count, but I’m not sure the superdelegates will.

Let’s say, though, that it increases to a 20-point lead (60-40). This certainly does not strike me as being outside the realm of possibility. Hillary would then lead in every count that includes Florida.

Let’s push it to a 65-35 lead, which would be her general lead among Hispanics this season. Under this count, she would lead in every iteration of the counts.

In other words, she’s still very much in the hunt for a popular vote win. It all comes down to Puerto Rico. Which is another example of just how screwed up the Dems’ primary process is this year . . .

“white working class has gone to the Republican nominee for many elections, going back even to the Clinton years…[Democrats] haven’t solely relied on the demographic.”-David Axelrod, Obama Campaign Strategist.

Axelrod’s comments on NPR (don’t you just love it?) yesterday have been already been pounced upon by the Clinton campaign. Speaking in North Carolina (from a flatbed truck in a baseball field mind you), President Clinton told a crowd:

“Today her opponent’s campaign strategist said, ‘Well, we don’t really need these working class people to win, half the time they vote for Republicans anyways. I will tell you something — America needs you to win, and therefore Hillary wants your support, and I hope you will help her in this primary in North Carolina.”

Obamamania! aside, the Illinois Senator needs to win in the Rust Belt in order to become the next president of the United States. The candidate, or his surrogates, making statements that trash these voters in each successive primary is not going to help achieve that end.

Would you just look at this?

The day after her big win in Pennsylvania, Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday that she now has more votes than anybody who has ever run for president in a Democratic primary.

…

Clinton is including Michigan and Florida, primaries she won after all the candidates agreed to boycott the states for holding votes too early for party rules. Obama had his name pulled off the ballot in Michigan, so he doesn’t get a single vote from that state.

“I’m very proud that as of today, I have received more votes by the people who have voted than anybody else, and I am proud of that,” Clinton said at a rally in Indianapolis. “It’s a very close race, but if you count, as I count, the 2.3 million people who voted in Michigan and Florida, then we are going to build on that.”

Counting Michigan? Damn. In it to win it, indeed. This is going to the convention unless some sort of deal is made in June. Hillary will only net a gain in the popular vote from here on out, as it stands, with Kentucky, West Virginia, and Puerto Rico sure to give her blowout victories in ways that Oregon, North Carolina, and Montana just can’t grant Obama.

So at the risk of giving away the ending: Hillary Clinton has won the popular vote (in her own eyes, of course — which is all that’s needed to bring this race to the convention).

This race just gets better by the day.

Well, it is his hometown paper making the case for him. But still… With his 96% lifetime ACU rating, charisma and good looks the GOP could do worse than this young Congressman from blue-trending Virginia:

…will Virginia come up empty in the 2008 national candidate sweepstakes?

Perhaps not.

ONE LOCAL pol whose name has not been mentioned could make the perfect running mate — for Republican John McCain.

Rep. Eric Cantor is 44. McCain is 71.

As a member of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, Cantor brings the clout and experience on economic and tax issues that many believe McCain lacks. He was a businessman before being elected to the House in 2000 and has been an eloquent spokesman for pro-growth policies ever since.

Cantor would energize economic conservatives in a way that McCain has not, and he possesses the skill and expertise to attack the Democrats’ high tax, anti-trade, big government platform as precisely the wrong medicine for a struggling economy. (His wife, Diana, also plays in the financial major leagues, serving for more than a decade as executive director of the Virginia College Savings Plan. She is currently a member of the Board of Directors of Media General, which owns this newspaper.)

As the Republican chief deputy whip in the House, Cantor is one of the youngest members of the congressional leadership. And in this year of group firsts, Cantor would be the first Jewish nominee on a national Republican ticket.

His consistent, staunch defense of Israel’s interests could strengthen McCain’s already respectable standing among traditionally Democratic Jewish voters, many of whom are growing nervous about Obama’s pastor’s embrace of the anti-Semitic Louis Farrakhan. Jimmy Carter’s get-together with Hamas terrorists offered another reminder that left-wing Democrats often lend tepid support to Israel.

The congressman from Richmond would keep Virginia and Florida in the GOP column and could help McCain in Northeastern states, such as New Jersey, where the Arizona senator appears to be running better than recent Republican presidential candidates.

Most people who know Cantor believe that his ultimate goal is to become speaker of the House. But with Republicans likely to lose seats this fall — perhaps a lot of seats — Cantor might best serve party and country by joining the McCain team.

Hat-tip: R4’08 reader Paul 8148

Obama the next McGovern?

City Pages is the Twin Cities version of the free weekly bird cage liner that is readily available in most major urban areas.  It is reliably liberal and consistently snarky toward anything or anyone conservative.  Indeed, I was proud that my Kennedy vs. The Machine blog earned a “heinous” designation from City Pages for a blog post I did in 2006 on Congressman Keith Ellison. 

That aside, City Pages has an entertaining bit called the “VP Pawlenty Meter” wherein they chronicle the weekly waxing or waning of the vice-presidential prospects of Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty.  Despite the paper’s general disdain for Pawlenty, this column is a fairly thorough synopsis of GOP veepstakes.

This week (to the best of my knowledge for the first time) City Pages has raised the Pawlenty “threat level” to Orange. 

Graphic:  City Pages