Don't let us hyperventilating media types distract you. We may prattle on about the latest spreads in Texas (Obama's up by two) and Ohio (Clinton's up by five), but it doesn't matter all that much, at this point, who wins those primaries--or the contests in Mississippi (probably Obama), Wyoming (Obama again), North Carolina (still Obama) and Pennsylvania (perhaps Clinton) that follow. This is a race for delegates, not states. And because Democratic delegates are awarded proportionally, there's simply no way for either candidate to reach the magic 2,025 majority--or for Clinton to significantly slash Obama's current 100-plus earned delegate lead--before the end of primary season on June 7.

In other words, only the party's 795 superdelegates can pick a winner--no matter what happens next week and beyond.

Of course, you've probably heard all of this before. But with the MSM barking away about this poll and that attack, it's important every once in a while to pause, breathe and take a cold, hard look at where the contest actually stands.

Over the past 20 days, Obama has quietly gained what could become decisive momentum in the all-important race for superdelegates--and may have even reached his tipping point. Here's the math. With 1,382 delegates (earned and super-) to his name, Obama still needs 643 to win the nomination. Let's assume that over the next three months he picks up 490, or half, of the remaining primary and caucus delegates--a conservative estimate, considering that most of the states in question (Mississippi, North Carolina, Wyoming, Oregon, Montana, etc.) favor him from the outset. That gets the Illinois senator to 1,872--or 153 shy of 2,025.

Which is where the remaining 359 uncommitted superdelegates come in. According to the AP, Clinton still leads 241 to 195 in the "committed" count. But Obama is gaining fast. Since Super Tuesday, he's snagged a net total of 43 supers (including four today); she's lost two. The trend is unmistakable. Seeing as Clinton can't catch up in the earned delegate count unless she wins by 20 or 30 points in every remaining contest, her best bet is to trounce Obama in both Texas and Ohio and hope that the "comeback" narrative convinces supers to stay uncommitted until after Pennsylvania on April 22. But if Tuesday ends with a split-decision or an Obama twofer, I can't imagine that gaggle of pols suddenly deciding, en masse, to give Clinton yet another chance. So the slow bleed will continue. At the current rate of two pickups a day, Obama would hit 153 in mid-May, effectively clinching the nod. And a convincing performance next week would only quicken the pace.

Paging Florida and Michigan...

My inbox is still dizzy.

At 11:02 this morning, I received the single most psychopathic piece of political spin I've ever read. The culprit: Hillary Clinton. In an email memo titled "Obama Must Wins," some genius staffer labors mightily to convince reporters that Barack Obama's recent successes mean that he must "score decisive victories" in all four March 4 states--or else "there's a problem."

One question: do Mark Penn and Co. really think we're that stupid? 

On Dec. 30, Clinton told ABC's George Stephanopoulos that the race would be "over by Feb. 5" (see video above). In case you didn't notice, it wasn't. After the tie on Super Tuesday, her aides took one look at February and quickly moved the goalposts to Ohio and Texas--states she led by 10 to 25 points at the time. "If she wins Texas and Ohio I think she will be the nominee," Bill Clinton said. "If you don't deliver for her, I don't think she can be." But now that Obama has captured 11 straight contests, raised $15 to $25 million more than Clinton for the month, pulled ahead in Texas and reduced the gap in Ohio to five points, the Clintonistas have decided to strap the goal posts to rockets and launch them into outer space:

Senator Obama has campaigned hard in [Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont]. He has spent time meeting editorial boards, courting endorsers, holding rallies, and--of course--making speeches. If he cannot win all of these states with all this effort, there's a problem. Should Senator Obama fail to score decisive victories with all of the resources and effort he is bringing to bear, the message will be clear: Democrats... have their doubts about Senator Obama and are having second thoughts about him as a prospective standard-bearer.

Right. Because when Clinton "campaigned hard" in Maryland, Virginia, Wisconsin and Maine and failed to win all of those states with all that effort, it wasn't a problem at all. Democrats weren't, like, having second thoughts about Hillary or anything like that. Quite the contrary. When you think about it, actually, Obama's astronomical fundraising totals and 11 overwhelming victories only mean that, come March 4, a win in, say, Rhode Island will be more than enough to kickstart a Clinton comeback.

I can almost see the memo now.

On February 26, an aide to Hillary Clinton told the New York Times that the campaign would launch a "'kitchen sink' fusillade against [Barack] Obama" in the run-up to March 4's potentially decisive primaries in Texas and Ohio.

Here's what the kitchen sink looks like.

On the air in Texas starting today, "Children," the Clinton's campaign latest ad (above), is fear-mongering at its finest. The indigo light of the moon falls on the cherubic faces of slumbering children. "It's 3:00 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep," says a deep male voice. Before you can ask why he's spying on your children, goddammit, a phone rings. Who calls at 3:00 a.m.? you think. Is Uncle Levon drunk again? But the voice quickly explains that you are mistaken. "There's a phone in the White House and it's ringing. Something's happening in the world." Whatever this something is, it must be bad, or else it would have the decency to wait until regular business hours. Then comes the twist:

Your vote will decide who answers that call. Whether it's someone who already knows the world's leaders. Knows the military. Someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world. It's 3:00 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep. Who do you want answering the phone?

As the voice delivers its final line, an image of Hillary Clinton in smart-lady glasses appears on screen. If you are wondering why she let phone ring six times before answering such an important call, stop it. As you can see, Clinton is obviously prepared to protect your children from certain death. Why else would she still be wearing a pantsuit at 3:00 in the morning?

Clearly, "Children" is absurd. Despite what Clinton may claim, there's no reason to suspect she'd keep America any safer than Barack Obama. Simply living in the White House does not make you a foreign-policy expert (just ask President Nancy Reagan). Clinton did not have security clearance. She did not attend national security meetings. She did not negotiate treaties. Instead, her policy focus were decidedly domestic, and her heartiest effort--health care--was a failure. As a senator, she has sat on the Armed Services Committee longer than Obama has sat the Foreign Relations Committee, but the difference in tenure hardly qualifies her to be Commander-in-Chief. And it's not particularly difficult to argue that whatever security cred Clinton does have comes from casting votes early in her Senate career that were meant to keep Republicans from calling her "liberal" or dovish--like, for example, her vote to authorize the war in Iraq. If she responds to pressure with decisions like that, critics would say, do we really want her answering the phone?

But, absurd as they are, ads like "Children" work. Which is why politicians keep making them. Clinton's new spot is a seamless blend of two devious Democratic classics--Lyndon Johnson's 1964 masterpiece "Daisy," which also employs the "vote for me or this adorable child gets it" line of reasoning, and Walter Mondale's similarly telephonic 1984 sequel "Red Phone." (Fun fact: "Red Phone" and "Children" share a creator, Texas ad whiz Roy Spence). The point isn't to establish Clinton as a credible Commander-in-Chief; the only proof provided--"she knows the world's leaders" and "knows the military"--is laughably vague. It's to prey on voters' existing insecurities about Obama, who's even less "experienced" than Clinton (for whatever that's worth)--and to be extreme enough to earn a lot of free media exposure. Over at the Atlantic, Marc Ambinder writes that "this is [Clinton's] best argument," yet wonders why "it's taken her 13 months to make it so explicitly." "Argument" is a stretch. But I agree that it's her last best bet--and that's precisely because there are only 72 hours left before D-Day. The hope for Clinton is that the short notice will give voters plenty of time to succumb to their fears--and not quite enough to stop and think.

UPDATE, 1:50 p.m.: In response, Obama (predictably) plays the judgment card:

"We’ve seen these ads before. They’re the kind that play on peoples’ fears to scare up votes." "Well it won’t work this time. Because the question is not about picking up the phone. The question is – what kind of judgment will you make when you answer? We’ve had a red phone moment. It was the decision to invade Iraq. And Senator Clinton gave the wrong answer. George Bush gave the wrong answer. John McCain gave the wrong answer."

UPDATE, 7:30 p.m.: Asked today "what foreign policy moment would you point to in Hillary's career where she's been tested by crisis?," Clinton's "usually verbose team of Mark Penn, Howard Wolfson and Lee Feinsten" responded with silence. After a long pause, they answered that "she's been endorsed by many high ranking members of the uniformed military." Rest easy, children.
 

Here's NEWSWEEK'S Michael Hirsh on how the spat between John McCain and Barack Obama over Iraq reflects tensions within the military itself.

Stumper's take: Is it just me, or does McCain risk seeming a little monomaniacal in a general election battle? For months, Obama and Clinton have ranged widely over the vast landscape of challenges confronting America, while McCain has focused like a laserbeam on national security, his strongest suit. It's clear that the Arizona senator will spend much of his time and energy between now and November painting Obama (his putative opponent) as a needless neophyte risk in a dangerous time. But Obama is so dexterous at defining the debate that I imagine he'll quickly use this one-sidedness to his advantage: Yes, Iraq is important, he'll say. But is it all we care about? Or do we want to deal with health care, the economy and education, too?Compared to Obama or Clinton, McCain is painfully short on domestic policy proposals. The more he harps on national security and Iraq--a war, by the way, that two-thirds of America currently opposes--the more he forces swing voters to decide what worries them more: the possibility of an attack--or, you know, everything else. It's a risky fight to pick.

Many in the commentariat pounced on Wednesday's sharp exchange over Iraq between John McCain and Barack Obama as a preview of the general election debate, should the Illinois senator get the Democratic nomination. But the dustup between the two leading candidates also gave us a glimpse into the growing divide within the U.S. military over how to split resources between Iraq and Afghanistan.

Indeed, the presidential campaign this year could also become a Pentagon proxy war, with Sen. McCain largely taking the side of Gen. David Petraeus, the commander in Iraq, and Obama more representing the interests of the Army chief of staff, Gen. George Casey, who opposed the Bush-Petraeus "surge" and has openly worried about an Army that's "out of balance."

McCain and Obama fired at each other from two separate events Wednesday. Campaigning in Texas, McCain mocked Obama for suggesting that he would send troops back into Iraq "if Al Qaeda is forming a base there," as debate moderator Tim Russert put it. The Arizona Republican, assuming his already patented posture of the steady statesman correcting the bumbling upstart, said, "I have some news for Sen. Obama. Al Qaeda is in Iraq."

Hearing those remarks while stumping in Ohio, Obama was plainly intent on showing that he will brook no such treatment. "I have some news for John McCain," he shot back, "and that is that there was no such thing as Al Qaeda in Iraq until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade ... They took their eye off the people who were responsible for 9/11, and that would be Al Qaeda in Afghanistan that is stronger now than at any time since 2001."

READ THE REST HERE. 

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

FOR OBAMA, A TASTE OF WHAT A LONG BATTLE HOLDS
(Adam Nagourney, New York Times)
If Mr. Obama becomes the Democratic presidential nominee, he is sure to face an onslaught from Republicans and their allies that will be very different in tone and intensity from what he has faced so far. In the last few days alone, Senator John McCain has mocked a statement Mr. Obama made about Al Qaeda in Iraq. The Tennessee Republican Party, identifying him with his middle name as Barack Hussein Obama, suggested that his foreign policy would be shaped by people who are anti-Semitic and anti-Israel. The Republican National Committee issued a statement on Wednesday invoking a questionnaire Mr. Obama filled out when running for Senate in 2004 to show that he once opposed cracking down on businesses that hire illegal immigrants. Without using Mr. Obama’s name, President Bush, at a White House news conference on Thursday, assailed his willingness to meet Cuba’s new leader, Raúl Castro, without preconditions, saying that to do so would grant “great status to those who have suppressed human rights and human dignity.”

OBAMANOMICS: HOPE AND FEAR
(The Economist)
As the battle for the Democratic nomination reaches a climax in Texas and Ohio, the front-runner's speeches have begun to paint a world in which laid-off parents compete with their children for minimum-wage jobs while corporate fat-cats mis-sell dodgy mortgages and ship jobs off to Mexico... [But] If you look on his website rather than listen to his speeches, there are plenty of intelligently designed, reasonably centrist proposals to be found (see article)... So although it might seem odd to advise suspicious voters to ignore the rhetoric of a man whose principal appeal rests on his speeches, Mr Obama in office would surely seek to be something other than the capitalist-hating demagogue he has recently sounded like. Yet there are reasons to worry.

DOES EXPERIENCE MATTER IN A PRESIDENT?
(David Von Drehle, Time)
Wouldn't it be nice if time on the job and tickets punched translated neatly into superior performance? Then finding great Presidents would be a simple matter of weighing résumés. Take a Democrat like Bill Richardson — experienced in Congress, in the Cabinet, as a diplomat and governor — and have him run against Republican Tom Ridge, a former soldier, governor and Director of Homeland Security, with the winner chosen by a blue-ribbon commission of all-purpose elders. The Danforth-Mitchell commission, perhaps, or O'Connor-Albright. But it has never worked that way, which is why Lincoln's statue occupies a marble temple on the Mall in Washington, while his far more experienced rival William Seward has a little seat on a pedestal in New York City. "Experience never exists in isolation; it is always a factor that coexists with temperament, training, background, spiritual outlook and a host of other factors," says presidential historian Richard Norton Smith. "Character is your magic word, it seems to me — not just what they've done but how they've done it and what they've learned from doing it." 

HILLARY AT TWILIGHT
(Walter Shapiro, Salon)
If the end is nigh for the fantasies of a Clinton II administration, it will mark the family's first political defeat since Bill, then 34 years old, was defeated for reelection as Arkansas governor in 1980. (If you missed the intervening years, here is the plot summary: He recovered.) But what is fascinating is that, in these closing days before the Ohio and Texas primaries, Hillary has been consistent rather than the political changeling that her detractors portray. She is going out (if that is her fate) as she came into the political orbit three decades ago -- as a smart, serious and sound policy maven who leaves to others soaring rhetoric and stirring emotions.

MORE: Clinton Seeks to Regain the Spotlight (Charles Mahtesian, Politico)
She’s struggling to get her message out and remain part of the campaign conversation as the media and her remaining rivals, Barack Obama and John McCain, stampede toward a general election matchup that seems more and more likely.

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP... 

Photo by Eliane Vanderborght, via Flickr

After months of "will he or won't he" speculation--if only in Manhattan media circles--Big Apple mayor Mike Bloomberg finally declared this morning in a New York Times op-ed that he would not throw his hat in the presidential ring. "I listened carefully to those who encouraged me to run, but I am not--and will not be--a candidate for president," he wrote.

Why not, and why now? On its surface, the essay actually seemed to argue for, not against, a Bloomberg bid. Hizzoner opened with a sanctimonious put down ("watching the 2008 presidential campaign, you sometimes get the feeling that the candidates--smart, all of them--must know better") followed by a guided tour of policy areas where his "common sense solutions" presumably stand in stark contrast to the tired pabulum emanating from the mainstream candidates' unimaginative maws. The point, according to Bloomie: "the vast majority of Americans know that all of this is true, but--politics being what it is--the candidates seem afraid to level with them."

There's only one problem: the two frontrunning candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama, have not, in fact, been afraid to "level with" the American people--at least in Bloombergian terms--on the issues he raises. Which is precisely why he's not running. The emerging prospect of two major party candidates able to attract sizable support among independents doesn't leave much room in the race for an actual independent. And that becomes painfully clear when you take the time to measure the distance between Bloomberg's criticisms of the candidates and, well, reality. To wit:

"They must know we can’t fix our economy and create jobs by isolating America from global trade."
No dice, Mike--especially on McCain. According to his voting record and past pronouncements, the Arizona senator is unabashedly pro-trade. "Every time the United States has become protectionist... we've paid a very heavy price," he has said. "Free trade should be the continuing principle that guides this nation's economy." McCain not only supports NAFTA, which he says has had an "unambiguously... positive impact on the US economy"; he supports extending trade wherever possible. Obama is closer, but still no cigar. While he's critical of NAFTA, blaming it in part for job loss and economic decline in middle America, to say he supports "isolating America from global trade" is absurd. (Even if he and Bloomberg would disagree on the details.) Instead, Obama advocates for adding additional "labor agreements" to the treaty and enforcing existing environmental and labor provisions. The idea, as he puts it, is to make sure that trade deals will "work for working people and not just for corporate profits."

"They must know that we can’t fix our immigration problems with border security alone."
Neither McCain nor Obama has ever suggested that border security alone would "fix our immigration problems," and to imply as much is misleading. McCain, in fact, is a leading proponent of providing undocumented workers with an earned path to citizenship, having co-authored with Ted Kennedy an ambitious but controversial bill designed to do just that. After taking a beating from conservatives for his so-called apostasy--and nearly losing the nomination--McCain now repeats the "secure the borders first" mantra every chance he gets. But his centrist stance remains unchanged. Meanwhile, Obama voted for McCain's bill and supports a typically Democratic array of measures meant to ease our immigration woes. Enough said.

"They must know that we can’t fix our schools without holding teachers, principals and parents accountable for results."
Seems like they do, actually. According to the AP, McCain has "promoted merit-based pay for teachers" and argued that "teachers should be tested for competence periodically and fired if they don’t meet certain standards." Does that qualify as accountability? For his part, Obama is one of the only Democrats around--and certainly the party's only remaining presidential candidate--who has proposed to reward teachers based on student performance."Teachers need to become more accountable for their performances," he has written, "and school districts need to have greater ability to get rid of ineffective teachers." Sorry, Mike.

"They must know that fighting global warming is not a costless challenge."
Seriously? McCain was one of the first Republicans to buck party orthodoxy and champion global warming legislation, going so far as to bash President Bush for his inaction on the issue. And although Obama has gotten flack from environmentalists for his politically expedient support of coal-to-liquid fuel, he certainly takes the threat seriously, saying that inaction would "condemn future generations to global catastrophe." As for costs, “Obama said the transition would be costly in the short run for U.S. consumers, taxpayers and businesses, requiring the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars," adding "it will not come without cost or without sacrifice," according to the Washington Times. It's hard to imagine that the fiscally conservative McCain would disagree.

"And they must know that we can’t keep illegal guns out of the hands of criminals unless we crack down on the black market for them."
Okay, so Bloomberg might have a point on this one (it's a pet issue of his, coincidentally). While McCain has shown an admirable willingness to cross party lines on gun control--he cosponsored legislation to close gun-show loopholes with Joe Lieberman--he's never made cracking down on the black market one of his priorities. Nor has Obama. 

So there you have it. To paraphrase Meatloaf, one out of five ain't good, and Bloomberg is well aware that there's no space for him in the middle of a McCain-Obama match-up. Instead, he's reduced to spending his moment in the spotlight slamming straw men in an attempt to burnish his centrist cred--and raise the value of his endorsement. Of course, it wasn't always supposed to be this way, which is why he waited until now to "withdraw." As NEWSWEEK editor Jon Meacham wrote this morning, the mayor "would have been making a very different announcement... if Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani were the putative major-party nominees."

It's just that he would've written the exact same same op-ed.

During our conservation yesterday about the intricacies of Barack Obama's unprecedented branding effort, I asked graphic design expert Michael Bierut whether any other presidential campaign had ever "pulled a Nike"--i.e., created a logo that carried the campaign's message without mentioning the candidate's name. His answer? "It's been a long time." But Bierut never expanded on this initial reaction, launching instead into an analysis of George W. Bush's 2000 bid, which relied on a "W" in a similar (if less sophisticated) way. So I cut it from the transcript. 

Stupid me. As it turns out, there is, in fact, another "Nike" logo on the books--and it bears a striking resemblance to Obama's. Ladies and gentlemen, feast your eyes on this 1972 poster for presidential candidate George McGovern (hat tip to Jerome Armstrong):

Just wait 'til Hillary Clinton gets her mitts on this. Of course, Obama is a "new day" type of candidate--much like McGovern was--so the rising sun imagery is probably more coincidental than referential. And because it's based on something organic--his initial--Obama's logo is definitely an improvement over his predecessor's. But now that the whole Deval Patrick "plagiarism" gambit is petering out, Sen. Clinton is probably on the hunt for another line of attack. Enter good old George. What better way to sink Obama among conventionalist working-class whites in Ohio and Texas, Mark Penn will mutter, than by accusing him of swiping from McGovern? I can hear it now: Are we ready to watch another anti-war "movement" candidate ride the support of young voters to a crushing 22-point loss? I mean, look at that groovy logo!

 Acid, amnesty and abortion, people. Acid, amnesty and abortion.

Say what you will about the divisive politics of the 1960s or the democratization of discourse in our Internet age, but this much is clear: when it comes to "pundits," they don't make 'em like they used to.

Of course, Buckley, who was found dead yesterday at the age of 82 in the study of his Stamford, Conn. home, was slightly more than a pugilistic showman (or, for that matter, a pundit). For more, read Timothy Noah's nuanced take on the intellectual father of modern conservatism here; National Review, the journal he founded in 1955, has the view from the right.

Sick of hearing Chris Matthews bark about who won and who lost the Democratic debates? So are we. That's why NEWSWEEK's Katie Paul called up Allan Louden, a professor at Wake Forest, the head of the National Debate Tournament and the principle academic partner at Debatescoop.com. They got past political theater and faddish punditry to talk about how Clinton and Obama are actually performing as debaters--and how that's influencing the election. Excerpts:

But that isn’t his tendency. His is to grab the other person’s argument and say, yes, that’s right, yes, I understand your point of view, and given that, here’s my new position. The most obvious example is with Farrakhan, denounce vs. reject. The reason the question was asked is about how to deal with the tension between black voters’ support and having to repudiate part of the black community. That’s the question he was actually asked. And he said, I understand what’s going on here and have repudiated it and, yes, the Jewish community can count on me. She said, well, not strong enough, because she still wanted to make a point about the Jewish community. And he comes back and says, OK, we’ll do both. He does that a lot. He grants the argument—that McCain is a hero worthy of respect, that she is a good, perfectly electable candidate—and that creates a different argument. It’s transcending the argument, as opposed to strict denial. That’s an argumentative move not often practiced, but it makes a lot of sense.
 
The health care example is interesting, too. In the last two debates, he said, we essentially agree on everything—now what? So that makes the argument about who can redefine the political system valid. Typically, you argue about who has the best policy. He changed argument to who can actually get something passed. That’s different ground. Divisiveness and high negatives all becomes part of the calculus in people’s thinking. He does that all the time, on all kinds of issues. That’s part of the reason it’s so damn hard to get underneath his rhetorical frame.
 
What about Hillary’s strengths?
She’s really pretty good in these. For the debate last night, there are multiple audiences. The moderators tried to exploit the tension between the Texas and Ohio audiences, and the candidates are well aware of that. I think she won the debate in Ohio, in that she spoke much more about Ohio local concerns, grounded in citizens’ reactions, how many kids are covered by insurance. I would say three-quarters of her answers had a recognizable Ohio reference. And that’s probably good politics. His wasn’t nearly as specific to Ohio, but more about the meaning of election, aimed at a national audience. It was more about how to interpret what’s going on. I think she wins the debate in Ohio, but he wins the debate nationally.
 
More generally, she uses her expertise to argue. And, if you watch the debates, the experience is very different than if you listen to them. It changes your perceptions entirely. Oddly, George W. Bush doesn’t actually sound too bad, though the speeches are dreadful if you’re seeing them. When I was just listening to Clinton, I found her to be much more substantive and nuanced than when watching her. I thought she won the first half of the debate. Obama was much more inclusive. He subsumes arguments.
 
Does this type of debate format put one of them in a better light?
Free flowing format was better for both of them. But there’s always a tension between talking too much and not enough. There was one point on health care when she just went on and on, while later in the debate on foreign policy, he went on and on. We often see holding the floor as dominance, but that can be perceptual. Back in the Cheney-Lieberman debate, Cheney spoke about 20 percent less than Lieberman did, but the perception was that he spoke more. With the format, because there is turn-taking and politeness factors, much judgment is not about the content or the person’s character, but about how they interact on a personal level. So, pulling a chair out, patting a hand, looking at each other, and that includes turn-taking—showing you know when to quit talking. In that sense, the open format allows relational thing to play out. And I think they both handled that well.

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP... 

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

BLOOMBERG SAYS HE WON'T RUN BUT WILL BE ACTIVE
(Diane Cardwell, New York Times)
Bringing an end to a long flirtation with a bid for the White House, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has officially closed the door on a presidential candidacy this year. In an Op-Ed article published in Thursday’s New York Times, Mr. Bloomberg wrote that he still believed that a nonpartisan approach was needed to solve the country’s problems and that an independent candidate could win. But he will not run, he said.

THE OP-ED: I'm Not Running for President, But... (Michael Bloomberg, New York Times)

INSULTS, APOLOGIES FUEL OBAMA'S RISE
(Ben Smith, Politico)
In the course of the primary campaign, and perhaps in a preview of the fall election drama, Senator Barack Obama has accepted the apologies of three United States senators, a former senator, CNN and various lower-level supporters of Senator Hillary Clinton. Most of them have apologized for saying something insensitive about Obama’s race, his name, or his heritage. And the dynamic of outrage and offense this campaign has proved race to be a much touchier subject than gender. At times, Obama’s campaign has sought to downplay burgeoning outrage. At others, he’s stoked it for political advantage. But most of the flaps ended the same way: With Obama forgiving the alleged offender. Sometimes he’s accepted the apologies graciously, sometimes sternly, but always in line with his message. And that message of reconciliation – often explicitly racial reconciliation – is a central part of his campaign’s appeal. With a general election that appears likely to open him to more Republican attacks, and more line-crossing, the campaign ritual of offense and forgiveness appears likely to be repeated often this year. 

CLINTON CAMPAIGN POURS RESOURCES INTO TWO CRUCIAL PRIMARIES
(Anne E. Kornblut and Shailagh Murray, Washington Post)
Clinton advisers anticipate that she will come under immediate pressure from prominent supporters to consider leaving the race if she loses on Tuesday. That pressure probably would be conveyed privately at first, but quickly become public if she fails to heed the message. A split decision Tuesday would be likely to lead to similar pressure, her advisers said. Only by gaining ground against Obama in the delegate fight would she find the justification to keep going. Aides described Clinton as realistic about her precarious standing.

LONGTIME CLINTON AIDE RETURNS TO THE FRAY
(Adam Nagourney, New York Times)
Harold M. Ickes may be Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s last hope for winning the Democratic presidential nomination... “I’m a little dismayed by the lack of fight on the part of our staff,” Mr. Ickes, the assistant to the campaign manager, scolded an audience of Clinton staffers dispirited after Mrs. Clinton’s losses last week, before beginning a roll call of the presidential campaigns he had helped win and lose. Mr. Ickes, who has typically been a behind-the-scenes player, is stepping out front to make the public case for Mrs. Clinton, at a time when campaign advisers have pressed to lower the profile of her chief strategist, Mark J. Penn. But most of all, he is serving as the campaign’s general in the fight for superdelegates... In doing so, Mr. Ickes is drawing on his intimate knowledge of the Clintons and their political networks — as well as delegate selection rules he helped write at the Democratic National Committee.

CLASH ON IRAQ COULD BE MCCAIN-OBAMA PREVIEW
(Michael D. Shear and Shailagh Murray, Washington Post)
For McCain, the decision to pick a fight with Obama helps keep the presumptive GOP nominee from being overshadowed by the battle between Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) for the Democratic presidential nomination. It also gives him a chance to undermine confidence in Obama's foreign policy experience before the Democrat can turn full attention to the general election. But even as he focuses on a potentially decisive showdown with Clinton in four contests next Tuesday, Obama has made it clear he won't ignore the attacks from McCain. Generating headlines about an Obama-McCain showdown could also benefit Obama by creating the sense among Democratic primary voters that he is on the verge of becoming their party's nominee and also that he can hold his own against the Republicans.

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP...
 

Reader Phil James, a Barack Obama supporter, writes from Des Moines (wait, Iowa still exists?) with an anecdote that shows Obama's aggressive branding strategy in action:
 
I knew there was something special to this campaign back in November prior to the Jefferson Jackson Day dinner in Des Moines.  My wife and I were in the parade that followed the Obamas up to the front door of Vets Auditorium.  Before the parade began, we pushed to the front of the crowd with our twin baby boys on our shoulders.  Someone from the side of the crowd handed us two handmade signs to carry in the parade, and we were all set to march with these signs until a campaign staffer grabbed it from us and gave us a campaign issued sign instead.  This was complete message control at its finest.

Point is, the Obama team has been on top of its branding from the start. Despite what some of the commenters have said, the seamlessness of the candidate's "corporate identity" does not automatically mean that he's an empty suit who's all style, no substance; well-designed logos and substantive policy papers are hardly mutually exclusive. (Obama has both.) That said, the campaign has been extremely vigilant about preserving and protecting its brand, as Phil notes, since at least last fall (and, really, for the past year). Clearly, Team Obama thinks this stuff is important. Which is why I do, too.

After garbling the name last night of Russian President Vladimir Putin's successor, Dmitry Medvedev--see video above--Hillary Clinton got off without any particularly excoriating commentary from the chattering classes. The only problem? Receiving the (relatively) silent treatment from the MSM is now earning her an earful from outraged conservatives. You think the press's overage of your campaign is unfair? they're saying. Try being a Republican.

Is there a double-standard at work here? Back in 1999, Boston reporter Andy Hiller quizzed George W. Bush on the names of foreign leaders. He didn't do particularly well--according to Bush, the leader of Pakistan was "General. I can name the general. General"--and the press gave him a beating. As Jonathan Martin, who blogs about the Republican race for Politico, wrote this morning,

such things are all about narratives and reflect poorly upon the media. Bush, the know-nothing governor who hadn't traveled the world and was prone to malapropisms, was supposed to be clueless about such things. So it reinforced an existing theme and was ipso facto news. But Hillary is the "experienced" candidate. So when she doesn't know much about Putin's hand-picked successor and dismisses the importance of even knowing his name, it doesn't matter.

Martin is right when he says that the media sees specific moments through the (often distorting) lenses of larger narratives. But there's a simpler reason why the Clinton and Bush "gaffes" have received completely different responses from the press: they're completely different gaffes.

In the Hiller interview, Bush was asked to name the leaders of four foreign hotspots: Chechnya, Taiwan, Pakistan and India. He admitted to only knowing one--Taiwain--and expressed no awareness of the challenges facing them other than to say that "the new Pakistani general, he's just been elected – not elected, this guy took over office. It appears this guy is going to bring stability to the country and I think that's good news for the subcontinent." Not exactly Kissinger material, there.

Conversely, Clinton delivered a relatively well-informed analysis of the situation in Moscow--"He's a hand-picked successor... who is obviously being installed by Putin, who Putin can control, who has very little independence"--before responding to Tim Russert's request for the "successor's" name with a series of syllables that sounded like "Meh, um, Me-ned-vadah," followed by a laughed-off "whatever" that struck me as a way to end the awkwardness rather than a dismissal. (I'm going to bet that Clinton thinks the name of the next Russian president is important.)

Simply put, Clinton clearly knew how "Medvedev" looked on paper but ended up pronouncing it like she'd "taken one too many shots of former-Soviet vodka with John McCain" (hat tip to my friends at Slate's Trailhead blog for the excellent allusion). Bush, on the other hand, didn't know his leaders' names--or much at all about them. If anything, I'd expect Clinton's "experience" narrative to make the press more prone to pounce on a foreign policy mistake, not less. But this is a case of ignorance vs. mispronunciation, and trying to equate the two is like comparing apples and or, um, or-ah-gan-gez.

Whatever.

Here's NEWSWEEK's Sarah Elkins with a dispatch from the Clinton caravan in Texas. 

DALLAS, Texas--Lloyd and Drenda Clemons have a knack for getting around Bill Clinton's Secret Service. At the former president's first inauguration in 1993, the couple managed to cut in front of thousands of eager onlookers and slip into the ceremony without even having tickets. So how'd they do it?
 
"I just showed the Secret Service gentleman Lloyd's high school annual," says Drenda, whose husband graduated from Arkansas' Hot Springs High School with Clinton in 1964 and, by alphabetical design, is pictured directly next to the statesman in the school yearbook.
 
The Clemons say that Secret Service ushered them into the event and that they were later able to "catch up" with Clinton. Lloyd says he has known Clinton since the 4th grade. The two men used to ride the bus to school together everyday and both played in the high school band. But turns out band class wasn't the last place Clemons and Clinton had seen one another: The Hot Springs High School class of '64 holds reunions every 5 years and, according to the Clemons, Clinton has "never missed a one." In fact, the Clintons held a reunion at the White House in 1994 where Drenda recalls being served "cookies and punch in Solo cups."
 
"When they saw one another at the White House," says Drenda, "they both started crying because they knew where they had come from."
 
Two years later, the Clemons--who now live in Dallas where Lloyd owns a chain of airport gift shops--found themselves at a Clinton re-election rally in Forth Worth. Drenda didn't have a yearbook this time, but she was able to find a campaign pamphlet. Using a tube of brightly colored lipstick, she scrawled "HS HS 64"--for Hot Springs High School 64--across the flyer. Clinton recognized the code and instructed his Secret Service detail to pull the Clemons aside for a post-rally meet up.  
 
At a Hillary Clinton rally in Dallas yesterday, the Clemons once again tried to connect with their old friend. The Clemons, who will vote in Texas's March 4 primary, are both undecided. While Lloyd whole-heartdedly supported his former classmate during his two runs for president, he says "you know, I have met Hillary several times and I still just don't know who I am voting for."
 
Yesterday's rally, which took place at Mountain View Community College, was packed. With a line of students snaking all the way around the campus parking lot and volunteers handing out t-shirts and hot dogs, it looked more like a rock concert or a Barack Obama event than an HRC rally.
 
"Can we move up?" Drenda asks a security detail. "We went to high school with him in Arkansas."
 
The Secret Service agent shakes his head.

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP... 

Logo at left; 'Change We Can Believe In' is written in Obama's signature 'Gotham' typeface.

Let's be honest. Barack Obama is not on the verge of clinching the Democratic nomination because of his policy positions--whatever his most evangelical supporters might tell you. If policy was all that mattered this year, Hillary Clinton would've won five or six of the last 11 contests instead of losing them all. When it comes to specifics, there's simply not that much space between the candidates.

Obama's success owes a lot, of course, to his message--the promise to pass Democratic policies by rallying a "coalition for change." But watching Obamamania over the past few weeks, I've become convinced that there's something more subtle at work, too. It's not just the message and the man and the speeches that are swaying Democratic voters--though they are. It's the way the campaign has folded the man and the message and the speeches into a systemic branding effort. Reinforced with a coherent, comprehensive program of fonts, logos, slogans and web design, Obama is the first presidential candidate to be marketed like a high-end consumer brand.* And for folks who don't necessarily need Democratic social programs--upscale voters, young people--I suspect that the novel comfort of that brand affiliation contributes (however subconsciously) to his appeal.

Seeking expert opinion, I tested my hypothesis on leading graphic designer and critic Michael Bierut, who was kind enough to dissect Obama's unprecedented branding campaign--and show me how it's helping his candidacy. Excerpts:

What are the elements of the Obama brand?
To start, he has this way of writing Obama in upper and lowercase in a serif font and juxtaposing it with that "O" symbol he has--the blue ring with red and white stripes disappearing into it, making the white form inside the blue look like what I suppose is meant to be a rising sun. [See photo above]

That's his "logo," right?
Right. A lot of times when he's at a podium what you'll see is, centered right beneath him, at the very top of the blue field that usually says something like "Change You Can Believe In," it'll be just that little symbol, functioning in the same way the Nike swoosh does. People look at that and know what it means, even though it's just an "O" with some stripes in it.

Has any other campaign ever "pulled a Nike"?
Well, Bush did that the last time around with the letter "W," to some degree. You would see somebody with the letter "W" on a bumper sticker, and it would kind of work that way. But Obama has gotten there much quicker and a little more gracefully, if you ask me.

How else is Obama's design different than what has come before--or what rival campaigns are doing?
He's the first candidate, actually, who's had a coherent, top-to-bottom, 360-degree system at work. Whereas, I think it's more more common for politicians to have a bumper-sticker symbol that they just stick on everything and hope that that will carry the day.

The thing that sort of flabbergasts me as a professional graphic designer is that, somewhere along the way, they decided that all their graphics would basically be done in the same typeface, which is this typeface called Gotham. [See "Change We Can Believe In" sign, above] If you look at one of his rallies, every single non-handmade sign is in that font. Every single one of them. And they're all perfectly spaced and perfectly arranged. Trust me. I've done graphics for events --and I know what it takes to have rally after rally without someone saying, "Oh, we ran out of signs, let's do a batch in Arial." It just doesn't seem to happen. There's an absolute level of control that I have trouble achieving with my corporate clients.

Then if you go to the Web site, it's all reflected there too--all the same elements showing up in this clean, smooth, elegant way. It all ties together really, really beautifully as a system. 

Is Obama's stuff on the level with the best commercial brand design?
I think it's just as good or better. I have sophisticated clients who pay me and other people well to try to keep them on the straight and narrow, and they have trouble getting everything set in the same typeface. And he seems to be able to do it in Cleveland and Cincinnati and Houston and San Antonio. Every time you look, all those signs are perfect. Graphic designers like me don't understand how it's happening. It's unprecedented and inconceivable to us. The people in the know are flabbergasted.

What does that say about his campaign?
My feeling, in my own narrow sphere as a professional graphic designer, echoes a little bit what Frank Rich wrote in his column on Sunday, where he was talking about Hillary Clinton's argument that Obama doesn't have the experience to run the country properly, and how you only needed to look at how her own campaign has been managed to see the flaw in that argument. I sort of see the same thing. I'm not sure that the commander-in-chief proves his mettle by getting everyone at his rallies to set their signs in the same typeface, but as someone who knows how hard that is, I'm very impressed.

The specific choices are also made in really good taste and I'd say to certain degree they also philosophically align with what his position is.

What do you see as the "philosophical implications," to use a highfalutin phrase, of Obama's design choices?
There are a couple of levels. There's the close-in parlor game you can play about what all these typefaces actually mean. Gotham was a typeface designed originally for GQ magazine, so it's a sleek, purposefully not fancy, very straightforward, plainspoken font, but done with a great deal of elegance and taste--and drawn from very American sources, by the way. Unlike other sans serif typefaces, it's not German, it's not French, it's not Swiss. It's very American. The serif font that he often uses to write Obama is delicate and nuanced and almost, not feminine exactly, but it's very literary-looking. It looks very conversational and pleasant, as opposed to strident and yelling. It's a persuasive-looking font, I would say. But that's putting these things on couches and pretending they have personalities.

Right. It's sort of hard to imagine in a voter in Cleveland (or a Newsweek political blogger from New York, for that matter) interacting with Obama's design on that level. How does it affect those of us who aren't graphic designers?

CLICK THROUGH FOR MORE... 

Here's NEWSWEEK's Suzanne Smalley with a dispatch from the spin room. 

CLEVELAND, Ohio—So much for feeling honored to share the stage with Barack Obama (as Hillary Clinton said almost sweetly at the University of Texas debate last Tuesday, a comment which many people saw as a valedictory signaling the end of her campaign).

Last night, Hillary Clinton 5.0 was on stage at Cleveland State University, taking on Obama and NBC News moderators with equal venom. There were audible gasps in the campus's large ballroom, a.k.a. "press file center", when, seemingly out of nowhere, a furious Clinton snapped after NBC anchor Brian Williams cut off a 16-minute policy debate on health care by asking her about her positions on NAFTA. Clinton, who may have been frustrated that she couldn't land a decisive blow on health care—her pet issue and one on which her campaign believes she clearly bests Obama—complained that she always gets questioned first. That may be true, but saying so made Clinton seem whiny. Especially since she pointed to a Saturday Night Live skit that many Ohioans likely haven't seen or heard about to make her case.

The skit, which aired over the weekend and portrayed the press corps as coddling Obama, clearly buoyed the Clinton campaign. But they may be so excited that they're overrating the value of a single, pro-Hillary SNL sketch. The bottom line is that when Clinton followed her complaint about getting questioned first with a vague and sarcastic snarl that she didn't "know if anybody saw Saturday Night Live, maybe we should ask Barack if he's comfortable and needs another pillow," she did not come off well.

Not that her campaign staff agrees. "I think a lot of people did see Saturday Night Live and I think she was pointing out that it was just funny that she was getting the first question just like they had illustrated," chief strategist Mark Penn told journalists who had gathered in the spin room after the debate. "It's almost become part of popular culture now that she gets the tough, hard questions and I think that if you were gonna pick one phrase that you heard in the debate that phrase would have been, 'Well, I agree with what she said.' And you saw Senator Obama say that about both foreign affairs matters, NAFTA, domestic matters—and I think that was probably the phrase of the night."

Penn said he is not concerned that Clinton might have come across as too negative. Instead, he said, she portrayed herself as serious and a fighter. "It was an extremely strong performance," Penn said. "The important moments of this debate for the people of Ohio were whether somebody favors universal health care or not and whether somebody's sending out unfair mailers or not." (The latter reference is to Obama mailers that Clinton says misrepresent her positions on NAFTA and health care. She lambasted the Illinois senator for sending the mailers during an event in Cincinnati over the weekend).

Despite their conviction that Clinton had a good night, her advisers were reluctant to be specific about their hopes for her on Tuesday, the crucial primary day in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Vermont that could well decide the Democratic nominee.

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP... 

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

COMBAT IN CLEVELAND: 
A Complicated Challenge on One Side; a Single Task on the Other (Nagourney, New York Times)
In Crucial State, a Contentious Debate (Washington Post)
Hillary Clinton Plays Victim Card (Simon, Politico)
20th Debate: Reality Show or Spinoff? (Stanley, New York Times)
Obama Tells Clinton: 'I Don't Whine' (Politico)
No Pain, No Gain (Corn, Mother Jones)
The Clang-Fest in Cleveland (Scheiber, New Republic)
 

TEXAS TWO-STEP VOTE COULD TRIP UP CLINTON
(June Kronholz, Wall Street Journal)
How is this for irony: Sen. Hillary Clinton, the ultimate Democratic Party insider, is struggling in Texas, in large part because the political system is stacked against her. Opinion polls show her rival, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, inching up to Sen. Clinton or already passing her in Texas. But it is the complicated delegate nominating system -- the Texas two-step -- more than popular turnout that could stymie a Clinton victory Tuesday and perhaps cost the New York senator the nomination.

BLACK VOTERS CRUCIAL TO TEXAS' PRIMARY BATTLE
(Leslie Casimir, Houston Chronicle)
Hispanic voters may be a swing factor in next week's Democratic presidential primary, but an energized black electorate could decide this cliffhanger race... "People should pay attention to the black vote because that's where all the action is," said Rice University political scientist Bob Stein. "But everyone is fixated on the Hispanic vote because that is where Hillary Clinton may be able to hold the line — but the black vote means a whole lot more." Although blacks accounted for 19 percent of the state's registered voters in the 2006 general election, compared with 25 percent for Hispanics, Stein said, Hispanics haven't been able to capitalize on that advantage in the Democratic primary. Stein predicts blacks will represent 30 percent of the vote Tuesday, while Hispanics may account for 25 percent.

OHIOANS HEAR POPULIST PLEAS BY DEMOCRATS
(Andrew Jacobs, New York Times)
For as long as anyone [in Youngstown] can remember, presidential hopefuls have made this scrappy, blue-collar stronghold an obligatory pit stop on the Democratic stump. Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy breezed through when the steel plants still turned the night sky orange; decades later, after the smelters had gone cold, Bill Clinton and John Kerry came by promising jobs to those left idle by the mill closings. Now it is Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton playing Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” at her rallies here, and Senator Barack Obama promising local residents middle-class tax breaks. Both campaigns are aware that winning the affection of Youngstown’s lunch-bucket voters and the party faithful can make all the difference in taking Ohio, a swing state whose delegates almost always wind up in the pocket of the candidate who takes the White House.

LOANS COULD PAINT MCCAIN INTO A CORNER
(Matthew Mosk, Washington Post)
The dispute centers on some of the most esoteric aspects of campaign finance law, but the implications for McCain's presidential bid are potentially serious. McCain applied for public financing last year, when his campaign was faltering. In February, when his campaign had turned around, he wrote the FEC seeking to exit the system. But to do so, McCain needed to show he had not yet received any federal funds and had not used the promise of those funds as collateral to borrow money. Should the FEC or a federal court force him to remain within the system, he would have to abide by a $54 million spending cap until September, when the primary season ends. His campaign had spent $49 million as of Jan. 31, reports show.

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP... 

For a blow-by-blow recap, click here for a transcript of my liveblog.

Plain and simple, they saved the best for last. After all kinds of ridiculousness (remember the UFO question, anyone?) the last two Democrats standing sat down tonight for a substantive--dare we say wonktastic?--discussion of serious issues ranging from health care (16 minutes!) and NAFTA to Israel and Iraq. It's a cliche to say this, but I think the voters of Ohio and Texas were the "winners" tonight; while pundits and political junkies know much of this material already, I suspect that people in Cleveland and San Antonio and elsewhere actually learned something about where the candidates stand on the issues.

Did Clinton change the dynamic of the race--which, after 11 straight losses, isn't exactly working in her favor? No. But I didn't expect her to, and I'm not sure she could have. Yes, the New York senator made some mistakes. Early on, she complained about getting the first question time and time again, implying that the media is treating her unfairly. Whether or not that's true, it looked whiny, especially when she cited an SNL skit to belittle Obama. ("Ask Barack if he … needs another pillow.") And I can imagine some people carping about her inability to get the name of Putin's successor--Dmitri Medvedev--out of her mouth intact. ("Med-medvedova, whatever.") But by and large, Clinton was as strong and substantial as ever. It was good to hear her admit that she wants a do-over on her Iraq vote, and I think she was smart to emphasize the fact that she's a "fighter" as early and often as possible. Along with reminding women voters of what her candidacy represents (and carefully casting herself as a victim, New Hampshire-style) it's probably her best remaining option. She made both points clearly and forcefully tonight.

That said, it would be hard not to acknowledge that Obama was at least as effective. As I wrote earlier, the policy focus actually benefited the Illinois senator. One of the most persistent criticisms of his campaign is that it's all style, no substance--so tonight's in-depth discussion gave voters a chance to see his wonky side, which is somewhat difficult to display at a 20,000-person stadium rally. He acquitted himself well. By claiming that she offers solutions, not just speeches, Clinton has set the bar pretty high for herself--she needs to show that she can outwonk Obama every chance she gets. Because that didn't happen tonight, he essentially neutralized her advantage on the "specifics" front. Plus his cool, deflective style--see: the difference between "denouncing on rejecting" Farrakhan's statements, the "turban photo" flap, "bombing" Pakistan, negative campaigning, etc.--served simultaneously to minimize Clinton's attacks and make her sound thin-skinned (which, as Noam Scheiber of TNR notes, is "the opposite of the battle-tested, Republican-slayer she purports to be.") Take her dismissal of Obama's 2002 speech warning against war in Iraq. When she pointed out that his actual Senate votes--once he actually had to cast them--closely matched hers, Obama showed his skill for parrying. "Once we had driven the bus into the ditch, there were only so many ways we could get out," he said. "The question is: Who's making the decision initially to drive the bus into the ditch?" Simply put, he's far more comfortable as the frontrunner than he ever was as an underdog.  

So who won, and who lost (other than the voters)? In my humble opinion, nobody and nobody (although I have to give a shout-out to Tim Russert, who gets my award for best moderator of the season). That's bad news for Clinton, of course, and good news for Obama. But as a reader named Chris wrote near the end of the evening, "Can I say that I find both of these people incredibly impressive and inspirational? I'm very proud of both of them." As divisive as this primary election has been, after tonight I can imagine that many of his fellow Democrats would agree.

Calling John McCain a "maverick" for his latest move might seem a little overblown. But "decent"? Sounds right to me.

After the ugliness of the past day-and-a-half--Obama wears turban! Obama is Somali 'native'!--I was starting to worry that I'd be forced by mid-March to opine on Photoshopped images of the candidate playing poker and smoking cigars with Ayman al-Zawahri, Khalil Sheikh Mohammed and Cat Stevens. But the presumptive Republican nominee's behavior at a campaign stop today in snowy Cincinnati hinted that my future won't necessarily be quite so bleak.

As a presidential candidate, you don't always know in advance who's going to introduce you at a rally. Most of the time, the opening acts are innocuous; a Lindsey Graham here, a local alderman there. But recently, a few of these folks--like union president Thomas Buffenbarger, who prefaced Hillary Clinton's Feb. 19 remarks in Youngstown, Ohio by comparing Obama to “Janus, the two-faced Roman god of ancient times"--have been less than helpful. Enter Bill Cunningham. Tapped to introduce McCain at today's event, the local conservative radio host dedicated most of his allotted time to--you guessed it--slamming the senator from Illinois. "At some point in the near future the media... is going to peel the bark off Barack Hussein Obama," Cunningham said. "Maybe [they'll] start covering Barack Hussein Obama the same way they covered Bush." Later, he repeated Obama's middle name yet again. Because when it comes to linking your political rival to a bloodthirsty dictator--you don't hear a lot of "John Sidney McCain" on right-wing radio--nothing does the trick like mindless repetition.

Frankly, I've long expected that "Hussein" would be a staple of Republican rhetoric between now and November--i.e., a word that the candidate himself would never say, but also never condemn. So I didn't expect McCain to do what he did next: apologize, and apologize profusely. According to First Read, "before reporters could even ask about the provocative speaker, McCain addressed the issue, saying he repudiated the comments and has respect for his Democratic opponents." "I never met Mr. Cunningham," said McCain, "but I will make sure nothing like that ever happens again." He apologized three times in all.

So there you have it. McCain says that using "Hussein" as a political jab is out-of-bounds. Now if only Hussein-mongers Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Bill Bennett would agree.

I'm not holding my breath.

Newsweek military blogger David Botti weighs in on Obama:

Over at the IntelDump last Friday, Phil Carter was urged by his readers to examine an anecdote Barack Obama gave in the Democratic presidential debate the day before. In the military community Obama's recollection of his conversation with an Army captain about the use of captured weapons prompted curiosity, skepticism, and disbelief.  As Obama said:

I heard from a Army captain, who was the head of a rifle platoon, supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon. Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24, because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq. And as a consequence, they didn't have enough ammunition; they didn't have enough humvees.

They were actually capturing Taliban weapons because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief. Now that's a consequence of bad judgment, and you know, the question is on the critical issues that we face right now who's going to show the judgment to lead.

What's got everyone talking is the idea that U.S. troops are so ill-equipped that they are actually using the enemy's weapons to turn around and fight the same enemy. My rifle company landed in Iraq in 2003 with hardly any M240G machine gun ammo. The rumor was additional ammo was graciously provided to the machine gunners by some Navy SEAL's. But that was when the war first started. How about now?

READ THE REST HERE

(Via TPM)

Here we go again. 

Barring any new revelations--like, say, who actually sent the shot to Drudge, and why--I was ready to let the whole "dressed Obama" controversy go the way of the Dodd. (Rimshot, anyone?) As I wrote yesterday, "If it emerges that top Clinton aides did, in fact, authorize the attempted "smear," then Obama's outrage would be justified, and Clinton should book her flight back to Chappaqua. If an unauthorized staffer sent it out, then he or she should be sacked--and the damage should stop at embarrassment." End of story.

But then Clinton surrogate Stephanie Tubbs-Jones had to go and unload a whole mess of crazy on MSNBC this morning--and now here I am, back on the chain gang. Heave-ho. The things I do for Stumper.

Here's what happened. Asked by Pat Buchanan whether "lovely photograph" in question was a "Clintonite dirty trick," Tubbs-Jones at first echoed the Clinton camp's talking points. "Understand this," she said. "The Clinton campaign does not condone people putting out pictures that they seem to believe are inappropriate." So far, so good. But the congresswoman quickly took the conversation in, ahem, another direction--as in, far from the planet earth. "But let me say this," she continued. "I have no shame, or no problem, with people looking at Barack Obama in his native clothing--in the clothing of his country." When she reiterated her analysis at the end of the segment--"We ought to be able to support their ability to wear the clothing of their nation"-- someone off-screen (Joe Scarborough, perhaps?) summed it up perfectly:

"Wow."

Where to begin. There are a couple of explanations for Tubbs-Jones' comments, and, in all fairness, I will heretofore examine each of them.

Perhaps she is insane. That's what it would take, I think, to believe that the largely Somali region of Wajir, in rural northeastern Kenya, is Barack Obama's "country" or "nation" and its garb "his native clothing"--especially considering that Obama was born an American citizen in Hawaii and has lived in America nearly his entire life. Verdict: implausible.

A likelier story? She's merely confused. Obama's father was, in fact, Kenyan, and it's possible that Tubbs-Jones meant "ancestral clothing" instead of "native." Unfortunately, Barack Sr. belonged to the Luo ethnic group of western Kenya, while the ensemble Obama donned in 2006 was of Somali origin--meaning "native clothing" is a bit of a misnomer even when extending the argument to ancestral proportions. But still--it's possible that she was trying to be, um, "gracious" and simply misspoke.

Finally, there is a small but significant chance that STJ is a politician. Whether you want to go the conspiracy-theory route (i.e., the Clintonistas are using an unassailable African-American surrogate to sow seeds of doubt about Obama's origins) or assume instead that she's a free agent, it's hard to deny how conveniently Tubbs-Jones silly remarks, repeated twice, reinforce rather than rebut the presumable intention of the original leak: to make Obama look suspiciously un-American--or even (gasp!) Muslim.  Because even though Hugh Rodham was the son of Welsh immigrants, something tells me that if "shocking" images were to surface of Hillary rocking this little number on a diplomatic trip to Wales, we wouldn't hear Tubbs-Jones complimenting Clinton for wearing the "native clothing" of "her country."

That makes the Clinton camp either a) devious or b) unlucky. Take your pick.

 

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

FINDING POLITICAL STRENGTH IN THE POWER OF WORDS
(Alec MacGillis, Washington Post)
Not since the days of the whistle-stop tour and the radio addresses that Franklin D. Roosevelt used to hone his message while governor of New York has a presidential candidate been propelled so much by the force of words, according to historians and experts on rhetoric. Obama's emergence as the front-runner in the race for the Democratic nomination has become nearly as much a story of his speeches as of the candidate himself. He arrived on the national scene with his address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, his campaign's key turning points have nearly all involved speeches, and his supporters are eager for his election-night remarks nearly as much as for the vote totals. But his success as a speaker has also invited a new line of attack by his opponents.

MORE: Obama and the Power of Words (Stephen Hayes, Wall Street Journal)
In a memo about the coming general election contest with Jimmy Carter, Richard Whalen wrote Reagan's "secret weapon" was that "Democrats fail to take him very seriously." Are Republicans making the same mistake with Barack Obama?

FINGER-POINTING, FRUSTRATING IN CLINTON CAMP
(Mike Allen and John F. Harris, Politico)
Looking backward, interviews with a cross-section of campaign aides and sympathetic outsiders suggest a team consumed with frustration and finger-pointing about the apparent failure of several recent tactical moves against Barack Obama. Looking forward, it is clear Clinton’s team has only a faint and highly improvisational strategy about what to do over the next seven days. Simply put, there is no secret weapon. 

PIECES OF TEXAS TURN PRIMARY INTO A PUZZLE
(Randy Kennedy, New York Times)
“It’s like running a national campaign,” said one veteran Texas Democrat, Garry Mauro, state director for Mrs. Clinton. “There are no similarities between Amarillo and Brownsville and Beaumont and Texarkana and El Paso and Austin and Houston and Dallas. These are very separate demographic groups with very diverse interests.” ... With recent polls showing that Mr. Obama has cut deeply into Mrs. Clinton’s lead in Texas, or even erased it, the state has become a political battleground to a degree not witnessed in a generation. And the rapidly mounting fight has reminded national political strategists yet again of Texas’ strange largeness — or large strangeness — a state that Congress decided in 1845, the year it joined the Union, might well be later divided into four more states should it consent.

OBAMA'S SUPPORT GROWS BROADER, NEW POLL FINDS
(Robin Toner and Dalia Sussman, New York Times)
After 40 Democratic primaries and caucuses, capped by a winning streak in 11 contests over the last two weeks, Mr. Obama has made substantial gains across most major demographic groups in the Democratic Party, including men and women, liberals and moderates, higher and lower income voters, and those with and without college degrees. But there are signs of vulnerability for Mr. Obama, of Illinois, in this national poll: While he has a strong edge among Democratic voters on his ability to unite and inspire the country, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York is still viewed by more Democrats as prepared for the job of president. And while he has made progress among women, he still faces a striking gender gap: Mr. Obama is backed by two-thirds of the Democratic men and 45 percent of the women, who are equally divided in their support between the two candidates. White women remain a Clinton stronghold.

CLINTON CAMPAIGN STARTS 5-POINT ATTACK ON OBAMA
(Patrick Healy and Julie Bosman, New York Times)
After struggling for months to dent Senator Barack Obama’s candidacy, the campaign of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is now unleashing what one Clinton aide called a “kitchen sink” fusillade against Mr. Obama, pursuing five lines of attack since Saturday in hopes of stopping his political momentum. The effort underscores not only Mrs. Clinton’s recognition that the next round of primaries — in Ohio and Texas on March 4 — are must-win contests for her. It also reflects her advisers’ belief that they can persuade many undecided voters to embrace her at the last minute by finally drawing sharply worded, attention-grabbing contrasts with Mr. Obama. 

Sure, the Straight Talk Express ain't what it used to be. But John McCain is still startlingly candid on occasion. Take today, for example. At an event in Rock River, Ohio, the Arizona senator told the crowd that to win the White House he must convince a war-weary country that U.S. policy in Iraq is succeeding--and if he can't, "then I lose. I lose."

"I don't think there's any doubt that how [voters] judge Iraq will have a direct relation to their judgment of me," he added.

McCain, of course, is right: his fate is tied to Mesopotamia. (If the president thing doesn't work out, Mac, perhaps you should consider a slot with the McLaughlin Group.) But it's not only--or even mostly--what happens on the ground in Baghdad that matters. In truth, McCain's White House chances may have more do with another candid admission, and how strongly it influences voters' judgment--not of Iraq, but of the candidate himself:

"Make it 100."

That's McCain at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire on Jan. 3, answering a voter who asked whether he agreed with President Bush that U.S. troops might not leave Iraq for 50 years. Democrats have made it clear that they plan to clobber McCain with the quote from now 'til November. The goal: define him as a bloodthirsty warmonger. On the trail, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have given it a starring role in the anti-McCain section of their stump speeches. "He could see having troops in Iraq for 100 years," says Clinton. "I want them to begin to come home in 60 days." The brilliant satirists behind the "John.i.am" video took it even further, positing an "Iraq Withdrawal Date" of 12,008. (McCain recently qualified his original response by claiming that Americans are not "concerned if we're [in Iraq] for 100 years, or a 1,000 years, or 10,000 years." How that's for digging in your heels?) And now VoteVegs.org has a new ad up on Washington, D.C. cable (top) in which a female Iraq veteran cradles her baby and blasts McCain for being "okay" with spending "the next 1,000 years in Iraq"-- demanding "1,000 years of affordable health care" instead. At this rate, we should hit a billion years by May.

There's a good chance that such silliness will work. In 2004, the Republicans mercilessly hammered John Kerry for saying he "actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it"--and McCain's current situation is strikingly similar. Both quotes are catchy emblems of the candidates' biggest perceived weakness. For Kerry, it was his apparent "flip-flopping"; for McCain, his unblinking support of a war that 64 percent of Americans oppose. And taken out of context, both comments are pretty unfair. Kerry voted for a version of the war funding that revoked Bush's tax cuts, then against the final bill in protest. Meanwhile, McCain doesn't mean that Americans troops should be hunting down insurgents on the post-apocalyptic horrorscape of the fertile crescent 10,000 years from now; he's trying to say that once casualties drop to zero, we'll hand over combat duties and keep troops stationed there to help maintain stability (think Bosnia). The problem is, a totemic soundbite swamps a nuanced argument every time. Rhetoric, in these cases, matters more than reality. It's a lesson President Kerry knows all too well.

Out on the trail, the "100 years" quote comes up constantly, so it'll be interesting to see how McCain keeps it from leeching the life out of his bid. Already he's battling back--ineffectively. "My Democrat friends like to distort that comment," he said today in Rock Rapids. "My friends, the war will be over soon... The insurgency will go on for years and years and years, but it will be handled by the Iraqis, not by us, and then we decide what kind of security arrangement we want to have with the Iraqis." Hmm, say Dems. So "the war" is almost over, but the "insurgency" will go on? What, exactly, is the difference? Where does one end and the other begin? And why, then, wasn't "the war" over six months ago, or a year ago, or on May 1, 2003? Uninterested in such subtlety, McCain's foes are already honing their response:

John McCain: For the 100-year war in Iraq before he was against it.  

Can't say we didn't warn you.

Last Friday, I told the good readers of Stumper to imagine they were political consultants newly drafted by Hillary Clinton to pilot her comeback. "How should Clinton spend the next two weeks, in the run-up to the critical votes in Texas and Ohio on March 4?" I asked. "How should she tweak her message, if at all?"

The advice came fast and furious (rest assured, it's no different at Clinton HQ in Arlington). Over the weekend, I sifted through more than four dozen smart, substantive suggestions, and here's the most interesting stuff I found:

1) Be a Mother: This was by far the most common response, and I agree that Clinton would be well served by "being herself" as much as possible. Neither I--nor the commenters--think this means something as simple as "showing her softer side." Instead, Clinton should strive to recapture the tone and style she displayed to great effect at the end of last Thursday's debate in Austin: supportive and compassionate, yet steely. The commenters called it maternal, and I think they're right.

"The problem with Ms. Clinton's Campaign was that as soon as she found her voice, she lost it," wrote mnoorist. "What she needed to do is stop talking issues and policy--I don't think people are listening, and start talking as a mother, and a woman running for the White House,  By emphasizing her "womanness"--with subtlety, and connecting with women, she has a good chance of winning both ohio and texas. I think Obama has shown that people do not want to hear so much about policy as they do about themselves and their own struggles."

howwiwowie agreed: "I will suggest she portrays herself as a FIGHTER (motherly though) to fight for what is the BEST for us because she CARES! Just like a mother cares for her children."

pmc21c cited Chelsea as evidence of Clinton's "skills and talents"--"her daughter exemplifies character," he or she wrote. "It is character that we need most in the next president"--while mintchip was short and sweet: "Be a woman, and do what women do best. Connect." Seeing as that's easier said than done, Peaceful Warrior offered tips on how better to convey a motherly vibe: "Hillary should try to use a softer tone of voice when making personal appearances.  She has a tendency to get shrill and that is a put off.  Further, she should watch how she uses her hands when talking.  She has a tendency to put her palms towards her audience.  She should use an open palm--up, not down as an invitation to get those in the audience to become engaged in what she is saying."

And votertoo sums it up best: "I definitely agree with other writers that Hillary should present herself as a woman with a mission.  It is well known that women lead the home and more times than a few they lead the home without the support of a man... Hillary needs to be rock hard underneath but express herself not as a competition to men but as someone like our mother, who would always be there with the right decision."

I doubt that getting maternal--however one does that--would alone be enough to resurrect Clinton at this point. But as a stylistic choice, it couldn't hurt. Watch those palms! 

2) Push the Patrick Analogy: When the Clinton campaign accused Obama of "plagiarizing" lines from Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, I assumed that there was more to the charge than met the eye. Namely, I guessed that Team Clinton was trying to suggest that Obama, like Patrick, his fellow inspirational African-American politician, would disappoint once elected. But I suspected that the Clintons were too worried about playing the race card to connect the dots.

But Commenter eagle14 says they should--pronto. Here's his or her take:

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP... 

Easy. Replace Bill Clinton with Tina Fey.

(I'll post the best of your campaign strategies in just a few.) 

UPDATE: Damn you, NBC-Universal. Or should I say "Sheinhardt Wig Company." No more Fey on the YouTube, so try this link for your fix.

In the highly unlikely circumstance that you don't refresh the Drudge Report every six seconds--as nearly every political editor I've ever met does--you may have missed the story that's been hovering atop the page the entire morning: CLINTON STAFFERS CIRCULATE 'DRESSED' OBAMA.

Needless to say, it's the buzz of the Beltway. According to Drudge, "with a week to go until the Texas and Ohio primaries, stressed Clinton staffers circulated a photo over the weekend...  [that] shows the Democrat frontrunner fitted as a Somali Elder, during his visit to Wajir, a rural area in northeastern Kenya." "Wouldn't we be seeing this on the cover of every magazine if it were HRC?" Drudge quotes "one campaign staffer" asking in an email. Drudge didn't post the message, which he claims to have "obtained"; but he sure as hell posted the photo, which shows Barack Obama donning a local costume--white turban, white wrap, walking stick.

Let's be clear about this: there's absolutely nothing wrong with Obama posing for such a photo. Other U.S. politicians--including secret Vietnamese double-agent George W. Bush--regularly suit up in local garb when touring far-flung corners of the world. The problem here is that Barack Obama is not "other U.S. politicians." As I've written before, "over the past few months, it's become clear that there are some shady people out there bent on spreading the claim----completely, inarguably, demonstrably false--that Obama is a 'crypto-Muslim Manchurian candidate.'" (It's absurd, as Drudge's "Clinton staffer" likely knew, to suggest that the media would crucify Clinton for donning similar garb.) Meaning that the photo, which shouldn't be controversial, will be---and the fact the Clinton staffers "circulated" it looks a lot like an attempted "smear."

But should we see it that way? I'm not sure.

For their part, Obama staffers are pushing the "smear" angle hard. “On the very day that Senator Clinton is giving a speech about restoring respect for America in the world, her campaign has engaged in the most shameful, offensive fear-mongering we’ve seen from either party in this election," wrote Obama campaign manager David Plouffe this morning in a statement to reporters. On comment boards across the blogosphere, Obama supporters are dropping words like "cynical," "disgusting," "despicable," "shameful" and, worst of all, "Rovian." The point, of course, is to suggest that the Clintonistas are slyly pressing for advantage among credulous, bigoted Americans who a) believe (despite reality) that Obama is Muslim, b) consider being Muslim a bad thing and c) would somehow see this innocuous image as "evidence" of Obama's Muslimness.

Which, if true, would be pretty damn Rovian.

So let's stay tuned before coming to any conclusions. I expect the Obama camp to keep assuming the worst of Hillaryland, and encouraging its supporters to do the same; that's just good politics. And I expect the Clinton camp to keep playing dumb. "If Barack Obama's campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed," said campaign manager Maggie Williams this morning, with irritating feigned ignorance of the charged "Muslim" context--and the fact that the original emailer allegedly implied that wearing such clothing should be cause for controversy. "Hillary Clinton has worn the traditional clothing of countries she has visited and had those photos published widely." Notably, Williams didn't deny that the photo was circulated by the campaign, which--as Marc Ambinder points out--"perhaps one can justify under the assumption that Williams doesn't have access to the e-mail records of all 700 of her employees." If it emerges that top Clinton aides did, in fact, authorize the attempted "smear," then Obama's outrage would be justified, and Clinton should book her flight back to Chappaqua. If an unauthorized staffer sent it out, then he or she should be sacked--and the damage should stop at embarrassment. And in either case, Obama supporters should recognize this flap for what it is--another opportunity to, as Obama said yesterday in Ohio, "lift it up [i.e., the Muslim rumor] and actively debunk it."

"What we have tried to do is just make sure that we are flooding the internet with the accurate information and pushing back as much as possible," he said. "I don't think that we are in an era anymore where you can just ignore these things and not dignify them. There was a time when they would be amplified as consequence of you calling attention to it. I don't think that's the case any more because of our media age."

Here's hoping that some good might still come of this ugliness.

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

THE NEWSWEEK ROSTER

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE...
(Evan Thomas and Michael Isikoff)
McCain's denial that he had a romantic relationship with a lobbyist was firm, but it invited a game of catch me if you can.

HILLARY SHOULD GET OUT NOW
(Jonathan Alter)
Clinton has only one shot—for Obama to trip up so badly that he disqualifies himself.

HAND-TIED BY THE TIMES
(Howard Fineman)
In running for president, John McCain loses his voice.

HOW THEY HAVE LOST
(Jonathan Darman)
In defeat, the Clintons are remarkably adept at picking up the pieces.

OBAMA: GOOD FOR THE JEWS?
(Michael Hirsh and Dan Ephron)
Hillary Clinton's surrogates are questioning Obama's commitment to U.S.-Israel relations.
 

THE BEST OF THE REST: 

SOMBER CLINTON SOLDIERS ON AS HORIZON DARKENS
(Patrick Healy, New York Times)
To her longtime friends, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton sounds unusually philosophical on the phone these days. She rarely uses phrases like “when I’m president” anymore. Somber at times, determined at others, she talks to aides and confidants about the importance of focusing on a good day’s work. No drapes are being measured in her mind’s eye, they say. “When this is all over, I’m really looking forward to seeing you,” she told one of those supporters by phone the other day. Mrs. Clinton has not given up, in her head or her heart, her quest to return to the White House, advisers say. But as resolute as she is, she no longer exudes the supreme confidence that was her trademark before the first defeat, in Iowa in January... If she is not temperamentally suited to reckon with the possibility of losing quite yet, advisers say, she is also a cold, hard realist about politics — at some point, she is known to say, someone will win and someone will not.

THE AUDACITY OF HOPELESSNESS
(Frank Rich, New York Times)
Clinton fans don’t see their standard-bearer’s troubles this way. In their view, their highly substantive candidate was unfairly undone by a lightweight showboat who got a free ride from an often misogynist press and from naïve young people who lap up messianic language as if it were Jim Jones’s Kool-Aid. Or as Mrs. Clinton frames it, Senator Obama is all about empty words while she is all about action and hard work. But it’s the Clinton strategists, not the Obama voters, who drank the Kool-Aid. The Obama campaign is not a vaporous cult; it’s a lean and mean political machine that gets the job done. The Clinton camp has been the slacker in this race, more words than action, and its candidate’s message, for all its purported high-mindedness, was and is self-immolating.

GOP FEARS CHARGES OF RACISM, SEXISM
(David Paul Kuhn, Politico)
The Republican National Committee has commissioned polling and focus groups to determine the boundaries of attacking a minority or female candidate, according to people involved. The secretive effort underscores the enormous risk senior GOP operatives see for a party often criticized for its insensitivity to minorities in campaigns dating back to the 1960s.  The RNC project is viewed as so sensitive that those involved in the work were reluctant to discuss the findings in detail. But one Republican strategist, who asked that his name be withheld to speak candidly, said the research shows the daunting and delicate task ahead.  Republicans will be told to “be sensitive to tone and stick to the substance of the discussion” and that “the key is that you have to be sensitive to the fact that you are running against historic firsts,” the strategist explained. 

AMERICAN ADAM
(John Judis, New Republic)
Obama's commitment to radical centrism could... be severely tested. Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, who enjoyed the support of popular movements, gave priority to getting their substantive legislative agendas adopted; and they succeeded by uniting their supporters and dividing their opponents. If they had focused first on uniting Democrats and Republicans behind common objectives, they probably would not have gotten their way... Jimmy Carter, too, provides a cautionary tale: The last Democrat to take office on a radical centrist agenda, Carter failed to tame Congress or K Street and was defeated for reelection. He had campaigned for the presidency on the presumption that reformers could overturn the status quo in Washington. In the end, he turned out to be wrong. The American instinct to continuously remake ourselves in the image of Adam--to achieve a decisive and final break with history--has periodically proven seductive to voters. And, sometimes, this instinct can produce important, transformative results. Yet the past--in the form of race or war or deeply held partisan animosities--has a way of lingering around. At the very least, it rarely recedes without a bitter fight.

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP... 

My NEWSWEEK colleague Michael Isikoff--ace investigative journalist that he is--uncovers a serious inconsistency in McCain's blanket denial of yesterday's New York Times bombshell (or "smear," depending on where you stand). Yesterday, I wrote that if "new info emerges, voters positioned to actually swing the election for McCain--independents, centrist Democrats--won't be as eager as Limbaugh to attack "the drive-by media." At this point, the public may be too distracted by the furor over the unproven "romantic relationship" and fawning process stories about his campaign's "sophisticated" counterattack to pay attention to what really matters--that is, whether McCain failed to meet his own ethical standards. But I'm betting that reporters like Isikoff will continue to cast doubt on McCain's reformist credentials. We'll see over the next few weeks whether anyone cares.

UPDATE: The Post has Paxson confirming that he met with McCain before the senator wrote letters to the FCC on his behalf in 1999. Jonathan Martin notes: "McCain's campaign continued to deny to Isikoff that the meeting had taken place. Now Robert Bennett, the Washington attorney McCain put on retainer to help with the original Times story, acknowledges to the Post that there was a meeting."

A sworn deposition that Sen. John McCain gave in a lawsuit more than five years ago appears to contradict one part of a sweeping denial that his campaign issued this week to rebut a New York Times story about his ties to a Washington lobbyist.

On Wednesday night the Times published a story suggesting that McCain might have done legislative favors for the clients of the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, who worked for the firm of Alcalde & Fay. One example it cited were two letters McCain wrote in late 1999 demanding that the Federal Communications Commission act on a long-stalled bid by one of Iseman's clients, Florida-based Paxson Communications, to purchase a Pittsburgh television station.

Just hours after the Times's story was posted, the McCain campaign issued a point-by-point response that depicted the letters as routine correspondence handled by his staff—and insisted that McCain had never even spoken with anybody from Paxson or Alcalde & Fay about the matter. "No representative of Paxson or Alcalde & Fay personally asked Senator McCain to send a letter to the FCC," the campaign said in a statement e-mailed to reporters.

But that flat claim seems to be contradicted by an impeccable source: McCain himself. "I was contacted by Mr. Paxson on this issue," McCain said in the Sept. 25, 2002, deposition obtained by NEWSWEEK. "He wanted their approval very bad for purposes of his business. I believe that Mr. Paxson had a legitimate complaint."

While McCain said "I don't recall" if he ever directly spoke to the firm's lobbyist about the issue—an apparent reference to Iseman, though she is not named—"I'm sure I spoke to [Paxson]." McCain agreed that his letters on behalf of Paxson, a campaign contributor, could "possibly be an appearance of corruption"—even though McCain denied doing anything improper.

READ THE REST HERE. 

From the AP: The Democratic superdelegates are starting to follow the voters — straight to Barack Obama. In just the past two weeks, more than two dozen of them have climbed aboard his presidential campaign, according to a survey by The Associated Press. At the same time, Hillary Rodham Clinton's are beginning to jump ship, abandoning her for Obama or deciding they now are undecided. The result: He's narrowing her once-commanding lead among these "superdelegates," the Democratic office holders and party officials who automatically attend the national convention and can vote for whomever they choose... Clinton still leads among superdelegates — 241 to 181, according to the AP survey. But her total is down two in the past two weeks, while his is up 25. Since the primaries started, at least three Clinton superdelegates have switched to Obama, including Rep. David Scott of Georgia, who changed his endorsement after Obama won 80 percent of the primary vote in Scott's district. At least two other Clinton backers have switched to undecided. None of Obama's have publicly strayed, according to the AP tally.

What did we tell you about the "Ides of March"? 

From Stumper, Feb. 13: Depending how March 4 shakes out, [the Potomac Primary] results--and the likely Obama wins in Wisconsin and Hawaii--may help determine the Democratic nominee by the ides of March. If Obama takes Ohio and Texas, I'm guessing that the decisive superdelegates will soon break his way and pressure will mount on Clinton to withdraw. If Clinton wins both, the race will continue through Pennsylvania on April 22. But if the result is muddled with a win apiece and/or a delegate draw--by far the likeliest result--Obama will have the upper hand. He'll probably lead in the popular vote (current margin: 700,000). He'll almost certainly lead in pledged-delegate count. (Now trailing by more than 130, Clinton needs to win 345 of the 573 delegates up for grabs between March 4 and April 22 to catch up). He'll have shown some serious crossover appeal (read: electability). And with 40 days between Mississippi on March 11 and the Keystone State on April 22, the superdelegates will have plenty of time to decide whether they want to prolong the contest or crown a presumptive nominee for the good of the party.

Barack Obama's staffers and supporters need a lesson in practicing what they preach.

Asked last night about accusations from the Clinton camp that he "plagiarized" speech lines from Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Obama was quick with the cool, dismissive catchphrase. "This is where we start getting into silly season in politics," he said. "Deval is a national co-chairman of my campaign, and suggested an argument that we both share: that words are important. That words matter. And the notion that I had plagiarized from somebody who was one of my national co-chairs, who gave me the line and suggested that I use it, I think, is silly.''

I've said it before and I'll say it again: he's absolutely right. That's not plagiarism. It's accepting help from a friend and adviser. Clinton was wrong to harp on the charge in Wisconsin--where it did little to help her--and wrong to characterize it as "change you can Xerox" in last night's debate.

Which is why I was disappointed to see Team Obama respond to Clinton's effective "final moment"--you know, her moving little soliloquy about how "the hits [she's] taken are nothing compared to what goes on every single day in the lives of people across our country," how both she and Obama are "going to be fine" and how she "hope[s] that we'll be able to say the same thing about the American people"--by accusing her of plagiarism, too. At 10:12 p.m., an email from Obama spokesman Bill Burton titled "Clinton's 'best moment' someone else's line?" arrived in my inbox. According to Burton, Clinton copped her "fine" line from John Edwards, who once uttered the totally idiosyncratic sentence “all of us are going to be just fine no matter what happens in this election, but what's at stake is whether America is going to be fine." (It's not the first time they've called Clinton a thief, by the way.) Soon, Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo noted that Bill Clinton had once minimized the hits he'd taken as well, and the Obamabots were off and running, cutting and pasting the damning quotes into comment boards across the blogosphere and emailing them to every reporter they could find (including me).

I get it. You think Hillary is being a hypocrite, and you're probably right. But regurgitating charges that Obama has already (rightly) dismissed as silly--especially when the effect is more "gotcha" than productive--is a perfect example of the very thing your candidate is campaigning against: politics as usual.

And that's not exactly change we can believe in.

To, you know, coin a phrase. 

If Hillary Clinton wants to kickstart a comeback, she needs to win Texas on March 4. But don't take it from me. Just ask her most devoted surrogate--some guy named Bill Clinton. "If she wins Texas and Ohio, I think she will be the nominee," the former prez told a crowd in Beaumont on Wednesday. "If you don't deliver for her, I don't think she can be. It's all on you."

Unfortunately, her standing in the Lone Star State is getting shakier by the day.

Ignore, for the moment, the fact that Clinton would need to win by 20 or 30 points in every March 4 state to close the gap of 150+ pledged delegates separating her from Barack Obama; disregard, too, Texas's odd allocation rules, which might force her to capture as much as 55 percent of the state's vote just to break even in terms of delegates. In this case, a win would be a win--and it would instantly change the national narrative from "Frontrunner Obama" to "Clinton Is Back." It's just that even a popular-vote victory is no better than a 50-50 chance at this point. Not only has Obama cut her lead from about 10 points around Valentine's Day to an average of 2.8 percent today--check out this chart for the visual--but three less spectacular (if no less significant) early indicators have surfaced in the past 48 hours that may show the state drifting in the Illinois senator's direction.

1) Money: After raising $36 million in January--or more than $1 million a day--the Obama campaign is now on track to rake in a whopping $50 million or more this month. Republican math whiz Patrick Ruffini notes that Obama "had tallied about 256,000 donors for the year as of the end of January," and that those donors contributed an average of $140 each (hence the $36 mil). Applying that same per-person average to February's 327,000 donors "would give Obama just over $46 million in 21 days"--and at least $60 million for the quarter. In comparison, Clinton raised only $13.5 million in January, and is expect to top out at $30 million this month. What does this have to do with Texas? A lot. For starters, it means that Obama is able to vastly outspend Clinton on the ground, dwarfing her $770,000 ad buy with a $1.25 million campaign of his own. (It's a similar story in Ohio, where his purchase doubles hers.) That's crucial in a state that's too large to fully cover in person. Secondly, the massive flood of small online contributions means that Obama can spend more time connecting to voters and less time gladhanding potential donors. As the New York Times writes, "Mr. Obama has done just a few traditional fund-raising events in January and none in February, in contrast to the Clinton campaign, which has been keeping up a steady diet of fund-raisers with either Mrs. Clinton or her husband, former President Bill Clinton." The more time Obama spends campaigning in a state, the better he does.

2) Early Voting: The good folks at Burnt Orange, a very smart blog on Texas politics, have put together a chart that plots "the stunning increase in Early Voting we saw Tuesday on the first day of voting in Texas" against the "percent Hispanic population per county, which is a crude proxy for support for Hillary." The result: "as the Hispanic population increases, the percent increase in voting lessens." Here it is (via Politico):

These results are extremely preliminary, and early voting won't decide the primary, but the numbers suggest that Obama, not Clinton, is leading the pre-primary derby there--and may also hint that voters in Obama-friendly areas of the state are more, ahem, "fired up and ready to go" (to the polls, at least) than those in regions expected to tilt toward Clinton. Not to mention the fact that the longer Hispanics hold out, the longer Obama has to win them over.

3) Black Turnout: In Texas, Latinos account for 35.7 percent of the population, while African-Americans make up only 11.9 percent. That's a three-to-one margin. But black voters typically show up on Election Day in numbers that exceed their overall share of the population, while Latinos have proven much harder to turn out--a gap that experts say might widen this year due to the excitement Obama's historic candidacy has generated in the African-American community. (His campaign's unprecedented GOTV machinery will help, too.) According to a report yesterday by John Moritz of McClatchy Newspapers, Obama supporter (and former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk) is claiming "that blacks this year could account for 25 percent to 30 percent of the Democratic turnout." And neutral strategist Kelly Fero is raising the bar even higher: "It's plausible that African-American turnout could push north of 40 percent in the Democratic primary." Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign forecasted in a recent memo that Hispanic turnout would "surpass the 24 percent mark it reached in 2004." If those numbers hold--and Obama continues to win 85-90 percent of the black vote and trail Clinton by 20 or so among Hispanics--he's likely to finish seven to 10 points better on primary day, writes Moritz, than previous polling predicted. Assuming the race remains deadlocked up until March 4, that alone would be enough for a win.
 

In presidential politics, John McCain is (or was, as recently as last November) what one would call an "underdog." Mike Huckabee might fairly be labeled a "long shot." Ron Paul? A beloved, well-funded impossibility.

And then there's Ralph Nader.

If you haven't checked up on the anti-corporate crusader since, say, 2004, you might be surprised to learn that, on Jan. 30, he went to the trouble of launching a presidential exploratory committee. That's right--"presidential." As in, the United States of America. And now, according to an email sent this morning to supporters (hat tip to Ben Smith) it's looking like Nader has convinced himself that the third time's the charm.

As you know, we've been exploring the possibilities in recent weeks. And here's one question that keeps coming up: What's been pulled off the table by the corporatized political machines in this momentous election year? Answer: Cutting the huge, bloated and wasteful military budget, adopting a single payer Canadian-style national health insurance system, impeaching Bush/Cheney, opposing nuclear power - among many others. Who will pick up these issues and put them back on the table? Hope you get a chance to tune in to watch Ralph Nader this Sunday on Meet the Press. 

Stumper is never one to declare a candidate DOA, but the math on this fellow is pretty unforgiving. Of course, the 66 percent of Americans who disapprove of George W. Bush could suddenly forgive Nader for bestowing him upon the country. And the 84 percent of Democrats who are happy with their choices could, as Naderite Patti Smith puts its, "awake from [their] slumber." But I'm going to assume, for a moment, that this election will still be held on the planet earth. In 2000, Nader received 2.9 million votes, or 2.74 percent of the total. In 2004, he netted 411,304 votes, for a total share of .33 percent--an 89 percent decline. If the trend continues, he should wake up on Nov. 5 with something like 16,000 votes. And last time I checked, that was about 62 million shy of a majority.

But at least he'll be able to spread his ideas. 

Go, Ralph, go.

In last night's pre-debate huffing and puffing, every pundit agreed: Hillary Clinton needs to change the course of the Democratic contest. But no one knew how, exactly. By evening's end, it was clear that Clinton herself was divided, veering from comity to canned critiques to compassion--and doing nothing to knock Obama off his stride.

What would you do differently? 

Imagine. You’re a political consultant, drafted this week by Clinton’s campaign to help pilot her comeback. Your candidate has lost the last 11 primaries by sizable margins. And the demographic groups who once flocked to your side—women, voters with incomes below $50,000, Latinos—have begun straying into your rival’s camp. The veterans in your candidates inner circle are at odds—some feel salvation lies in going negative, while others fear that a scorched-earth strategy would divide the party and do lasting damage to her legacy.

So, newcomer, what’s the game plan? How should Clinton spend the next two weeks, in the run-up to the critical votes in Texas and Ohio on March 4? How should she tweak her message, if at all? Should she shake up her staff further? Start naming picks for cabinet positions? Poach Barack Obama’s pledged delegates? Or present a moving human narrative of a life on the public stage—and lay off the negatives?

Give your best pitch in the comments section, and we'll post the smartest strategies as they come in.

Paging Mark Penn, Mandy Grunwald and Howard Wolfson. You might want to pay attention.

A round-up of this morning's must read stories.

DEBATE TAKES ON CONTENTIOUS AIR
(Patrick Healy and Jeff Zeleny, New York Times)
Mr. Obama, buoyed by 11 straight victories in the most recent nominating contests, sought to maintain a positive tone throughout, though at one point he accused Mrs. Clinton of suggesting that his supporters were “delusional” or “being duped” by his themes of hope and unity. Those few sharp rejoinders, as well as an emotional closing comment by Mrs. Clinton that seemed to move the audience — and even Mr. Obama — were the most memorable moments in a debate that had been loaded with expectation, with Mrs. Clinton seeking to stop the Obama juggernaut. After the 90 minute face-off was over, it was not clear that Mrs. Clinton, in the toughest position of the campaign for her, had done enough to change the course of the contest.

MORE: Clinton and Obama Debate Once More, and Does it Matter?
(Alessandra Stanley, New York Times)
At this critical moment in the campaign, it was not enough for Mrs. Clinton to look good; she had to make Mr. Obama look bad. But she was obviously aware that every time she tries to make him look bad, she risks looking worse. That conundrum was etched into her face and uncomfortable to watch: at times, Mrs. Clinton looked like the Jennifer Grey character struggling to show up her favored brother in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”

MCCAIN TURNS TABLES ON TIMES
(Jonathan Martin and Mike Allen, Politico)
Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign claimed vindication Thursday night after a sophisticated 24-hour counterattack turned a potentially lethal story in The New York Times into a conservative call to arms. The piece about McCain’s friendly relations with a telecommunications lobbyist—long-discussed in political circles and planned for weeks by McCain operatives—was the first test of his ability to confront a public-relations crisis since becoming the GOP’s presumptive nominee. But the reaction may have said as much about the mindset of the conservative movement on the brink of the general election as it did about McCain and his team. Few commentators on the right—including some who regularly denounce ethical lapses or weaknesses of the flesh among Democrats—paused to assess seriously whether the Times’s suggestions of conflict of interest were well-founded. Instead, many swallowed past misgivings about McCain to rally to his defense, on the apparent theory that anyone under assault by the most powerful institution in the mainstream media could not be all bad.

THE MCCAIN WORLD RIFT
(David Brooks, New York Times)
At his press conference Thursday, McCain went all-in. He didn’t just say he didn’t remember a meeting about Iseman. He said there was no meeting. If it turns out that there is evidence of an affair and a meeting, then his presidential hopes will be over. If no evidence surfaces, his campaign will go on and it will be clear that there were members of his old inner circle consumed by viciousness and mendaciousness. But lingering over everything is the bitterness of the rift, which has caused duplicity and anger to seep into the campaign of this fine man. The poisons have yet to be drained.

THE MOVEMENT AND THE MAVERICK
(Ronald Brownstein, National Journal)
An Obama-McCain race would probably accelerate the process, under way since the 1960s, of scrambling the parties' historic class alignment. Obama's strong support from affluent and college-educated voters in the primaries demonstrates his opportunity to convert Republican-leaning upper-income voters (especially men) now disaffected from President Bush. But Obama's struggle during the primaries with working-class white women suggests an opening for McCain to court those downscale "waitress moms" with the same security issues that drew many of them to Bush in 2004. The first trend should boost Obama in Virginia and Colorado (two affluent states atop Democratic target lists); the second should help McCain defend Ohio and besiege Pennsylvania.

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP...
 

My take on tonight's debate in Austin? Advantage, Obama.

That's not because Clinton had a bad night. Far from it. She was substantive and strong, and had the best moment of the evening with her forthright, compassionate response (above) to the "tested" question in the bottom of the ninth. (Although she also had the worst. "Change you can Xerox"? Painful.) As I wrote earlier, Obama played it safe, reiterating the "mistakes of my youth" line before reciting his "inspiring" biography yet again. It was textbook politics, and I expected Clinton to do something similar--even though everyone in the audience was well aware that her low point was probably Monica Lewinsky. But to my surprise, she actually alluded to the scandal. "As everybody knows, I've been through some crises in my life," she said. It resonated immediately. Then, smartly, Clinton pivoted to stories of the suffering of Iraq war veterans, and admitted that her trials were nothing compared to their pain. “You know, no matter what happens in this contest—and I am honored to be here with Barack Obama—whatever happens, we’re going to be fine.” she said, reaching over to touch her rival's hand--and echoing John Edwards and her husband Bill. "You know, we have strong support from our families and our friends. I just hope that we’ll be able to say the same thing about the American people, and that’s what this election should be about.” If the undecided voters of Texas and Ohio remember any part of Clinton's performance tomorrow, I suspect that this dramatic "Hallmark moment" will be it--especially after the cable channels put it on repeat. I even noticed a little mist in her eyes.

Unfortunately for Clinton, there's a larger trend at work--and she didn't (and probably couldn't) do much to reverse it. Obama has long trailed in Texas and Ohio--but he trailed everywhere else, too, and has ended up winning more often than not. In Texas, the latest polls show the race tied; in Ohio, Clinton's lead is down from 15 to 20 points last week to seven or so today. Obama has cut into Clinton's early advantages among Latinos, white voters, women and downscale Dems. I don't think that Clinton needed to attack tonight; snipping and sniping probably would've done her more damage than good. But for much of the debate--especially the middle third--she allowed Obama to preempt her best contrasts and even make her look a little petty. For me, the turning point came about halfway through. "Hillary's been saying 'Let's get real,'" said Obama, tipping his hat to the voters who support him and the Texas editorial boards that have endorsed him. "The implication has been that the people who have been voting for me or involved in my campaign are somehow delusional." The audience laughed. "The thinking is that somehow they're being duped ... and that eventually they're going to see the reality of things," he continued. "[But] I think they perceive the reality of what's going on in Washington very clearly. What they see is that if we don't bring the country together, stop the endless bickering, actually focus on solutions and reduce the special interests that have dominated Washington, then we will not get anything done." It was at once a deft dismissal of Clinton's major critique and a pretty convincing introduction to the voters of Texas and Ohio--who, believe it or not, are still getting to know him.

We'll see over the next 10 days or so whether Obama can come from behind in the Lone Star and Buckeye States as he did in, say, Wisconsin. There's certainly no guarantee that he will. But the problem for Clinton is that such a surge is no less likely now than it was before tonight's debate. Sometimes, as they say, reality bites.

Read my (charmingly typo-riddled) liveblog here.

The headline pretty much says it all. When Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama face off tonight in Austin, I'll be here at Newsweek.com covering every little glare, gaffe and gotcha moment in breathless, blinkless liveblog fashion. The best part? You can join in.  Thanks to good folks at CoveritLive, you can send me your comments, reactions and analysis as the action unfolds--and I'll incorporate the smartest, funniest stuff into my coverage. Got a question? I'll try to answer it. Want to play pundit? Be my guest. Go here to chime in now.

Thanks for reading,
Andrew
 

NOTE: I'll be updating this post throughout the afternoon, so check back frequently.

With the cable-news commentators barking away about whether or not the New York Times should have dropped this morning's McCain bombshell suggesting improper behavior concerning a former lobbyist--and politicos salivating over a New Republic story about internal strife at the paper--it seems like everyone is starting to forget that in the beginning, this wasn't a story about journalism. It was a story about John McCain. So let's step back, take a deep breath and reexamine the facts.

1. Did John McCain have a "romantic relationship"--the Times' words, not mine--with 40-year old former lobbyist Vicki Iseman in 1999-2000?

We have no idea whatsoever. First of all, the story doesn't pretend to prove that an affair was actually going on. Instead, it says that "top advisers" were "convinced the relationship had become romantic" and "intervened to protect the candidate from himself." The distinction is important; we're talking about concerns within a campaign, not anything approaching evidence of a love connection.

Secondly, nowhere in the story do the top advisers themselves actually confirm that they were worried about an affair. Instead, every hint of "romance" comes to us secondhand through "former campaign associates" who "had become disillusioned with the senator." As Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic notes, "associates" is "an umbrella term for friends, family members, aides and the like," but "if the Times really had former paid campaign staffers--aides--making these allegations, it would have attributed them to 'aides.'" Here's a typical sentence: "According to two former McCain associates, some of the senator’s advisers had grown so concerned that the relationship had become romantic that they took steps to intervene."

So it's anonymous "associates" relaying what they say were the suspicions of actual staffers--after those associates had become disillusioned with the campaign. Not the best sourcing. Of course, it doesn't help that McCain, as Matthew Yglesias puts it, "repeatedly cheated on his first wife Carol, of a number of years, with a variety of women, before eventually dumping her for a much-younger heiress whose family fortune was able to help finance his political career." (McCain has admitted that he had affairs.) But despite that backdrop, any report alleging a damaging affair by a current presidential candidate needs to be air tight--especially if it's nearly a decade old. It's clear that the Times hasn't come close to proving that McCain strayed again.

2. So was his relationship with Iseman even a cause for concern? 

Absolutely. Just ask John Weaver. McCain's closest confidant at the time, Weaver has openly admitted to numerous media outlets (including the Times, the Washington Post, Politico and the National Review) that, according to the Post, he "met with Vicki Iseman at the Center Cafe at Union Station and urged her to stay away from McCain"; Iseman confirmed the encounter. According to the Times, the meeting came after she began "turning up with [McCain] at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet."

Weaver elaborated this morning in an interview with the National Review's Byron York:

[Weaver] said he "had no reason to think" that McCain might have been having an affair with Iseman, but he was concerned about word he had heard suggesting that Iseman was telling associates she had connections with McCain... "When you hear back from several people that this person is saying they can get anything done, then that is alarming," Weaver continued. So Weaver met with Iseman, at a Union Station restaurant, and told her to back off. He told me he didn't exactly say, "Get lost," but that that was the gist of it. "The discussion lasted all of five or six minutes in which I told her to cut that stuff out," Weaver told me. "I said, 'You need to stop this.'" Iseman's response, according to Weaver: "She was not happy."

That's not anonymous innuendo; it's hard, cold, on-the-record fact. Combine Weaver's admission with the Times first-hand reporting, which revealed that "a former campaign adviser described being instructed to keep Ms. Iseman away from the senator at public events, while a Senate aide recalled plans to limit Ms. Iseman’s access to his offices," and it's clear that McCain's top brass thought McCain's relationship with Iseman was a problem--whether it was "romantic" or not. (The Washington Post reports that "concern about Iseman's presence around McCain at one point led to her being banned from his Senate office, according to sources close to McCain.") Weaver says the "get lost" meeting was a matter of preserving McCain's political persona. "Our political messaging during that time period centered around... placing the nation’s interests before either personal or special interest,” he told the Times. “Ms. Iseman’s involvement in the campaign, it was felt by us, could undermine that effort.”

But was it only about image? Was the smoke, in this case, unaccompanied by fire? In other words...

3. Did McCain actually do anything wrong?

Depends how you define the word "wrong." If we're talking legally wrong, then no; McCain's hands are clean. But that's not really the issue. Both the Times and the Post report that McCain accepted more than $100,000 in campaign donations from interests represented by Iseman and her firm before taking actions at Isenman's urging that were intended to benefit the lobbyist's clients--and drawing a rare rebuke for interference from the head of the FCC. (McCain denies discussing the issue with Iseman; Iseman says she sent information to his staff.) Here's the Post's account:

In the years that McCain chaired the commerce committee, Iseman lobbied for Lowell W. "Bud" Paxson, the head of what used to be Paxson Communications... In late 1999, McCain wrote two letters to the FCC urging a vote on the sale to Paxson of a Pittsburgh television station. The sale had been highly contentious in Pittsburgh and involved a multipronged lobbying effort among the parties to the deal. At the time he sent the first letter, McCain had flown on Paxson's corporate jet four times to appear at campaign events and had received $20,000 in campaign donations from Paxson and its law firm. The second letter came on Dec. 10, a day after the company's jet ferried him to a Florida fundraiser that was held aboard a yacht in West Palm Beach... When the letters became public, William E. Kennard, chairman of the FCC at the time, denounced them as "highly unusual" coming from McCain, whose committee chairmanship gave him oversight of the agency.

This sort of chronology, which raises suspicions of influence peddling, is par for the course in Washington. But over the past 20 years, McCain has styled himself a crusader for reform, routinely launching stinging critiques of lobbyists and maintaining that he has "never, ever done a favor for any lobbyist or special interest group." Now there's Iseman on one side of the story, "[speaking] up regularly at meetings of telecom lobbyists in Washington" to "extoll... her connections to McCain and his office," according to the Post. On the other side, there's a cabal of worried staffers struggling to separate her from McCain--and, in so doing, tacitly conceding that McCain's connection to this particular woman was stronger and stranger than any of his dozens of other relationships with lobbyists. And in the middle is the senator himself, perhaps betraying the intensity of that connection in a series of "highly unusual" moves that look a whole lot like favors.

Forget the "romantic relationship"; at this point, it remains a huge, hovering question mark. For now, whether you think McCain did anything wrong depends largely on whether you believe he should be held to the standards of "politics as usual"--or whether he should be held to the standards he's set for himself.

Here's Holly Bailey with the view on McCain from 35,000 feet.

John McCain’s campaign plane is usually a pretty jovial place to be. The senator, his family and aides sit in the first few rows, while the press is stationed in the back of the plane. On most days, the two sides openly mingle, with reporters sometimes able to sit close so close to the front that they can hear McCain and his aides talking strategy.

But in the aftermath of today’s New York Times story looking at McCain’s dealings with a Washington lobbyist, the mood is decidedly different. Before McCain boarded his plane, reporters were asked to sit farther back than usual on the plane. And when McCain finally boarded the plane, he failed to offer his usual wave at reporters and opted to quickly take his seat. During the flight, the cabin was unusually quiet, save a few quick discussions McCain had with top aides Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter. Near the end of the flight, Schmidt came back to the press cabin, where, with cameras off, he railed against the New York Times for publishing its story. “The Times in a post-Jayson Blair, post-Judith Miller world… went through a painful period of self-evaluation,” Schmidt said. “That went out the window yesterday with this piece on John McCain...This is much more a story about journalism than a story about John McCain.” When reminded that the Washington Post also published a story today, Schmidt shrugged. “The Washington Post piled on (but) the Washington Post didn’t instigate the story,” Schmidt said.

Is the Post getting a pass? Schmidt says no, but there’s a reason that the McCain campaign is targeting its ire solely at the Times: There’s no other paper more reviled on the right than the Gray Lady. And the story has earned McCain a level of sympathy from some of his toughest critics, including Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, both of whom have lambasted the paper for publishing its account on McCain today.

Until now.

It may be his only option. After more than two months of Beltway buzz, The New York Times last night published an article aimed at the heart of McCain's appeal--his integrity, both personal and public--that reported on worries among aides eight years ago that the presumptive Republican nominee was conducting a "romantic" relationship with a female lobbyist while he was chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee.  

McCain quickly denied the allegations, of course. But seeking to rally conservatives--who have been reluctant to support the maverick senator--his campaign immediately pivoted to declare war on the Gray Lady itself. "It is a shame that The New York Times has lowered its standards to engage in a hit-and-run smear campaign," said communications director Jill Hazelbaker in a statement released shortly after the Times story appeared online. On TV, McCain surrogates like Mark McKinnon and Mark Salter have spent the morning repeating that "the largest liberal newspaper in America [is] smearing the new conservative Republican nominee" and dropping talking points like "innuendo," "gossip," "blind quotes," "Jayson Blair," "Judith Miller" and even--gasp!--the "National Enquirer." (Seriously. I've heard or read the tabloid's name at least five times already.) The goal: make the case that the behavior of the Times--not the senator--should be the issue and unite McCain with the right wing against a common enemy.

Is it working? So far, so good. Longtime McCain antagonist Rush Limbaugh immediately accused the "drive-by media" of "trying to take [McCain] out." "The story is not the story," Limbaugh wrote in an email to the Politico. "The media picked the GOP's candidate, the NYT endorsed him while they sat on this story, and is now, with utter predictability, trying to destroy him." Laura Ingraham--like Limbaugh, an influential conservative radio host--also implied that the Times' motives were sinister. "You wait until it's pretty much beyond a doubt that he's going to be the Republican nominee, and then you let it drop," she said this morning. "Drop some acid in the pool, contaminate the whole pool. That's what The New York Times thinks." David Brody of CBN.com, the website of the Christian broadcasting network, told his massive conservative audience that a Times "hit job" is a "badge of honor." And Kathryn Jean Lopez at the National Review's Corner blog says she's received a flood of emails from angry conservatives. "I'm the typical conservative who has not been happy with the McCain ascendancy, but the NYTimes has accomplished what Tojo did with Pearl Harbor," wrote one. "They have awoken a sleeping giant.  We have been reminded who the real enemy is and it is not Senator McCain.  I'm ordering my bumper sticker today." Limbaugh, Ingraham and their ilk aren't so much embracing McCain as jumping at another opportunity to bash the liberal media. (Limbaugh, in fact, joked that McCain's "base" has finally bitten him in the butt.) But the sound and fury are sufficient for now.

That said, I wouldn't bet on the whole "McCain finally cements his conservative support" storyline just yet--or assume that it's the article's most important aftershock. Right now, the media maelstrom is focusing mainly on the journalistic ethics of the Times story, and that redounds to McCain's benefit--especially among voters who already support McCain. But it's only because there's nothing else to report. Yet, that is. Times editor Bill Keller says he's confident in the "substance" of the story; McCain says it's utterly false. A showdown seems inevitable. I'm waiting for the Times (or other news outlets) to put a few more cards on the table before I conclude that McCain has emerged from this scuffle stronger than before, or even unscathed. Conservatives may continue to cry foul. But I get the sense that if any new info emerges, voters positioned to actually swing the election for McCain--independents, centrist Democrats--won't be as eager as Limbaugh to attack "the drive-by media." Their fury will be focused elsewhere.

And McCain won't just be playing the victim anymore.

A round up of this morning's must-read stories.

FOR MCCAIN, SELF-CONFIDENCE ON ETHICS POSES ITS OWN RISK
(Jim Rutenberg, Marilyn W. Thompson, David D. Kirkpatrick and Stephen Labaton, New York Times)
Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers.A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity... Mr. McCain, 71, and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, 40, both say they never had a romantic relationship. But to his advisers, even the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee Mr. McCain led threatened the story of redemption and rectitude that defined his political identity.

MCCAIN'S TIES TO LOBBYIST WORRIED AIDES
(Jeffrey H. Birnbaum and Michael D. Shear, Washington Post)
Aides to Sen. John McCain confronted a telecommunications lobbyist in late 1999 and asked her to distance herself from the senator during the presidential campaign he was about to launch, according to one of McCain's longest-serving political strategists. John Weaver, who was McCain's closest confidant until leaving his current campaign last year, said he met with Vicki Iseman at the Center Cafe at Union Station and urged her to stay away from McCain. Association with a lobbyist would undermine his image as an opponent of special interests, aides had concluded. Members of the senator's small circle of advisers also confronted McCain directly, according to sources, warning him that his continued ties to a lobbyist who had business before the powerful commerce committee he chaired threatened to derail his presidential ambitions.

MCCAIN CAMP VOWS TO 'GO TO WAR' WITH NEW YORK TIMES
(Jonathan Martin and Michael Calderone, Politico)
John McCain’s campaign promised to “go to war” against the New York Times Wednesday night after the newspaper posted its long-awaited story on McCain's alleged relationship with a telecom lobbyist. Both McCain and the woman in question denied having a romantic relationship... The McCain campaign is using a two-pronged attack to push back against the story. First, they’ll argue it was a thinly sourced piece of innuendo journalism. But McCain aides will also strike at the source, using the Times’ liberal reputation as a means of self-defense to draw sympathy from the GOP’s conservative base.

CLINTON AIDS SPLIT ON HOW TO TAKE ON OBAMA
(Adam Nagourney, New York Times)
Some — led by Mark Penn, her chief strategist — have been pushing Mrs. Clinton to draw sharper and deeper contrasts with Mr. Obama, arguing that she has no other option, campaign officials said. Others, particularly Mandy Grunwald, her media adviser, have pushed for a less aggressive approach, arguing that attacks would not help Mrs. Clinton’s campaign in an environment in which she is increasingly appearing to struggle, aides said. This latest division within the campaign reflects intense frustration among Mrs. Clinton’s advisers as they look for ways to turn around their campaign against Mr. Obama, an opponent whose appeal and skills as a candidate caught them by surprise. So far, her own positive message has been outshone by his, and every line of attack on him has fallen short, fizzled or backfired.

CAN OBAMA BE STOPPED?
(Chuck Todd, MSNBC)
There's no dispute anymore. Sen. Barack Obama is the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination and he's one win away from putting this race to bed. A victory in either Ohio or Texas will probably drive Sen. Hillary Clinton out of the race. Victories for Obama in both states will definitely end it. Obama's trajectory is really stunning right now. He's 10-0 since Super Tuesday, and remarkably, his smallest margin of victory came Tuesday night in Wisconsin. That's right, Obama's 17 point blowout of Clinton in the Badger State was his poorest showing since Super Tuesday. He's gone from a narrow pledged delegate lead (and overall delegate deficit) on Feb. 6 to a nearly insurmountable 150+ pledged delegate lead. When you factor in superdelegates, he's still ahead by 80. In fact, expect Obama's superdelegate deficit to Clinton to close very quickly over the next 13 days. Right now, he's trailing her by approximately 75 superdelegates. My guess is he'll pick up a net of 20 superdelegates before March 4. That's based on more than a hunch but I'll leave it at that.

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP... 

Obama responds, via Richard Wolffe: 

Obama, struggling with a head cold that forced him to blow his nose in midspeech, tried to deliver a punch against both rivals in Dallas. "Today Senator Clinton told us that there's a choice in this race, and you know that I couldn't agree with her more," Obama said. "But contrary to what she's been saying, it's not a choice between speeches and solutions. It's a choice between a politics that offers more of the same divisions and distractions that didn't work in South Carolina and didn't work in Wisconsin and will not work in Texas, or a new politics of common sense, of common purpose, of shared sacrifice and shared prosperity. It's a choice between having a debate with John McCain about who has the most experience in Washington or having a debate about who is most likely to change Washington. Because that's a debate we can win."

Doesn't strike me as a particularly compelling counterpunch. But then again, it's Clinton who needs to change the dynamic, not Obama; his message is already connecting. Plus Richard left out what I think is the most convincing part of Obama's argument: "It's a choice between going into the general election with Republicans and independents already united against us or running with a campaign that has already united Americans of all parties around the agenda for change. That's the choice."

The whole "politics of common sense" thing doesn't do it for me, and the suggestion that Clinton-McCain match-up would center on who has the most experience in Washington is a silly swipe rather than a real contrast. But if you've ever met a Hillary hater, the line about Republicans and independents uniting against her actually seems plausible--and might represent the major difference between the potential Obama and Clinton Administrations. One out of three ain't bad.

Poor Kirk Watson. Last night, the Democratic state senator from Travis County, Texas (and former Austin mayor) went on MSNBC to show his support for Barack Obama in a debate with Hillary Clinton surrogate Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, a congresswoman from Ohio. 

But apparently Watson hadn't done his homework.

"You're a big Barack supporter, right, senator?" asked Chris Matthews.

"I am, yes I am," said Watson. 

"Well, name some of his legislative accomplishments," said Matthews. Watson smiled, and stalled, and tried to spout some platitudes about "what [Obama] is offering the American people," but Matthews wouldn't let go. A few moments (and awkward pauses) later, the hapless pol finally admitted, "I'm not going to be able to name you specific items of legislative accomplishment." It was the most agonizing moment of political television since last November, when Matthews repeatedly inferred that John McCain was married to his own mother. The flaxen-haired host kept snapping sadistically--probably to prove that he's no Obama sympathizer, whatever the senator's speeches do to his leg--but the damage was already done.

Or at least that's what Obama's foes would like to think. As the YouTube clip spread across the blogosphere, critics seized on it as the purest (and most painful) evidence to date that Obamaniacs support the senator for his persona rather than his record--and that Obama himself hasn't accomplished anything worth remembering. But I wonder if the effect of the video "going viral" (at least among politicos like us) isn't precisely the opposite. It's basically impossible to get journalists to actually talk about "legislative accomplishments"--and even more difficult to get readers to pay attention once they do. But the Watson flap has effectively transformed the comment sections of several influential blogs into substantive surveys of Obama's legislative record--and made comparisons of Clinton and Obama's "accomplishments" a briefly sexy subject of discussion. Go figure.

Sure, the Clintonistas were bound to pounce. Clinton herself brought up the blunder at this morning's "major address" at Hunter College in New York. But reasonable people surely hold the gaffe against Watson, not Obama--and would probably admit to themselves that, come to think of it, they don't actually know a whole lot about their chosen candidate's legislative accomplishments. (When asked the same question, for instance, Tubbs-Jones credited Clinton with "numerous" such accomplishments "all around the world"--but never named a specific example.) As long as the debate continues and the information keeps flowing, then, Watson's slip serves as an opportunity--now that people are tuning and Clinton is playing it for applause--for Obama supporters to dispel the myth that their man hasn't actually gotten anything done. In fact, the "name his/her accomplishments" question will probably become a standard part of the supporter interview--meaning that his and her lists of accomplishments will, too.

As I said, poor Kirk Watson--I suspect last night was the beginning and end of his career as an Obama surrogate. But poor Obama? Maybe not.

UPDATE, 6:43 p.m.: Watson blogs his mea culpa! "My mind went blank," he writes. "I expected to be asked about the primary that night, or the big one coming up in Texas on March 4, or just about anything else in the news. When the subject changed so emphatically, I reached for information that millions of my fellow Obama supporters could recite by heart, and I couldn’t summon it." Actually, I can kind of understand. One time I uttered the words "I've lost my train of thought" live on MSNBC. OK when you're alone with your laptop; not OK when you're on national television.

Expertinent is a regular Stumper column featuring interviews with experts on the news of the day.

By now, you've likely seen yesterday's most important numbers: 58 and 41. The first was Barack Obama's share of the vote in the crucial Wisconsin primary; the second, Hillary Clinton's. That 17-point spread immediately transformed Obama, a one-time insurgent candidate, into the presumptive frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. As every pundit pointed out, Obama had beaten Clinton in a state where she had no clear excuse for defeat, setting the stage for showdowns in Texas and Ohio on March 4 and leaving little leeway for further losses.

What was surprising about the results in Wisconsin--especially considering where the race stood a month ago, or even a week ago?
The real effect is we went from polls that showed a small Obama lead to this 17, 18 point ultimate win, and how deep that win is among demographic categories. On the Clinton side, it's how her strongest groups were groups that she managed to only barely win. That, clearly, is the message of yesterday's primary. Obama ran even or even won among Clinton's key supporters--women, middle-aged people, union members, Catholics and core Democrats--while running up huge margins of 20 to 70 points in his strongest demographics: black voters, young voters, etc. If Clinton is going to build a winning coalition in the upcoming states, she's going to have to do a lot better with her "base." Sure, she did okay with them in Wisconsin--but only because she didn't lose them by double digits [like she did with Obama's strongest groups].

Do those shifts--in effect, Obama's poaching of core Clinton supporters--have to do with something specific about the character of the state? Is Wisconsin different in some essential sense from earlier states?
Actually, these differences are largely in line with what we saw in Virginia and Maryland. They seem to be on course with a trajectory of Obama improving across the demographic groups from earlier in the process to Super Tuesday and then in these post-Super Tuesday states, where that improvement has continued. They're consistent with a long-run, rising trajectory for Obama. It's been pretty broad, actually, in terms of the groups Obama has cut into. It's not that Obama is only winning African-Americans or only winning people under 35. This advantage he's been gaining has really been across a whole lot of groups.

Would that cut against the Clinton camp's charge that some of these 10 states that he's won were outliers?
I think it would. You don't look at the states post-Super Tuesday that we have exit polling for and see them stand out as exceptionally different. There is variation in the racial composition, from what turned out to be about 9 percent black last night here in Wisconsin to substantially more than that in Virginia and Maryland. But if you look at other demographics, Wisconsin's not that different from Ohio, for example. And the bottom line is that we've seen these same patterns across states, not just in one or two.

Let's talk specifically about this trend of broad demographic improvement you've been seeing in Obama's numbers.
Sure. Take the white vote, for example. We've seen trends of Obama's share of the white vote going from 24 percent in South Carolina to 31-44 percent on Super Tuesday to now running very close, neck-and-neck with Clinton among whites. As long as Obama does that well among white voters--he actually ended up winning whites by six points here in Wisconsin--then the racial divide that we heard so much about back in January is either effectively a net zero or a very small advantage for Obama.

What about the gender gap?
The gender gap is one of the more interesting and telling ones. Clinton managed to win women by three percent, but she lost men by two-to-one, 66 to 32 percent. Clearly, her campaign has only managed to marginally gain an advantage among women, doing just better than barely breaking even. But whether it's her campaign that has alienated men, or it's Obama's campaign that's attracted them, or whether this also has something to do with latent levels of sexism--men being reluctant to vote for a women--nevertheless the bottom line is that for a group that's nearly half of the Democratic electorate, Clinton has been doing stunningly poorly among male voters. Looking ahead, if she's going to get her campaign back on track, this is a group where she desperately needs to cut down Obama's advantage.

Obama is essentially neutralizing what her campaign thought would be their silver bullet: women.
Right. If it's a three-point advantage for Clinton among women, that's pretty small. And that despite the fact that female turnout, at least as a share of the electorate, went up in Wisconsin from 52 to 57 percent from 2004 to 2008. So something mobilized more women as a portion of the electorate, but Clinton certainly did not win a lion's share of women--only a very small margin. Ultimately if Ohio and Texas are going to be Clinton's firewall, the firewall is constructed out of the bricks of the individual demographic groups. And that means she's going to have to be running far better among many of those groups in those two states than she's been doing the post-Super Tuesday exit polls.

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP... 

NEW YORK, NY--Call me crazy, but something tells me Hillary Clinton wanted the press to pay attention to her speech this morning. Acknowledging that hacks like me refuse waste their precious time on minor matters, she made sure to label the thing a "major address"on her daily schedule. Major address? said editors everywhere. We must cover it! Then she sent out excerpts of yesterday's remarks in Youngstown, Ohio--remarks, her press shop wrote, that would "preview [the] major address." Nothing like a sneak peek of a sneak peek of a major address to whet our appetites.  Finally, Clinton decided to deliver the speech at New York's Hunter College--a mere taxi ride away from the mainstream media's world headquarters in midtown Manhattan. Apparently the Newsweek building was booked.

Seeing as the Upper East Side is more accessible than El Paso, Stumper attended. Was it worth the one mile trek across Central Park? Yes and no. The Clinton camp clearly sees today's "major address" as the start of its March 4 messaging campaign--and plans, based on what the candidate said on stage, to focus obsessively on "the choice" between Hillary and Barack Obama. The question is whether those contrasts will catch on and convince Democrats to choose Clinton in time to save her fading bid.

Content-wise, there's no reason to think they will--mainly because they already heaven't. Flanked by New York pols and the usual multicultural cast of smiling supporters, Clinton recycled a series of applause lines that anyone following the campaign has heard dozens of times before. Her charge that Obama "favors" "speeches" over "solutions" and "words" over "work"? Alliterative, sure, but at least as old as New Hampshire. The line about being "ready on day one"? Been around for more than a year. And it's not like her attacks on Obama's health-care plan and present votes are news. Viewed up close--with your nose an inch from the canvas--it's hard to see why "the choice" Clinton is outlining today is any different than it was yesterday, when the voters of Wisconsin chose Obama by 17 percent. Or, for that matter, ten days ago--at the start of the Illinois senator's 10-0 streak. And you know what they say about not learning from history.

But I have to wonder whether today's major address was more about packaging than content--and, if so, whether the new packaging will make Clinton's product more palatable to consumers. First of all, it'd be a mistake to think the candidate was speaking mainly to reporters this morning, despite her eagerness to lure us into the room. She was using us to get to the voters--especially the voters in Texas and Ohio who haven't been paying a lot of attention. The message was simple: This is it, she said. This is your choice. Gone were the resume recitations and laundry lists of proposals that have anchored her stump speech for months--in effect, the case for Hillary. Instead, it was all "me vs. him." Every graf opened with a line like "there is a choice" or "this is the choice we face" or "the contrast couldn't be more stark" or "there are real differences." And in the end, Clinton tied it together with her clearest catchphrase to date. "Let's get real," she said. "This campaign is not about a campaign. It is not about a personality... Others might be joining a movement. Well I‘m joining you on the night shift and the day shift. And I’m asking you to join me to shift America into high gear again."

Let's get real. Not the most inspiring message, exactly--in fact, it's the polar opposite of "the audacity of hope." But Clinton's desperate desire is that the people she's counting on to keep her alive on March 4--Latinos, older women and blue-collar Dems--will view every contrast (words vs. work, experience vs. newness) through that prism, and decide, in the end, that they can't afford to choose "hope" over "reality."

It'll be interesting to see whether the press (and, subsequently, the voters) treat Clinton's "major" new message as a flurry of small, familiar brush strokes or a broader, more convincing picture. The latter may be Clinton's last best chance for a comeback. Obama's narrative has always been more seductive, and in the past two weeks significant swaths of the Democratic electorate have been seduced. Now Clinton has two weeks left to counter with a compelling narrative of her own. Call it "The Choice" instead of "the choices." If her story sticks, she may be able to keep this morning's promise: "This campaign goes on." If not, it's hard to see how she goes on much longer.

Here's Newsweek's Michael Hirsh with his take on yesterday's results. I'll be back later this morning with some expert analysis--courtesy of Charles Franklin of Pollster.com and the University of Wisconsin--that looks forward to the coming Democratic contests in Ohio and Texas.

Wisconsin, a state hitherto best known for beer, cheese and the Green Bay Packers, may earn a place in history as the primary that finally tilted the race for the 2008 Democratic nomination to Barack Obama. In a decisive victory that showed just how dramatically Obama has cut into Hillary Clinton's once-strong support among whites, women and blue-collar workers, the Illinois senator on Tuesday defeated his rival from New York 58 percent to 41 percent.

John McCain, meanwhile, drew within a breath of the Republican nomination, defeating lone rival Mike Huckabee by 55 percent to 37 percent. Huckabee has proved unable to garner much support outside the South, traditional stronghold of his fellow evangelicals, but the former Arkansas governor has resisted bowing out of the race until McCain actually reaches the required 1,191 delegates needed for nomination.

Obama, in an impromptu speech while campaigning in Texas, told a roaring crowd: "Houston, I think we've achieved liftoff here." As he has increasingly done in recent weeks while racking up nine straight primary victories-including Wisconsin -Obama all but claimed the nomination, referring to the "improbable journey" he began a year ago and saying his "bet has paid off." Obama also attuned his message to the general election contest against McCain and sounded his now-trademark call for "change." Because McCain endorses George W. Bush's economic policies and his war in Iraq, Obama said, the 71-year-old Arizona senator "represents the policies of yesterday and we want to be the party of tomorrow, and I'm looking forward to having that debate with John McCain."

Obama also continued to register a certain defensiveness against his rivals' attacks on his relative youth and inexperience. "A year ago ... there were those who said why are you running so soon ... You can afford to wait," he said. "I had to explain to them, I'm not running because of some long-held ambition. ...  I'm running because of what Dr. King called 'the fierce urgency of now.'" Whether the issue was Iraq, global warming or the economy, he said, "we cannot wait."

While major primaries remain in Texas and Ohio on March 4, Wisconsin was seen as test case of whether Obama could make inroads into Clinton's strongest areas of electoral strength, workers and women. He also won in a mostly white state, decisively capturing the caucasian male vote and belying a perception that he has been carried in previous primaries by the African-American electorate.

READ THE REST HERE.

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

YESTERDAY'S RESULTS
(In case Stumper is your only source of election news. I'm flattered.)

Wisconsin (D)
Obama: 58 percent
Clinton: 41 percent

Hawaii (D)
Obama: 76 percent
Clinton: 24 percent

Wisconsin (R)
McCain: 55 percent
Huckabee: 37 percent
Paul: 5 percent

Washington (R)
McCain: 49 percent
Huckabee: 22 percent
Paul: 8 percent

WISCONSIN AND HAWAII HAND VICTORIES TO OBAMA
(Patrick Healy and Jeff Zeleny, New York Times)
Senator Barack Obama decisively beat Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Wisconsin primary and the Hawaii caucuses on Tuesday night, accelerating his momentum ahead of crucial primaries in Ohio and Texas and cutting into Mrs. Clinton’s support among women and union members. With the two rivals now battling state by state over margins of victory and allotment of delegates, surveys of voters leaving the Wisconsin polls showed Mr. Obama, of Illinois, making new inroads with those two groups as well as middle-age voters and continuing to win support from white men and younger voters — a performance that yielded grim tidings for Mrs. Clinton, of New York.

OBAMA WIN SETS STAGE FOR SHOWDOWN
(Ben Smith, Politico)
Senator Barack Obama picked up steam with ninth straight victory in Wisconsin, beating Senator Hillary Clinton in a state where she had no clear excuse for defeat, and leaving her no leeway at all for further major losses.  His win sets the stage for showdowns in Texas and Ohio on March 4, two states Clinton's supporters acknowledge she must win... The results in Wisconsin, like those in Virginia, suggest that the next two states are an uncertain firewall for Clinton. Wisconsin has only half the African-American population of Ohio, and shares some of its characteristics, with a large white working class, and broad disenchantment with trade and globalization. 

OBAMA CHIPS AWAY AT CLINTON'S USUAL HARD CORE OF SUPPORTERS
(Paul Kane and Jon Cohen, Washington Post)
After the Super Tuesday primaries two weeks ago, Sen. Barack Obama faced continuing questions about the support he could draw from lower-income white voters and those with less education, who had to that point proved to be the bedrock of support for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. But yesterday the senator from Illinois broke deep into Clinton's base in Wisconsin. He solidified gains he made in last week's Potomac Primary, proving competitive among some key Wisconsin voting blocs that had been backing the senator from New York and overtaking her among others... "She's narrowly winning her base. He's overwhelmingly winning his," Mellman said. "There's no question that Senator Clinton is on the defensive. Senator Obama has proven that he can win the kinds of voters that he needs to win" in states such as Texas and Ohio.

OBAMA HAS UPPER HAND
(Ron Fournier, Associated Press)
The Democratic nomination is now Barack Obama's to lose. After 10 consecutive defeats - including a heartbreaker in tailor-made Wisconsin on Tuesday - Hillary Rodham Clinton can't win the nomination unless Obama makes a major mistake or her allies reveal something damaging about the Illinois senator's background. Don't count her out quite yet, but Wisconsin revealed deep and destructive fractures in the Clinton coalition. It's panic-button time.

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP... 

Here's Holly Bailey reporting from John McCain's Wisconsin victory party (in Columbus, Ohio). Without a real rival for the Republican nod--sorry, Mike Huckabee--the Arizona senator is using the windows of free, uninterrupted air time after his primary wins to attack the man he's expecting to face next November--Barack Obama. If his past two performances are any indication, McCain plans to focus his fire on Obama's "inexperience" and two most controversial foreign policy ideas--his willingness to meet with leaders critical of America and carry out strikes against terrorists in Pakistan. (Hillary Clinton also takes issue with Obama's positions here.) Obama's response? “John McCain’s remarks tonight shows why he’s offering nothing more than a third term of George Bush’s policies," said Obama spokesman Bill Burton in an email to reporters. "More fear-mongering, more than a century of war in Iraq, and more budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthiest few at the expense of hardworking Americans." So it's Bush, 100 years of war and tax cuts for the wealthy. Feels like October, doesn't it?

John McCain and his advisers say they aren’t counting Hillary Clinton out when it comes to who will win the Democratic presidential nomination, but you sure couldn’t tell that from the Arizona senator’s victory speech tonight after his win in the Wisconsin GOP primary.
 
For the second week in a row, McCain took direct aim at Barack Obama, who leads the delegate fight for the Democratic nod. “I will fight every moment of every day in this campaign to make sure Americans are not deceived by an eloquent but empty call for change that promises no more than a holiday from history and a return to the false promises and failed policies of a tired philosophy that trusts in government more than people,” McCain said to a packed ballroom in Columbus, Ohio, where voters will head to the polls on Mar. 4.
 
Speaking about the political turmoil in Pakistan and Afghanistan and the anti-American hostility shown by Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, McCain brought up Obama’s comments several months ago that if elected president he’d be willing to meet with America’s critics. “Will the next president have the experience, the judgment that experience informs and the strength of purpose to respond to each of these developments in ways that strengthen our security and advance the global progress of our ideals?” McCain asked hypothetically. “Or will we risk the confused leadership of an inexperienced candidate who once suggested invading our ally, Pakistan, and sitting down without pre-conditions or clear purpose with enemies who support terrorists and are intent on destabilizing the world by acquiring nuclear weapons?” McCain even played the age card, telling the crowd, “I’m not the youngest candidate, but I am the most experienced.”
 
Indeed, there was only one line in McCain’s speech that might be interpreted as a dig at Clinton—and that might be stretching it: “I don’t seek the office out of entitlement,” McCain declared.

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP... 

And by best we mean worst.

(Hat tip to Wonkette)

If you love adolescent lyrics and off-key, high-pitched, vibrato-heavy warbling, you'll love "Hillary Clinton--Making Our Dreams Come True." Personally, I miss "Hillary4U&Me."

The less I say--other than "beware"--the better. But I do have a few factual quibbles. Despite what ron0iQRe claims, I suspect the senator from New York has, in fact, "heard the word impossible" at some point over the past six decades.  Also, this time there is time for chance. There is always time for chance.

Over at the Politico, Mike Allen reports on the early buzz among party insiders:

Democratic officials with access to exit polls say Sen. Obama looks like he’s headed for a huge win in today’s Wisconsin primary... The party officials said that if the trends reflect in the interviews with hundreds of Badger State voters, the news out of the primary will be: Obama encroached deeply into three of Clinton’s core groups of voters — women, those with no college degree and those with lower incomes — while giving up none of his own.

Based on my first look at the polling, Allen's analysis is spot-on. At this early stage--unweighted exit polling is an early glimpse, not the final word--Obama has neutralized Clinton's sustained advantages among women (51-49 Obama), families with income under $50,000 (again, Obama 51, Clinton 49) and union households (Clinton 50, Obama 49). Couple that with a two-to-one Obama edge among Independents (63-34), who made up more than a quarter of the electorate, and it's basically impossible for Clinton to emerge tonight with a "W."

Team Obama is certainly feeling confident. "Wisconsin is almost the kind of state Hillary Rodham Clinton would have invented to win a Democratic presidential primary, brimming with whites and working class voters who usually support her," spokesman Bill Burton wrote to reporters at 6:14 p.m. "A poor performance there Tuesday would raise big questions about her candidacy."

Not the sort of spin you send out when you're expecting to lose--to put it mildly.

If the exit polls are right and Obama did, in fact, cut into Clinton's core constituencies, it doesn't bode well for Clinton's chances in Ohio, where she's counting on women and working-class voters to carry her to victory. The pundits basically predicted a loss; they didn't predict that Obama would shatter the demographic pattern that's held steady since the start of primary season. Except headlines to that effect tomorrow--and a lot of teeth-gnashing and garment-rending at HRC headquarters in Arlington.

By Catharine Skipp 

As news of the sudden resignation of Cuba’s President Fidel Castro rippled through Miami’s Little Havana overnight, it was not the ringing celebration of Cuba Libre in the streets that many had expected. So too from the presidential campaigns who were quick to point out that one Castro is no better than another as proven by the reign, to date, of Fidel’s brother, Raul, as acting head of state since July 2006. There has been little change to point to as the power shifted from one to the other. None of the presidential hopefuls felt that the resignation signaled any monumental shift in political direction for the island nation. The statements issued by each campaign and echoed in calls from senior policy advisors all similarly called for the release of political prisoners and reiterated that this ‘change’ is no change.

Randy Scheunemann, Sen. John McCain’s director of Foreign Policy and National Security said that the Cuban people have no more freedom or liberty today than they did yesterday; they are under the same repression from the same secret police today that have been used against them for generations. He says Sen. McCain has always advocated freedom for the Cuban people and continuing the embargo until there was real democratic change on the island. “I think it is a mistake to think there is going to be a real change in this government’s attitude as long the Castro brothers and the old guard remain in power.” McCain said the resignation is “nearly half a century overdue…Yet freedom for the Cuban people is not yet at hand, and the Castro brother’s clearly intend to maintain their grip on power.”

Sen. Barak Obama’s senior policy advisor, Tony Lake, said while Cuba is obviously undergoing a transition, it remains to be seen if there will be true change. “It is important that we have a dialogue to try to effect this because it will certainly not be the case that democracy will bloom overnight.” He said even though Fidel Castro’s brother, Raul, has made some overtures about opening a dialog with the US, “Raul’s suggestions at reforms have been more on the economic side than on the political side.” Obama, said in a prepared statement: “Cuba’s future should be determined by the Cuban people and not by an anti-democratic successor regime…If the Cuban leadership begins opening Cuba to meaningful democratic change, the United States must be prepared to begin taking steps to normalize relations and to ease the embargo of the last five decades."

The Clinton campaign issued a statement calling on the new leadership in Cuba to choose to “continue with the failed policies of the past that have stifled democratic freedoms and stunted economic growth-or take a historic step to bring Cuba into the community of democratic nations.”

While Fidel steps down as President and Commander-in-Chief, he retains his position as Secretary General of the Cuban Communist Party.

(Via TNR) 

For nerds like Stumper who monitor the wires for fluctuations in the approval ratings of Laura Bush's hairstyle, Gallup's latest national tracking poll is almost enough to induce a state of statistical shock. Not only does it show Barack Obama leading Hillary Clinton 49 percent to 42 percent overall, but suggests for the first time that eight straight losses--and the "Frontrunner Obama?" headlines that followed--have had a disastrously deleterious effect on the New York senator's natural coalition: Latinos, older voters and women.

To wit. After Super Tuesday, Clinton led Obama nearly two-to-one (63-32) among Hispanic Democratic voters. But now Obama actually leads among Hispanics, with 50 percent support to Clinton's 46. Women show similar slippage, dipping from 53-38 Clinton on Feb. 8 to 46-45 Clinton today. And middle-aged voters are even worse, plunging from from 49-42 Clinton to 51-42 Obama. Is nothing sacred?

Team Clinton will likely dismiss such dismal national figures as irrelevant. After all, they'd say, we're fighting this battle state by state, not coast to coast. But the national numbers do matter at this point. Yes, there's not always a clear line between the big picture and what's happening on the ground--especially when a campaign is actually, you know, reaching out to local voters on TV, radio and the stump. But the loss of support among Hispanics is enough to sink Clinton in Texas, and significant drops among women and middle-aged voters would be spell doom in Ohio. What's more, there's nothing but time between now and March 4--meaning that today's face-off in Wisconsin could be more important (and determinative) than anyone expected.

Here's why. If Obama wins tonight (and takes his birth state of Hawaii), he'll wrap up a perfect 10-0 post-Super Tuesday sweep. The "Frontrunner Obama?" headlines will harden into conventional wisdom, and whatever impact the coverage of his victories (not to mention the victories themselves) has had on Democrats nationwide will only intensify. Without any contests between now and March 4, there won't be much--barring an Obama meltdown--to reverse what we're already seeing in the Gallup numbers. In that case, there's no reason to think that Clinton's key supporters won't keep drifting to the man with the Big 'Mo--making it difficult (if such seepage does trickle down) to keep up in Texas and Ohio.

On the other hand, if Clinton wins Wisconsin, all bets are off. That would shock the pundits, rewrite the headlines and instantly brake Obama's momentum. More importantly, it would likely convince the women, older folks and Latinos who supported Clinton as recently as Super Tuesday to take a second look--meaning that instead of spending the last two weeks of February feebly plugging holes in her sinking ship, Clinton could actually start shoring it up for the stormy days ahead.

Someone get the woman a cheesehead hat. Pronto.

After dissing the earnest, pro-Obama hipsters of "Yes We Can," praising their anti-McCain parodists ("John.i.am") and comparing the maniacal "Hillary4U&Me" to a jingle for hepatitis B, it's only fair that Stumper takes note of the latest supporter-generated musical extravaganza: Mike Huckabee's "High Hopes" (above).

How does it compare? I'm torn. On the one hand, I appreciate the historical allusion; originally popularized in 1959 by Frank Sinatra, "High Hopes" was rerecorded by the Rat Pack in 1960 to serve as a campaign theme for John F. Kennedy. (Lyrics included the immortal phrase, "Oops, there goes the opposition -- KERPLOP!") But whatever trivia points the Huckafans may have scored by plundering the past, they've more than lost with their actual rendition of the song. Without spoiling the surprise, let me say that "overeager Disney World cast member performs at Asian karaoke joint circa 1997" wouldn't be too far off the mark.

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

WHEN THE MAGIC FADES
(David Brooks, New York Times)
How exactly would all this unity he talks about come to pass? How is a 47-year-old novice going to unify highly polarized 70-something committee chairs? What will happen if the nation’s 261,000 lobbyists don’t see the light, even after the laying on of hands? Does The Changemaker have the guts to take on the special interests in his own party — the trial lawyers, the teachers’ unions, the AARP? The Gang of 14 created bipartisan unity on judges, but Obama sat it out. Kennedy and McCain created a bipartisan deal on immigration. Obama opted out of the parts that displeased the unions. Sixty-eight senators supported a bipartisan deal on FISA. Obama voted no. And if he were president now, how would the High Deacon of Unity heal the breach that split the House last week? The victims of O.C.S. struggle against Obama-myopia, or the inability to see beyond Election Day. But here’s the fascinating thing: They still like him. They know that most of his hope-mongering is vaporous. They know that he knows it’s vaporous.

HOW HILLARY CAN WIN
(Ben Smith, Politico)
Strategists almost universally said Clinton’s only hope is to bring Obama down through more — and more direct — attacks on his readiness to lead. And if that works, Clinton’s road map to victory is simply to start winning. An unexpected victory in Wisconsin on Tuesday would restore her campaign’s momentum. And win or lose there, Clinton, as her campaign has acknowledged, must win Ohio and Texas on March 4. Then, as the race stretches through the long spring of March, April, May and June, she needs to win the big state of Pennsylvania and — just as important — to win the argument about why she’s winning, the strategists said.

DECISION GOES TO VOTERS TODAY
(Greg G. Borowski, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
In what amounted to a series of closing arguments, four would-be presidents raced from rally to rally Monday to make their best case to Wisconsin voters, who are to issue their verdict today. On the Democratic side, Barack Obama faced sniping over some recycled rhetoric, and Hillary Rodham Clinton benefited from an unplanned full day in the state. Meanwhile, all-but-minted Republican nominee John McCain arrived in Appleton with the endorsement of a former president, and Mike Huckabee called on voters to reject "party bosses" and the idea that "it's just (McCain's) turn. The results tonight won't seal the nomination on either side, but they could put a dramatic stamp on what remains of the 2008 race.

CLINTON TARGETS PLEDGED DELEGATES
(Roger Simon, Politico)
Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign intends to go after delegates whom Barack Obama has already won in the caucuses and primaries if she needs them to win the nomination. This strategy was confirmed to me by a high-ranking Clinton official on Monday. And I am not talking about superdelegates, those 795 party big shots who are not pledged to anybody. I am talking about getting pledged delegates to switch sides. What? Isn't that impossible? A pledged delegate is pledged to a particular candidate and cannot switch, right? Wrong.

TEAM FORMS NEW PLAN FOR NEW FIGHT
(Michael D. Shear, Washington Post)
Five top aides to Sen. John McCain hunkered down for two days of meetings at the senator's rustic cabin south of Flagstaff, Ariz., over the weekend as they began to plot his transformation from primary-season candidate to Republican nominee. As they ate barbecue with McCain and his wife, Cindy, the campaign's inner circle debated the dynamics of a race against either Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton or Sen. Barack Obama, the funding necessary for victory, the political climate likely to exist six months from now, and the shape of the organization they will need to quickly assemble.

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP... 

The fourth of four posts in which Stumper reality-checks the Democratic contest. Click through for Wisconsin, Texas and the Hart-Mondale analogy.

Hillary Clinton is not only beating Obama in the latest Ohio polls-she's crushing him. In late January, she led 42-19, and even after Super Tuesday and a few follow-up wins for Obama, the New York senator is still ahead by margins ranging from 14 to 21 percent.

Still, a storyline is emerging in the press that Obama will close that gap between now and March 4. For the most part, the case looks something like this: 1) Obama always trails early on and gains ground as he stumps (and organizes) in a particular state, 2) most of the polls that show Clinton leading (with the exception of Rasmussen, a sketchy one-day sample) were taken before Obama's Potomac Primary wins, and if he captures Wisconsin his Buckeye State stats will surely surge and 3) Ohio's demographics mirror either Wisconsin's (where Obama is ahead) or Missouri's (which he's already won). Here's Jeff Greenfield of Slate making the case for Wisconsin:

In Wisconsin, according to exit polls from the 2004 presidential primary, 57 percent of the voters called themselves moderates or conservatives. Seventy-five percent had incomes of $75,000 a year or less; 50 percent earned less than $50,000 a year. A third of the voters were Catholic. More than half had no college education and more than one in five were union members. This is the kind of electorate Clinton is counting on in Ohio and, in April, in Pennsylvania, because it's the electorate that favored her up until Obama's big victories in Maryland and Virginia.

And Joe Klein of Time arguing for Missouri:

Ohio's population is 84 percent white (the exact same as in Missouri), 11.8 percent black (11.3 percent in Missouri) and 2.3 percent Hispanic (2.8 percent in Missouri). The percentages of college graduates and the household-income distribution are nearly identical as well.

I don't quite buy it. Sure, there's something to the "room for growth" and "wait for new polls" lines of reasoning. But while I'm as much a fan of demography as destiny as the next political hack, in this case, it falls a little short.

Only 37 percent of the 2004 Democratic primary electorate in Ohio, for example, graduated from college or graduate school--which is 10 percent less than Wisconsin. That alone makes Ohio friendlier terrain for Clinton, whose margins over Obama typically grow as one descends the education ladder. What's more, Ohio bests Wisconsin in number of union households (by 10 percent) and voters who make under $75,000 a year (four percent)--both key Clinton demographics. I wrote last Friday that the similarities between Ohio and Wisconsin suggested that the latter was would be more welcoming to Clinton than her campaign was willing to admit, but I don't think a Wisconsin win will automatically augur an Obama surge in Ohio.

Missouri, on the other hand, matches Ohio closely in terms of demography. But while the exit polls clearly show a Democratic electorate that's about 50 percent working-class (sub-$50,000) in both states, the surveys can't reveal who exactly those voters are. Ohio is a hard-core rust-belt state; Missouri, not as much. Manufacturing was never as important in Missouri as it was Ohio--which means that the loss of manufacturing in Missouri has not produced nearly as devastating a decline as in Ohio.

Combine that with an electorate that's considerably less urban than Missouri's (34 percent to 44 percent, respectively) and you start to see why differences in character--as opposed to quantity--might help Clinton maintain her current edge.  We'll see soon enough whether Obama's unbeaten streak changes the calculus. But for now, at least, the Buckeye State looks to be the strongest of Clinton's March 4 firewalls.

By Matthew Philips

It was the epitome of middle-class middle America: a bowling alley in Milwaukee, Wis., on a Sunday afternoon. Nachos and pizza and pitchers of Miller Light for $8, NASCAR on TV, kids plunking tokens into arcade games, Mike and Janet Huckabee bowling 10 frames. Fresh from a trip to the Cayman Islands, where he gave a paid speech at a black-tie leadership awards banquet Saturday night, Mike Huckabee returned to the trail in preparation for Tuesday’s Wisconsin primary with a trip to Olympic Lanes in South Milwaukee. He and his wife, Janet, were greeted by a few hundred supporters, though some had clearly shown up just to throw a few frames and were surprised by the gathered media. A few recoiled at the sight of cameramen amassed at the door and decided to go home. But by the time the Huckabees made their way to lane 23, surrounded by a huddle of media and fans while donning their bowling shoes, the whole place was paying attention. The Huckabees combined for an 86 in ten frames with each throwing a few gutterballs and Janet picking up a spare (the highlight of the effort). The former first couple of Arkansas displayed solid, if rusty, form. "He took me bowling on our first date," said Janet, who was a little more consistent as a bowler--Mike’s attempts, in a metaphor of political leanings, strayed to the far right on most of his throws. They took on a team of media members, including yours truly, who outdid the Huckabees with a 112. Huckabee picked out a few reluctant members of the traveling press and hammed it up by turning the cameras on them as cameramen and embedded network producers lined up for their turn to bowl.

After shaking hands and signing "I Like Mike" campaign signs for a good 45 minutes, Huckabee gave an impromptu press conference, where he was immediately asked about his trip to the Caymans. His tanned face and beet-red ears weren't from sitting on the beach, he said, but from running seven miles on Saturday. (Huckabee still hopes to run the Boston marathon in April.) Huckabee has spent the last few months railing against offshore tax havens such as the Caymans for keeping “$12 trillion” out of the U.S. economy, and Sunday he said that he had met for an hour with a Caymans official whom he called “the equivalent of the prime minister.” Though the campaign has refused to name the official, Huckabee said the two discussed "efforts to clean up the banking industry and make themselves a financial services center, not so much to launder money.” Not that there’s anything shady about the Caymans' financial dealings. “It’s perfectly legal,” he said. “The problem is why should U.S. investors have to put their money in places other than the United States? Because our tax system is chocking the daylights out of investors.” Which brought him to his idea for the Fair Tax, which he argues would bring capital back to the U.S. by doing away with the federal income tax. So, what did the Caymans official think of the Fair Tax? “I’m sure he would rather not see us have it.”

Today, Huckabee is making three campaign stops around Wisconsin before flying to Little Rock, Ark., later this afternoon, just as he did on the eve of last Tuesday's Potomac Primary, to spend some time at home. He'll continue on to Texas and Ohio later in the week no matter the outcome of the Wisconsin primary.

The third in a series of four posts in which Stumper reality-checks the Democratic contest. Stay tuned for Ohio later today.

UPDATE, 12.19.08: The polls are getting closer. Survey USA has Clinton leading by five percent--and CNN pegs the gap at two. Hold on, buckeroos. This is going to be a wild ride.

For Hillary Clinton, February has been the cruelest month. So far, she has lost eight straight nominating contests, and faces two more on Tuesday that Barack Obama is favored to win. Not that any of this is a surprise. After Super Tuesday, her staffers made it clear that they didn't expect Clinton to capture any of the February match ups. Her sights, they said, were set on March 4, when Ohio and Texas will award a combined 389 delegates. "Meet me in Texas," she said on the night of the Potomac Primary, challenging Obama. "We're ready." She was speaking from El Paso.

There's no doubt that the demographics of the Lone Star State are favorable to Clinton. She typically trounces Obama three to two among Latinos, who in 2004 made up 24 percent of the Texas primary electorate and are expected to turnout in record numbers next month. And 73 percent of those who voted in the 2004 primary made less than $75,000 a year, playing to Clinton's strength among blue-collar Dems. What's more, she has a 30-year head start in the state after volunteering there for McGovern in 1972 and visiting repeatedly as First Lady (her husband's efforts to reach out to Latinos don't hurt). So far, the polls reflect these advantages, pegging her post-Potomac Primary lead at a hearty 10.3 percent.

All of which makes it seem as if Clinton has Texas by the horns. But don't count Obama out yet. He has two "secret weapons" in the state--and if they work as planned on March 4, he could very well finish strong enough to break Clinton's firewall and maintain his momentum heading into the spring.

1) Younger Latinos:

As Henry Cisneros, a Clinton backer who was the mayor of San Antonio and a cabinet member in her husband's administration, told my NEWSWEEK colleague Arian Campo-Flores, much of Clinton's Texas strategy is based on brand loyalty, which is "unusually" strong among Latinos. Obama, the thinking goes, may be "new"--but who the heck knows if he's "improved." "Down here, con la gente [with the people]... Obama is not recognized through the rank-and-file raza," says Paul Elizondo, a county commissioner in San Antonio who's endorsed Clinton. "We have a saying here: 'El no trae nada.' He's never done anything for anybody here."

The thing is, many Texas Latinos may be too young to care. The average Hispanic voter in the state is under 40--a number that's sure to sink closer to 26, the average age of Hispanics statewide, if turnout increases as predicted. (Everyone wants to participate when the primary actually counts). As in Arizona, where Obama won 45 percent of the Latino vote largely on the strength of his youth support, the campaign is hoping this new generation of voters is more receptive than its elders to the candidate. One encouraging sign: newly elected Brownsville state Rep. Eddie Lucio III, 29, has broken with his father, longtime state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., to support Obama over Clinton--"even though he grew up looking at family photos of his parents and grandparents with the Clintons." "Those memories and those links and those ties, to a lot of young people who have been voting for only a few years, have been lost on them," says Juan Garcia, a Harvard Law School classmate of Obama's and now a first-term legislator in Texas.

Team Obama is hammering the generational divide hard, devoting one of its two ads airing in Latino radio markets to younger voters. "Obama is talking to me about the opportunity to go to college, and about ensuring my parents and grandparents have the healthcare they need," it says. "That's why I'm talking to others -- my parents, my uncles, and my friends" about supporting Obama. And they're citing former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk as a case study of why the much-discussed "tensions" between blacks and Latinos may be exaggerated. An Obama-esque African American pol who's now advising the campaign, Kirk not only won about 70% of the Latino vote in his mayoral runs--he also beat out a Latino candidate and a member of the powerful Bentsen political family in the 2002 U.S. Senate primary and went on to carry the heavily Latino Rio Grande Valley in the general election.

Will this put Obama over the top with Latinos? Probably not. But it may be enough to neutralize Clinton's advantage--especially considering...

2) The System 

... the rules governing Texas's nominating contest are almost guaranteed to funk Clinton and favor Obama. For starters, only two-thirds of the state's 193 pledged delegates will be awarded through the primary process. How will the other third be divvied up? In 8,000 caucuses that take place after the polls close--and are only open to people who voted in the primary. Thanks to his aggressive on-the-ground organizing and passionate, upscale supporters, Obama tends to dominate caucuses (he's won 10 of 11 so far); the overworked, underpaid blue-collar Dems in Clinton's base are less likely to vote during the day and return at night to slog through time-consuming rounds of alignment and realignment. Secondly,Democratic turnout in 2004 and 2006 determines how delegates are distributed over 31 state Senate districts--meaning that there simply aren't enough delegates at stake in heavily-Hispanic, low-voting South Texas for Clinton to rely on big margins there. By one analysis, Clinton could win the state's 10 most-Hispanic districts 60 to 40 percent and still emerge with just a two-delegate advantage among Hispanics statewide, while wins in high-turnout Dallas and Houston--where Obama expects to receive significant support--could yield three or four times as many delegates. (Overall, blacks should account for 20 percent of primary voters, and Latinos roughly the same--giving Obama an organizational advantage.) Finally, the state's primary is open to Republicans and Independents--groups that Obama has been winning three- or four-to-one.

This is not to say that Clinton won't "win" the Lone Star State--she very well may. But if Obama can cut into her Latino support over the next few weeks--he's built from 26 percent in Nevada to 36 percent on Super Tuesday to 54 percent in Virginia--the rules will make it very difficult for Clinton to emerge from Texas any closer in the overall delegate count, even if she captures more votes. At this point, it's unclear whether a popular-vote victory will be enough to propel her forward--or if Obama's 140-delegate edge will still be the story of the day.

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

THE NEWSWEEK ROSTER:

THE END OF CONSERVATISM (Fareed Zakaria)
Conservative slogans sound anachronistic in the context of today's problems, like an old TV show from the 1970s.

BARACK'S ROCK (Richard Wolffe)
She's the one who keeps him real, the one who makes sure running for leader of the free world doesn't go to his head. Michelle's story.

'I CAN ONLY BE WHO I CAN BE' (Richard Wolffe)
Michelle on the 'pluses and minuses' of her potential role as First Lady.

A REAL WIFE, IN A REAL MARRIAGE (Raina Kelley)
An outspoken, smart black woman or a bossy, emasculating wife? Michelle Obama defies stereotypes, but cannot escape them, either.

PART OF SOMETHING LARGER (Howard Fineman) 
Barack Obama is a symbol of a new generation of leadership.

A PERENNIAL PRESS OPERA (Evan Thomas)
Be serious! Give us access! The roots of the Clinton-media tension.

HOW DEEP IN THE HEARTS OF TEXAS (Arian Campo-Flores)
Clinton's chances may come down to Latino support in the Lone Star State.

SCOPING OUT OBAMA VS. MCCAIN (Jonathan Alter) 
The race would pit change vs. experience, fresh vs. tested, green vs. gray.

THE BEST OF THE REST: 

CAN JOHN MCCAIN REINVENT REPUBLICANISM?
(Ryan Lizza, New Yorker)
There is the principled McCain, who, more than any other candidate running for President this year, has a record of sticking to a position even when it puts his political future at risk. In this campaign, his positions on the surge and on immigration (he supported a guest-worker program and a path to citizenship for illegals) almost sank him. But there is also the political McCain, who knows that a reputation for standing on principle is a valuable commodity, though only if it’s well advertised. If it takes flogging a dodgy quote to emphasize a larger truth about your own character, then so be it. 

THE MEME PRISONER
(John Heilemann, New York)
Citing the Times primary-beat reporters assigned to the candidates, a competitor of theirs observes, “Pat Healy’s job is to challenge the Clinton myth and machine. Jeff Zeleny’s is to write the epic rise of Barack Obama. That’s generally the media’s approach—Clinton and Obama are just at different points in their stories.” Campaigns are, at bottom, a competition between memes: infectious ideas that gather force through sheer repetition. The most powerful of these memes are what Just refers to as meta-narratives, the backdrops against which everything plays out in the media. “Clinton’s meta-narrative,” she says, “is that she’ll do anything to win; she can’t be trusted, she’s ethically challenged; she’s manipulative, calculating, and programmed.” Obama’s meta-narrative is decidedly otherwise. “It’s the same, in a way, as John McCain’s,” says Just. “He’s authentic, honest, free of taint. Then you add in new, charismatic, and an agent of change.”

THE GRAND OLD WHITE PARTY CONFRONTS OBAMA
(Frank Rich, New York Times)
The 2008 primary campaign has been so fast and furious that we haven’t paused to register just how spectacular that change is. All the fretful debate about whether voters would turn out for a candidate who is a black or a woman seems a century ago. Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama vanquished the Democratic field, including a presidential-looking Southern white man with an enthusiastic following, John Edwards. What was only months ago an exotic political experiment is now almost ho-hum.

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP...
 

The second of four posts in which Stumper reality-checks the Democratic contest. Stay tuned for Texas and Ohio over the weekend.

UPDATE, 11.19.08: Up until late last week, Hillary Clinton looked like she was ducking Wisconsin in favor of later contests in Texas and Ohio. Whether she was simply lowering expectations or actually planning to leapfrog the Badger State, who knows. But she's clearly contesting it now. In addition to Friday's sharply negative ad (above), Clinton has spent every day since Saturday stumping in the state. And she's added a new attack to her arsenal, accusing Obama of plagiarizing speeches by Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick. The charge is sort of ridiculous: as Obama's national co-chair, not to mention his friend (and a former client of guru David Axelrod), Patrick has said that he and Obama regularly discuss language--and even that he instructed Obama's speechwriters to appropriate the phrases in question. Regardless, Clinton has effectively shifted the harsh media spotlight from her flailing bid to her opponent's "misstep" in the waning hours of the Wisconsin campaign. One poll out Sunday even shows her leading 49 to 43. We'll see this evening whether her efforts have paid off.

FRIDAY'S ORIGINAL POST: 

If the Beltway bloviators are to believed, Barack Obama is a lock to win next Tuesday's Wisconsin primary. In his favor, according to Ben Smith of the Politico: "big college campuses, a primary open to independents, the ineffable nature of a state that elects Russ Feingold, and the latest polls." All of which rings true. (Plus, he's from neighboring Illinois.) The only problem? In the land of cheese curds and Schlitz, Hillary Clinton has just as much going for her. Which means that the Badger State could end up being closer than anyone expects--except, perhaps, the campaigns (more on that later).

Here's why. Despite the whole upscale, egghead, Feingoldian stereotype, Wisconsin in reality looks a lot like, well, Ohio--where Clinton currently leads by 17 points. Yes, any state that's home to the excitable, ultraliberal student enclave of Madison and a progressive tradition stretching from Robert La Follette through the down-with-the-system Sixties probably boasts more than few Obamaniacs. But as Jeff Greenfield points out, 57 percent of primary voters in 2004 called themselves moderates or conservatives; half earned less than $50,000 a year, half had no college education, a third were Catholic and more than one in five were union members. Like Ohio, Wisconsin is an increasingly purple swing state with higher-than-average unemployment and a population that's whiter and older than the nation as a whole. In other words, it's a prime place for Clinton, the persistent problem-solver, to test her enduring appeal to white working-class voters. Think PC--and by that I mean "punch card"--instead of Apple.

Both campaigns are acutely aware of this. Despite winning every contest since Feb. 5--that's eight straight for folks keeping score at home--Obama's Badger State lead is stalled at a meager four percent, and a source tells NEWSWEEK that the campaign's internal polls are just as close, if not closer.  "By [the Clinton's] own definition, Wisconsin would be a state you would think would be prime turf with them," campaign manager David Plouffe recently told the Wall Street Journal. Of course, Team Obama could just be raising expectations for its rival. (Last week, an internal Obama memo  predicted a seven point victory.) But if so, that's only because the Clintonistas have set them so low. Since losing the Potomac Primary, Hillary has barely uttered the word "Wisconsin," insisting that she would focus her efforts on the March 4 states of Texas and Ohio instead. Obama arrived in Madison on Tuesday night and only left for Valentine's Day; Clinton won't touch down until Saturday-- and even then her campaign says the goal is to ensure that she gets as many delegates as possible, not to win.

Baloney. The delay was clearly a stutter step--a move intended, as Greenfield writes, "to turn a strong Clinton showing—much less a victory—into one of those 'Oh my God, what a shocker!' reactions that changes the whole tenor of the political conversation." The press is already calling it a "missed opportunity." Just imagine what the headlines will say if she actually gives Obama a run for his money.

Don't believe my "expectations game" hypothesis? Take a gander at Clinton's latest ad (above). Called "Deserves," it's the second in a series taking Obama to task for refusing to participate in a Wisconsin debate (Obama, for his, part, says 20 is enough--and we tend to agree). But this spot goes much further than the first, twisting the Illinois senator's statements on health care, energy and social security in a way the New York Times calls "spine-chilling." That might be a bit much. But at the very least, it's first real negative ad of the cycle. And trust me--Clinton wouldn't bother offending gentle midwestern sensibilities unless she knew she had a shot.

Game on.

Stumper's Take: He foresaw global warming. He "took the initiative" on the Internet. And he knew exactly how Iraq would turn out. Who's to say that Al Gore hasn't known all along that the Democratic race would descend into some weird state of gridlock--and that only he, the Goracle, could rescue the party from civil war? Read on for the what if's...

By Eleanor Clift

Al Gore on the second ballot: A scenario that a few weeks ago seemed preposterous is beginning to look plausible to some nervous Democrats looking for a way out of the deadlock between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. It goes like this: We love them both, but neither is a sure bet when it comes to electability. It's not about gender and race, each has more mundane vulnerabilities. Hillary's negatives will drive white men to John McCain; Obama's inexperience will require a gut check on the part of voters. What if the super delegates decide not to decide, denying either candidate the requisite number of delegates to secure the party's nomination. Democrats want to win. The new rallying cry: Gore on the second ballot.

The last time a political convention went to a second ballot was 1952, but this is a year with so many twists and turns that nothing is impossible. Gore would be tempted on so many levels. He would only have to endure two months of campaigning, not long enough for voters to remember what they didn't like about him eight years ago. Gore has sat out the primary process, refusing to offer even so much as a hint of where his sentiments lie. Years of playing second-fiddle to Hillary in the White House no doubt precluded his endorsement for her. Surely he would happily take Obama as his running mate, ending the Clinton dynasty and positioning the Democrats for a potential 16-year reign at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. A Gore-Obama ticket would be unstoppable, the thinking goes, matching the presumptive Republican nominee, McCain, on national security and experience, while embodying a powerful message of change.

The Gore second-ballot scenario isn't being seriously considered by Democratic Party leaders (as far as we know). But a number of individual high-profile Democrats are talking about it, along with any number of other ideas to end the seemingly intractable stalemate.

The first of four posts in which Stumper reality-checks the Democratic contest. Stay tuned for Wisconsin later today and Texas and Ohio over the weekend.

The Comparison
Since the start of the 2008 campaign--it feels like eons ago, doesn't it?--pundits have compared the Clinton-Obama contest to an earlier Democratic nomination battle: 1984's match up between Walter Mondale and Gary Hart. The similarities were initially superficial. Clinton, like Mondale, entered the race as the well-oiled, well-funded choice of the party establishment, while the younger, looser Obama echoed Hart's call for a new generation of leadership. But now that neither candidate looks likely to win the 2,025 pledged delegates needed to clinch the nod before the last primary in June, the climax of the 2008 campaign may also mirror 1984--with the power players known as superdelegates deciding the outcome.

Why It Works
In both cases, an inspiring, Kennedy-esque upstart shocks the political establishment by trouncing an older, stodgier Senator--who, incidentally, spent some time in the White House--in most of the states up for grabs. (Hart won 28 to Mondale's 24; at press time, Obama has won 20, Clinton 12.) But thanks to proportional allocation of delegates and the fact that most of those victories are in small states, the insurgent is unable to secure a majority--meaning that the superdelegates, who tend to favor the establishment candidate, must step in and break the logjam.

Why It Doesn't Work
Even though Hart beat Mondale 26-22 in the first 48 contests--including a sweep of five straight contests in mid-May--he was still trailing the former veep 1,564 delegates to 941 at the end of month. So their grand finale wasn't exactly a nailbiter. Mondale won New Jersey on June 5, which put him within 40 delegates of a majority; by midnight the next day, he'd swayed enough superdelegates to sew up the nomination. Hart kept running, but it was a lost cause. In contrast, Obama leads Clinton by only about 130 delegates at this point. If that margin stays the same, superdelegates will eventually be forced to choose between an establishment candidate who (barely) lost the delegate battle and an upstart who (barely) won. It'll make 1984 look like a cakewalk.

The better comparison, in fact, may be Gerald Ford (the White House habitue) vs. Ronald Reagan (the inspiring insurgent) in 1976. Despite early losses, Reagan dominated the second half of primary season and wound up tied with Ford after winning California on June 8. So the battle continued through the convention. Reagan and Ford spent the next two months personally wooing superdelegates--much as Clinton and Obama would do, were the race still undecided come summer. By the time the candidates arrived in Kansas City in August, Ford had a slight edge, but was still shy of the 1130 needed for a majority--and only clinched the nod after a bit of wheeling and dealing. The final count: 1187-1070. Coincidentally, that's almost precisely the gap that now separates Clinton and Obama.

New Supporter: Obama with Lewis. Photo: John Amis/AP.

But is Obama's tipping point coming sooner than even I expected? Yesterday afternoon, the New York Times (among others) reported that Rep. John Lewis, an elder statesman from the civil rights era and one of Hillary Clinton’s most prominent black supporters, is suddenly planning to cast his vote as a superdelegate for Obama in" hopes of preventing a fight at the Democratic convention." “In recent days, there is a sense of movement and a sense of spirit,” said Lewis. “Something is happening in America, and people are prepared and ready to make that great leap.” Hungry for news on a slow day, the media responded with typical breathlessness. "Floodgates could open," wrote Time's Mark Halperin, a reliable peddler of Beltway CW. "If Lewis breaks away, take whatever you thought Clinton’s chances of winning the nomination before and divide that number by as much as two — those would be the odds of her winning now."

Whoa, nelly. Not so fast. Sure, Lewis's "defection" is significant--but in a limited sense. For one thing, it's not really a defection; instead, Lewis is still endorsing Clinton (for the time being) but promising to cast his superdelegate vote at the convention with his Atlanta-area district, which voted three-to-one for Obama--if it comes to that. Lewis's confusing stance symbolizes a very specific political challenge facing black elected superdelegates--and black elected superdelegates only. If Obama maintains his lead among pledged delegates, members of the Congressional Black Caucus who have endorsed Clinton will face enormous pressure to switch sides. Like Lewis, many represent districts where Obama earned 85 to 90 percent support among black voters--meaning to defy their constituents and cast a vote that lots of people would see as stealing the election from the first black president would be tantamount to political suicide.

Over the past few weeks, there's been a slow drift of superdelegate support from Clinton to Obama. Not counting Lewis, Obama has gained 12 superdelegates since Feb. 5, while Clinton has lost a net of three. But until we start seeing a greater number of pols making the leap to Obama without such political pressure, I think it's a bit early to say the floodgates have opened. It may happen; it may not. But any potential tipping point is still a ways away.
 

Not exactly. Here's NEWSWEEK's Suzanne Smalley with the inside story of Romney's decision to endorse the presumptive Republican nominee.

They often looked ready to trade blows in the debates. Just a few weeks ago, Mitt Romney called John McCain a liar for allegedly distorting Romney's position on the Iraq War. For his part, McCain seemed to revel in leading the other Republican candidates in ganging up on Romney, whom he didn't even try to pretend to like.

But all that is ancient history now. After watching Mike Huckabee continue to rack up delegates and signal he has no intention of exiting the race--as he did after the Virginia primary Tuesday night--Romney decided to formally endorse the Arizona senator Thursday. According to a source close to Romney, who asked not to be identified discussing internal campaign strategy, the former Massachusetts governor was spurred to action by Huckabee's "decision to linger against impossible odds, delaying the launch of a general-election campaign ... We were going to endorse at some point. The only question was when. Doing it now seemed to have added value, given that Huckabee continues to be a presence."

Despite Romney's decision to endorse McCain, the men have hardly become chummy in recent days. A second source close to Romney stressed that the "businessman" in him decided to make the endorsement for "practical" reasons. A third Romney adviser stressed that it "was always sort of inevitable" that Romney would formally endorse McCain. But the adviser said that the McCain campaign was in a hurry to move things along (so much so that Romney delayed a family trip to California to visit his grandchildren so that he could make the announcement). The adviser said that Romney's delegates, while not bound by law to McCain, will "put him over the top" if they support the senator as expected. The McCain campaign "want[ed] to get it done sooner", the adviser said of the endorsement, because they hope to get Huckabee out of the race. The Romney adviser added that he believes the RNC will begin increasing pressure on the former Arkansas governor to step aside very soon.

As is typical of Romney, the choice to endorse was a no-nonsense call arrived at without a lot of ceremony. Romney's campaign manager phoned Rick Davis, who is managing McCain's campaign, and told him of Romney's plans Thursday morning, Romney's spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom tells NEWSWEEK. Romney had intended to announce his endorsement Monday, before Tuesday's Wisconsin primary, but McCain's campaign wanted to move the announcement up since McCain was campaigning in Rhode Island on Thursday and could easily get to Boston for the press conference. Romney and McCain met inside Romney's Boston headquarters for 15 minutes, Fehrnstrom said, before adding that the men had not spoken since last week when Romney dropped out of the race.

Read the rest here.

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

BLACK LEADER, A CLINTON ALLY, TILTS TO OBAMA
(Jeff Zeleny and Patrick Healy, New York Times)
Representative John Lewis, an elder statesman from the civil rights era and one of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s most prominent black supporters, said Thursday night that he planned to cast his vote as a superdelegate for Senator Barack Obama in hopes of preventing a fight at the Democratic convention... His comments came as fresh signs emerged that Mrs. Clinton’s support was beginning to erode from some other African-American lawmakers who also serve as superdelegates. Representative David Scott of Georgia, who was among the first to defect, said he, too, would not go against the will of voters in his district.

CLINTON AT OSU: 'THE PEOPLE OF OHIO GET ME'
(Joe Hallet, Columbus Dispatch)
Sen. Hillary Clinton last night said she does not view Ohio as a must-win firewall to keep Sen. Barack Obama from winning the Democratic presidential nomination. “I really don’t think about it like that,” Clinton told The Dispatch following a 35-minute speech to 2,600 in Ohio State University’s French Field House. “I think about doing the very best I can. I’ve got a good campaign here. I’ve got wonderful, broad support across the state and we’re just going to work like crazy to get as many votes as we possibly can and hopefully we’ll do well.”

CLINTON, OBAMA OFFER SIMILAR ECONOMIC VISIONS 
(Jonathan Weisman and Anne E. Kornblut, Washington Post)
Clinton and Obama both promised that they would make the tax code more middle-income-friendly and would protect consumers from threats -- including predatory credit card companies and rapacious college lenders. Both candidates condemned corporate tax breaks that they say send jobs overseas. Both pledged to protect homeowners and said they would repeal President Bush's upper-income tax cuts while extending those for the middle class. Both promised to rein in credit card companies that arbitrarily raise interest rates, sending families into a downward spiral of debt. "I've been looking for ways to differentiate these two, and it hasn't been easy," said Jared Bernstein, an economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute. This week's economic speeches do not "make it a whole lot easier," he added.

OBAMA CASTS HIS SPELL
(Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post)
Interestingly, Obama has been able to win these electoral victories and dazzle crowds in one new jurisdiction after another, even as his mesmeric power has begun to arouse skepticism and misgivings among the mainstream media. ABC's Jake Tapper notes the "Helter-Skelter cultish qualities" of "Obama worshipers," what Joel Stein of the Los Angeles Times calls "the Cult of Obama." Obama's Super Tuesday victory speech was a classic of the genre. Its effect was electric, eliciting a rhythmic fervor in the audience -- to such rhetorical nonsense as "We are the ones we've been waiting for. (Cheers, applause.) We are the change that we seek." That was too much for Time's Joe Klein. "There was something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism ... ," he wrote. "The message is becoming dangerously self-referential. The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is."

MCCAIN-OBAMA RACE COULD REDRAW THE ELECTORAL MAP
(Laura Meckler, Wall Street Journal)
In recent presidential elections, the electoral map largely has been fixed, with certain regions predictably loyal to one party or another and the competition narrowed to fewer than 20 battleground states. But Barack Obama's success in rallying African-Americans and John McCain's difficulty with conservative evangelicals raise an intriguing question: Would a general election between the two put additional states -- particularly in the South -- into play?

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP...
 

She's running strong among workers in Ohio and Latinos in Texas, but Hillary Clinton may have just lost a crucial swath of the Democratic electorate to Barack Obama:

The "hopeless romantic" vote.

Fans of chick flicks that involve Meg Ryan, Tom Hanks and/or Nora Ephron and tell the story of two people coming together despite overwhelming odds--count me in--may be disappointed to hear that Bill and Hill will not be spending this most amorous of holidays within 400 miles of each other. While the former president stumps across Wisconsin--Milwaukee to Waukesha to Madison to La Crosse--his wife is wooing voters three states away in Ohio. I never bought the whole "marriage of political convenience" cliché, but with Clinton coming off eight straight losses, lagging in the latest Badger State polls and banking on Ohio as one of her March 4 bulwarks, political inconvenience is more than enough to keep her from cuddling up in Chappaqua with chocolates, Courvoisier and a whole lotta Bubba.

The surging Obama, on the other hand, is doing exactly that. (Minus Bill.) When I noticed that today's schedule put the senator in Chicago with no public events, I got in touch with a campaign spokesperson to ask whether he was "home for Valentine's Day, or just fundraising." She confirmed that Obama is, in fact, "spending time with his wife and daughters--no interviews, no fundraisers, no events." And what about tonight--anything special planned?

"He is going out to dinner with his wife in Chicago," she wrote back.

Hopefully that heart graphic available on the Sears Tower, too.

UPDATE, 5:30 p.m.: During an impromptu press conference on board her press plane, Clinton just told reporters that this is the first Valentine's Day she and Bill have spent apart in 37 years. Apparently, he sent a dozen roses and some chocolates to her hotel room in Youngstown, Ohio last night. And in a move that's sure to melt the hearts of Meg-aholics everywhere, Clinton passed out chocolates to reporters and apologized via cell phone to two of their girlfriends for the holiday travel.  “I want to personally apologize to you that Fernando is with me and not with you on Valentine’s Day," she told one. “I would love to be Fernando’s second choice for Valentine’s Day.” Meow.
 

Yesterday, I pointed out that John McCain's attacks on Obama for lacking specifics mirrored Hillary Clinton's--and speculated on how this echo effect could influence superdelegates to decide the Democratic race sooner rather than later. But I didn't weigh in on why McCain, who's no detail man himself, had chosen this particular swipe at this particular time (or why his economic adviser attacked Obama for allegedly plagiarizing Clinton's stimulus plan later in the day). Luckily, the very smart Jonathan Chait at the New Republic has done the heavy lifting for me. His take:

I expected McCain to go after Obama, I just thought it would be on grounds of being a liberal liberal liberal peacenik. Could the answer be that... McCain's goal is not to hurt Obama in the general election but to hurt him in the primary? Every poll now shows Obama performing better than Clinton against McCain. On average, he does five and a half points better than her, which is a very significant margin. So it's quite likely that the reason that McCain is amplifying Clinton's attacks on McCain, rather than make attacks that would fit his general election audience, is that they're targeted to the primary. If McCain attacks Obama for wanting to withdraw from Iraq, that helps Obama in the primary. If he attacks him for lacking domestic policy proposals, it helps Clinton. I suspect McCain is trying to pick his opponent here.

contributed by Matthew Philips

On Friday, Gov. Mike Huckabee and his wife Janet, following two days of campaigning in frigid Wisconsin, will head south for a weekend in the warm, tax-friendly climate of the Cayman Islands. The Huckabees are noted lovers of the outdoors (Janet’s a crack shot) but they won’t be doing much scuba diving there.

The governor is scheduled to make a paid speech at the Young Caymanian Leadership Awards banquet, where he was keynote speaker in 2000. The money (campaign aides declined to say how much) won’t go to his presidential campaign but into his pockets. Since he left the governor’s office in Little Rock a year ago, Huckabee’s primary source of income has been paid speaking engagements, making one or two every few months. “This is his job,” campaign manager Chip Saltsman told reporters on the plane from Little Rock to Wisconsin on Wednesday. “It’s his livelihood.”

The last paid speech Huckabee gave was at a church in San Antonio, Texas, where the money he earned was funneled back to his church in Little Rock. Saltsman warned against drawing any conclusions about a candidate leaving the country in the middle of the campaign trail to go make a paid speech; the Cayman's speech “has been on the books for months,” he said. 

At a press conference following an event in Waukesha, Wis., Wednesday evening, Huckabee pointed out that as the only presidential candidate not getting a regular government paycheck, and someone who’s not personally wealthy, he faces far more financial constraints than the other candidates. “Especially with McCain-Feingold,” he said, referring to the campaign-financing law. Asked if it bothers him that he has to take off in the middle of an election cycle to go raise money so he can pay his personal bills, Huckabee replied, “No, it bothers me more that I have to pay for my opponents’ bills. As a taxpayer, I’m subsidizing my opponents’ campaigns." He quickly dispelled any ideas that he might be taking advantage of the Caymans friendly tax rates. “I’m not parking my money in the Caymans. My money is coming back to the U.S. where it’ll be taxed at 40 percent.”

As part of his Fair Tax pitch, throughout his campaign Huckabee has railed against the “$12 trillion” he says is parked in offshore tax havens and is such a burden on the American economy. A tax on consumption and not income, he argues, would send much of that money back home. Though never asked directly, his point seems to be that we need to end the flow of dollars into the Caymans and other offshore financial centers. Does that count as a contradiction then with his upcoming trip? It does not, he said last night before quickly ending the press conference and walking away with Saltsman from the podium, a very un-Huckabee move, as he’s usually more than willing to take extra questions these days. Maybe he had to go buy some sunscreen.

The Democratic race may be cruelly, cripplingly cloudy right now, but this much is clear: whoever wins, Clinton or Obama, will labor mightily in the general election to fuse John McCain and George W. Bush into a hellish two-headed Orthrus in the minds of the American people. Obama, in fact, is already off and running, devoting much of Tuesday's "Potomac Primary" victory speech to contrasting himself with "Bush-McCain Republicans" (subtle, no?)  "George Bush won't be on the ballot this November, but his war and his tax cuts for the wealthy will," he said. "When I am the nominee, I will offer a clear choice." The hope, of course, is that the 66 percent of the populace that disapproves of Bush will see McCain in the same light--and that McCain will be forced to distance himself from Dubya without offending the GOP base, which still likes the guy. Not an easy dance to do--especially while still clinging to the last shreds of your maverick rep.

With that in mind, the Democratic National Committee is out today with a Valentine's Day web ad called "Sweetheart Deal" (above). The spot sees Obama's "Bush-McCain" formulation and raises him a hearty dose of... um, latent homosexuality. Marvel as McCain and Bush advocate for "making the tax cuts permanent"! Guffaw as they reiterate their opposition to "amnesty"! And gasp as they agree that "we should stay the course in Iraq"! Oh, and while you're at it, watch a nostalgic, black-and-white photo montage (complete with Ken Burns panning and pink heart graphics) of the lovebirds laying their arms on each other's shoulders and giggling as they clutch a birthday cake, with Bush at one point grasping McCain's aged head and pulling it, softy, tenderly, to his lips and McCain, later, resting his weary brow on Bush's cheek. "Do they share the same heart?" the ad asks. Who knows. But there's nothing like the slinky, soft-core sounds of a soprano saxophone to set the mood. How could something so wrong feel so right?

Which makes you wonder. Maybe the DNC isn't targeting only centrist Democrats with the ad. After all, it's die-hard Republicans--the very people still not sold on McCain--who are most opposed to gay rights. Keep them home next November and the Democrats win.

Now if only Howard Dean could convince Larry Craig to endorse...

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

OBAMA'S LEAD IN DELEGATES SHIFTS FOCUS OF CAMPAIGN
(Adam Nagourney, New York Times) 
Neither candidate is expected to win the 2,025 pledged delegates needed to claim the nomination by the time the voting ends in June. But Mr. Obama’s campaign began making a case in earnest on Wednesday that if he maintained his edge in delegates won in primaries and caucuses, he would have the strongest claim to the backing of the 796 elected Democrats and party leaders known as superdelegates who are free to vote as they choose and who now stand to determine the outcome... With every delegate precious, Mrs. Clinton's advisers also made it clear that they were prepared to take a number of potentially incendiary steps to build up Mrs. Clinton's count. Top among these, her aides said, is pressing for Democrats to seat the disputed delegations from Florida and Michigan, who held their primaries in January in defiance of Democratic Party rules... The prospect of a fight over seating the Florida and Michigan delegations has already exposed deep divisions within the party.

CLINTON TEAM SEEKS TO CALM TURMOIL
(Monica Langley and Amy Chozick, Wall Street Journal)
The campaign has something of a shell-shocked feel, as staffers privately chew over a blowup last week where internal frictions flared into the open. Clinton campaign operatives say it happened as top Clinton advisers gathered in Arlington, Va., campaign headquarters to preview a TV commercial. "Your ad doesn't work," strategist Mark Penn yelled at ad-maker Mandy Grunwald. 'The execution is all wrong,' he said, according to the operatives. "Oh, it's always the ad, never the message," Ms. Grunwald fired back, say the operatives. The clash got so heated that political director Guy Cecil left the room, saying, "I'm out of here."

CLINTON SCRAMBLES TO TRY TO REVERSE OBAMA'S MOMENTUM
(Dan Balz, Washington Post)
Top Clinton strategists dismissed the idea that Obama's momentum is strong enough to carry him through the next three weeks, noting that perceptions have swung wildly from week to week depending on the outcome of state-by-state contests. Walter Mondale in 1984 and Jimmy Carter in 1980 lost key primaries before winning the nomination, chief strategist Mark Penn reminded reporters during a conference call. But others in the party, including some who have been backing Clinton, say Obama's winning streak has raised the stakes considerably.

OBAMA'S ECONOMIC PLAN IS A PITCH TO THE WORKING CLASS
(Peter Slevin and Shailagh Murray, Washington Post)
Obama's advisers and many Democratic strategists believe he can continue to chip away at Clinton's success with working-class voters and women by a new focus on the economy as he faces off against Clinton in Ohio and Texas, which hold primaries March 4; Pennsylvania, which holds its primary April 22; and Wisconsin, which votes on Tuesday. Recent polls show Obama, familiar to many in Wisconsin because of his popularity in neighboring Illinois, with a narrow lead over Clinton. He opened offices earlier, began television advertising sooner and visited the state twice last year.

Sometimes something goes viral in a good way--like, say, the pro-Obama video "Yes We Can," which has racked up 3.7 million views in the last week. And other times, something goes viral... like hepatitis B.

World, meet "Hillary4U&Me." Upon first seeing the pro-Clinton clip--to call it a "music video" would suggest that the years 1982-2008 never happened--I wondered whether it was part of a sadistic plot on the part of the Obama campaign to convince the few remaining sentient beings who believe Clinton is "cool" that she is, in fact, not. But alas--this is user-generated content. The ceaseless, maniacally delighted dancing; the grinning Asian flautist; the lyric "The world is getting hot / But our global warming plan is not;" and the song itself, which sounds sort of like a commercial jingle for a used futon store circa 1979, only less catchy--all of it is the brainchild of a real live Hillary supporter named Gene Wang, a 50-year-old entrepreneur from Palo Alto, Calif.

According to a Jan. 30 article on Palo Alto Online, Wang wrote the song late last year and quickly taped the video at the local University Club. In its first three months on YouTube, the clip netted only 1,100 views. The silence seemed, for a time, to validate an ancient truth: that the only people who can get away with the abbreviation "4U" are 12-year old girls, or Prince. But today, Wang's hit counter shot up to 5,000, then 10,000. The reason: the video was randomly picked up on a handful of political blogs. Now that it's in the bloodstream, expect views to skyrocket over the next few days, as every Obama fan on earth forwards the link to friends and family as (self-gratifying) "evidence" that the stereotypes about the candidates' supporters--Obama: iPhone; Clinton: fanny pack--are true. I received my first email while writing this item. "It hurts," wrote the sender. "It really does."

Painful or not, I'm not the type to fault a candidate for attracting dorky, flute-playing fans. But apparently Clinton is culpable, too. According to Wang, the New York senator actually heard a live rendition of "Hillary4U&Me" at a January fundraiser in nearby Atherton--and "loved it."

That's 2 much 2 4give.

For Democrats, the problem with extending a bitter nomination contest any longer than necessary: every attack that Barack Obama launches on Hillary Clinton--or vice versa--is immediately legitimized so that it can be turned against her (or him) in the general election. And with no primary opponents to battle, John McCain is free to adopt and deploy those newly-legitimate barbs at his leisure. I'm not playing partisan politics, the logic goes. His or her fellow Democrats are making the exact same points.

Want to see how this works? McCain's already off and running. During last night's victory speech, the presumptive Republican nominee fired his first shots at Obama--and they sounded suspiciously familiar. "To encourage a country with only rhetoric rather than sound and proven ideas that trust in the strength and courage of free people is not a promise of hope," he said. "It is a platitude." And speaking to reporters this morning in Washington, McCain continued the onslaught. "There's going to come a time when we're going to have to get into specifics," he said. "I have not observed every speech [Obama] has given, obviously, but they are singularly lacking in specifics."

If you're still wondering where you've heard those lines before, here's a hint: Cillary Hlinton. The "talk vs. action, rhetoric vs. reality" contrast has anchored Clinton's message since at least early January--and she shows no signs of cutting it loose. “You never hear the specifics,” she said Monday, referring to Obama. “It’s all this kind of abstract, general talk about how we all need to get along." And just this morning she criticized the Illinois senator's economic plan, saying, "we need real results, not more rhetoric.”

McCain's mimicry is no reason for Clinton to ditch a swipe that's working for her (and trust me--the "specifics" thing comes up constantly in conversations with voters on the trail). But if Obama is still looking as strong after March 4 as he's looking today, the party may decide that Clinton is hurting the probable nominee more than she's helping her own bid. That's a long way off--and the race could still break her way. I'm just saying: don't doubt the power of Republican parroting to remind superdelegates that the ultimate goal is winning the White House--and even to lure them down off the fence.

Rise and shine, happy campers. It's June 8, 2008. Last night, Democratic primary voters awarded some of Puerto Rico's 55 delegates to Barack Obama; the rest went to Hillary Clinton. After six unbroken months of intraparty squabbling, the primaries and caucuses are finally over. But there's still no nominee. Obama leads in the delegate count--his unbroken string of 10 sweeping victories last February opened a 170-pledged-delegate gap that, thanks to proportional allocation and tight finishes in Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania, Clinton hasn't been able to close. Neither contender, however, has yet hit the magic number: 2, 025. Which means that it's up to the superdelegates--hundreds of whom are still uncommitted--to put one of them over the top.

Welcome to "The Intermission." With 80 days until the end of the convention in Denver and no voters left to win over, Clinton and Obama will struggle to navigate a weird, unprecedented lull in the action as long as 2004's entire primary season. They will woo superdelegates in secret, underscoring how irrelevant actual voters have become, and attack each other in public, hobbling the eventual victor. Raising money will be tough--enthusiastic primary season supporters will resist forking out for a general election campaign that may never happen. And while Obama and Clinton pour salt on the party's wounds, Republican nominee John McCain will continue to do what he's done for the past four months--rake in the dough, consolidate his support and make his case to the American people.

If the Intermission sounds like a nightmare scenario for Democrats, that's because it is. "This is something the Democrats would want to avoid pretty significantly," says election scholar Rhodes Cook. "The longer this goes on, the more bitterness, the more party turmoil, the more infighting there is." Superdelegates can't stomach the thought of hurting the party's chances next November; they are, after all, the faithfullest of the party faithful. But barring huge Obama landslides in Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania, they're probably going to have to break the tie and pick the nominee at some point--and for the party, sooner is better than later. (See above.) Which is why, for the first time since Jan. 4--the morning after his Iowa upset--Obama now looks like the odds-on favorite to win the Democratic nomination.

Here's how I see it. Last night, Obama didn't just crush Clinton in Virginia (64-35), Maryland (60-37) and Washington, D.C. (75-24). He made a convincing argument for his strength against McCain in the general election. First off, he took three primaries and even captured the white vote in Virginia, rebutting two key Clinton charges--that he wins only when competing in activist-friendly caucuses or inside his comfort zone (blacks and young voters as opposed to southern whites). What's more, the Illinois senator trounced Clinton 69-30 among the 22 percent of Democratic primary voters who said they were independents, and widened the gap--72-23--among the seven percent who self-identified as Republicans. All told, Obama's vote total last night exceeded all Republicans combined by more than 100,000. As Jonathan Martin writes, "Obama has a real chance to break the GOP's 44-year hold on Virginia this fall."

Depending how March 4 shakes out, last night's results--and the likely Obama wins in Wisconsin and Hawaii--may help determine the Democratic nominee by the ides of March. If Obama takes Ohio and Texas, I'm guessing that the decisive superdelegates will soon break his way and pressure will mount on Clinton to withdraw. If Clinton wins both, the race will continue through Pennsylvania on April 22. But if the result is muddled with a win apiece and/or a delegate draw--by far the likeliest result--Obama will have the upper hand. He'll probably lead in the popular vote (current margin: 700,000). He'll almost certainly lead in pledged-delegate count. (Now trailing by more than 130, Clinton needs to win 345 of the 573 delegates up for grabs between March 4 and April 22 to catch up). He'll have shown some serious crossover appeal (read: electability). And with 40 days between Mississippi on March 11 and the Keystone State on April 22, the superdelegates will have plenty of time to decide whether they want to prolong the contest or crown a presumptive nominee for the good of the party.

"If Obama comes out having only lost one state between Super Tuesday and March 11, it would be tough to argue that he hasn't clearly established an edge," says Cook. "That pause would be the first opportunity for all of these players who are pressuring for a decision to weigh in, and that might be enough to tip it." In other words, it may be that the Democratic party spends this first "Intermission" making sure the second one never happens.

Contributed by Holly Bailey

There’s still plenty of uncertainty about the race for the White House at this point, especially on the Democratic side, but here’s relatively reliable prediction: John McCain won’t ask Mike Huckabee to drop his bid for the White House.

But that doesn’t mean his staff won’t. For the second week in a row, a senior McCain aide has drafted a memo arguing it’s “mathematically impossible” for Huckabee to win the Republican nomination. “He now needs 950 delegates to the secure the required 1,191,” writes Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, in a memo circulated late last night. “But in the remaining contests, there are only 774 delegates available. He would need to win 123 percent of remaining delegates.” In other words: Hint hint, Huck. You can’t win.

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

PERFECT GAME
(Arian Campo-Flores, Newsweek)
Clinton suffered another wave of dispiriting losses against Sen. Barack Obama. He beat her in Virginia 64 to 35 percent, in Maryland 61 to 35 percent and in the District of Columbia 75 to 24 percent, according to incomplete returns. These trouncings give Obama a perfect 8-0 record against Clinton in the primaries and caucuses held since Super Tuesday... Obama found plenty to celebrate in Tuesday's exit polls. In Virginia--the most closely watched and contested of Tuesday's competitions--it was no surprise that he trounced Clinton among blacks and young voters. What was surprising, and surely worrisome to the Clinton campaign, was that Obama beat her among women, 58 to 42 percent, and pulled nearly even with her among whites, garnering 48 percent compared to her 51. He also defeated her in two other categories that she has usually dominated: lower-income groups and people without a college degree. All of which shows that Obama succeeded in broadening his coalition.

SURGING, OBAMA MAKES HIS CASE
(Adam Nagourney, New York Times)
For weeks, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama had approached this race the same way: as state-by-state trench warfare, in the belief that the nomination would go to whoever got the most delegates. But the latest results suggest that the race might be tilting back to a more normal form, where the goal is achieving a series of splashing victories and thus momentum. That has provided Mr. Obama with the opportunity, which he plans to seize in a more full-throated way starting on Wednesday, to argue that voters across a wide cross-section of the country have embraced his candidacy, and that the time has come for the group that could hold the balance of power, those 796 unpledged superdelegates — party leaders and elected officials who have an automatic seat at the national convention — to follow suit.

SHIFTING LOYALTIES
(Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post)
For more than a month, the grand coalitions of Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama battled to a draw: women, rural Democrats and the white working class pairing almost evenly with African Americans, young voters and affluent, educated whites. Then came Virginia and Maryland. Obama's thrashing of Clinton in the two states yesterday raised the possibility that her coalition is beginning to crack, three weeks before she reaches what will probably be more friendly territory in Ohio and Texas. Obama won among men, among women and among union voters. He won big among the affluent, educated voters in the District's suburbs, but he also won convincingly among rural voters and small-town Democrats.

CLINTON PLAYS ELECTION ROULETTE
(Jeanne Cummings, Politico)
Hillary Rodham Clinton is now on a path to the Democratic nomination that is remarkably similar to the one that failed for Republican Rudy Giuliani. Just as the former New York mayor pinned his hopes on a late Florida victory to sling-shot him into front-runner status among Republican candidates, the New York senator is banking on wins in Ohio and Texas next month to revive her campaign after a February string of back-to-back-to-back losses. It’s a high-risk play for the once undisputed Democratic front-runner. It also may be the only maneuver she has left after rival Barack Obama managed to effectively counter her planned Super Tuesday knock-out punch. 

INSIDE THE CLINTON SHAKE-UP
(Joshua Green, The Atlantic)
In one sense, Solis Doyle performed exactly as Hillary had hoped. Somewhat to my surprise, the long-standing fissures in Hillaryland never truly erupted when Clinton came under presidential-campaign pressure, certainly not the way they did in 2000. For all the chaos and disillusionment with Clinton’s performance so far inside the campaign, very little of it had leaked to the press until just recently. And despite her late start, Clinton did not lag on the money front: she has raised $175 million since winning her Senate seat in 2000, which should have been enough to fund a formidable campaign, even one that dragged on as long as this one has. That the money was so obviously mismanaged and Clinton was essentially left helpless to compete in last weekend’s primaries and caucuses is the reason Solis Doyle ultimately had to go. The problem, as before, was mismanagement — only this time against a worthy enough opponent that the cost was obvious to everyone. 

BUT WHICH DEMOCRAT CAN WIN IT ALL IN NOVEMBER?
(Christopher Cooper, Wall Street Journal)
Right now, Mr. Obama has the stronger argument: In nine polls in the past two months that are posted by RealClearPolitics.com, the Illinois senator tops Mr. McCain in eight of them, with several of the most recent showing him winning by more than the survey's margin of error. Mrs. Clinton, by contrast, loses seven of the nine head-to-head contests, but only slightly. But polls have proven volatile this political season, and at this point neither Democrat is close to a lock for a theoretical November victory. Both candidates display weaknesses that could hinder their electability.

By Matthew Philips

What a difference a week makes. Last Tuesday, the press and a crowd of supporters filled a sprawling event center outside Little Rock for the Huckabee watch party. There were balloons and confetti, country music and over 1,000 cheering people to celebrate Huckabee’s surprising Super Tuesday wins in the South.

But on Potomac Primary night, the scene was deathly silent. Again in Little Rock, Ark., the Huckabee watch party--if you can even call it a party, was in the empty lobby of a downtown bank building. No supporters, no signs, no confetti, not even the ubiquitous Brooks & Dunn tunes that have become mainstays of every Huckabee event. Chuck Norris was nowhere to be seen. Just a handful of reporters and cameramen milling around, sitting on the floor (nowhere else to sit) wondering why we’d come all the way to Little Rock from D.C. on Tuesday. The answer was obvious: money. A deserted lobby in Little Rock is surely cheaper than a big suburban event center, or any locale in D.C. for that matter.

You could almost hear a pin drop as Huckabee, just after 9 p.m. Central time, appeared from upstairs, dressed in the same suit he’d worn on the plane Tuesday morning, save for a bright red tie featuring white elephants in top hats. "Are those elephants?" a reporter asked. “Absolutely,” he smiled. What did we think, he’d have donkeys on his tie?

Okay, so it isn't exactly Super Tuesday. But even though the polls predict that Barack Obama (18 points ahead in Virginia; 22 points ahead in Maryland) and John McCain (about 20 ahead in Virginia; about 30 in Maryland) will sweep today's Potomac Primary, there's still news to be made tonight. We MSMers may forget from time to time, but a primary doesn't have to be unpredictable to be important. Here's what I'll be watching as the returns roll in:

1) The Virginia Democratic Exit Polls: Barring any big surprises--namely, a Hillary upset or very close second--tonight's statistics will be tomorrow's story. And I've got a hunch that most of the media attention will focus on Virginia, an increasingly purple state that Dems hope to pick up next November. 

There are two demographics to flag: a) the commonwealth's white voters and b) today's Republican/Independent crossover participants.

Because Obama typically wins more than 80 percent of the black vote, the media has an irritating (if understandable) tendency to credit his victories in states with sizable black populations solely to his "bloc" support among African-Americans--an analysis that, even when statistically supportable, makes it seem as if the analyst is dismissing the entire outcome. There's a risk that could happen tonight in Virginia. In 2004, black voters made up 33 percent of the commonwealth's Democratic primary electorate--meaning that Obama only needs 36 percent of the white vote to win. But what if Obama wins the white vote, too? That's a much more interesting story--especially because pre-primary polls show Clinton leading the subgroup 49 to 41. If Obama runs strong among whites in the delegate-rich ring of D.C. suburbs in northern Virginia, he could very well surpass Clinton--and earn a day of headlines saying that he too can win in states with broader demographics. It would rebut a key Clinton charge (that Obama excels mainly in activist-based caucuses) and bode well for Ohio and Texas, which, like Virginia, are microcosms of the larger electorate.

Republicans and Independents may be even more important than whites in shaping the new narrative. Virginia is the first open primary since Super Tuesday--both Maryland and D.C. are closed to registered party members--so if Obama crushes Clinton among non-Democrats, reporters will likely read it as a sign of general election strength. And pay attention to which party attracts more Independents overall. If the Dems come out ahead--and Obama wins the swing vote--it'll augur well for his potential chances next November against John McCain.

2) Wisconsin: The Badger State hosts the next major primary a week from today--and Clinton has been giving off mixed signals about whether she plans to compete. According to the conventional wisdom, Wisconsin is largely seen as Obama country--thanks, as Ben Smith puts it, to "big college campuses, a primary open to independents, the ineffable nature of a state that elects Russ Feingold, and the latest polls." While Clinton is spending tonight in El Paso, Texas, Obama is already in Madison with a full day of stops in Janesville, Waukesha and Racine ahead of him. But the race could be closer than the pundits expect. "I don't think you can really give a leg up to anybody between the two of them," said Mike Tate, who ran Howard Dean's Wisconsin campaign in 2004, in today's Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. "There are scenarios where Barack wins and where Hillary wins." Meanwhile, there are early signs that Clinton isn't abandoning Wisconsin altogether. She's already launched a positive health care ad in the state, and the campaign just announced that Bill will stump Thursday in Milwaukee, Madison and La Crosse. Whether this is merely an effort to maximize her delegate tally without looking like she tried and failed (see: South Carolina) or the start of an actual effort largely depends, I think, on tonight's results. If Clinton can score any surprises--a closer-than-expected silver in Virginia would work--then expect a renewed interest in cheese, brewskis and the Green Bay Packers. If not? More time in Texas and Ohio. 

3) Mike Huckabee's Margin in Virginia: In the latest CNN delegate estimate, McCain leads Huckabee 723 to 217, with only about 1,000 delegates left to be awarded--which means Huckabee would have to win basically every remaining delegate to reach the 1,191 needed to clinch the nomination. But while most of the Republican party has accepted reality, Huckabee hasn't. "I didn't major in math," he has said. "I majored in miracles."

Even miracles are about to get less likely. Tonight, McCain is expected to expand his lead by about 110 delegates--Virginia, with 63, is winner take all--making it mathematically impossible for Huckabee to get the nod. Sure, Huck has every right to run as a "sparring partner" until McCain hits 1,191, but expect calls for his withdrawal to increase in volume and intensity starting tomorrow. His best hope for saving face (other than a win)? A surprisingly close second in Virginia. In the latest SurveyUSA poll, McCain's lead has narrowed to 11 points--plunging from 32 two days earlier. It's a testament to Huckabee's "near-constant TV presence, never-say-die support among evangelicals and FairTaxers and position as the sole remaining McCain alternative," as Jonathan Martin notes. A close silver won't be enough to kickstart a Huckabee comeback, but it may be enough to keep him keeping on.

By Matthew Philips 

Nothing is easy on the Huckabee campaign these days. As if the inevitability of the McCain nomination wasn’t enough for the traveling press corps to sometimes feel a little forgotten, the road (and skies) traveled haven’t exactly been smooth.

First, the press plane made an emergency landing last week in New Jersey after the controls went dead, forcing the two pilots to muscle the small craft safely down through thousands of feet of turbulence. Then on Sunday, with high winds causing delays to many commercial flights across Virginia, the campaign endured two harrowing plane rides (DC to Lynchburg; Lynchburg to Richmond) with enough bumps and drops and wind-blown landings to raise a round of applause upon touchdown. Finally, on the way to the Dulles Airport to catch a plane to Little Rock this morning, the press van ran out of gas and had to pull over to the side of the Dulles Toll Road.

We all looked at each other, still bleary and starting to laugh. As the driver tried the ignition again and again, a feisty campaign staffer shouted from the front seat: “We’re out of gas, dude! Call your dispatcher!”  We were 13 miles from Dulles, stalled on the side of the road directly opposite the USA Today building at 9:25 a.m.--and the plane was leaving in five minutes. The staffer called a colleague. “We have a big problem,” he said. “The van ran out of gas. No, I’m not kidding.”

But then... a miracle. A second van, this one carrying staffers, reporters and campaign strategist Chip Saltsman, pulled up behind us on the side of the road. Suddenly, Huckabee’s bodyman Drake Jarman was standing outside the window. “I’m your knight in shining armor,” he said, herding us onto the second van and assuring us that our bags would follow us to the next stop. They did, after yet another van was dispatched to retrieve them. Unfortunately, it took another 90 minutes our stuff to show up. The reason for the delay: the luggage vehicle also ran out of gas.

One campaign, it seems, only gets so many miracles.

By Arian Campo-Flores 

The news cycle in the past week has not been kind to Hillary Clinton. There were the crushing defeats in the contests over the weekend, the signs of tumult at headquarters as her campaign manager was replaced. Unfortunately for her, today isn’t shaping up to be much rosier. Clinton’s campaign is expecting another string of defeats in today’s Potomac Primary, as voters head to the polls in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia. “We’ve got this run where it’s not going to be good for us,” says one campaign adviser who declined to be named discussing internal matters. Among the pre-eminent challenges the campaign is facing right now, the adviser says: “the national media chatter” about Clinton’s waning fortunes, and “nervous supporters.” As a result, the candidate has been phoning backers and superdelegates to reassure them that her campaign is righting itself. “She’s trying to keep their eye on the ball, which is the long march to delegates,” says the adviser. “Hearing about management changes helps with some donors.”

Already, the campaign is trying to steer the discussion away from the Potomac to points west and south-most importantly, Ohio and Texas, which vote on March 4. Clinton’s advisers believe she should do well in those delegate-rich states because of the large portion of working-class (Ohio) and Hispanic (Texas) voters, among whom she’s performed strongly. Though Obama may well emerge from today’s contests with yet another burst of momentum, Camp Clinton argues that voters in the March 4 states will base their decisions on pressing issues like jobs and health care, which they say benefits them. “We think they’re going to take it seriously and not be swayed by a popularity contest,” says the adviser. Given the perception that Clinton’s campaign is on the ropes, the burden is on her to win those primaries. “If we don’t win,” says the adviser, “we’re going to get more pressure” from all that pesky media chatter.

Don Norcross is moving up. First he was an electrician with the IBW--although, as he puts it, he'd "been with organized labor in one fashion or another since birth." Then about a dozen years ago the 46-year old resident of Voorhees, N.J. became president of the local AFL-CIO. Next up: politics. In 2000, Norcross followed his brother George--"profane, boastful and sure of his power," writes the Star-Ledger, he's "one of the state's most formidable political bosses"--into the Democratic fray, rising to the position of party chairman in Camden County. But his latest position is undoubtedly his most powerful. Come August, Norcross--along with approximately 796 congressmen, senators, governors, party members and power players--could very well pick the next Democratic nominee for president of the United States.

Don Norcross is, in other words, a superdelegate.

You've probably heard of them at this point. Created in 1980 by the party establishment to wrestle control back from the rabble--who'd just chosen George McGovern and Jimmy Carter--superdelegates represent 19 percent of the Democratic party's total delegate count. They've been completely irrelevant since 1984, when Walter Mondale's establishment support helped him quash Gary Hart's insurgent candidacy. But now Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are so closely matched that one of them would have to win 80% of the remaining regular delegates in primaries and caucuses to reach the 2,025 needed to clinch the nod--an enormously unlikely scenario. Which means that the race could come down to the superdelegates--specifically the 400 or so, like Norcross, who still haven't picked a candidate. Norcross has already received "a dozen" calls from the Clinton and Obama campaign sasking him to "sign on the dotted line" (as well as "at least two [daily] emails" apiece). Up next: a charm offensive from the candidates themselves.

Amid all the wheeling and dealing, many rank-and-file Democrats are dyspeptic at the thought of a superdelegate tiebreaker--the Doomsday Scenario. How, they ask, will a superdelegate decide between the candidate who emerges from the primaries and caucuses with the most popular votes and the candidate who emerges with the most delegates? (Yes, it's a possibility.) And what if one candidate finishes with fewer votes and fewer delegates--but remains so close in the delegate count that an infusion of superdelegate support would be enough to put him or her over the top? (Also possible--and even likely. Obama, for example, currently leads Clinton in the pledged-delegate tally. But Clinton's 243-156 edge among superdelegates gives her the overall delegate lead.) Will the superdelegates be willing to thwart the will of the people? Are we heading for Bush v. Gore: The Sequel?

Wanting answers to these fascinating--and potentially decisive--questions, I gave Norcross a call. Fifteen minutes later, I hung up more confused than before. Norcross is genuinely uncommitted--asked if he's leaning, he gives a curt "no" and refuses to discuss the candidates' strengths and weakness. And he's not an elected official, unlike most of his fellow superdelegates--which means that he won't be pressured to follow the primary voters in his district or state. So I pressed him to explain how--"if we go through all the primaries and caucuses and neither candidate has reached the magic number of 2,025 delegates" --superdelegates should choose  His initial response was simple. "I think they should absolutely listen to the people," he said. Apparently, Norcross believes that the party will "reach consensus" organically. "It might be in Denver and might be before that, but we will unite all the delegates and all the members of the Democratic party behind one candidate," he said. "Someone will be the clear leader." Over and out.

Which is all well and good. If one candidate leads in pledged delegates, popular votes and number of states won, the uncommitted superdelegates will probably agree to support him or her (and should). But what if it's not so clear-cut? Asked to explain which yardstick he would use if the "voice of the people" was muddled--the popular vote? the vote in his area? the pledged delegate count?--Norcross was hazy. "Yes. Yes to all those," he said. "They're all relevant." At one point, he even suggested that he'd take the temperature of his union members. "I'm a labor guy," he said. "I have more discussions that you can shake a stick at. As any good leader would do, you need to listen to the folks who are responsible for putting you there."

Meaning that Norcross would solicit input, consider the stats--and then essentially follow his gut. It's an unsettling thought. Lacking a definitive popular choice, the superdelegates may very well do what they were designed to do--decide the Democratic nominee on their own.

I asked Norcross if he was worried that the party faithful would cry foul. "At the end of the day, in Denver, I believe the people will say that it was a fair process and we chose the best candidate," he said. "Unfortunately, this might be like sausage--you never want to see it being made, but in the end it tastes real good."

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

WHEN REALITY BITES
(David Brooks, New York Times)
There’s a big difference between the Republican and Democratic campaigns: The Republicans have split on policy grounds; the Democrats haven’t. There’s been a Republican divide between center and right, yet no Democratic divide between center and left. But when you think about it, the Democratic policy unity is a mirage. If the Democrats actually win the White House, the tensions would resurface with a vengeance.

FOREVER YOUNG
(Leon Wieseltier, New Republic)
After Bush, who is not for a fresh start? But there is something unfresh about Obama's movement for freshness. We have been this young before. "She starts old, old," Lawrence wrote, in his discussion of the Leatherstocking Tales, "wrinkled and writhing in an old skin. And there is a gradual sloughing off of the old skin, towards a new youth. It is the myth of America." So can we agree on a ground between cynicism and myth? Or must we have Camelot once more? After all, being young again is also a way of living in the past. There was something mildly farcical about the Kennedys' endorsement of Obama--of this candidacy that is alleged to signify an alternative to the dynasties, and a break with ideological antiquity; but worst of all was its brazen delight in mythologization... I understand that no one, except perhaps Lincoln, ever ran for the presidency on a tragic sense of life; but if it is possible to be too old in spirit, it is possible also to be too young. 

CAMPAIGNS COVER THE REGION IN LAST EFFORT TO CHARM VOTERS
(John Wagner, Amy Gardner and Nikita Stewart, Washington Post)
Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama offered himself as "something new" at a pair of spirited, arena-size rallies in Maryland yesterday, while his primary rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, portrayed herself as a "battle-scarred" fighter for the middle class at more intimate events held across the region on the eve of today's primaries... Obama was angling to sweep the three jurisdictions. For Clinton, a stronger-than-expected showing could blunt Obama's momentum in what has turned into a protracted competition for convention delegates: 171 are in play today, with contests in larger states such as Ohio and Texas looming. Republicans will be on the ballot in the three jurisdictions as well today, but the contest between Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee has been more subdued, given McCain's seemingly insurmountable lead in delegates after Super Tuesday. Still, today's contests, particularly in Virginia, could provide a measure of conservative discontent with the presumptive GOP nominee. On the Republican side, 119 delegates are up for grabs.

FOR CLINTON, BID HINGES ON TEXAS AND OHIO
(Patrick Healy, New York Times)
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and her advisers increasingly believe that, after a series of losses, she has been boxed into a must-win position in the Ohio and Texas primaries on March 4, and she has begun reassuring anxious donors and superdelegates that the nomination is not slipping away from her, aides said on Monday. Mrs. Clinton held a buck-up-the-troops conference call on Monday with donors, superdelegates and other supporters; several said afterward that she had sounded tired and a little down, but determined about Ohio and Texas. They also said that they had not been especially soothed, and that they believed she might be on a losing streak that could jeopardize her competitiveness in those states.

MORE: Clinton Looks to Trusted Advisor to Re-energize Flagging Campaign (Washington Post) 

SEEKING UNITY, OBAMA FEELS PULL OF RACIAL DIVIDE
(Ginger Thompson, New York Times)
Glimpses inside the Obama campaign show, though, that while the senator had hoped his colorblind style of politics would lift the country above historic racial tensions, from Day 1 his bid for the presidency has been pulled into the thick of them. While his speeches focus on unifying voters, his campaign has learned the hard way that courting a divided electorate requires reaching out group by group. Instead of following a plotted course, Mr. Obama’s campaign has zigged and zagged, reacting to outside forces and internal differences between the predominantly white team of top advisers and the mostly black tier of aides.

Hey, guess what, kids? Hillary Clinton wants your vote. So what if Obama dominates among voters aged 18 to 29, speaks in the Millennial generation's native tongue and boasts a YouTube hit created by actual young supporters instead of high-paid media consultants. Hillary recently released her own "hip" ad (above), and it's full of things that really capture the spirit of being young and fun in America today: asymmetrical hair cuts, stubble, hoodies, striped polo shirts and white Futura lettering on a blue background. Plus, in chronicling Clinton's brief but meteoric career as a shredding rock guitarist, "Hillary and the Band" even manages to pay homage to VH1's "Behind the Music"! And as every youngster knows, that's the coolest show ever--even it hasn't aired regularly since, like, 2006.

Gnarly.

Okay, so I have to admit: I wasn't a fan of "Yes, We Can"--you know, the pro-Obama video by Will.i.am of Black Eyed Peas and Bob Dylan's son (no, not the "One Headlight" guy) that featured celebrities--and Tatyana Ali--staring earnestly into the camera and swaying in black and white as they crooned the "uplifting" words of an Obama speech over the pregnant strum of a single acoustic guitar. It felt like an indulgent, condescending Gap ad, and made me embarrassed to be under 30. But apparently my peers disagreed, and the clip quickly became a viral hit on YouView, or whatever you call it.

Thankfully, the good folks at "Election08"--a comedy group featuring veterans of MTV, ABC, NBC, The Daily Show, Second City Chicago and Reno 911--have finally made a video that even a professional cynic like me can love. Called "john.he.is," it's a pitch-perfect parody of the original. You've got your deadpan, dreadlocked black vocalist. Your diverse cast of backup singers, who fidget ostentatiously, as if to say, "It is uncomfortable to be so, like, honest." And, of course, your egregious Mariah-style vocal melisma ("B-b-b-baby! Ooh-ooh-ooh.") But while "Yes, We Can" was self-serious hagiography, "john.he.is" is biting satire. The target: John McCain.

I won't ruin it for you, but suffice to say: I actually LOLed--as the kids call it--twice over the course of the clip. Whoever came up with the idea of exchanging Obama's gauzy hope talk for McCain's dark rhetoric on Iraq and terrorism--lyrics include "terrible sacrifices," "combat wounds" and "the promise of a better future is not always clear"--is a genius. Not only does it make McCain seem like a wheezy old warmonger (which is right out of the Dems' general election playbook), but if the video spreads virally--and I'm betting it will--it'll probably force at least a few viewers drawn to McCain's maverick rep to do what the singers themselves start to do about halfway in: listen to what's he saying and be like, "What? Wait a second." (Although by mocking the seriousness of our challenges abroad, it could also galvanize some conservatives--and non-hipsters. Which is why a campaign will never produce something this funny.)

Especially brutal, and hilarious: the line about Americans not being "concerned if we're [in Iraq] for 100 years, or a 1,000 years, or 10,000 years." To be fair, McCain means that once casualties drop to zero, we'll keep troops stationed there to help maintain stability, as we now do in Bosnia. But with the words "Iraq Withdrawal Date: 12,008" flashing onscreen over a catchy pop soundtrack, it isn't easy to hear the other side of the story over all the laughter.

Such is the power of YouView.

All of which got me thinking about the general election. Sure, the Illinois senator is a long way from clinching the Democratic nomination. First he has to survive Ohio and Texas on March 4 and Pennsylvania on April 22--states that are rich in delegates and far more favorable to Clinton than February's Obama-friendly face-offs. Even then, the fight will probably go all the way to the convention in August (the math isn't rocket science). But i