(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.
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Tags: clinton
(Via New York Times.)
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is bracing for one of the most difficult days of her presidential race on Wednesday, anticipating new pressure to quit the race and facing a set of financial and logistical decisions that will determine just how robust a campaign she can continue to wage against Sen. Barack Obama, according to several advisers and political allies.
And that is only for starters, these people say: After her narrow win in the Indiana primary and steep loss in North Carolina, working off a few hours of sleep, Mrs. Clinton is also bound to think over a question in her own head and to hear it from at least some supporters — should she continue running?
The advisers and allies to Mrs. Clinton said in interviews on Tuesday night that her victory in Indiana — even by less than 2 percentage points — made it less certain that she would withdraw from the race. (Her advisers had said a loss would likely lead her to quit.) Yet these supporters said that North Carolina had come to be seen as a major test in the eyes of the Clintons and their aides, and the severity of her loss to Mr. Obama there was dispiriting.
They were also girding for the possibility of more bad news. Her campaign is deep in debt and believed to be near broke, and her advisers made the unusual move on Tuesday night of refusing to confirm or deny whether Mrs. Clinton had made a loan to her campaign to keep it afloat. She made such a loan, of $5 million, in January, and she pleaded for donations in her televised primary night remarks on Tuesday, even reminding people that they could donate on her Web site.
Full story here.
Tags: clinton, Indiana, north carolina
(Via CNN.com.)
Barack Obama edged closer to securing the Democratic nomination in the U.S. presidential election early Wednesday after claiming a decisive victory in North Carolina as his rival Hillary Clinton narrowly took Indiana, vowing to keep her campaign alive.
The latest round in the drawn-out contest to select a challenger to George W. Bush’s likely Republican successor John McCain helped Obama strengthen his lead over Clinton, but failed to strike a final blow against either candidate.
Both Clinton and Obama greeted the results with conciliatory speeches focusing on unity and the race for the White House rather than the divisive attacks on each other that have previously been the hallmark of the campaign.
“Some were saying that North Carolina would be a game-changer in this election. But today, what North Carolina decided is that the only game that needs changing is the one in Washington,” Obama told supporters in Raleigh, North Carolina.
“We can’t afford to give John McCain the chance to serve out George Bush’s third term. We need change in America and that is why we will be united in November.”
Full story here.
Tags: clinton, delegates, Indiana, north carolina, obama, primaries
(Via Informed Comment.)
Barack Obama pulled closer to clinching the nomination last night, widening his lead over Hillary Clinton in voted delegates and in the popular vote. He overwhelmingly took Indianapolis and narrowed her earlier lead to only 2%, about 20,000 votes out of the hundreds of thousands cast. Obama even got 35% of working class whites in Indiana, which suggests that while Clinton is stronger with that constituency, Obama has an appeal there as well. He is clearly raising far more money than she, so voters are voting for him with their pocketbooks.
Full story here.
(Via AmericaBlog.)
This is a huge point. Huge. Earlier today, Hillary’s people tried to argue that even if Obama reaches the 2,025 delegates he needs to become our nominee, Hillary will continue to contest the election until Florida and Michigan are seated. Yeah, only one little problem. NBC’s Chuck Todd, who is brilliant and highly respected on such things, just said that you can give Hillary Florida and Michigan - on her terms - and she still loses the nationwide delegate count and the popular vote. She still loses the nomination.
Full story here.
Tags: clinton, delegates, obama, superdelegates
(Via MyDD.)
The upshot is that there is no way to spin away what happened tonight: Senator Clinton had a really bad night and Senator Obama had a phenomenal one. It’s impossible to overstate the significance of what he accomplished, not only considering what he’s overcome over the past three weeks but also considering how decisively he denied Clinton what she needed to continue to have a credible path to the nomination. To put it plainly, tonight was her final shot and she needed to win Indiana by 8-10% and to lose NC by 1-3%; in other words she needed to do about 10% better in each state than she did in order to keep Michigan and Florida relevant and the popular vote in play for superdelegates. Unfortunately, she was unable to do either. Zogby was right this time and Survey USA…and I…were wrong.
Which leads me to the conclusion, sadly, that I no longer see a real path to victory for Hillary Clinton and I now believe Barack Obama will be the nominee of our party.
Full story here.
Tags: clinton, delegates, Indiana, north carolina, obama, primaries, super delegates
(Via Newsvine.)
Tonight, Cnn’s Bob Constantini relayed unconfirmed and undisputed reports that Senator Hillary Clinton gave her campaign for the Democratic nomination another infusion of cash.
Senator Clinton is locked in a tight race for the Democratic nomination that many believe will be largely determined tonight in the primary contests in Indiana and North Carolina.
The Clinton campaign has suffered through staff shake-ups and financial woes, spending the last few months in the red on their balance sheet. It has been reported widely that the campaign has had problems paying vendors and and finding enough funds to compete in television advertising, although staffers have claimed the earlier Pennsylvania contest, won by Clinton, produced record breaking donations through the campaigns website. Financial data is expected in the upcoming days.
Reports have circled the campaign for months, painting the culture of staff as divided and contentious. Long-time friend Patti Solis-Doyle was widely believed to have been forced out, and trusted director Mark Penn had to step down in early April after supporting a free trade deal with Columbia that was against the position of Senator Clinton.
At the time of this report the numbers of the contests are still being counted. It appears that it will go as expected: a strong win to Senator Obama in North Carolina and a narrower win for Senator Clinton in Indiana.
(Via Talking Points Memo.)
NBC just reported that Hillary Clinton is holding no public events tomorrow. We’d earlier reported that she’d cancelled her morning show appearances. But that’s not that surprising. There’s not a lot good to talk about. But canceling all public appearances, if that’s what they’re saying, is a different story.
Tags: clinton
(Via Open Left.)
On Friday I wrote about Clinton’s ability to consistently win among late deciders. The last SUSA polling from Indiana suggests the pattern may be repeating in Indiana.
The SUSA Indiana poll has Clinton up 54-42. If you look at the recent polling in Indiana, what becomes apparent is most of the volatility is around Clinton’s number. Clinton ranges from a low of 42 (Zogby) to a high of 54 (SUSA). Obama, in contrast, ranges only between 42 (SUSA) and 46 (PPP). This repeats the pattern in Ohio where Clinton ranged in final polling from 56 to 44, but Obama ranged in all but one poll from 42 to 44 and in Pennsylvania where Clinton ranged between 46 and 54 while Obama polled within a narrower range (in most cases between 42 and 44.
This polling suggests that the undecided in places like Ohio and Pennsylvania actually at some level lean to Clinton, something that the exit polling seems to confirm.
This suggests Clinton is likely to win by at least 10 in Indiana. In fact, I would not rule out a Clinton win of 15 or more.
As I also wrote last Friday, late deciders in southern states have broken for Obama and not Clinton. The intuition here is that in places like Indiana the undecided tend to be white and lower class (and break for Clinton) while in the South the undecided tend to be African American (and break for Obama).
Full story here.
Tags: clinton, Indiana, north carolina, obama, primaries
(Via The Indianapolis Star.)
The two precincts at Broad Ripple Family Center selected Republican Jon Elrod over Democrat Andre Carson in March’s special election for U.S. Congress. But by 9 a.m., just 21 voters in one of those precincts had requested Republican ballots — out of 168 cast.
Amid heavy turnout, Republicans appeared to be crossing over in droves today in Marion County and suburban counties, where fewer Republican voters might impact down-ticket primary races.
At the Broad Ripple center, nearly 400 voters — of 1,800 registered in the two precincts — had turned out in the first few hours of voting. Among them was Meghan Ward-Bopp, 24, who went against family tradition and asked for Democratic ballot so she could vote for Barack Obama; she plans to vote for Republican John McCain in November.
“I’m a hardcore Republican,” she said, “but it’s about who I wanted in second place in case McCain doesn’t make it. … I don’t like the way this country’s been run in the last 20 years. I’m sick of the dynasty (of two families) that’s been running things.”
Ward-Bopp voted for the Democrat she liked, but 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.”
Full story here.
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