clinton

(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.

(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.

(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.

(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.

(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.

(Via Charlotte Observer.)

A heavy turnout was reported this morning at some polling places across North Carolina in the state’s first significant presidential primary election in two decades.

Longtime N.C. political observers say that 1.5 million voters may participate in the historic Democratic primary — the first in which a woman, Hillary Clinton, or an African American, Barack Obama, will represent the party.

A half-million more voters could participate in the Republican primary. John McCain — who campaigned in Charlotte on Monday — is the party’s presumptive nominee for president, but state races will attract GOP voters.

Full story here.

(Via washingtonpost.com.)

Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday she’ll have no truck with economists telling her where to put her gas-tax holiday.

Well, now she’s got a truckload of them.

More than 230 economists — Democrats, Republicans, advisers to past presidents and four Nobel laureates — signed a letter today opposing proposals by Clinton and presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain to suspend the 18-cent federal gas tax for the summer driving season.

“First, research shows that waiving the gas tax would generate major profits for oil companies rather than significantly lowering prices for consumers,” they wrote. “Second, it would encourage people to keep buying costly imported oil and do nothing to encourage conservation. Third, a tax holiday would provide very little relief to families feeling squeezed.”

Signatories include four Nobel laureates: Joseph Stiglitz (a Clinton White House adviser), James Heckman, Daniel Kahneman and Roger Myerson. Also signing were: President-elect of the American Economic Association Angus Deaton; former AEA presidents Charles Schultze, Alice Rivlin and Peter Diamond; former Reagan administration economist Clyde Prestowitz and former Clinton economic adviser Jeffrey Frankel. Indeed, former president Bill Clinton’s administration is well represented on the list, with the signatures of Jeffrey Liebman of Harvard University, Rebecca Blank of the University of Michigan and J. Bradford DeLong of the University of California at Berkeley.

Others are household names within the smaller household of the economics profession: John Shoven and Lawrence Goulder from Stanford, Alan Auerbach from Berkeley, David Cutler from Harvard, James Galbraith from the University of Texas and Frank Levy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

(Via washingtonpost.com.)

Some Democrats think this is now largely a media-driven story, though a few party strategists say the controversy will hurt Obama today in Indiana and North Carolina. And there is near-universal agreement among strategists in both parties that, if Obama emerges as the Democratic nominee, the Wright issue will continue to dog him through the November election. “This story will continue to drip and seep into the electorate,” one Democrat noted. Another said that “all bets are off if the reverend decides to go on another press tour.” Republicans were adamant that Obama will have to deal with the Wright fallout through the rest of his campaign. They argue that his handling of the controversy has raised questions about his judgment and veracity. But they predicted, and Democrats agreed, that John McCain and the Republican National Committee will try to stay away from the story, though other groups — whether state parties, as happened in North Carolina last week, or independent groups — will put it into the laps of voters. One GOP strategist, however, offered this warning: “The chance that such an attack could backfire, though, seems to be relatively high.”