Democrats

(Via CNN.com.)

The drawn out Democratic presidential race is producing “negative dividends in terms of strife within the party,” said a key Senate supporter of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s White House bid.

A day after the Indiana and North Carolina primaries bolstered Sen. Barack Obama’s candidacy, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California and a superdelegate, said she wants to talk to Clinton to “see what her view is on the rest of the race. What the strategy is.”

Feinstein, who described herself as “very loyal” to Clinton, said “the question comes whether she can get the delegates that she needs and I’d like to know what the strategy is to do that.”

Superdelegates — made up of governors, senators, House members and various other party officials or members — are also known as unpledged delegates. They are free to choose the candidate they like, while pledged delegates are assigned in primaries and caucuses.

Full story here.

(Via New York Times.)

Top Democratic officials said privately that Congressional leaders were content to have the race play out as long as it did not take on a negative tone. Attacks on Mr. Obama by the Clinton campaign or its surrogates could lead to a leadership push for superdelegates to show their hand and bring the race to a close, said aides, who did not want be identified discussing internal strategy.

Full story here

(Via Open Left.)

With 1.5 million donors, this campaign has blown away anything we’ve ever seen in terms of grassroots fundraising. The technology is all centralized, so Obama knows the name, address, giving patterns, and occupation of every donor out there, as well as social networking information, like who the best raisers are. He has bypassed Actblue, and will probably end up building in a Congressional slate feature to further party build while keeping control of the data.

One email from Moveon to their full list can bring in between $100k to $1M for a candidate, with $1M being the very top end of the range. With one good email to his list, in a few months, Obama will probably be able to bring in $1-3M for a Senate candidate under attack or split that among several. 10-20% of the money going to Senate candidates this cycle might come from Barack Obama’s internet operation. Stunning.

Full story here.

(Via msnbc.com.)

Hillary Clinton wasted little time reaffirming her intention to see the Democratic contest through, telling reporters that she is “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 said. “That is what I’ve done; that’s what I’m continuing to do.”

The statement, made barely 12 hours after most news organizations finally called Indiana for Clinton, comes despite increasing pressure for her to step aside, given the shrinking mathematical window to reach the delegate threshold (whichever it is) and the perception that a prolonged fight will hurt the party’s standard bearer.

“I just don’t believe that,” Clinton said of the latter view. “We’ve had a historic, record turnout by both of us bringing people into the Democratic Party. … And I think we can build on that going forward.”

She added that her husband didn’t secure the nomination in 1992 until June and was successful, while John Kerry, an Obama supporter, was the nominee by March 2004 and lost to George Bush. She also said that under Republican Party rules, she’d have won the nomination by now.

“So this is a dynamic electoral environment,” she said. “What matters is what strength you have going into the general election, who you’re going to be able to bring to your side, and what the electoral map will look like.”

To drive that point home, campaign aides pointed out to reporters that no Democratic candidate has won the White House without winning West Virginia since Woodrow Wilson.

Full story here.

By way of demonstrating the impossibility of Hillary Clinton winning the Democratic nomination, here’s a scenario for the remaining contests.

West Virginia, Kentucky, Oregon: We’ll put Clinton in the win column 70/30.
Montana, South Dakota: We’ll project Clinton 52/48.
Puerto Rico: We’ll write in Clinton for a 60/40 win.
Superdelegates: Clinton picks up 64% of all remaining.

End Totals:
Clinton, 1993
Obama, 2026

The margins in WV, KY and OR are larger than anyone is projecting. The wins in MT and SD would be huge and entirely unexpected. And, Obama has been picking up superdelegates in nearly inverse numbers of this projection since February. So, under the worst case (Clinton wins all remaining primaries and a majority of undeclared supers), Obama still reaches the 2025 magic number.

In the real world, this thing is over.

[Calculations based on CNN's Delegate Calculator.]

(Via The American Prospect.)

Barack Obama coupled a solid, double-digit win in North Carolina with a narrow defeat in Indiana to stall the momentum Hillary Clinton showed in the 11 weeks since Obama’s last significant win. “We now know who the Democratic nominee is going to be,” NBC’s Tim Russert declared shortly after midnight, as the late numbers trickling in from Gary-based Lake County in the northwestern corner of Indiana reduced Clinton’s victory margin in the Hoosier State to around 20,000 votes. It is a testament to how much the complex mix of expectations, performance, and spin figure in this contest that a proclamation by the dean of televised punditry matters more than the potential endorsements of the nearly 300 undeclared Democratic superdelegates.

Full story here.

(Via AmericaBlog.)

On MSNBC, Clinton spokesperson Howard Wolfson confirmed this loan and added, “I certainly don’t rule out her giving more.” No wonder Hillary said to Bill O’Reilly, “Rich people. God bless us.”

AP just reported, via MSNBC, that Hillary Clinton loaned her campaign $6.4 million last month.

Last night, we wrote about the possibility of another loan based on a report from Ben Smith. She already loaned her campaign $5 million.

Keep in mind that, despite the previous loan, Clinton was in debt at the end of February and at the end of March. And, you know, we kept hearing how much money the Clinton campaign was raking in big bucks through April.

Another huge loan. This is so over.

(Via Firedoglake.)

No matter what happens next, this is exactly what Obama needed to say. The media spent weeks implying, but pretending not to say, that as a black man, Obama may not love his country, sympathizes with violence, is not patriotic and does not understand or relate to ordinary Americans’ concerns and hopes. No credible journalist believe this nonsense, yet MSM pundits like Russert and Matthews wallowed in these false images as though somehow they might be true. As Matthews conceded, Reverend Wright helps their ratings.

Full story here.

(Via Newsvine.)

This was the Obama campaign’s opportunity to fall apart. As the media encroached upon his candidacy, savaging it with news cycle after news cycle of Wright’s hateful comments and questions of how it would affect the campaign, They hounded Obama into giving a second speech by Thursday of last week, finally cutting Wright loose for good. Clinton struck not only on the Wright issue but also accusing Obama of being an elitist that was uninterested in helping blue collar voters for declining to put a moratorium on the federal gas tax. Obama was having such a bad week that John McCain finally told reporters he wasn’t interested in discussing the Wright issue.

(Via Political Wire.)

Political Wire has learned that Sen. Hillary Clinton is returning to Washington, D.C. today to meet with advisers and discuss the future of her campaign.