Barack Obama likely to Win Texas
Things may not be as bad for Obama as they seemed Tuesday night. In the Texas primary Hillary Clinton leads in primary delegates by 65 to 61. But Obama is leading by a whopping 12% in the Caucus count. So far only 40% caucus results have come in and he is greadually increasing his lead. Even if the ultimate caucus result remains the same i.e. Obama's 56% to Clinton's 44%, Obama will win Texas overall (not counting the Super delegates). This is how the math works out:

Delegate Allocation:
Primary (99% results in) Clinton 65 Obama 61
Caucus (40% results in so far
Obama 56% Clinton 44%
assuming total 67 delegates
allocated on this basis) Clinton 29 Obama 38

Total Delegates Clinton 94 Obama99

Once all the caucus results are in, Obama should claim victory in Texas.

Also he needs to fire his advisor Goolsbee who damaged him tremendously in the Ohio primary by telling a Canadian Consulate employee in Chicago that Obama does not mean what he says about NAFTA. Obama should also address this issue in his next speech and take it head on to put this controversy to rest.

Less campaign blogging! More health care conference write-ups!

Shorter Ezra:

Obama plays politics with NAFTA = Good

Clinton plays politics with NAFTA = Bad

Oy!

dk,

not quite sure that's a fair argument.

If Sen. Clinton reached out to the Canadians to say: "take this with a grain of salt," and the Canadians reached out to one of Obama's advisors -- who wasn't in his campaign capacity while speaking -- that is a legitimate difference. Moreover, Obama's advisor and the Canadians have both been adamant that they reported the conversation inaccurately.

But what strikes me is this: Clinton called Obama a liar and told the voters of Ohio he couldnt be trusted on Nafta. Now we learn that the very thing she buried Obama with was the same thing her campaign was doing.

Is that something her campaign needs to address? I think so.

Umm, not quite...

There is also now a leaked memo, written after the meeting, from the Canadian consul general describing a meeting with Austin Goolsbee, Obama's cheif economics advisor (and U Chicago econ professor), which backs up the report of what Goolsbee said to the Canadians.

Clinton might have done something similar, and if so, is hypocritical for attacking Obama over this, but its clear that Goolsbee did in fact talk to the canadian government and tell them to ignore Obama's campaign rhetoric.

This post makes it seem like that is now in question. It's not.

Stephen Harper really does need to stick to throwing bribes at dying men.

Sure, but the spin we are getting from Ezra and other A-list bloggers who are in the tank for Obama is that, somehow, the truth of the matter is that the true villain in all this is Hillary.

Look, they both played politics with NAFTA. If that is the take away from a post, I have no problem with that. But when the take away from the post is to criticize one of them over the other for doing it, it just becomes campaign rhetoric.

Actually, the bigger scandal is in Canada, where Harper claimed someone in a Canadian embassy or consulate leaked this, when it turned out to be his chief of staff. That's, uh, kind of a huge, huge scandal.

It's funny (funny as in maddening) that the authenticity of John Edwards's populism was constantly called into question when he was up against these two corporate-backed populist poseurs.

Especially considering that if you want bitterness over NAFTA, forget Ohio and head north. Americans whining about NAFTA always strike me as amazingly ignorant; you really don't realize how harshly Canada's been shafted by the deal, and how regularly America breaks with it whenever NAFTA ends up being even slightly inconvenient to Americans in favour of Canadians.

Sure, but the spin we are getting from Ezra and other A-list bloggers who are in the tank for Obama is that, somehow, the truth of the matter is that the true villain in all this is Hillary.

Look, they both played politics with NAFTA. If that is the take away from a post, I have no problem with that. But when the take away from the post is to criticize one of them over the other for doing it, it just becomes campaign rhetoric.

How about we criticize both for playing games with NAFTA and then criticize Hillary for her hypocrisy? That would seem to be an accurate reading of events, no? In which case, of course, Clinton comes out smelling worse, but so what?

No Josh, because you are not taking into account Obama's hypocrisy in the form of the pamphlets he distributed in Ohio claiming to be to the left of Hillary on NAFTA.

So again, you can criticize both for being NAFTA, and for being hypocrites, but again, saying one is more than the other is just campaign spin, and says more about the author of the post than anything else.

Mike N.,

my understanding is that the Canadian consul general has since said that maybe they were blurry on the reporting of that meeting. remember there were no direct quotes in the memo, just paraphrasing.

No one is 100 percent pure here. from what I have read, Goolsbee wasn't talking for the campaign, and that should at least be remembered.

what gets me though is the blatant hypocrisy though. she called BHO a liar over a story that was, at the time, being discredited and questioned by both the campaign and the Canadians. Naftagate stopped Obama's surge in Ohio, and probably led to his crushing defeat. it just strikes me as ridiculously underhanded to slime your opponent for something that you yourself have done.

And, suppose the Canadians really did screw this up and misrepresent what Goolsbee said? What do we have in that scenario...

> Clinton tells Canada: "dont sweat it..."

> Canada calls Goolsbee, discuss Nafta, nothing controversial

> Brodie tells colleagues, "HRC said don't sweat Nafta rhetoric

> Somehow, that account shifts to Obama being a double talker

> Obama gets killed in the media

> Clinton and McCain call him a liar

> Clinton profits from Naftagate, despite her campaign's involvement

Off-topic but for future reference, I'm going to remember this bit from Ezra Klein: leaks from foreign governments that are meant to influence American elections are not a good thing.

Some of 2006's immigration marches were organized by those linked to the MexicanGovernmnt. And, one of the main organizers of the march that Obama attended is an official with Mexico's PRD Party.

Perhaps in a future post Ezra could condemn such meddling. For extra credit, he could encourage Senator Barack Obama to investigate - rather than assist - such meddling.

Too bad there is
Canada's Obama NAFTA Memo

from: Bonnie Goldstein
Posted Tuesday, March 4, 2008, at 5:36 PM ET

On Feb. 9 Austan Goolsbee, the senior economic adviser to Barack Obama's presidential campaign, had a meeting with Georges Rioux, consul general for the Canadian government. The two men met in Chicago, where Rioux maintains a consular office for the states of Illinois, Missouri, and Wisconsin and where Goolsbee teaches economics at the University of Chicago. (Slate readers may also remember Goolsbee as a onetime "Dismal Science" columnist.) Afterward, Joseph DeMora, a consulate staff member, wrote an enthusiastic summary (see below and the following two pages) for Canadian Ambassador Michael Wilson. In the memo, DeMora praised Goolsbee's "intellectual prowess … approachability, curiosity and youthful enthusiasm" and alerted Wilson that the Obama brain-truster "appeared genuinely … impressed by the magnitude" of the economic relationship between the United States and Canada (see below)....

dk,

we might have to agree to disagree on this one.

Obama pointed out, much to HRC's ire, that Bill Clinton rammed Nafta through Congress, AND, that in the years since then HRC has been on record supporting Nafta. I mean, those are pretty much facts.

what is also a fact, however, is that both candidates share the same position NOW about Nafta. But it's not out of bounds to remind voters in a state where Nafta is despised that one's opponent was once in favor of the agreement.

you say BHO is hypocritical for his mailers. let's look at them:

the boon mailer was a mis-characterization. Newsday called it a boon, then retracted, (but here's the interesting part) after their retraction Obama's campaign stopped sending out the mailers.

fast forward a couple days, and HRC is doing the "shame on you Barack Obama" thing for "negative mailers."

then what does she do, literally, in the next 48 hours? she puts out 2 mailers that completely cut and paste Obama's position on Nafta throughout the years so as to imply that he's a double talker.

The full Obama quote would read, (paraphrase) "I support free trade agreements like Nafta, BUT they must be done better to include labor and environmental protections..."

that's the same position he has today.

But HRC's mailers she sent out (again, after the "Shame on you" moment) read this this, (again paraphrase) "Barack Obama supported Nafta, saying, 'I support free trade agreements like Nafta'" ....and would completely leave out the labor and environment pieces.

hypocritical? i think so, especially after scolding (challenging?) BHO to not go negative, she turns around and takes his words completely out of context.

and lastly, the reason why this latest development has people up in arms is this:

> HRC told us (when calling Obama a liar) that it was OK to believe the Canadians in their account of what went down. If they say he reached out to them, it must be true. AND she flatly denied that her campaign reached out them. Now, she wants us to NOT believe the Canadians when they say that it was her that said 'don't sweat the rhetoric' and again, she is flatly denying the incident took place.

it doesn't sit right that she wants it both ways, and more, that she would call a fellow Dem a liar when she knew full well that her camp did the same thing she is accusing him of having done.

"And on the third, this was a pretty hypocritical attack on the part of the Clinton campaign."

What attack of hers hasn't been hypocritical? Her campaign strategy has been basically to criticize Obama for things she's equally or more guilty of, and then whining any time he responds.

Mike and others,

My memory of the debate was that Obama had said that he would wanted to renegotiate the NAFTA to the extent that it created unsatisfactory results with respect to labor and environmental standards. If you read the memo (see para 7), that is exactly what Goolsbee told the Canadians (note this was several weeks before the debate).

How exactly are Obama's position during the debate and Goolsbee's comments inconsistent?

Although I posted the comment below on another site (the Mahablog), I'd like to repeat it here and just to add that mightgodking is absolutely right. Every time there has been a trade dispute, the US has dragged things out in an effort to get us to back down. And when we win before the NAFTA tribunal, the US just ignores the ruling. The softwood lumber issue is a perfect example.

So here goes with my repeat posting:

The “leak” is making the headlines in Canada. Many people are saying that it was intentional on the part of the Harper government: our current (minority) government is mightily right-wing–at least by Canadian standards and Harper is definitely more a fan of the Republicans than the Democrats. If he can help his buddies out by smearing the Dems, then hey, why not?

This being said, I think both Hillary and Obama are playing the populist, demagogue card with their criticism of NAFTA. The left in Canada was very against it from the start. Although there are studies that show that it has been economically good for Canada (or at least the moneyed elite), we worry about a) our health care system being subject to lawsuits by American companies b) our cultural industries and c) the fact that we cannot stop the oil from flowing to the US, no matter what you (the US) do.

Blaming job losses in the US on Canada is a total joke. As the right keeps reminding everyone, we in Canada have got higher taxes, better, and therefore more expensive, social programs (maternity leave, universal health care, etc.). We are on the same side when it comes to job losses: on the other side is China. That’s where products are produced at a fraction of the price we North-Americans can make them at, where environmental controls are non-existent, where labour laws (if they exist) are laughable, etc. etc.

Although I sincerely hope the Dems win the White House, I am disappointed that “Blame Canada” has become more than a silly song on South Park.