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LIGHTNING ROUND: NC GOP SINGS "OBAMA AND JEREMIAH, SITTIN' IN A TREE, K-I-S-S-I-NG."
- Strange but true: if you promise lots of big tax cuts, and no new taxes, and a balanced budget, you're almost certainly lying about something. John McCain apparently doesn't realize that saying 1 - 1 = 2 is not straight talk.
- The North Carolina GOP is running an an ad against two Democratic candidates in the state who have endorsed Obama using footage of Jeremiah Wright's "God damn America" sermon. The ad is pretty much what you'd expect: OMG! Barack Obama like totally "SAT IN HIS PEW!!!" while some black dude said some bad things about America. He clearly is a terrorist!!! Except that he wasn't actually in the church when the clip the ad uses was recorded. As Kevin Drum pointed out, John McCain and the national RNC chairman Mike Duncan are so outraged that they ... sent an email and left a polite voice mail message respectively. Feel the fury! I'm sure with this kind of strong response we won't see these sorts of tactics in the general election.
- Marc Ambinder makes a weirdly compelling, though ultimately unconvincing, case that Obama's loss in Pennsylvania might actually make superdelegates more likely to endorse him than they would have been had he lost more narrowly. Still, even if this isn't completely right, it still suggests that the effect of Pennsylvania is more complicated than we realize.
- Christopher Beam makes an under-appreciated point: We have no idea what the actual popular vote is because there's just no way to know how many people caucused in caucus states and, anyway, caucus turnout isn't comparable to primary turnout.
- The Clinton campaign looks likely to raise $10 million today.
- Tom explains how Clinton's victory is due to her mad skillz with white women.
- Jonathan Cohn has a great post which points out that, despite two months of Wrightgate, bittergate, Tuzlagate, etc., Obama and Clinton have maintained a steady tie with McCain in hypothetical head-to-head match-ups. That suggests that there's a ceiling on McCain's support of 45 percent and that once the general election actually starts, whoever takes the Democratic nomination will take the lead.
--Sam Boyd
COMMENTS (7)
I'm sure with this kind of strong response we won't see these sorts of tactics in the general election.
McCain is 71.
Every day the country he wants to run is less white, less native-born, less straight, less Protestant, less Christian, less religious, than it was the day before.
For him, there is no long run.
For his party, there is no tomorrow.
I expect the dirtiest campaign in modern American history.
Deniable, of course—but the dirtiest.
Posted by: Davis X. Machina | April 23, 2008 7:49 PM
First as as caucus voter, I detest the Clinton campaign's spin to discount our votes. Second, McCain will be dirtier than Clinton, but he will be an easier target. Obama doesn't want/need his supporters to vote for him - just staying home will be good enough. McCain has a dismal record. The American public wants to believe that we can do better than Bush. Obama is a great salesman, and he can make this sale.
Posted by: Eric | April 23, 2008 8:30 PM
Wait till the national election and Dems run video commericals of McCain endorser, right wing nut job and Christian Zionist teleevangelist John Hagee preaching apocalypse in the Middle East. He will make Jeremiah Wright look tame by comparison.
Posted by: seethelight | April 23, 2008 8:55 PM
We must keep covering the Bill Ayers / Barack Obama matter because we have to be really, really, really sure that, if elected Barack Obama will not go out and attempt to blow up government buildings with homemade bombs with his friends.
After all, we don't really know, do we? Isn't that what these questions about "judgment" come down to -- people saying "Oh, I'm just not sure I can trust Obama not to make homemade bombs and blowing up government buildings?"
Because, if people AREN'T saying that, then they really aren't being honest that the Ayers non-issue is a real issue in any meaningful, policy-related fashion -- which it is not.
Posted by: El Cid | April 23, 2008 9:42 PM
Re: the "popular vote"
It's disgusting that Hillary Clinton counts Massachusetts (population 6.45 million) as 240% of the value of Washington (pop. 6.47 million) in her specious argument that's she is somehow ahead in popular vote. Forget the Democratic Party, her small-d democratic credentials are in question. The same twisted "Clinton math" suggests that legislation passed in the US House is more credible than legislation passed in the US Senate because it received more "votes". It's dopey, it's wrong, and it's no way for a democratic leader to act in any party or democracy.
Posted by: joejoejoe | April 24, 2008 1:20 AM
"It's disgusting It's dopey, it's wrong, and it's no way for a democratic leader to act in any party or democracy"
waaahhhhhhh! Grow up, little boy.
Posted by: paul b | April 24, 2008 6:36 AM
Re: the popular vote
This is something the media need to spend more time deconstructing. These numbers are not the real numbers of people who participated in the process, and the numbers being used oddly skewed (Minnesota counting only 1/4 as much as Missouri). More importantly, the primary is NOT about the popular vote, it is a race to gain the most delegates. If it were about the popular vote, the campaigns would have followed different campaign strategies. It would be a vastly different race. Why aren't more people pointing out that the rules cannot and should not be changed in the middle of the game?
Posted by: kelly | April 25, 2008 4:50 AM