When Will Hillary Quit the Race?

Senator Pat Leahy called on Hillary to drop out of the race because she can't win, and the Democrats need to take John McCain on sooner rather than later. "She has a right to run" he said, "but not a very good reason."

Billary said they were in it to the end, again. But politicians always say that, until they announce they aren't in it anymore. The question is, when is that likely to happen with Hillary?

I don't think it will happen in some scenario of party elders going to her and asking her to. A Saturday NY Times story suggests that people in her campaign will tell her it's time to drop out if she loses PA or, two weeks later, she loses Indiana.

But she might not quit even then. It might take a movement of super delegates to seal the nomination for Obama in May.

But there are circumstances under which she could decide to quit. The first is if she doesn't have enough money to go on. That's how the calls for her to quit, and the stories that she can't win, really hurt: they hurt her fundraising. I doubt that many of those millionaires who back her can legally contribute any more.

The second depends on whether she wants a career in the U.S. Senate from New York, or any political office in that state. If she does, she will be watching the polls--not everywhere, not even in upcoming primaries, but in the state of New York. If she sees voters there turning against her, she will have to pay attention to that. She can't afford to continue a long-shot run for the presidential nomination at the cost of alienating voters from returning her to the Senate, or for a possible run for governor of New York. If she stays in the race too long, and her attacks lead to Obama's eventual defeat in November, her political career as a Democrat could be over.

Barack, "The Bus" and the Immaculate Receptor
(Bob Casey, Jr. in the background) and the new
blue Terrible Towel in Pittsburgh Friday.

PA in Play?

The surprise endorsement Friday of Barack Obama by Senator Bob Casey, Jr. of PA was the latest and potentially most powerful move that has put PA more in play than perhaps it was last week.

First of all, note the strength of the endorsement. "I believe in this guy like I've never believed in a candidate in my life, except my father." Casey's father, Bob Sr. was the very popular two-terms governor of the Commonwealth in the late 1980s. (Casey's speech is here.)

The politics of this going forward is fascinating. This Bob Casey is also Catholic and a moderate Democrat, conservative on some social issues. He ran for governor in a Dem primary against the current governor, Ed Rendell, and lost, before beating Rick Santorum in 2006 for the U.S. Senate. In Casey's race against Rendell for governor, Rendell won by piling up huge majorities in Philadelphia and surrounding southeastern PA, while Casey beat him everywhere else. For this primary, Rendell is backing the highly favored Hillary--but Obama is strongest in the same Philly area that backed Rendell. So now with Casey campaigning for him, Obama can reach into areas of the commonwealth, and into constituencies, that like Casey but that are Hillary voters---so far.

Obama started his barnstorming bus tour of PA Friday in Pittsburgh, where he appeared with possibly even more important supporters locally: Pittsburgh Steelers icons Franco Harris and Jerome "the Bus" Bettis. They presented him with a replica of the "Terrible Towel," another Steelers icon, but in Obama's campaign colors.

Another sign of PA in play was the Obama campaign assigning the guy who ran their successful Iowa campaign to run their campaign in PA.

Once again Hillary was forced to announce she's still the race after Senator Pat Leahy of Vermont suggested she drop out because she can't win. Howard Dean suggested strongly that the race should be over by no later than early July, and the sooner the better.

Meanwhile, the effort by Clinton big money supporters to essentially blackmail Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi into backing off her support for super delegates endorsing the delegate leader coming out the primaries seems to have backfired. While MoveOn became the first organization to push back with its own financial power, several reporters said that super delegates were offended by the letter, and were less and less inclined to back Clinton. One writer suggests that some are keeping quiet only because they fear political retribution by Clinton and her party supporters. But leaders like Bob Casey, Jr. and Bill Richardson who took those risks to endorse Obama may help them declare.

And all this came at the end of a week in which polls had mostly bad news for Clinton, and the last Gallup poll of the week showed Obama regaining his largest lead of 8 points over Hillary. And the good news is likely to continue Saturday when Texas Democrats in county and state senate district conventions complete the final step in that state's primary/caucus process, and Obama officially wins Texas.

As for PA, Obama is still the underdog, and the goal is to come close and to win delegates. One supporter (not connected with the campaign) suggested to the New York Times that a 5 point loss is a win. Others have said under 10 points. I expect the crowds Obama gets on this bus tour--even though there is only one big rally on the schedule so far, at Penn State on Sunday--will help gauge the potential for Obama.

The PA primary election will be a test of the power and perhaps the depth of committment to Clinton in the PA Dem party machinery, versus the Obama coalition--and who comes out to vote. And it's still more than three weeks away. From the Times story: “This is like a symphony,” said Clifford Levine, a Pittsburgh lawyer, fund-raiser and chairman of Mr. Obama’s western Pennsylvania steering committee. “You don’t start with a crescendo when you have five weeks. You start with a softer sell. We’ll build things up, and once there’s support and people get to know him, you start in with the big crescendo.”

Today's News--and Maybe Tomorrow's

The Tuzla Doozy--also being called Snipergate--continued to fill up the morning hours Wednesday. Al G. also found a recording of a radio interview with the actual pilot of the flight into Tuzla, who said quite reasonably that if there had been any danger of sniper fire, they simply wouldn't have landed, and definitely wouldn't have let anyone off the plane.

A video making fun of Snipergate became the number 1 vid on YouTube, replacing Obama's speech on race.

But Hillary's bad day was just getting started. While she and Bill pumped up the volume about how she was going to stay in until the convention, and all this fighting was a good thing, and Obama wants to disenfranchise voters in Michigan and Florida, but really pledged delegates as a result of such elections don't really mean anything, etc., the news shifted to a surprising NBC poll that showed in the past two weeks--with the Rev. Wright reel playing on a closed loop on TV, etc.--it was Hillary, not Obama, who took a big hit:

As expected, one of the two major Democratic candidates saw a downturn in the latest NBC/WSJ poll, but it's not the candidate that you think. Hillary Clinton is sporting the lowest personal ratings of the campaign. Moreover, her 37 percent positive rating is the lowest the NBC/WSJ poll has recorded since March 2001, two months after she was elected to the U.S. Senate from New York.

This poll was taken Monday and Tuesday, as the Snipergate story was getting TV attention. Another poll in just California, that didn't get national attention yet, shows the same trend, only more so. Some 61% have a favorable impression of Obama, but only 45% of Hillary (who won the state primary.) Her unfavorable rating is 52%. The poll also shows another Obama-friendly trend: people want change, across the board.

Other findings in the NBC poll and in a Gallup poll show that nearly a fifth of Obama voters and a fourth of Hillary voters would rather vote for McCain than the other guy. This adds more fuel to the growing Dem party and super-delegate fire. Some uncommitted and Hillary-backing supes who talked to an NBC reporter said they were increasingly upset by her campaign's tone, they don't like her using Rev. Wright to "scare white people," and they were definitely pissed about Bill Richardson being called a Judas. What's a bit different about this report is the end: " But some said they were increasingly in touch with Clinton campaign officials to say their support is in jeopardy."

Still, while restless supes are talking to the media, nobody seems to be doing anything to avert disaster: the bitter, damaging campaign, and the prospect of it going on to the convention. But one guy is stepping up: Phil Bredesen, Gov. of Tennessee, formally uncommitted, who proposes that right after the last primary the supes convene for a couple of days and vote until they put one of the candidates over the top--and his preference is the one who has the most votes from the primaries and caucuses.

So much for Wednesday news. But something may be bubbling up for the day and days ahead. Yesterday when I heard Hillary say that Rev. Wright would not be her pastor, I thought: if I'm a reporting listening to this, my next question is, well, who is your pastor?

In that context, I noticed on Huffington Post today, not one, not two, but three new posts on Hillary's affiliation with a shadowy, scary-sounding religious group called "The Fellowship" and sometimes "The Family." These posts (one of which referred to a new MSNBC report) follow one from a few days ago by Barbara Ehrenreich called "Hillary's Nasty Pastorate" that begins: There's a reason why Hillary Clinton has remained relatively silent during the flap over intemperate remarks by Barack Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. When it comes to unsavory religious affiliations, she's a lot more vulnerable than Obama."

Well, now she's opened herself up to scrutiny on this, and if half the stuff Ehrenreich and the others at Huffpost are saying proves out, we may be hearing more about Hillary and the Family/Fellowship soon, and often. But even if the media doesn't pick up this thread immediately, there's a new book about to be published that exposes The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. Publication is for May, which means publicity starts soon--soon enough for the PA primary.

This is potentially pretty dark stuff--an outfit with a long history that reaches back to Nazis, South American death squads and today features such American exemplars as Ed Meese, John Ashcroft, James Inhofe, Rick Santorum and former Senator George Allen of VA. All led by Doug Coe, who Hillary has called (in writing) "a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide..." Do you think maybe somebody is looking through his videos?

Snipers

Hillary may not have actually had bullets flying over her head in Bosnia, but she was under fire big time on Tuesday. Apparently the evening news on all three broadcast networks led with her Tuzla Tale, and had even more video to show how absurd her version was. Al G. at the Field had the video for CBS and ABC.

This repeated lie opened the door wider to examination of other exaggerations and lies, such as Hillary's repeated assertion that she was against NAFTA. MSNBC demolished that one. (Again, Al has the video.)

Print press was no kinder. Why wasn't the truth good enough for Hillary Rodham Clinton? was the lead for an AP report, called "Hillary's Flight of Fancy." Dan Kennedy in the Guardian put it all in perspective, and senses that while the media bought the argument that they'd been soft on Obama before Ohio, they are feeling they've been too soft on Hillary since, and that's over. Kennedy was quotably ascerbic about some of this, like James Carville calling Gov. Richardson a "Judas" for his endorsement of Obama: a remark that caused millions to rack their brains over whether they may have missed any Jesus-like qualities in Hillary Clinton over the years. Of course, it's possible that by the time this ends she'll claim to have walked on water. "

Kennedy concludes: "By Monday evening, Clinton was saying that she "misspoke" on Bosnia, which, of course, she hadn't. The only credible explanation for her incredible remarks is that she lied and got caught. Frankly, if she really believes she and her then-teenage daughter had come under sniper fire that day in Tuzla - well, on second thought, keep the red phone away from that woman, please."

But on Tuesday, Clinton tried to change the subject and at the same time go racist in PA (you had to do it in the town where I was born, didn't you, Hillary?) by personally trying to re-ignite the Rev. Wright controversy. It looked to me that cable news bought it, but the networks didn't. But that's really the audience she wanted. She gave the interview in which she first made this Rev. Wright remarks to the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, the rabid right Scaife daily that was a charter member of the vast right wing conspiracy, having commissioned many stories trying to prove Vince Foster was murdered by Billary. But now, the rabid right are Hillary's allies, and the Pittsburgh Trib-to- Fox News is to be her channel to blue collar white voters in PA. And with the lovely logic of the Manchurian Candidate, she enables hate votes by condemning hate speech.

She also called her Tuzla doozy a "mistake" rather than a "misstatement." Though she of course wound up playing the victim by asserting "it proves I'm human, which for some is a revelation." Once again, she attacks without restraint, but when called to account, she plays the victim.

Unfortunately for her, she then went on to make other exaggerations, and the media--the Times in this case--was all over it immediately.

"He wouldn't have been my pastor," Hillary chides, but the pastor of the church she went to as First Lady defended Wright: "He has served for decades as a profound voice for justice and inclusion in our society. To evaluate his dynamic ministry on the basis of two or three sound bites does a grave injustice to Dr. Wright, the members of his congregation, and the African-American church which has been the spiritual refuge of a people that has suffered from discrimination, disadvantage, and violence. Dr. Wright, a member of an integrated denomination, has been an agent of racial reconciliation while proclaiming perceptions and truths uncomfortable for some white people to hear. Those of us who are white Americans would do well to listen carefully to Dr. Wright rather than to use a few of his quotes to polarize."

But that's clearly also part of the Hillary strategy in PA, where her first television ad has "not a person of color" in it.

Meanwhile, a Rasmussen poll shows Obama now just ten points behind Clinton in PA. And a new Public Policy Polling survey shows that Obama has jumped out to a 21 point lead in North Carolina.

Obama has been catching some rays in the Virgin Islands all this time, but he's back in North Carolina Wednesday. He begins a bus trip across PA on Friday, starting in western PA, in the vicinity where Hillary was Tuesday.

Who Could Like This Monday

What a dull thud of a day. The prevailing media narrative was that the Democratic party is gleefully destroying itself by prolonging this campaign--and as the corrolary, that the Clintons are willing to destroy the party and cede the White House this year if they aren't nominated.

Huffpost identified today's CW as McCain benefits from the long campaign and the bitter conflict in it, which Jonathan Alter on Keith agreed was "the tipping point" being reached, and that 9 out of the last 10 elections, the party that settled on its nominee first won the general.

On the second point, Robert Novak "quoted" a "longtime associate of Billary as saying "They will do anything -- anything -- to get nominated,"and apparently the panelists on Hardball agreed that the Clinton strategy is either to win the nomination or make sure Obama loses the election so Hillary can run in 2012.

No, not a pretty day.

Elsewise, as I predicted somewhere, Hillary had to retract her "sniper fire" recollection about landing in Bosnia, thus keeping the story alive for another day. But she also did it badly--calling it "misspeaking" when it was part of a written speech, and is (or was) on her website, which will keep it alive awhile longer.

It's the kind of thing that gets into the street talk, and I'm guessing that there are some of those white men in PA who are thinking twice about her. Veterans who have been under fire aren't likely to be charitable about someone who wasn't but claims she was. Plus the other part of her story was that she was sent there because it was too dangerous for the President--so the conclusion is that Bill Clinton sent his wife--and his daughter--into mortal danger. That implication isn't going to sit well with fathers. No, even though she's told more substantive falsehoods and exaggerations about her "experience," this is the one people will talk about.

Will Hope Spring?

PA Update: I missed this, but Teresa Heinz Kerry wrote an oped in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette Sunday endorsing Obama. I figure the paper itself will endorse him, too.


Meet the Press Sunday tried to keep the Dem race alive, despite GOPer Peggy Noonan claiming that Hillary is "surrounded by people who would adore the chance to be for Obama." Then on another show, a New York Magazine reporter claimed that top Clinton staff told Hillary they won't stick with her if she tries to destroy Obama. Both quotes are here; I happened to see the MTP gabfest replay switching during commercials and halftime on NCAA basketball, and when I wasn't running the vacuum cleaner--and Noonan's comment was quite strange in the context of keeping up the contest talk.

Oddly, I didn't hear them mention Hillary's money problems (unless they did so during the Memphis-Mississippi State action.) Or the tidbit I saw somewhere--that after reaching 1 million donors just last month, the Obama campaign is quietly coming close to 2 million donors.

But what was interesting in terms of that part of the CW that still thinks there is a nomination question is that they weren't talking about Pennsylvania as being decisive, unless Obama wins it. They were looking to North Carolina and Indiana the following week. Once again, Hillary has to win both or it's over, was pretty much the consensus. So now the idea is it could be over in May.

I also saw somewhere that PA Gov Rendell is claiming that in the general, Obama as well as Clinton would win the Commonwealth. He's got Obama to thank already for a lot of new Democrats. Final figures will be out shortly after the registration deadline today (Monday), but already Dems have added at least 100,000 while the GOP has lost 14,000.

But PA is still going to be the political focus, and though the Obama campaign has succeeded in changing expectations, and Obama has been campaigning elsewhere, there seem to be plans for Obama to contest it actively. Obama told the Philadelphia Inquirer that he's planning an Iowa-style campaign: meeting with small groups and talking to people across the state, over the weeks to come.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post hit a couple of VFWs in Harrisburg, one white and one black, and found that racial division is real. Kind of a self-fulfilling prophesy on several levels, and not all that enlightening. (Although one white guy who won't vote for Obama did give him credit for being loyal to Rev. Wright, so my intuition on that much at least was justified.)

Noting the ugly round number of 4,000 U. S. soldier deaths in Iraq, I blogged over at Dreaming Up Daily about an article called Euphemism and American Violence--the uses of euphemism to mask the lies and realities that allow such wars to start and go on this way. This war and much else of what this government does is so clearly designed to benefit certain corporations and wealthy people that corporate conspiracy theories are usually beside the point. But a diary I just saw at Kos makes a very good point about how media corporations--the corporations virtually in charge of politics, and certainly the major beneficiares of political campaigns--are deciding the issues that the presidency will be decided on. And, this diarist maintains, they're making sure it's anything but controlling corporate power.

The CW Circles Hillary

After the stories Friday, including the one about NAFTA and especially Hillary's preposterous account of her Bosnia trip which may be yet to blossom on cable TV, the media conventional wisdom is circling around Hillary, declaring the game is over. Or as Time's Michael Scherer says "The media referees in the ring are itching to call the Democratic bout."

The chorus grew by two today--Mark Helprin (usually on the conservative side) and Maureen Dowd in the NY Times (hard to characterize her because I just don't read her columns. Even when she's on my side, she's too snide for my tastes.) Here's another take on their takes.

What's prompting this now, besides what's turning out to be a long time between primary contests, is probably not just the bad news about Hillary and her campaign in the past few days, but the evidence that Obama has survived the Rev. Wright cablebombing (the CBS poll yesterday, and his return to lst place in the Gallup daily tracking poll today) and the symbolism of Bill Richardson's endorsement.

There's also beginning to be some admitting that if Obama and Hillary's positions were reversed in the delegate, popular vote and states won leads, the drumbeat for Obama to drop out would have been deafening a long time ago.

The charges and countercharges go on--I'll see your Judas and raise you a McCarthy--but if prominent super-delegates start following Richardson's lead, this could be over even before Pennsylvania, especially if Hillary's money problems are as severe as the financial report suggests they might be. Though I suppose the smart money is still on June.