Clinton delegates want Hillary as VP

As I pointed out at Pajamas Media, the common-sense logic of the Obama-Clinton "dream ticket" is such that many Hillary supporters still believe her to be the obvious choice as running mate. Most Oklahoma Democratic convention delegates agree:

Of the 14 Clinton delegates who responded to an Oklahoman survey last week, 11 named Clinton as their first choice for running mate. Obama is expected to announce his choice this week.
Mildred Banks, a delegate from Tulsa, said, "As a delegate pledged to Hillary Clinton, and as chair of Tulsa Area Hillraisers for Hillary Clinton, my pick for VP is Hillary Clinton. She brings 18 million voters -- more than any candidate in history."

Don't bother arguing with me. Take it up with Mildred.

UPDATE: Similar news from New Mexico:

Hillary supporters in the audience included Paulette Atencio, 61, of Chama, who worked for Clinton in the primary. Clinton narrowly won New Mexico's Democratic caucus in February, getting 14 delegates, compared to 12 for Obama.
"Way deep in our hearts we are very disappointed," Atencio said.
If Obama doesn't select Clinton as his running mate, she said she would support McCain in the general election Nov. 4.

Does Obama think these ladies are kidding?

UPDATE II: The Hillary-or-else message is also being heard from Texas:

Ramona "Monchi" De La Paz Torres wants to see that U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton gets the respect she deserves at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.
"I'm going to stick to Hillary to the end," said De La Paz Torres, who lives in Central El Paso.
She's one of 10 El Paso Democrats who will be delegates at the convention Aug. 25-28. . . .
De La Paz Torres said she's not sure she can vote for Obama. . . .
"He's not experienced enough for him to handle the presidential decisions right now," she said. "I feel that he should have waited."
Blanche Darley, a fellow Clinton delegate from Central El Paso, said she doesn't like Obama, doesn't trust him and doesn't think he has paid attention to the needs of Mexican-Americans.
"I don't believe in him," she said.

UPDATE III: Big Tent Democrat says of Clinton as VP, "I've never seen a bigger no-brainer in my life," and links Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight, who says:

I think Obama might get an immediate 10-15 point bounce if he named her. . . . It's a crazy scenario, but the whole Obama veepstakes has been crazy enough that I wouldn't rule it out.

(Cross-posted at AmSpecBlog.)

Tuesday: Polls & Predictions

Latest polls, discussion, predictions and predicted MSM spin.

INDIANA

Insider Advantage (May 4)

• Clinton 48%
• Obama 44%

Survey USA (May 2-4)

• Clinton 54%
• Obama 42%

Zogby (May 3-4)

• Obama 44%
• Clinton 42%

DISCUSSION: RCP lists all polls, including the partisan PPP poll and the obscure Suffolk poll, but I stick to name-brand outfits. As you can see, the three most recent mainstream polls for Indiana are pointing in three different directions.

Without knowing any specific of Survey USA's methodology, I suspect their anomalous 12-point edge for Hillary is the result of pushing "leaners." They're the only major polling company that has ever shown a double-digit for Hillary in Indiana. Meanwhile, Zogby's the only major pollster showing Obama ahead in the past two weeks.

Neither of those two outcomes -- a double-digit Hillary win or an Obama victory -- seems likely in Indiana. However, it is an open primary, and Republican crossover votes would break for Hillary. Based on the "Operation Chaos" factor, then . . .

INDIANA PREDICTION

Clinton 54%

Obama 46%

NORTH CAROLINA

SURVEY USA (May 2-4)

• Obama 50%
• Clinton 45%

INSIDER ADVANTAGE (May 4)

• Obama 48%
• Clinton 45%

ZOGBY (May 3-4)

• Obama 48%
• Clinton 40%

DISCUSSION: For several days, people have been asking me if there is a chance Hillary could pull off an upset victory in North Carolina. Never say never, but the chances of such a stunning result are remote.

Look at the RCP poll list and you'll see that only once since February has any poll shown Hillary ahead in Carolina. That was an Insider Advantage poll taken April 29 -- a week after Hillary's Pennsylvania win, and immediately after Jeremiah Wright's media tour, and thus at ebb tide for Obama. Even that poll only showed her ahead 44%-42%, which is to say she had a 2-point margin and was nowhere near 50%. Since then, the same polling company shows Obama's gained 6 points and Hillary's gained 1, meaning the undecideds now seem to be breaking toward Obama.

Unlike Indiana, North Carolina is a closed primary, and the last day to change party registration was April 11, so there's lot less chance of "Operation Chaos" playing a role here.

Now let's talk about what the MSM will obsess over in reporting Tuesday's North Carolina primary results, namely race. According to CNN exit polls, in 2004, 73% of whites in North Carolina voted for Bush; 85% of blacks voted for Kerry. It is estimated that blacks constitute 40% of registered Democrats in North Carolina. And let's face it, if you're a white Democrat in North Carolina -- that is, if you're registered with the Harvey Gantt party -- it's unlikely you've got racial issues.

Based on those factors . . .

NORTH CAROLINA PREDICTION

Obama 55%

Clinton 45%

So, I'm picking Hillary to slightly outperform the polls in Indiana, while Obama significantly outperforms the polls in North Carolina.

Either prediction may be wrong, of course, and I don't have a crystal ball. But if the results are in line with what I'm predicting -- if Obama's margin of victory in N.C. is bigger than Hillary's margin of victory in Indiana -- then you'll see the network commentators talking delegates, delegates, delegates. The reason? North Carolina has 134 delegates and Indiana has 84, therefore a big Obama win in N.C. would have much more impact on the delegate count.

What if Hillary comes on stronger than expected in both states? Suppose that Hillary hits a double-digit win in Indiana and keeps it close in North Carolina. Then the MSM talking heads will be all about "electability": Does this result show that Obama was critically damaged by the Wright controversy?

Now, what if Obama exceeds expectations in both states? If he keeps it close in Indiana and really scores a blowout in Carolina -- getting 56% or more -- then it's going to be Hillary Death Watch on the networks. Those pundits will be driving nails in her coffin so fast it'll sound like a hammering contest.

I'll be live-blogging Tuesday night's results, perhaps moving Crisis '08 headquarters a remote location to be divulged later. So be sure to come back and laugh at me when my predictions turn out to be completely wrong, as they almost invariably are.

'She knows the reality'

Once inevitable, now impossible:



Via Hot Air, as Ed Morrissey summarizes:

Bad news, Chaosters — it looks like Hillary Clinton will throw in the towel before the convention. According to Andrea Mitchell at MS-NBC, the big loss in North Carolina and the narrow win in Indiana has convinced even the Clintons that they just can't get to the nomination. Mitchell says that Team Hillary is just "going through the motions."

Michelle Malkin offers mournful music.

UPDATE: I've gone on the road three times to cover the Hillary campaign for The American Spectator. It began as more or less a whim in late March, when I saw that all the experts were lining up to declare the Clinton candidacy dead. "What the heck, let's go see the gotterdammerung," I said to myself, and off I went to Pennsylvania.

What I saw in Greensburg, Pa., however, was not a campaign feebly playing out the string, but rather enthusiastic crowds and a candidate who refused to quit:

Trailing badly in the fourth quarter of her campaign for the Democratic nomination, Hillary may yet lose, but she seems determined not to quit until the final whistle.
Asked Tuesday if she was feeling pressure to get out of the race, Mrs. Clinton answered, "The most common thing the people say -- it happened here, it happened last night, it happens everywhere I go -- is, 'Don't give up,' 'Keep going,' 'We're with you.' And I feel very good about that, because that's what I intend to do."

I next caught up with Hillary in Harrisburg on the eve of her April 22 Pennsylvania victory:

Almost all observers expect Hillary to win today's primary in a state where every credible poll has shown her leading since last year. But if she can win by the double-digit margin suggested by the internal poll the Clinton campaign leaked to Drudge yesterday, Hillary's people are ready to declare a momentum shift based on Obama's apparent inability to win in states that will be major battlegrounds in November.
"Senator Obama has been outspending us three-to-one here in Pennsylvania,"
[Clinton spokesman Mo] Elleithee said. "I think a lot of people are going to have to ask the question, if he fails to win here, despite outspending us three-to-one -- which would be the same pattern as we saw in Texas and Ohio -- he's going to have to start answering a lot of questions as to why.
"Why can't he close the sale? Why can't he win in these big states, and these swing states in the general election?"

That win kept her in the game another two weeks, but the May 6 results blunted her momentum. By the time she reached West Virginia the next day, the press was again hounding her to quit:

Hillary's supporters cheered and chanted her name at the West Virginia event, but reporters pounced at a post-rally press conference, suggesting it might be time for her to strike the tent. Does her vow to keep fighting, asked one network TV reporter, mean that Clinton will continue her campaign all the way until the vote on the convention floor in Denver?
"I'm staying in this race until there's a nominee, and I obviously am going to work as hard as I can to become that nominee," she answered. "So we will continue to contest these elections and move forward." . . .
A few minutes before Hillary's Shepherdstown speech, Clinton spokesman Mo Elleithee dismissed doomsayers in the media."The pundits have counted us out since Iowa," he said. "The funny thing about elections is, the voters get to make up their own minds."Barring a decisive tsunami of superdelegate support to Obama, the campaign will continue.

Now, it seems, even her own campaign staff have accepted defeat, which is not the same as saying that they're quitting the fight. I chronicle and summarize Hillary's "Chaos" comeback in the June print edition of The American Spectator, soon available on newsstands everywhere. To subscribe to the Spectator (12 issues for a low, low $19.95), click here.

Everyone sees doom for Hillary

UPDATE: Will she fight on? Ben Smith:

A Clinton donor tells me that on a conference call . . . with major fundraisers this afternoon, Harold Ickes told them Clinton isn't planning to drop out. . . .
I've obtained a draft of the Illinois finance committee's letter, being circulated by a Clinton fundraising aide, Rafi Jafri, which stresses a fight until the convention, and a resolution in "August, and no earlier."

Never underestimate the Clintons.

PREVIOUSLY: James Antle, Allahpundit, Malkin -- everybody is eager to see that wormwood stake driven through her heart.

I don't know. People have been predicting the end for Hillary ever since Super Tuesday, and yet she keeps going. I've covered her campaign for The American Spectator -- actually had a brief chat with Chelsea in West Virginia -- and so I'm not necessarily objective.

A reporter always has an emotional investment in the story he's covering. You want to believe that what you're reporting is an important story, and if the Clinton campaign was hopeless and pointless, then it wasn't important, was it? So the notion that Hillary might somehow pull off a miracle comeback is appealing, even if it is completely irrational.

Still, as I've been saying for more than two months, Hillary might lose, but she won't quit. Even if she lays off her campaign staff, I don't expect her to concede and release her delegates. She'll at least insist on a first-ballot vote in Denver, and I expect her to try every little behind-the-scenes trick at her disposal.

My Spectator coverage of Hillary's campaign:

• March 26: Fourth and Long for Hillary
• April 22: Madame President?
• May 8: Rear-Guard Action
• May 19: Hoarse Race
• June 2: Crone Wars

I would argue, by the way, that those who are crowing over the apparent collapse of the Clinton campaign have their own biases. Last year, when the Democratic primaries looked like a coronation ceremony for Queen Hillary, a lot of people started hoping she could be beat. Then, after Iowa and Super Tuesday, they started predicting that, in fact, she already had been beaten. (The spate of "it's over" columns in March were of this ilk.)

Since her final defeat would be the fulfillment of their hopes and predictions, these people had a bias toward bad news for Hillary. It wasn't a political bias, really -- there's not a dime's worth of difference between Hillary and Obama, issue-wise -- so much as it was the very common human desire to see the underdog upset the reigning champ.

Every time I went out to cover Hillary on the campaign trail, I'd talk with other reporters. None of them gave her a chance of winning, and they turned every press conference into a game of who could find the most novel way of re-phrasing the question: "Hey, Hillary, when are you going to admit that you've lost?"

One more point: Obama's appeal to youth impacted the press coverage. A lot of younger reporters especially seemed to have it in for Hillary -- it was like some kind of Freudian mother-hatred thing.

Assuming that Obama actually gets the nomination (and hey, anything can happen in June, right?) the general-election campaign will occur under a shadow of "what if?" Should Obama lose, the liberals in the MSM will be left to wonder what might have happened if they hadn't been so willing to participate in the Hillary takedown. If Obama wins, those conservatives who gloated over Hillary's downfall will have cause for remorse.

Team Hillary: Race baiters?

Based on a column by Charles Blow of the New York Times, HuffPo's Al Giordano accuses Hillary Clinton's supporters and media allies of engaging in a "cynical effort to turn the 2008 campaign into a race riot":

You can see that Clinton is in a staggering free-fall among African-American voters, her favorability is down 36 points while 17 percent view her more negatively than before, while Obama's favorable and negative ratings among whites have paired at five point increases. . . . The greater context is that even including Obama's slight dip [due to the controversy surrounding Rev. Jeremiah Wright], he's more popular today among white voters than he ever was prior to February.

Giordano ofters this interesting bit of media analysis:

Nary a superdelegate can go on Fox News without being berated by an anchorperson screeching (this is pretty close to an exact quote): "But your duty as a superdelegate is to select the most electable and that's Hillary Clinton!" That these anchorpersons are Republican partisans openly cheering for Senator Clinton is our first clue of the game afoot. One of the major successes of Rush Limbaugh's Operation Chaos is that it has got all the right-wing pundits and reporters marching lockstep behind the effort to give Clinton enough oxygen to keep slashing away at Senator Obama, who remains the prohibitive likely Democratic nominee.

Maybe Giordano monitors Fox News more closely than I do, but . . . Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!

First of all, how many Democratic superdelegates have appeared on Fox? And did any anchorperson actually "screech" at them in the manner described by Giordano? I concede that Fox News anchors are, in general, GOP cheerleaders, and I can imagine them (or any other reporter) asking superdelegates how considerations of "electability" factor will into their decision. But if Giordano can produce video or transcripts of this "almost exact quote," I'd like to see it.

What is even more dubious is Giordano's suggestion that "right-wing pundits and reporters" have the ability to "give Clinton enough oxygen" to continue her campaign. Exactly how much influence does Charles Krauthammer or Major Garrett have in the Democratic primary? I don't doubt that some Democratic voters watch Fox News, but far more get their news from other sources, including ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN, none of which are notorious as major employers of "right-wing pundits and reporters."

The basis for Giordano's rage is this chart in Blow's column. The chart is interesting, but it is essentially irrelevant to the actual argument made by Team Clinton. The chart shows CBS/NYT polling data about the favorable/unfavorable ratings of Hillary and Obama among registered Democrats.

I repeat: "among registered Democrats." This is not what Hillary's handlers are talking about when they talk about Obama's "electability."

Understand that the percentage of registered Democrats within the electorate varies from state to state. One of the reasons we speak of "red states" and "blue states" is that there are a lot more registered Democrats in New York and Massachusetts, for example, than there are in Tennessee or Texas. So any poll that reports only the opinions of registered Democrats will necessarily oversample the deep-red states. QED.

The "electability" argument is not about the opinions of hard-core partisan Democrats in Boston or Detroit. It's about swing voters in swing states.

Swing voters are people with no strong commitment to either major party. Swing voters may be registered as Democrats, Republicans or independents, but the key point is that they are "in play" for either party in the general election.

Swing states are those which, like swing voters, are "in play." The GOP presidential campaign is unlikely to put much effort into wooing voters in Massachusetts, just as the Democrats aren't likely invest campaign resources in Alabama. Assuming that the fall campaign is fairly close, the battleground will be narrowed down to a relative handful of states. Based on past elections, that means most of the focus will be on the Ohio/Mississippi river valley states -- Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Missouri and Iowa -- as well as Florida.

So when Team Clinton talks about "electability," they are arguing that Hillary has an advantage over Obama in her ability to win swing voters in those swing states. Whether that is true or not remains to be seen, but that's what the argument is about, and that CBS/NYT poll chart doesn't say a damn thing useful to that argument.

Giordano insults Democrats who support Hillary, saying they have fallen "hook, line and sinker" for the electability argument "because they are gullible, haven't an original idea in their little pea brains, and follow the pack of what everybody else is talking about." But it is Giordano who shows himself to be gullible, having failed to question the relevance of poll data about registered Democrats to the issue in question.

Giordano sees in this New York Times graphic a magic wand with which he can dispel all doubt, vanquish all foes, and thereby triumph over Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos." When Democrats insult other Democrats over irrelevant nonsense, I assure you it only advances Rush's objectives.

Please, don't let me persuade any of you Democrats from calling each other idiots and morons and liars and racists. Be as petty and as vicious as you want. I'm thoroughly enjoying this show.

Dem strategist: Obama 'unelectable'

As early as March 2007, Hillary Clinton strategist Mark Penn argued that Barack Obama was "unelectable except perhaps against Attila the Hun."

That's from the cache of internal Clinton campaign documents accompanying Joshua Green's Atlantic Monthly article about how Hillary lost it.

UPDATE: If you want to know how not to curry favor with the press, check out this letter from the Washington Post's managing editor, complaining that Clinton spokesman Phil Singer was badmouthing one of the Post's reporters to a colleague.

UPDATE II: OK, continuing to read through the Green article, and now we see the fatal turn:

On May 21, the deputy campaign director, Mike Henry, wrote a prescient memo noting the cost and difficulty of running there and proposing that Clinton skip the caucus. The memo was leaked to The New York Times. Henry had estimated (conservatively, as it turned out) that Iowa would require more than $15 million and 75 days of the candidate's presence, and would not provide any financial or organizational edge. "This effort may bankrupt the campaign and provide little if any political advantage," he warned. When the story appeared, Clinton felt compelled to
publicly recommit, thereby upping Iowa's significance even further.

By the time Iowa was over, Hillary had raised $100 million -- but had spent $106 million. Too much of this money went to Mark Penn, the pollster/consultant, who was very good at "big picture" image stuff but knew zilch about the grassroots mechanics of campaign organization.

Obama and Edwards had gotten a big head start in Iowa because Hillary was up for re-election to the Senate in 2006 and couldn't afford to make it appear she was looking ahead to '08. One could think of ways to get around that -- putting together a "shadow" operation in Iowa at relatively low cost that could be funded trhough her leadership PAC or other sources -- but the big brains in Team Clinton were apparently so focused on the "big picture" stuff that they neglected that kind of nuts-and-bolts thinking.

UPDATE III: In the absence of leadership:

On February 11 . . . Phil Singer, Wolfson's deputy and a man notorious for his tirades at reporters, blew up in Wolfson's office and screamed obscenities at his boss before throwing open the door to direct his ire at the campaign's policy director, Neera Tanden, an ally of [fired former campaign director Patti] Solis Doyle. "Fuck you and the whole fucking cabal!" he shouted, according to several Clinton staffers. In the end, he climbed onto a chair and screamed at the entire staff before storming out.

It is very important in any large organization that everybody knows who's boss. There must be hierarchy and clear lines of authority, and the boss has to be able to evaluate the competence of deputies. Patti Solis Doyle didn't know what she was doing, and Penn was paid way too much for what he was doing. It's impossible to evaluate Harold Ickes performance, since nobody seems to know exactly what he was supposed to be doing. And, as media strategist, Wolfson managed to alienate everyone in the media.

"Personnel is policy," the old saying goes, and Hillary's campaign had assembled a cadre of second-raters in top positions. But this is entirely the candidate's fault. The candidate is always ultimately in charge of his own campaign, and if Hillary put the wrong people in charge, she has no one to blame but herself.

UPDATE IV: In three successive e-mails (2/25, 3/5, 3/10) a group of advisers urged Hillary to challenge the DNC on the disallowed Florida and Michigan primaries, but she refused to act on their advice until May, when it was too late. Again, this is her fault.

My new BFF, Bill Clinton

Preparing for Tuesday's trip to see Hillary at a "Solutions for America" event in Greensburg, Pa., I RSVP'd at HillaryClinton.com, providing my e-mail address as requested.

Hillary's husband must be minding the Web site nowadays, because next thing you know, I got the following personal e-mail from the former Leader Of The Free World:

Dear Robert,
You and I both want Hillary to win. So let me be frank about the challenge our campaign faces right now. It couldn't be any simpler than this: we cannot be competitive politically unless we are competitive financially -- and right now we are at a financial disadvantage. The Obama campaign is already spending more than $1 million on an aggressive ad buy in Pennsylvania. . . . .
Despite the spirited support from Hillary's best supporters, including you, we are still being outraised and outspent by the Obama campaign. He outspent us by more than $10 million in February alone. Let's close the gap so Hillary can win in Pennsylvania, keep on winning, and be our next president. . . .
Just like Hillary, you've worked hard to get us this far. We cannot let up our efforts now and let this race be decided by a shortfall of funds. One thing I know for sure about Hillary -- if we give her the support she needs, she will never let us down, not as a candidate and not as president. She'll work just as hard for you in the White House as she is on the campaign trail. Let's match Hillary's efforts with our own.
Contribute to help us raise as much as we can by midnight tonight. I appreciate everything you are doing for Hillary so much. Let's keep working and winning.
Sincerely,
Bill Clinton

You know, Bill, it's that "sincerely" that makes all the difference. That means so much, coming from you. And I'm sincerely glad to know how much you appreciate everything I'm doing for Hillary.

UPDATE: Monday night in Uniontown, Pa., Hillary campaigned with "coveted superdelegate," John Murtha:

U.S. Rep. John Murtha, an Iraq war critic, stumped for Hillary Clinton in Western PA Monday evening, in his first campaign appearance since endorsing the senator last week.
Murtha was one of two of the coveted superdelegates – the other was DNC committeeman Pat Maroney from West Virginia -- to endorse the New York senator after a long, post-March 4th drought.

While I'm neither coveted nor a superdelegate, Bill Clinton did call me "Dear Robert." And he did it sincerely.

UPDATE II: This reminds me of the time I was under sniper fire in Bosnia. Sorry, I "misspoke."

UPDATE III: I'm now in Greensburg, at the campus computer center. Got linked by Sean Hackbarth at The American Mind. Sean sincerely doubts my "Friend of Bill" credibility.

P.S.: Because of my Pennsylvania trip, I probably won't be blogging Tuesday.

Hope vs. hopeless

My American Spectator story about Hillary's Pennsylvania campaign finale in Harrisburg espies a glimmer of a chance that Team Clinton may yet manage a comeback:

Almost all observers expect Hillary to win today's primary in a state where every credible poll has shown her leading since last year. But if she can win by the double-digit margin suggested by the internal poll the Clinton campaign leaked to Drudge yesterday, Hillary's people are ready to declare a momentum shift based on Obama's apparent inability to win in states that will be major battlegrounds in November.
"Senator Obama has been outspending us three-to-one here in Pennsylvania," Elleithee said. "I think a lot of people are going to have to ask the question, if he fails to win here, despite outspending us three-to-one -- which would be the same pattern as we saw in Texas and Ohio -- he's going to have to start answering a lot of questions as to why."Why can't he close the sale? Why can't he win in these big states, and these swing states in the general election?"

Read the whole thing, and then check out American Spectator staffer Philip Klein's more gloomy prognostication of Hillary's prospects:

The Obama campaign will try to take solace in any loss within single digits. . . . Anything less than a 20-point blowout will all but mathematically eliminate Clinton from overtaking Obama in the pledged delegate count or popular vote.
But in a conference call with reporters yesterday, Clinton's chief strategist Geoff Garin dismissed such numbers as "ridiculous." The campaign argued that Obama had outspent Clinton substantially in Pennsylvania and thus any victory by Clinton would raise further questions about Obama's ability to win working-class voters in big swing states.
Clinton, it's pretty clear, will use any angle to justify continuing her candidacy. The trouble is, financial reports released over the weekend showed Clinton heavily in debt, and Obama with a five-to-one cash advantage.
And that was at the beginning of the month, before all of the spending in Pennsylvania. Unless she and Bill are willing to kick in more of their sizable fortune on a nearly lost cause, this Clinton nostalgia tour may soon be performing its final engagement.

So, is the glass half-empty or half-full? My own article acknowledges the same problems for Clinton that Klein identifies, and any sober observer would estimate her hope for winning in Denver as a longshot.

Perhaps it is my sentimental attachment to underdogs, my love of miraculous comebacks, that causes me to remember that "unlikely" is not the same as "impossible." And I'm beginning to worry that Klein has spent so much time in Pennsylvania lately that he's become bitter, clinging to his guns and religion and poll numbers.

Ultimately, Democrats will choose their own nominee (with some unsolicited help from Rush Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos" crew), so it probably doesn't much matter what a couple of reporters think about the Hillary-vs.-Obama contest, especially a couple of conservatives like Klein and me.

But it's pretty impressive -- though almost entirely accidental -- that the Spectator would have two reporters filing two starkly different assessments of Hillary's prospects on the day of the crucial Pennsylvania primary. Diversity!

Crisis '08 HQ: Barack the Vote!

11:15 p.m.: You've got to see this Obama operation at the grassroots level to really understand what's involved, and how they've been able to accomplish what they've accomplished. There are four guys and a girl -- the oldest is 28 -- sitting at laptops in a grocery store cafe, typing in data about their phone banks, their canvassing, and other campaign activity. Some are paid staff, some are volunteers.

This is the team for the Eastern Panhandle region of West Virginia. Some of these people have already worked in several states during this campaign. They've got the assistance of a 54-year-old Martinsburg volunteer.

Just got off the phone with Tom Bowen, national press guy for Team Obama. Imagine that -- a regional team member gets nervous about a reporter hanging around, sends an e-mail to headquarters, and next thing you know, the national press guy is on a cell phone talking to the reporter.

I mention to Tom that it's pretty impressive that they've got such an operation in a state where Hillary's expected to win by a heavy margin.

"Obama's philosophy is organize everywhere," Tom says.

"That's Old School," I say, and explain I'm not here to play "gotcha." He seems reassured.

The midnight deadline for the staff's data dump is approaching, and it looks like we're not going to have final results for Indiana until tomorrow morning. So I'm going to pack it up. Obama won by double digits in North Carolina; looks like Hillary's going to squeak by in Indiana.

It's been fun watching the campaign team work at the grassroots level. Wednesday, Chelsea Clinton's coming to nearby Shepherdstown. Should be quite a show. Whether or not Obama comes to the Panhandle, and when, is yet to be determined. But Tom tells me I'll be the first to know.

10:58 p.m.: I am in the cafe of a Martin's grocery story in Martinsburg, W.Va. Team Obama (WV Panhandle Div.) is now operating here, rushing to meet a midnight deadline to file their data of the day's activity. This grocery story has the best WiFi connection in town, they say.

The guy who's streaming live MSNBC says it's 86% of precincts reporting from Indiana, now 52% for Hillary, 48% for Obama -- closer than my prediction. Obama's outperforming the polls.

9:31 p.m.: They're running us out of headquarters here, am relocating.

9:11 p.m.: Obama's acceptance speech begins . . .

"This is your victory!"

Gracious: "Game changer ... congratulate Senator Clinton on what appears to be her victory in the great state of Indiana ..."

Obama goes right at Hillary's "electability" argument -- calls North Carolina "a big state, a swing state."

"Today we stand less than 200 delegates away . . ." (not according to Hillary's math, but ...)

"Pundits have suggested this party is inalterably divided . . . I don't believe it. . . . This election is about you, the American people."

"This fall we intend to march forward as a united party ..."

Give him this, the guy does "the vision thing" real good. He sounds good doing the lofty and inspiring phrase.

Something else: He's not afraid to repeat the same anecdotes and the same phrases he's been repeating for months. Obama remembers that, for many Americans, tonight is the first time they've actually sat down and listened to him speak.

Obama is Reaganesque in that sense. Reagan did the after-dinner speaking circuit for years and resisted the temptation to innovate. Find what works and stick with it. If a line gets a good reaction, use it again in your next speech. By repeating the same themes over and over -- rehearsing his lines, as it were -- Reagan developed the timing and rhythm of a seasoned performer.

Watching Obama deliver this speech, you see how he's got it down cold.

"That's the America I love. That's the America you love. That's the America we're fighting for in this election." (The crowd goes wild.)

One problem: Obama's also got that Clinton thing where he starts speaking and goes on forever until the audience gets tired, bored and irritated. A good election speech should be no more than 10 minutes, and Obama's already gone more than 15.

9 p.m.: Greetings to Michelle Malkin readers from beautiful West Virginia, where an Obama phone bank is going on while they watch the returns on MSNBC. It's interesting to hear half the phone conversations. One phone banker just said: "Watch your language, sir!" I looked up and caught the eye of the field organizer, who shrugged: "It happens."

The size of Obama's North Carolina win is pretty impressive -- apparently much bigger than the 10-point win I'd boldly predicted this morning. And the Obama campaigners are still holding out hope for Indiana, where the margin has closed to 6 points -- Hillary 53%, Obama 47% -- with 67% of precincts reporting.

8:54: Sorry for the long delay, but I had some work to do over at the American Spectator blog. Had a long conversation with an Obama field operative here who said he was surprised by the level of Ron Paul support here in West Virginia. Meanwhile, back in Indiana . . .

With 59% of the Indiana vote counted, the margin now is Hillary 54%, Obama 46% -- the exact margin I called in my predictions early this morning. But my friend, the Obama operative, says that the late returns will be stronger for Obama, so the margin is expected to narrow. MSNBC says the state is still too close to call.

Here's a photo of Dana Stewart, an enthusiastic Obama supporter, doing a "honk-and-wave" on Queen Street in Martinsburg:




7:35: A passerby just stopped by the front door of Obama HQ (where I'm liveblogging the results tonight) and asked about the election returns. Told that Obama had just been called the N.C. primary winner, the man said, "All right! My man!" and then proceeded 0ut to the street corner: "Barack just won North Carolina!"

7:16: Michelle Malkin is bitterly blogging. Hot Air has got their bitter high-tech chat thing happening. Here in at Obama HQ in Martinsburg, W.Va., the bitterness is almost palpable. They've got a phone-bank going, watching the election returns while they flog the phones for Obama. Will get a photo up in a few minutes.

7:14: Now with 9% reporting in Indiana, it's Hillary 57%, Obama 43%.

7:12: Man, easy to see why the liberals rant against Chris Matthews. If you tune in to MSNBC for the oh-so-serious Olbermann, the chatty Matthews is an annoyance.

7:08: Now it's John Kerry spinning for Obama -- mentioning "Operation Chaos"! Olbermann insinuates some sinister conspiracy; mentions Richard Mellon Scaife!

7:06: Terry McAuliffe -- wow, there's a guy I haven't seen much lately -- is on with Chris Matthews now. McAuliffe has nice teeth and a tan that looks like he's spent the past two weeks in Palm Beach. "We've got a long way to go in this process," he says, spinning the idea of 2,209 as the magic number.

7:03: "Too early to call" in Indiana, Chris Matthews says, with 4% reporting and Hillary ahead 59%-41%. Another 27 minutes before N.C. polls close.

6:55: Still no adequate explanation for the MSNBC early returns when polls haven't yet closed. Right now, Tom Daschle -- who's for Obama -- is on with Keith Olbermann, talking super-delegates. Olbermann, as usual, looks on the verge of erupting in fury. I don't know why.

6:50: Just set up Crisis '08 HQ at the offices of the Berkeley County (W.Va.) Democratic Party, where they've got got MSNBC on TV. For some reason, the network is already showing 3% of the vote counted in Indiana, with Hillary ahead 61% to 39%.

5:15: Just about to head out and caught a few minutes of Fox News coverage. Note to Megyn Kelly: Lose those Alan Colmes glasses. I know you're trying to be taken seriously -- not just another smokin' hot Fox blonde, and all that -- but you've gone too far with this Colmes look.

Speaking of serious, Fox just highlighted a report from the Wall Street Journal that Hillary Clinton's campaign is saying 2,209 is the magic number:

Clinton was also asked about the delegate count: Would the race against Sen. Barack Obama end when she or he gets 2,025 delegates – generally accepted as the total needed to secure the nomination — or 2,209 delegates, a number that includes delegates from Florida and Michigan? The Democratic National Committee has said it would not seat Florida and Michigan delegates since their states held early primaries in violation of party rules.
Clinton said she thought 2,209 was number needed to win. On Monday, Geoff Garin, her chief strategist had said on a conference call that 2,209 is “what we believe is the standard for deciding this is that who has a majority of the total number of delegates,
including Michigan and Florida, that — to decide the nomination,” according to a transcript of the call.
For its part, the Obama camp is clearly focused on 2,025, and the campaign put out a press release Monday saying the Illinois senator needs 273 more delegates to reach that goal.

Another ear full of cider, you see.

4:25 p.M.: Just about to get in the shower (preparatory to my excursion to West By God Virginia) when I decided to check Memeorandum and saw this report from Indiana:

Amid heavy turnout, Republicans appeared to be crossing over in droves today in Marion County and suburban counties. . . .
Jim Adams, 36, voted for Hillary Clinton to keep the race going beyond Indiana. He's a McCain backer and enjoys watching the Democrats fight.
"In the end, I think McCain is going to win," Adams said, and then referred to controversial statements by Bill Clinton and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor. "Bill can't keep his mouth shut, and the reverend can't keep his mouth shut."

An "Operation Chaos" agent in action!

4 p.m.: While I dozed this morning, Team Clinton was lowering expectations in North Carolina, where my prediction of a 55-45 Obama win now looks safe. North Carolinian Bob Owen says it's just a question of how big Obama wins there. The margin in Indiana will be the main point of interest tonight. Michelle Malkin has a "primary countdown" thread going.

3:30 p.m.: Having spent two previous occasions covering Hillary's campaign, I decided it was time for some Hope and Change, so tonight Crisis '08 HQ will be in the Martinsburg, W.Va., offices of Sen. Barack Obama's campaign.

Just got off the phone with Brenda Robinson, who told me they'll be serving "pizza and everything" at their "Barack the Vote! Results Watching and Phone Banking Party."

I'll be liveblogging the results of the North Carolina and Indiana primaries in a few hours. In the meantime, you can check out my "polls and prediction" post, or see my latest post over at the American Spectator blog, where Philip Klein's latest article prompts my question:

On the other hand, are we so sure that a principled progressive like Obama would do the nation less harm than an unprincipled panderer like Hillary?

Expect updates . . .

On Hillary's exit

New York Magazine:

The Hillary I encounter a few minutes after Obama leaves the building [at the AIPAC summit June 4] is somber, prideful, dark-humored, aggrieved, confused -- and still high on the notion that she is leading an army, Napoleon in a navy pantsuit and gumball-size fake pearls. . . .
"The real lesson of the campaign is that neither my base nor his base alone is sufficient for a general election," she tells me. "That's important to stress, because now we need to look to November and how we put together a winning majority. We've gotta get this coalition to work together, because clearly the Republicans have been more successful at picking off the people who voted for me, and that's exactly who they’re going after again."

The astute reader will detect a dismissive, contemptuous tone in John Heileman's article (you should read the whole thing) and I suppose he's not alone in that attitude. Every time I showed up on the campaign trail to cover Hillary (in Greensburg, in Harrisburg, in Shepherdstown) I was struck by how hostile the press was toward her. Many of the reporters seemed to resent the fact that she wouldn't just quit and let Obama have the nomination.

I am not the type to throw around words like "misognynist," but thinking back on it, it does seem like some of the most hostile treatment Hillary got from the press -- I'm particularly thinking of one surly, bearded CBS reporter who showed up at Shepherdstown -- came from male reporters. And there was that bit with the manly Tim Russert.

It's as if those reporters doubted Hillary's power, or her willingness to wield power for her own purposes. As if they really didn't believe that Hillary would be willing to take her campaign all the way to Denver, or that she might be less than enthusiastic about rallying her disgruntled supporters to the Obama banner, knowing that it was only because of the media and the (disproportionately male) superdelegates that she'd been denied the nomination.

Heh. Just you wait, buckos. Hillary's got about $30 million in campaign debt, and I'm thinking she'll get a lot more contributions for her debt-relief fund if Obama loses than if he wins. Then she'll be the "I told you so" candidate, the ticket to ride for 2012, and she's going to make you sexist swine crawl. And the same goes for turncoat sellouts like Patti.

So go ahead and cheer for Obama, fellas. If you're not cheering on Nov. 5, just remember how you dissed Hillary. Hell hath no fury . . .

UPDATE: Jason Horowitz:

A former bundler to Hillary Clinton just called in to tell me that Barack Obama's selection of Patti Solis Doyle as chief of staff to the campaign's eventual vice presidential nominee is the "biggest f--- you I have ever seen in politics."
The donor, speaking on background, said that everyone in Clinton circles knows the two have hard feelings towards one another and haven't spoken since Clinton removed Solis Doyle as campaign manager, and that Clinton loyalists view her with deep suspicion and believe that she is shopping around a book deal and acted as a background source for an extremely harsh Vanity Fair piece about Bill Clinton.

Hey, Patti, try to see if you can finish this sentence: "Payback's a b----."

Obama 'desperate'?

The London Daily Mail doubtless exaggerates:

Barack Obama made an impassioned appeal to voters last night to end Hillary Clinton's dreams of another comeback in the race for the White House.
The Illinois senator told Democrat voters heading to the polls today in Indiana and North Carolina: "I need help."
With less than a month to go before the state-by-state vote ends, the Obama camp is desperate to finish off Mrs Clinton's campaign to become the Democrat's presidential nominee.

Surely, with all that money in the bank and an insuperable lead among pledged delegates, Obama's campaign is not desperate, although I'm sure they're kicking themselves for having failed to finish Hillary off earlier. It was the Clinton campaign that was "desperate" in March, but then that one-eyed jack jumped out of the deck.

Now, polls show a Hillary resurgence, but as Ed Morrisey says:

The effects of Jeremiah Wright and perhaps William Ayers appear to have created momentum away from Obama, and Democrats may well wonder whether Obama can beat anyone at this point in time, let alone John McCain in November.
The question for Hillary will be whether this surge came too late. She needed this kind of movement in the polls in February, before the Obama nomination really got sold as a fait accompli. Hillary has enough evidence of Obama’s faltering campaign, but the superdelegates may be too afraid of the backlash if they act on it now. Voting for Hillary now looks like stealing the nomination from Obama, and it will take a lot of convincing before they can do that and sell it as the best decision for the party.

Just in case anybody was sleeping in French class, the English translation of "fait accompli" is "done deal," ne c'est pas?

Since today seems to be Foreign News Day, the Daily Mail also reports that Australian starlet Mischa Barton has cellulite.

And speaking of the Daily Mail -- the one in Charleston, W.Va., that is -- Don Surber reports a Rasmussen poll showing Hillary Clinton is ready to stomp Obama's butt in next week's West Virginia primary. Don explains why West Virginians are so bitter:

West Virginia is the nation’s oldest state with an average age of 38.9 years, has the second lowest per person income, and the lowest percentage of college graduates among its adults.
In short, Hillary’s people.

Hillbillies for Hillary!

Hillary's premature obituary

In the latest issue of The New Republic, Michelle Cottle has a 3,330-word opus on the Clinton campaign that ends thus:

From the outside, the struggle for control of a campaign that likely won't be around much longer may appear absurd. In Ballston, however, the sense of looming loss seems only to feed the fury, as advisers grab for what may be their last chance to right the ship. Whether driven on by dedication, desperation, or delusion, some of Hillary's not-so-happy warriors find themselves unable to give up the fight--not just against Barack Obama, but also against each other.

This is a problem for Cottle, in that:

• The article went online before Hillary's double-digit Pennsylvania win breathed new life (and a reported $10 million fundraising bonanza) into her campaign;
• In the course of the article, Cottle pretty much urinates all over the reputation of key Clinton strategist Mark Penn; portrays the Clinton campaign ("Hillaryland") as desperately chaotic; and depicts Bill Clinton as a meddlesome source of discord in his wife's campaign.

The subhead on the article -- "Inside Hillaryland's fatal psychodrama" -- is a clear tipoff to Cottle's intended purpose. Plainly, Cottle wrote this article in "Hitler's Last Days" mode: See the feuding of the Nazi inner circle as the Eastern Front collapses and Der Fuehrer madly orders phantom divisions hither and yon.

Chock-full of juicy nuggets about the backstabbing rivalries inside the campaign, Cottle's article effectively burns her bridges to Team Clinton. No sensible political reporter would have published such an article about a campaign that was still viable. Especially if Mark Penn retains any influence in the campaign -- and despite his demotion over his Colombian connection, Penn is still a key advisor -- Cottle will now be persona non grata with the Clintonistas.

And Cottle clearly knows it. She's bet the ranch that Obama will finish off Hillary -- and finish her off pretty quickly -- so Cottle gets hysterical over any news that may favor Team Clinton, including the continued disputes over the disenfranchised Democrats of Florida and Michigan:

For what feels like the one millionth time, I just did some segment over at MSNBC on the theme of how Michigan possibly impacts Hillary's position if the popular vote there is factored into the candidates' running tallies. From now on, my official position is this: It is a b.s. line of argument from the Clinton campaign -- and anyone else promoting it -- because the Michigan primary results are fundamentally illegitimate.
As you know, left up to me, neither Michigan nor Florida's delegates would be seated. Those states knowingly and flagrantly broke the rules. They knew what the penalty would be, and they did it anyway.

Cottle's premature obituary for Hillary's campaign, you see, puts TNR's senior editor in the decidedly unobjective position of having a stake in the game. If Hillary somehow comes back to snatch the nomination away from Obama, not only will Cottle have egg all over her face, but Cottle will also have a hostile relationship with the top campaign staff of the Democratic Party's nominee.

If Hillary wins now, Cottle's screwed. So watch Cottle's further campaign coverage with that in mind.

Hillary and me

Monday, Bill sent an e-mail calling me "Dear Robert," and then yesterday, Hillary Clinton decided to hang out with me:

Asked Tuesday if she was feeling pressure to get out of the race, Mrs. Clinton answered, "The most common thing the people say -- it happened here, it happened last night, it happens everywhere I go -- is, 'Don't give up,' 'Keep going,' 'We're with you.' And I feel very good about that, because that's what I intend to do."

That's from my report for The American Spectator on Mrs. Clinton's "Solutions for America" rally in Greensburg, Pa. Of course, you should read the whole thing. I also blogged the event for the Spectator, including this after-action report:

Barely an hour ago, Hillary Clinton was less than 10 feet from me -- me, two dozen other reporters, and no fewer than seven TV cameras on hand for a post-rally press conference.

It only lasted 15 minutes, but we were so close. And immediately afterwards, when I logged on and checked my e-mail, guess what I found in my inbox?

Yeah: "Dear Robert . . ." from you-know-who.

Can I charm 'em, or what?

UPDATE: I realize that some skeptics, like Sean Hackbarth, might accuse me of exaggerating the emotional bond that Mrs. Clinton and I formed during our moments together in Pennsylvania. But strange things were happening in Pennsylvania yesterday. And besides, maybe I . . . misspoke. I'm only human, after all.

UPDATE II: This video proves it. Notice at the 29-second mark, where she looks over to her right and gives me a big smile:

Oh, that little minx . . .

UPDATE III: Don Surber joins the scoffers:

Question: Does Hillary have a crush on Robert Stacy McCain?
Answer: He thinks so. Mrs. Clinton keeps sending him e-mails. Don’t break his heart by telling him this, but she sends everyone those e-mails.

Yeah, Don. Go ahead and laugh, but today I got an e-mail from Chelsea. Those Clinton women, they just can't resist me, I tell ya . . .

Joan Walsh gets it

Salon.com editor Joan Walsh is a San Francisco lefty who makes Bill Ayers look like a milquetoast moderate. She's also an Obamaphile who's starting to sober up from her overdose of Hope and Change, and who's got a hungover epiphany about Hillary:

Clinton is just a campaign jackhammer, shattering your resistance with detail. I tried to tune her out, but I found myself listening to her long lists of what she'd do to solve the health care crisis, the mortgage crisis, the college education affordability crisis. And suddenly, hey! She's talking to me! She told me she'd do away with FAFSA, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid! Everyone hates FAFSA! . . . Clinton solved problems I didn't even know I had. . . .
Sure, Clinton's "Solve every problem" shtick can seem like pandering -- trust me, she is not going to get rid of FAFSA! -- but it can also seem reassuring.
Whether you like her or not, it's hard not to concede that Clinton's second act, in which she (belatedly) discarded Mark Penn's incumbent costume and put on her Harry Truman outfit, is working better.

Having twice been on hand to watch Hillary do her neo-populist shtick at rallies, I know exactly what Walsh is talking about. Hillary's got this laundry-list spiel that's just bam-bam-bam -- a relentless list of problems she's going to solve and greedy rich scapegoats she's going to fight. ("I'm fighting for you!") The Democratic audiences laps this stuff and screams for more.

Assuming that you know absolutely nothing about economics and have no fear of a tax-hungry omnipotent Nanny State -- that is, assuming you're a Democrat -- then Hillary will tell you exactly what you want to hear.

Oil companies are shamelessly profiteering, and Hillary's going to fix their little red wagon, so that within 90 days of her inauguration, gas will be 29 cents a gallon again. Insurance companies are shamelessly profiteering, and she'll fix that, too, so that within 120 days of her inauguration, you'll be able to get guaranteed pain-free denistry for the price of a cold beer. Mortgage companies are shamelessly profiteering, but by the time Hillary gets through with 'em, they'll be paying you interest.

OK, she didn't actually make those specific promises, but you get my drift. What Hillary's populist routine is, more than anything else, is a revival of the Promise 'Em Anything Democrat, completely indifferent to questions of what those promises might cost in terms of higher taxes and bigger government.

She's Hubert Humphrey in a pantsuit, promising government goodies to The People just for the sheer joy of hearing The People cheer her for making the promise.

Hillary flatters The People. She tells them what great and wonderful folks they are, and how horrible it is that they lost their job or can't afford a tank of gas or have to stand in line for their veteran's benefits. How tragic it is that The People must suffer and do without! There must be someone to blame -- someone rich and greedy and indifferent -- and she's going to make those bad people pay for the wrong they've done!

It's all utter nonsense to anyone who understands economics, but like I said, we're talking about Democrats. And of course, anyone familiar with Hillary's Wellesley-Yale Law-Rose Law Firm biography might chuckle at the idea of her as a blue-collar populist, but you ought to see her do her routine live in front of a Democratic audience. Her family was fairly affluent and she grew up in a nice neighborhood on the north side of Chicago, but when she's giving her speeches, Hillary makes it seem that the Rodham family was just scraping to get by on her Dad's meager earnings.

Hillary's act is neither more nor less bogus than Obama's act, and their policy presciptions are equally nonsensical. But Hillary's Old School populism is a proven recipe that partisan Democrats can't resist, and if she keeps serving it up hot, there's no reason the regular customers shouldn't keep coming back for more.

Fear of Hillary's payback

Eleanor Clift:

I'm beginning to think Hillary Clinton might pull this off and wrestle the nomination away from Barack Obama. If she does, a lot of folks -- including a huge chunk of the media -- will join Bill Richardson (a.k.a. Judas) in the Deep Freeze. If the Clintons get back into the White House, it will be retribution time, like the Corleone family consolidating power in "The Godfather," where the watchword is, "It's business, not personal."

The post-Pennsylvania possibility of a Hillary comeback -- which grows more credible as Team Obama continues to flounder around with Rev. Jeremiah Wright -- is sure to strike fear in the hearts of many big-name Democrats who jumped on the Obama bandwagon in recent months. I'm guessing Ted Kennedy won't get invited to too many state dinners if Hillary re-occupies the White House.

Funniest line in Eleanor Clift's column:

During the 1992 campaign the pundits wrote off Bill Clinton, certain he couldn't survive allegations of infidelity and draft dodging.

Oh, come on, Eleanor! At this late date, I think we can all agree that those were not merely "allegations." Bill Clinton is, was, and always will be, a compulsive horndog. That's an objective fact.

UPDATE: Bob Herbert of the New York Times:

Barack Obama is winning, so why does it look like Hillary Clinton is having all the fun? . . .
You can almost feel the air seeping out of the Obama phenomenon. The candidate and his aides are brainstorming ways to counter the Clinton death-ray machine and regain the momentum.

Herbert's one of those left-of-Lenin liberals, but I like his "death-ray machine" phrase. I'm picturing Hillary's minions as the Martian invaders in "War of the Worlds," vaporizing everything in their path.

Hillary's debate challenge

Allahpundit calls it "part of her new strategy to make him look like a complete wimp" -- keep challenging Obama to more debates:

Clinton took the debate dispute to a new level, challenging Obama to face off with her in a debate without a moderator, Lincoln-Douglas style.
"Just the two of us, going for 90 minutes, asking and answering questions, we'll set whatever rules seem fair," Clinton said while campaigning in South Bend. . . .
Trailing in delegates and the popular vote, Clinton has been stepping up the pressure on Obama for more debates in advance of primaries in nine days in Indiana and North Carolina. Clinton argued that Obama won't debate because he's unhappy with questions from moderators during the April 16 debate just before the Pennsylvania primary.

This is Politics 101: If you're comfortably ahead, avoid debate, since that tends to give legitimacy to your opponent. If you're behind, demand debates -- and accuse your opponent of ducking you if he refuses.

Obama was all in favor of debates when there were more than a half-dozen candidates in the Democratic primary field. The Democrats had more than 20 debates, and most of the time, the candidates took turns (a) bashing Bush, and (b) tag-teaming Hillary.

Once the field narrowed down to Obama and Hillary -- and once Rev. Jeremiah Wright's anti-American rants became an issue -- suddenly Obama decided he didn't need to debate as much. Funny how that happens.

Naturally, Obama declined Hillary's latest challenge:

Asked why he was repeatedly “ducking” Clinton’s debate challenges before the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, Obama said, as he has before, that he just wants to spend time with voters.
“I’m not ducking. We’ve had 21 (debates), and so what we’ve said is, with two weeks, two big states, we want to make sure we’re talking to as many folks possible on the ground taking questions from voters,” he said, so no debates.
“We’re not going to have debates between now and Indiana,” he said.

Obama wants to keep "taking questions from voters" -- and continue saturating the airwaves with attack ads -- without having to answer tough questions in a live debate. Funny how that happens, too.

Remember that Obama's sitting on a huge mountain of campaign cash, while Hillary's campaign -- at least before she got a big haul after winning Pennsylvania -- was practically broke. Obama outspent Hillary about 3-to-1 in Pennsylvania.

When I covered Hillary for The American Spectator last week, I filed my story from the lobby bar at the Harrisburg Hilton (where they have free WiFi). There was a TV in the bar, and it seemed like every time I looked up, there was another Obama ad slamming Hillary for taking money from "special interests." In fact, one Obama ad even accused Hillary of "the same old politics, misleading negative ads":



The most amazing thing about Hillary's comeback in Pennsylvania is that she did it despite this tsunami of TV ads from Obama -- in which he repeatedly claims that he doesn't take money from special interests (corrupt slumlords like Tony Rezko apparently don't qualify as "special interests").

Clinton keeps fighting

It's over. It's over, right? Don't tell her it's over:

Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday she wasn't ceding Oregon — or the nomination — to opponent Barack Obama, who is heavily favored to collect another victory here next week as he comes closer to winning the Democratic nomination.
"I've been declared dead so many times, and luckily it's been premature, and I'm hoping it stays premature," Clinton said. "If I'd listened to people a month ago, three weeks ago, last week, you wouldn't be here trying to make up your minds about who you're going to vote for," she added.

She said that during an hour-long televised town hall event that he had all to herself because Obama refused to debate her. Think she's ready to quit? Uh-uh:

Proving she has no plans to leave the race just yet, Hillary Rodham Clinton is airing new messages in Kentucky and Oregon.

Here's an Oregon ad where she takes dead aim at the pundits who've been counting her out for the past two months:



The polls show she'll win by a landslide in Kentucky, while Obama's got a 15-point lead in Oregon. But after Hillary got a full hour of free TV in Oregon, surely it will be closer than that.

After Tuesday, there will be two weeks left until the last primaries June 3 in South Dakota and Montana. Only by getting additional superdelegates in his column could Obama clinch by then if 2,025 is the magic number. And Hillary keeps saying the number is 2,209, or else voters in Michigan and Florida will have been "disenfranchised."

Experts have been saying for two months that Hillary can't win, and who am I to argue with experts? But if she can't win, she doesn't seem to know it. She'll fight it out to the bitter end. Obama evidently thinks he's got the nomination so safely locked up he can ignore Oregon, let her have a whole hour of free TV and focus his attention on John McCain. That's an extraordinary level of confidence, one that ought to worry Obama's supporters.

UPDATE: I just looked at the RCP delegate count, and noticed how Hillary has nibbled away at Obama's pledged delegate lead since Pennsylvania (where she was net +12). Guam was a 2-2 tie, and Obama gained a net +13 from the May 6 primaries in North Carolina and Indiana, but then Hillary netted +12 in West Virginia.

So the pledged delegate gap has narrowed by 11 since April 22, and Obama's cumulative margin is now 153. There are 103 delegates at stake Tuesday. If Hillary gets the Kentucky landslide predicted by the polls, and Obama underperforms in Oregon, the gap should narrow further. Given that a Kentucky win would reinforce her swing-state "electability" argument, Clinton could go into the last two weeks with a strong argument why superdelegates (227 of whom have not yet declared for either candidate) should not jump too quickly to her opponent.

If between now and June 3 there were any serious scandal or gaffe on Obama's part . . . ah, but what am I saying? It's over. The experts told us so.

UPDATE II: The latest ARG poll for Oregon has it at Obama 50, Hillary 45. Of course, it's a mail-in primary and voting's been going on for a couple of weeks already, so it's hard to poll. But if Hillary holds Obama to a single-digit margin in Oregon and wins big in Kentucky, it will be interesting to hear what the pundits are saying on Wednesday. Meanwhile, Obama is "whining for votes."

Conservatives for Hillary?

After reading my Wednesday article in The American Spectator Online about Hillary Clinton's determination to fight to the end, reader Michael Tomlinson applauded:

That Hillary has the audacity to hope she can still win the Democrat nomination may offend effete Democrat elites, but as she knows they consistently backed losers or those should have lost so why listen to them. Obama is seriously damaged and a Muskie moment is not impossible. . . .
As a proud "tribalist" straight-ticket conservative Republican who wants to defend America from the threats without and within I'm enjoying the "catfight." I hope it lasts beyond the August Democrat zoo in Denver. I hope the vitriol trickles down into the ranks as the candidate's partisans begin attacking each other. Bill Richardson's knife in Hillary's back was sweet, but Carville's calling him Judas was even better. All I can say is more, more, more!

Mr. Tomlinson is by no means alone. Many conservatives are dissatisfied with the choice of John McCain as the GOP nominee, but this ugly feud between Obama and Hillary is the kind of intraparty squabble among Democrats we haven't seen since 1968. And Spectator reader A.C. Santore adds:

[T]he Clintons will not be done fighting until the last gavel of the Democratic Convention has banged, the doors are bolted and locked, and everyone has headed home.

Now we have George McGovern telling us that Hillary's a victim of sexism. And I don't think he's talking about Bill:

"I have a feeling that in this country where we're at today in our thinking, it's going to be harder to elect a woman than to elect a black man," he said to AP. "I wish that weren't true....I'd love to see Hillary as president."

Does being anti-Obama make McGovern a racist? Better yet, are Obama's supporters anti-Semites?

Barack Obama faced fresh controversy yesterday over the anti-Israel views propagated by his former pastor even as he was being welcomed to New York by Michael Bloomberg, the city's Jewish Mayor.
The disclosure of articles published by the Rev Jeremiah Wright's church newsletter threatened to overshadow his speech outlining his economic plans. The articles included a column by the Hamas leader, Mousa Abu Marzook, which asked: “Why should any Palestinian recognise the monstrous crimes carried out by Israel's founders and continued by its deformed modern apartheid state?”

(Via Memeorandum.) I am troubled that the Times of London felt the need to point out that Mayor Bloomberg is Jewish, as if only Jewish people would be offended that a Christian church would publish this kind of anti-Israel libel, written by a leader of Hamas, a notorious terrorist organization.

This revelation that Obama's church published in its newsletter a column by a Hamas leader could prove very damaging, even among anti-war Democratic voters. This crosses a line that even liberals ought to be able to recognize. It is possible to criticize U.S. foreign policy without resorting to reprinting terrorist propaganda.

So, to recap: The Democratic Party nomination battle comes down to Hillary's racist supporters versus Obama's sexist, anti-Semite, pro-terrorist supporters. Now all we need is a plausible accusation of homophobia . . .

UPDATE: Fake pledges of "unity" for the rubes:

They may bicker daily over issues, character and innuendo, but both Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama appear to agree on one thing: Democratic voters will coalesce around a nominee and carry him or her to victory in November over Republican John McCain.

(Via Memeorandum.) This "Kumbayah" crap doesn't fool me for a minute. Hillary has spent her whole life working toward this moment, she believes herself to be entitled to the Democratic nomination, and she feels betrayed that so many of her ex-friends are now supporting Obama. She will neither forget nor forgive such betrayals. Bill Richardson had better watch his back. (Say, whatever happened to Kathleen Willey's cat?)

And if Hillary wins? The other day, I spoke to one analyst who predicted that if Hillary beats Obama for the nomination, there will be riots in major cities across the country. A bit too dire, maybe, but something to think about.

UPDATE II: Anita Thompson is a Hillary supporter:

The Clinton campaign is trailing so far behind the money game, it's grim. I even contributed to her campaign from my microscopic savings account just to make some effort to compete with all the cash flowing in to Obama. He is totally rolling in dough, and I doubt it's coming from his grandma in Kenya.

Like her late husband, Hunter S. Thompson, Anita is left/radical in her politics. Of course, it's hard to know where the Freak Power candidate for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colo., would line up in this Hillary-Obama grudge match, eh? Either way, I'm sure he'd enjoy the show.

(Background: I've been a big HST fan for 30 years, met Mrs. Thompson in September, and reported her reaction in November when she felt HST was being targeted by unfair posthumous criticism.)

Who's smearing who?

There has been a good deal of indignation -- see Malkin, Limbaugh, Red State, Townhall, Sundries Shack, AmSpec -- about the efforts of Team Obama to blame conservatives for the Michelle Obama "whitey" video rumor, which in fact was fueled by Hillary Clinton supporter Larry Johnson.

This reminded me of an incident most people have probably forgotten by now: The infamous "Obama madrassa" story of January 2007. This story resulted in my friend, Insight editor Jeff Kuhner, getting burned by his sources.

What Insight reported was that the Clinton campaign was preparing to use Obama's biography against him, claiming that while a boy Indonesia, young Barack had attended an Islamic school. This was the lede of the Insight story:

Are the American people ready for an elected president who was educated in a Madrassa as a young boy and has not been forthcoming about his Muslim heritage?
This is the question Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s camp is asking about Sen. Barack Obama.
An investigation of Mr. Obama by political opponents within the Democratic Party has discovered that Mr. Obama was raised as a Muslim by his stepfather in Indonesia. Sources close to the background check, which has not yet been released, said Mr. Obama, 45, spent at least four years in a so-called Madrassa, or Muslim seminary, in Indonesia.
"He was a Muslim, but he concealed it," the source said. "His opponents within the Democrats hope this will become a major issue in the campaign."

Carefully note how this story is sourced: Persons "close to the background check" -- that is, an opposition-research action by Clinton campaign operatives -- told this to Insight.

The problem for Insight was that all the sources used in the article spoke on condition of anonymity. With such a bombshell allegation -- that one campaign is attempting to confirm negative information on a rival -- you just can't do that, and my friend Kuhner quickly discovered why. Hillary's campaign denied conducting any such research, and both her campaign and Obama's campaign accused Insight of spreading a scurrilous right-wing smear.

Kuhner has never told me anything about his sources, but both privately and publicly, he's never backed down from the original story which (I must repeat) was about the Clinton campaign's opposition-research effort.

It seems possible that someone in Hillary's camp was playing a very familiar campaign game: "We can't confirm that this rumor about our opponent is true, but let's at least make him deny it." This has the benefit of throwing the opponent on the defensive, and making some undecided voters ask themselves, "Hey, what's this guy hiding?"

Such tactics, however, are usually employed in the closing days of a campaign: the last-minute, hard-to-handle smear, so the opponent doesn't have adequate time to fully repond. (A Republican friend of mine once got hit by such an attack -- a particularly vicious personal smear -- in the closing days of a hard-fought GOP primary.)

This is why the "Obama madrassa" story always puzzled me. If the Hillary campaign was researching Obama's Indonesian education, why wouldn't they wait until they'd confirmed something, and then put it out? Why leak it out in such a half-baked fashion, so early in the campaign?

What this leads me to suspect is that Kuhner got his original tip via an unauthorized or secondary source -- somebody who knew somebody directly involved in the oppo-research project. This would be a "loose lips sink ships" type of leak: The spouse or business associate of the researcher has a few drinks and decides to brag a bit: "Hey, let me tell you about this ...." And so then you contact the reseacher and say, "Hey, so-and-so told me that ...."

There's a lot of different ways news gets reported, and I'm just guessing here. But if my hunch is right, then whoever was researching the Indonesia angle on Obama was never authorized to tell anyone about it, and it may have been that the Clinton campaign never actually intended to use that angle.

Oppo-research is sort of like war-planning: Somewhere on the shelf at the Pentagon there's probably a war-game plan for an attack on Canada, just in case. And so the Obama-madrassa angle might have been something that was gathered, and stuck into a file somewhere at Clinton HQ, without any actual intention to use it. Except that the guy who was doing the research didn't know that.

The bottom line is that all major campaigns conduct opposition research. Democrats want to pretend that the "right-wing attack machine" has a monopoly on dirty politics, but as the recent primary campaign demonstrated, Democrats are perfectly capable of getting down in the gutter and throwing mudballs, without any help from the GOP.

So the next time Democrats claim that any negative information about their nominee is a "right-wing smear," don't forget the very first big hunk of dirt that was flung in this campaign -- dirt that my friend Jeff Kuhner swears to this day was unearthed by Team Hillary and given to him by her research operatives.