CANDIDATES’ HEALTH CARE IDEAS MAY NOT OFFER IMMEDIATE CARE (Laura Meckler, Wall Street Journal) Sen. John McCain kicks off a week of health-care pegged events Monday with a simple message: The fundamental problem facing the health-care system is spiraling costs that must be brought under control. It is an idea that Democrats and Republicans agree on. Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are proposing many of the same things that Sen. McCain supports. But health-care experts say it is unclear how many of the candidates’ ideas could actually make a dent in the rising cost of care, particularly in the short term.
BILL VS. BARACK (Ryan Lizza, New Yorker) Adjusting to the modern, gaffe-centric media environment has been wrenching. At most of [Bill’s] Pennsylvania stops, the national press was represented mainly by a pair of young TV-network “embeds,” whom Clinton regards not as reporters but as media jackals who record his every utterance yet broadcast only his outbursts, a phenomenon that has helped transform him into a YouTube curiosity and diminished him—perhaps permanently. “It’s like he’s been plucked out of time and thrown into the middle of this entirely new kind of campaign,” the adviser told me. Jay Carson, a senior Clinton campaign official and Bill’s former spokesman, said, “Because of the way he is covered, the only thing anyone ever sees is fifteen seconds that is deemed by the pundits to be off message.” The focus on Clintonian error has obscured a serious debate that Obama and the former President tried to have.
CHANGING THE CHANGELING (John Heilemann, New York) What the past two months have shown beyond doubt is that Obama’s campaign is in desperate need of a serious midcourse retooling—in particular, a sharper economic message, delivered from a brawler’s stance, in order to give those blue-collar voters who’ve sided with Clinton a bedrock reason to stay in the Democratic column and not flee to McCain, as many now threaten to do. Even more important, though, the time has come for Obama to move beyond his airy mantra of post-partisan transformation. The polarization that plagues our politics is an awful thing, no doubt. But the irony is that before Obama can do anything to change it, he needs to win. And winning will require him to channel the very partisan furies—the anger at Bush, the ire toward the Republicans, the palpable yearning for a fight—that he eventually hopes to tame.
EYES ON BLUE-COLLAR VOTERS, OBAMA SHIFTS STYLE (Jeff Zeleny and Adam Nagourney, New York Times) In interviews with several associates and aides, Mr. Obama was described as bored with the campaign against Mrs. Clinton and eager to move into the general election against Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee. So the Obama campaign is undertaking modifications in his approach intended to inject an air of freshness into his style. In strategy sessions last week, advisers concluded that Mr. Obama, of Illinois, needed to do a better job reminding voters of his biography, including his modest upbringing by a single mother and one of his first jobs as a community organizer helping displaced steel mill workers. He also has to sharpen his economic message, they said, to improve his appeal and connection with voters in hope of capitalizing on the sensibilities that served him well in Midwestern states.
MORE: Obama Tackles Bread and Butter Issues in Indiana (Nick Timiraos, Wall Street Journal) Campaigning in central Indiana, which has been hit hard by plant closings this decade and where unemployment is two percentage points above the national average, the presidential candidate spoke about how he would bring changes to help people overcome their economic plight. Sen. Obama’s stripped-down stump speech marks a shift from the last primary, in Pennsylvania, where he pressed for change without as direct an economic hook.
HOW MCCAIN LOST PENNSYLVANIA (Frank Rich, New York Times) Though ignored by every channel I surfed, there actually was a G.O.P. primary on Tuesday, open only to registered Republicans. And while it was superfluous in determining that party’s nominee, 220,000 Pennsylvania Republicans (out of their total turnout of 807,000) were moved to cast ballots for Mike Huckabee or, more numerously, Ron Paul. That’s more voters than the margin (215,000) that separated Hillary Clinton and Mr. Obama. Those antiwar Paul voters are all potential defectors to the Democrats in November. Mr. Huckabee’s religious conservatives, who rejected Mr. McCain throughout the primary season, might also bolt or stay home. Given that the Democratic ticket beat Bush-Cheney in Pennsylvania by 205,000 votes in 2000 and 144,000 votes in 2004, these are 220,000 voters the G.O.P. can ill-afford to lose. Especially since there are now a million more registered Democrats than Republicans in Pennsylvania. (These figures don’t even include independents, who couldn’t vote in either primary on Tuesday and have been migrating toward the Democrats since 2006.)
THREE REASONS TO BELIEVE (John Dickerson, Slate) Clinton talking point No. 1: Clinton consistently performs better with downscale voters, women, Catholics, and older voters… Clinton talking point No. 2: Voters consistently favor Clinton to Obama when asked which candidate can better handle the economy… Clinton talking point No. 3: She can take a punch. Clinton has shown extraordinary tenacity. Voters get proof every day of just how hard it will be for Republicans to beat her down… Obama talking point No. 1: He can capture independents and younger voters, bringing new people into the Democratic fold and into the voting booth in November… Obama talking point No. 2: He is the candidate of change. Eighty percent of those polled say that the country is moving in the wrong direction. More than any other candidate, Obama is more associated than any other candidate with the change voters want… Obama talking point No. 3: The party will explode if superdelegates reverse the will of the pledged delegates, among whom Obama leads.
DEMOCRATS REGISTERING IN RECORD NUMBERS (Eli Saslow, Washington Post) The past seven states to hold primaries registered more than 1 million new Democratic voters; Republican numbers mainly ebbed or stagnated. North Carolina and Indiana, which will hold their presidential primaries on May 6, are reporting a swell of new Democrats that triples the surge in registrations before the 2004 primary. The contest between Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama has engaged enough new voters to change the political makeup of the country, experts say. The next several months – and the general election in November – will reveal the extent of the shift. Is it a temporary increase in interest resulting from a close election between historic candidates? Or is it a seismic swing in party realignment that foretells the end of the red-blue stalemate?
SUPERDELEGATE STALEMATE SHOWS NO SIGN OF EASING (Larry Rohter and Carl Hulse, New York Times) The Pennsylvania primary was supposed to help clarify the picture for the 795 Democratic superdelegates, but Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s strong victory there on Tuesday has in many ways complicated matters for them, furthering a stalemate that has deeply divided the party even as top Democrats called this week for them to make up their minds by June. The latest New York Times survey of superdelegates — the party leaders and elected officials who essentially have the power to determine the nominee — finds that Mrs. Clinton holds a 16-person edge that slices into Mr. Obama’s overall lead in delegates. And those 478 superdelegates who have declared their allegiances show no signs of switching sides as the primary calendar proceeds toward its June 3 ending.
SUNSET IN AMERICA (Sean Wilentz, New Republic) What some experts envisaged, only three years ago, as a permanent Republican majority now looks like an illusion. The Democrats, despite their internecine battles over the presidency, remain in a potentially strong position and ought to win substantial majorities in both the House and Senate. Having claimed his party’s nomination, John McCain must persuade many on the right that his campaign will not, as the radio polemicist Rush Limbaugh has predicted, “destroy” the Republican Party. As his remedial actions demonstrate, McCain cannot count simply on reassembling, yet again, the old Reagan coalition. “It’s gone,” Ed Rollins, Reagan’s White House political director, has said. “It doesn’t mean a whole lot to people anymore.” If Rollins is correct, we have reached the end of an extraordinary era in American history.
OBAMA TEAM REMAINS UNSHAKEN (Carrie Budoff Brown, Politico) After Sen. Barack Obama’s third major primary loss and endless media coverage dedicated to dissecting the apparent weaknesses of his candidacy, one of the most striking elements of his campaign this week was what’s missing: any hint of internal upheaval. At Obama headquarters in Chicago, hundreds of miles removed from the Beltway bubble, advisers held steadfast in their adherence to The Plan, a blueprint devised 15 months ago by the same inner circle that runs the campaign today, supported by the candidate and carried out by a tight-knit staff. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s operation could not be more dissimilar. Her campaign, ensconced in a Washington suburb, has experienced two major staff shakeups fueled by high-level staff rivalries, shifting strategies and an unusual degree of finger-pointing.
