At Last

First of all, Caroline Kennedy, what was that all about? First she's in, then she's the frontrunner, then she's not the frontrunner, then she's out but she was the frontrunner, then she's out because she wasn't the frontrunner. All I can say is that it's looking like our long state nightmare is over and Governor Paterson has picked a replacement for Hillary Clinton's Senate seat.

I know next to nothing about Kirsten Gillibrand other than that she's a Democratic female Congresswoman from upstate New York. I've also heard some rumblings that she may be more conservative than some folks are happy with.

Honestly, I don't care. We heard a lot about "Clinton fatigue" during the 2000 presidential election. I think I'm suffering from "Clinton's senate seat fatigue." Basically it's left me inert to all news relating to the appointment of her successor. I'll try to read up more on this Gillibrand character today, but I probably won't enjoy it.

Campaign Vacation

The latest big news to hit the campaign trail? Former Democratic President Bill Clinton is predicting that current Democratic candidate Barack Obama is going to win the election in November. Really. This is what passes for campaign news these days.

I've been getting so frustrated with the coverage lately. It's so trivial and inconsequential and meaningless and repetitive. I just can't stand to read about the latest petty fight about make up wearing farm animals or whatever else they're going to decide to fight about.

Maybe you haven't noticed, but there's a country out there. And it has issues.

I can't really take it anymore. So starting today, I'm taking a campaign vacation. As much as is humanly possible given the saturation of the news, I'm not reading, writing, or talking about politics if I can at all avoid it. I just need the time to depressurize and build up my tolerance for stupidity.

I'll still be posting here, but it won't be about politics, at least at the national level. So check in for education thoughts or New York politics or whatever else happens to catch my attention over the course of the next week. It's certainly not going to be the campaign.

Hillary is 44?

Every so often I come across something that needs to be shared. Sometimes the sharing is for good, other times for bad. What I'm about to show you is not in the good column.

Hillary is 44 is a website seemingly dedicated entirely to the fact that even though Hillary Clinton lost the nomination to Barack Obama, she should still be the 44th President of the United States. For those of you who've only read about the vehemence of the pro-Clinton/anti-Obama crowd this is a pretty thorough crash course. I can't go through it point by point because the site is huge and so filled with flawed logic and out of context facts that it would take me more time than I have right now to go through it all.

What's incredible to me is the stubborn insistence in spite of all facts to the contrary that Hillary Clinton not only should, but will be the Democratic nominee for the presidency. Die hard only begins to describe it. These are people who say that they're looking forward to the day that Obama gets his comeuppance and loses the election. This election has become so personal for them that they would rather no Democrat win than a Democrat other than Clinton win.

If I were a Republican, I would think that sites like this were a gift from God. As a Democrat, I'm deeply concerned.

The Problem with Sexism

I was at an event last night in New York City surrounded by middle aged and beyond women to discuss that state of gender equality in the country. It was just one of those things for work. While the discussion ranged from the thoughtful to the absurd, the one point that most stuck with me was the complaint - universally accepted as truth among this crowd - that Hillary Clinton's campaign was the victim of sexism, particularly from the media.

Admittedly, I'm male and a partisan for the other side, so I can't even claim to be a neutral observer or evaluator of this claim. That being said, I think it's a disservice to the real sexism that exists in the country (wage gap, etc.) to blame Clinton's campaign failure on unfair media bias.

The reason that Clinton lost the campaign was bad strategy. She focused just on the big states and, if you'll recall, didn't win a state for about a month. Male or female, it's hard to complain about the bad press you're getting when that's the state of affairs. At the end of that stretch, Obama was clearly way ahead with no realistic hope for Clinton to catch up. Is it sexism to say that she should drop out when she can't win? Wouldn't it be sexist to not say it just because she's a woman?

I don't know. I'm willing to believe that there were elements of campaign coverage that were different because she is a woman. However, I don't believe those elements were as decisive as her followers would have us believe.

Also, has anyone else noticed a certain "The South will Rise Again" quality to many Hillary supporters recently. I keep hearing people refer to her campaign in the present tense and point out that she just suspended her campaign, she didn't concede. She's still retaining her delegates. This worries me. Not because I think she'll actually be able to snatch the nomination away. Rather, because it's a major hurdle for party unity when a good portion of the party is still waiting for the other candidate to come back.

All's Well That Ends Well

Hillary Clinton gave her concession (or should I say suspension?) speech on Saturday. I have to say, I think it went pretty well. She didn't make any ridculously martyr-ish statements and even echoed a few Obama themes, which was a nice touch.

I'm not 100% sure why she waited to give the speech in the first place. Perhaps it was to create a sense of suspense or to make her speech seem more concilliatory and gracious than it would otherwise be considered because there had been some doubt as to whether or not she would even give it. But, she did it. Even if it was a bit of a non-event.

Now comes the real campaign and we'll see how serious the calls for party unity really are. I don't think that a united Democratic Party will have any trouble beating John McCain in the fall. But the Democrats have beaten themselves before, so let's keep the old fingers crossed.

End Game

Well, the end of times are upon us. Or at least, the time to end is. After being clearly destined to be the loser for months and a day after it became clear that Obama was the winner, Hillary Clinton announced that she was ending her campaign for the Democratic nomination.

In an e-mail to supporters apparently sent last night, Hillary announced that she was going to be stepping out of the race and giving her support to Obama. The letter seems to kind of pretend that she wasn't claiming to be winning as recently as yesterday. Nor does it say that she lost. It just says that now she'll be supporting Barack Obama for president. It's kind of like she woke up one morning and decided that she didn't want to run anymore.

Her actual announcement is apparently scheduled for Friday. We'll see how she handles things there, but right now she seems to be backing out with dignity. We'll see how well she does trying to move her supporters over to Obama (and more importantly, how he does at bringing them in).

As this chapter of the race comes to a close I just have to say how really exciting it all is. Never mind that I've never really supported a winning candidate before; we're now looking at an election set up to be a clash of contrasting visions for what America should be as we move into the future. Both McCain and Obama present unapologetically different world views and visions of what the country can be. I hope that the race stays clean and focused because if it does, we'll get to see which vision of America people really want to follow.

Good Day

I have to admit that I woke up this morning with a certain sense of elation. It became clear last night that Barack Obama is officially going to be the Democratic nominee for president. YAY! After a grueling primary that literally lasted through all 50 states, the Democrats not only have a nominee, they have the right nominee. So life is good this morning.


Or is it?

Did anyone else notice that Hillary Clinton is still hanging around? And judging be her speech last night, she's not exactly in a conciliatory mood. Even though she's now officially lost the race she's still making claims about having more votes than "any primary candidate in history." This is the party coming together? This is starting to campaign vigorously for whoever the nominee is?

In a lot of ways, Hillary has painted herself into a corner that's going to be very hard to get out of. Here's the situation as it stands:

1) Given the bitterness of the nomination fight, a united Democratic Party needs Hillary Clinton to be a huge advocate for Obama and help get her supporters to become his supporters.
2) Hillary is going to want to save face and bow out on her terms rather than be ignomiously forced out because she out and out lost.
3) The essential reality that fueled her rationale for staying in the race has not changed. Namely, when you count Michigan or don't count any of the states Obama won, she has more votes.

Here's the options available to Hillary. Option 1 is that she basically say that her math was bogus the entire time and that she knows she's lost the race and is looking forward to working to put Barack Obama in the White House. I wouldn't hold my breath for this one for obvious reasons.

Option 2 is an ostentatious show of self-sacrifice where the popular vote winner bows out of the race not because she lost the election, but "for the good of the party." This will simply enrage the hard core Hillary supporters and drive a further wedge into the Democratic Party. Yet, especially given her speech last night, this seems to be the more likely route for her to follow.

There may also be some as of yet unenvisioned third or fourth options. However, anything that comes next for Hillary has at its root options 1 or 2. She needs to repudiate her own logic or hold to her rightful claim but leave anyway.

So it's a good day, but not a great one. There are still too many unknowns for a great day. But until those unknowns are known, I'll take a good day.

Beginning of the End

I imagine that we're going to see a lot of Winston Churchill quotes in the news pretty soon. You know where he says that we're at the "end of the beginning." Nice try. But today definitely marks the beginning of the end of the Democratic nomination contest and Hillary Clinton's campaign. As it stands this morning, Obama is only 42 delegates shy of claiming the nomination. Coupled with good showings tonight and the expected post-primary surge of endorsements, and Obama should have the nomination.

That didn't take long.

I'm going to echo what every other living commentator has said, which is that once he's got the nomination, Obama needs to move quickly and aggressively to consolidate the Democratic base and unite the party behind his leadership. Some of this will happen naturally, to be sure. But there's going to be a diehard contingent of Hillary supporters who aren't so happy about it. And they're very strident in their Obama attacks. I know. I get regular e-mails from them.

The best case scenario is that Obama tallies two wins tonight by a margin of about 400,000 votes. That way, he's ahead of Clinton no matter how anyone tallies the popular vote (i.e. counting Michigan, but giving Obama a zero in that state). Given the relatively small populations of the states voting tonight, I'm not sure how likely that will be. Which brings up back to Hillary.

What she does in the next few days is going to have huge impacts on the rest of this race. I'll write more about this tomorrow, but for now suffice it to say that she's going to need to do some pretty agile tap dancing in order to remove herself from the race without further riling up her base. Because we know they're plenty riled already. Now is the time for calm and reconciliation. I hope she's got it in her.

Solomon and the DNC

The DNC Rules Committee sat down over the weekend and made perhaps the most predictable move in this entire campaign. Faced with two rogue states holding out of season primaries, now turning out to be important, and having lots of people upset, the Democrats basically copied the Republicans. The grand Solomonic compromise they reached was to seat all the delegates from the states and award them a half vote each. In other words, cut the delegates in half.

Brilliant, eh?

This essentially leaves the campaign exactly where it was. Obama is still unreachably far ahead in the delegate count. Clinton is still using some pretty twisted logic to show she's ahead in the popular vote. Obama supporters are whining that Clinton hasn't dropped out yet. Clinton supporters are making crazy claims that they'll vote for McCain if Clinton isn't the nominee.

All in all, not the best weekend for the Democratic party.

The thing is, at this point there's really nothing left to do. The DNC can't plausibly reinstate all the delgates from the two states with full votes if it wants to have any authority in future elections (or even this election). So that's out. They certainly won't go back to excluding all the delegates, so that's out too. So here we are, right where we're going to stay.

On Tuesday, the last states will hold their primaries. Obama is polling ahead in both of them and regardless of the outcome, will lead in delegates, states, money, and reasonably counted popular vote. Then it will be time for Clinton to decide whether or not she's in this race for herself or the greater good. It will also be time for her supporters to take a similar look in the mirror.

How Not to Count

After writing yesterday about what struck me as a fair way to count the popular vote, I spent the day reading about the Clinton campaign's latest claim to victory. Namely that she will have won the popular and delegate votes in primary states. That's right, she's not even going to count the caucus states (you know, because she didn't do so well there).

As Chris Beam points out on Slate, this claim to victory is pretty absurd. If nothing else, it requires the counting of states like Florida and Michigan (which we all know have problems), but not counting states like Iowa because it used a caucus. Wow.

The point we're at now is that the Clinton campaign is simultaneously saying that we should count every vote (Translation: Give her extra delegates from Florida and especially Michigan) but that she wins if we ignore a whole bunch of states for no real reason other than that they don't help her.

I have to admit that I don't get it. At this point, it's just getting ridiculous. It's also more than a little sad to see Clinton (once such a proud figure) resorting to Alice in Wonderland style math in order to claim victory in a race she's clearly losing. The dignity of the campaign is gone and now we're into sort of a pathetic begging phase. I just hope it ends soon.

Also, since it's Friday, you should check this out. It's a crazy world we're living in.

How to Count

By next Tuesday night, every single voter in the country will have had a chance to cast a ballot in the Democratic primary. You would think at that point that we would have a clear and unequivocal winner in the election. I don't think that's too likely. The problem here is that there are so many competing metrics of success (delegates, states, popular vote) that it's difficult to say which one really determines the winner.

Now, the system is set up so that the delegate count is what really matters. And in that realm, Obama is definitely the winner. Same with number of states won. Where it gets tricky is the popular vote. After all the hooting and hollering about the 2000 election going to Bush because of the electoral college when Gore won the popular vote, it would be a pretty strange sight to see the Democrats award their nomination to someone who had won the delegates, but not the popular vote.

So this raises an entirely new wrinkle. As it turns out, there are all sort of different ways to count even the popular vote. Do you count Florida? Michigan? The caucus states without official vote counts? Puerto Rico, which isn't allowed to vote in the general election?

See? It gets complicated quickly. Added to the confusion is that depending on how things are counted a different candidate may come out on top.

Here's my plan for counting the votes. I haven't done the math or anything to see how this turns out, so this is just me being as fair as I can. For practical purposes, the popular vote is a sort of straw poll that conveys a sense of legitimacy on the candidate who wins it. Haggle over the rules for seating delegates, but the popular vote should be as inclusive as popular. So I say count all the votes. That includes estimates from the caucus states as well as Florida and Michigan. A note on Michigan: given that the Clinton campaign's argument for counting Michigan is that the "uncommitted" voters were saying that they wanted Obama, give him all the uncommitted votes. Otherwise take the state totally out of play. I'm a little mixed on Puerto Rico because they won't be voting in the general election. In that sense it would almost be like taking a poll of Canada and counting that. On the other hand, PR is a U.S. territory and they're allowed to vote, so let's count 'em.

Add up all the votes and let the chips fall where they may. What a crazy election.

According to Plan

It's always nice when things run according to plan. Apparently the candidates and voters in Kentucky and Oregon agree. So in voting yesterday Clinton won a landslide in Kentucky and Obama carried a healthy majority in Oregon. Also as expected, Obama won a majority of the pledged delegates in the race. It is now impossible for Clinton to overcome his lead without a huge superdelegate defection to her camp. Obama also leads the popular vote if you use any reasonable figures (though not if you count Michigan where his name wasn't even on the ballot).

Unsurprisingly, Clinton vowed to fight on and continue her campaign. The bright side of all this is that there's really only two weeks left of campaigning. After the June 3rd primaries in Montana and South Dakota, every state and person will have had the chance to cast their votes. There will be no one left. No more miracle scenarios.

The way it's looking, Obama will definitely have the delegate lead and will likely have the popular vote lead (again, assuming you use reasonable figures). He'll also likely have a big superdelegate lead by that point. You can't argue with facts like that.

As the CNN article linked above indicated, the electorate is very divided between the Democrats. Two thirds of voters in Kentucky said they would not vote for Obama in November. We've been seeing facts like that on both sides of the divide for a while. I lay that entirely at the feet of Clinton. The longer she runs and the more divisive she makes her campaign, the more we're going to see figures like that. Now that the race is essentially over, it's time to start bringing everyone together under the same Democratic tent.

So Long West Virginia

I really was set to write a post this morning that didn't focus exclusively on the primary race between Clinton and Obama. But sometimes current events intercede and you've got to throw out the old plans.

In case you missed it, last night John Edwards announced that he was endorsing Barack Obama for president. I'll make a bold prediction here and say that the papers and blogs today are going to be simply jam packed with analysis of how this helps Obama/hurts Clinton/doesn't do anything for McCain/who knows what else.

For my part, I don't really know how much this endorsement is really going to help. At this point, Obama has the nomination pretty much sewn up, so it's not like this (or Edwards' 19 delegates) are really going to be what puts him over the top. What this endorsement does (and is brilliant for doing) is makes everyone forget about how badly Obama was shellacked in West Virginia. We went from a week's worth of stories about how white voters didn't want Obama to a week's worth of stories about how much the Edwards endorsement is going to help Obama. Pretty brilliant. It's about time that Obama started taking command of the news narrative again.

In terms of how this actually helps Obama, the main point you'll be seeing a lot of is how this is going to help him win those hardworking white Americans that Hillary talked about. Frankly, I'm not sure how much that's going to be the case. After all, do you really see Mr. $400 Haircut swaying the folks way out in the hills of West Virginia? It's a nice symbol for urban voters that Obama can win the hardworking white vote, but I'm not sure how much of a difference it's going to make when you actually get out to those areas where Obama does so poorly.

The Unity Gap

After winning big in West Virginia yesterday, Hillary Clinton says she is "more determined than ever to carry on this campaign." Great.

The results were pretty staggering. In the end, Obama only secured 26% of the vote while Hillary racked up 67%. That's a little more than two Hillary votes for every one Obama vote. As an interesting comparison, John McCain won 76% of the vote and he's running unopposed! It's incredible that Clinton was anywhere near him.

Now, this was obviously the expected result. Polls had been showing Clinton way ahead for a long time in WVA. Obama kind of just gave up on the state and didn't really do much campaigning there. So this was not a shocker.

Still, it's upsetting in terms of what it means for Democrats. At this point, there's really no question that Barack Obama is going to be the Democratic nominee. The race has been all but called for him. He has the money, the votes, the states, the pledged delegates, and the super delegates.

So why is he still losing races?

Party leaders keep saying that no matter how divided the party is now they have no doubt that everyone will come together and support the nominee in the fall. And that may turn out to be true. But I'm troubled by the lack of unity coalescing behind the obvious standard bearer so far. When it became clear that McCain was going to be the nominee, the Republicans all jumped right in line. Four years ago, the same thing happened for the Democrats behind Kerry. For whatever reason, that isn't happening now.

It's tempting to blame Hillary for the lack of unity and there's no question that she's playing a part. But it's not all her. Whether it's race or ideology or something else entirely, there's something that's keeping the Democratic Party split. And unless we can figure out what it is and fix it, we're in real trouble come November.

So Hard to Say Goodbye

After last Tuesday's primaries in Indiana and North Carolina, I wrote that Hillary Clinton was now losing by every single valid metric (and even some that were not so valid). I was actually incorrect when I wrote that because she did still hold a superdelegate lead. Obviously, this is a flimsy thing because the super delegates aren't bound to one candidate or the other and because her once triple digit lead was down to a single digit.

Paltry though it may have been, even that has since vanished. According to CNN, the two are now tied. Real Clear Politics even gives Obama a superdelegate lead of four. So the race is drawing to a close. But, as is often the case in these kinds of things, it's so hard to say goodbye. So Hillary persists in her dogged pursuit of the nomination based around the argument that voters are racist and won't vote for Obama. (Oddly, this "electability" argument hasn't stopped him from being more electable than her.)

I try to assume the best of people's intentions, even in politics. But with that said, it's hard to approve of what Hillary said recently regarding her broader appeal. "I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

On first reading of that, it really seems to me like she's equating hard working Americans with white Americans who haven't graduated college. By extension she seems to be saying that black Americans or even white Americans who went to college were not hardworking Americans. Wow. Now, I'm willing to believe that she didn't mean it to come out that way, but that's pretty bad. Even the facade of running a positive campaign is gone now. Now it's about tearing down one nominee and setting different demographic groups against each other. I guess it really is hard to say goodbye.

It's Over Now, Right?

It's not over yet, but last night's results sure helped things along a bit. With Obama barely losing Indiana and dominating the North Carolina vote things are looking pretty good right now. Obama added to his lead in the delegate race and is now closer than ever to having cinched the nomination.

Perhaps more importantly, he staked his claim to the popular vote, no matter how's it's counted. Since Pennsylvania, Clinton has been claiming that she was leading in the popular vote. Of course, her counting to get that fact meant counting Florida (which isn't being recognized by the DNC), counting Michigan (where Obama wasn't even on the ballot), and not counting Iowa, Nevada, Maine, or Washington (caucus states that didn't keep records of turnout (and which Obama won most of)). So her claim was already a little dubious. Now, according to Real Clear Politics, even if you use the Hillary Clinton fuzzy math, Obama still has a lead of 89,076 votes. If you do something fair (like count the votes in the states that count for the DNC) Obama has a lead of 822,379 votes. Obama is now the clear winner in terms of votes (no matter how they're counted), delegates, and states won.

Despite this, Hillary is pledging to go "full speed ahead." What? She's losing by every single metric and given the lack of big states left to vote, she doesn't really have a shot at overtaking Obama in any of them. As such, her claim to the nomination is pretty much nil. And yet she perseveres. Give her credit for persistence, but come on now. What does it take? Is she really going to go through all the way to the bitter end at the convention when rather than having the opportunity to bow out gracefully she'll be rejected by the party? I'll be looking forward to reading her increasingly desperate spin in the coming days.

The shame of there not being any more big contests coming up is that there won't really be another opportunity to knock Clinton out of the race with a decisive win. Now it's just a matter of waiting for the inevitable while the race slogs on. Not a pleasant thought. It's up to Obama now to seize the narrative of the campaign again so that people start to forget that there's anyone else in the race. Because for all intents and purposes, there isn't.

Another Tuesday

Well, it's Tuesday again and it's time for the latest round of everybody's favorite game show: Is it Finally Over? Because at this point it's just getting silly.

Whereas the last few rounds of IIFO have been almost painfully formulaic, we're actually going to see something a little different this time around. Namely we'll get to see if Obama's support holds out as well against late surges as Clinton's does.

The trend in recent primaries has been for Clinton to start way ahead, Obama to make a late surge, Clinton to shore up support and win. That's probably what's going to happen in Indiana where any momentum Obama had for the state seems to have hit a brick wall in the form of Jeremiah Wright.

It's North Carolina that bears watching. Obama was ahead in NC by as many as 17 points about a month ago. Now, Real Clear Politics averages have him up by about 8. That's almost a Clinton-esque slide in the polls. The question now is whether or not he will likewise emulate Clinton's election day rebound and score a double digit win.

I really am writing (Wrighting?) off Indiana for Obama. I've seen the same thing happen too many times to have any faith that he'll pull off an upset there. Maybe I'm wrong, but I wdoubt it.

It's North Carolina that has my full attention. If it's close there or if Clinton (somehow) pulls out an actual win then we're looking at a very different race than the one we grew accustomed to over the last two months or so. If Clinton wins North Carolina, I would expect to see a huge super delegate swing in her direction. That really would be the game changer she talks about. Obama hasn't had a must-win state (as opposed to an it-would-be-really-nice-if-he-won state) since Iowa. We'll see if the folks in North Carolina stick with him and keep the game the same as it has been. Because either way, I don't think IIFO will be finishing anytime too soon.

Money Laundering and Energy Policy

It's not often that I laugh at loud while reading the op-ed pages in the New York Times. It's even more rare when I'm reading about energy policy and a presidential campaign. But I have to admit that Thomas Friedman's latest column on the Clinton-McCain plan to suspend the gas tax made me laugh.

You really should read the thing yourself and I won't get into it that much here except to say that I agree with him and am glad that I back the candidate who also agrees. Also I want to share the brilliant line: "This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country."

Again, I'll leave the energy policy analysis to Mr. Friedman, but I do want to use the point as a launching pad for the current state of this campaign. Does anyone else think it's odd that just a week or so after saying that we need a Democratic candidate who'll stand up to John McCain, Hillary Clinton is siding with him on energy/fiscal policy? This is standing up?

Also, as Friedman and others have pointed out, this is not a good plan. It will barely even provide temporary relief, let alone address the underlying issues that will make this keep coming back again and again. McCain seems to be backing it because in his latest incarnation he doesn't seem to be able to find a tax cut he doesn't like. Clinton seems to be in favor because it helps her appear more blue collar and in touch with average Americans than Obama.

And now Obama has the opportunity to tell the American people the hard truths he keeps saying he's going to tell them. What better opportunity? Here is a plan that on the surface sure sounds like a good idea to anyone about to pay $60 to fill up a tank of gas. Now's the time to educate and explain why we have to look out for our long term interests on this. Now can be Obama's time to show what a leader he's willing to be.

McCain and Clinton (who really do seem to be on the same side now) will assail him for being out of touch and elitist. Now's the time to hit back by saying it's not elitist to be looking out for the best interests of the country and its people. Now's the time to hit back by saying that leaders should look to the common good, not pander to the whims of the moment.

Will it help him win votes? Maybe. But not a lot. But if this election really is to be about change and transforming American politics, this might be a good place to start.

Out of Control

After months of being in the driver's seat election-wise, Barack Obama seems to have lost control of the narrative of the election, at least at the nation-wide level. Where in the weeks before Iowa and the months that followed, he was undoubtably the one setting the tone and tenor of the whole thing, now that role has gone to Clinton. Not to belabor the obvious, but there's a huge advantage to being the one in charge.

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo sums up the view pretty nicely here. The key line is where he says that the Clinton attacks have "made [Obama] recede into the background, even as he's a constant topic of conversation."

For those who like a little more substance than commentary in their posts, a recent CNN report came to pretty much the same conclusion in terms of the television ads the candidates were running. Obama is spending way more, but his ads largely seem to be responding to the few ads and issues that Clinton has focused on. The story concludes that if Hillary is able to set the agenda then more money for Obama won't do a whole lot of good.

What's so amazing about this is that Obama was in total control of the campaign message for so long. Remember when everyone was trying to run as the change candidate? Obama was, Edwards was, Clinton was. Even the Republicans were getting in on the game. And all of that came from Obama. Incidentally, that's also when he was winning the most. There's something to be said for controlling the message. He's certainly experiencing that now as he's lost control of the narrative.

Now, I've noticed that this kind of thing has happened before in this campaign. Just weeks ago it seemed like Obama had totally lost control over the message of the campaign with all the Rev. Wright stuff. Obama came out with his great speech on race followed by a really good speech on foreign policy. And he was back in it for a while. But now the luster has faded and the kitchen sink continues to sail at him. How many more great speeches can the guy have in him?

Perhaps more importantly, why can't he do a better job controlling the message without these incredible, standout speeches. The last time Obama lost control it took a speech that some called the most important speech since I Have a Dream to get things back on track. You can't base a campaign strategy around the ability to make once in a generation style orations. Of late, Obama has showed very little ability to control the agenda on a day to day basis. Without question, that's going to cause him problems until he can get himself back in control and keep it.

Deja Vu All Over Again

Stop me if you've heard this one before. Clinton had a huge early lead in the state. As the election approached, Obama made big gains and narrowed the gap. The occasional poll showed him in the lead even (but those polls were universally outliers). On election day blacks vote heavily for Obama, women for Clinton, new voters for Obama, late deciders for Clinton. When all is said and done Clinton walks away with the victory by a bigger margin than most polls had indicated she would. Sound familiar?

History (at least as it relates to this election) played itself out again yesterday in Pennsylvania with Clinton again winning. This time by 10 percentage points. (That's squarely in the middle of the 8 - 12 point margin I fearlessly predicted earlier.)

As Obama points out, 10 points is a huge improvement over the 25 he was trailing Clinton just a few weeks ago. In fact, immediately after the Ohio and Texas primaries I remember him saying that anything less than 10 points would pretty much be a victory for his campaign. As the election approached, the pundits seemed to agree that a high single digit margin for Clinton would be a draw, less would be a win for Obama, more would be a win for Clinton. Thus, last night's 10 point loss puts the result in the draw shading toward win for Clinton column.

What Obama failed to achieve last night was a result that fell within the Margin of Plausible Victory (MPV). That's the realm in which, while not actually winning the state, a candidate can plausibly claim to have won anyway. To use a sports metaphor, it's like beating the spread. The pundits will probably end up spinning last night at a draw with Clinton spinning one way and Obama spinning the other way. But in the end, last night showed yet again that Obama is simply not able to score a decisive victory on Clinton when it matters. And that's just going to keep this race going longer and longer.

P.S. Speaking of not being able to get a victory when it matters, the Phoenix Suns lost to the San Antonio Spurs last night again. The Spurs always beat the Suns and I hate them. Between Obama and the Suns last night was pretty grim for me.