SPIN SET, LET THE VOTING BEGIN (Ben Smith, Politico) Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton toured Indiana on Sunday, both calling themselves the “underdog.” But as they barrel into the biggest states left to vote, North Carolina and Indiana, polling and conventional wisdom have set clear expectations that belie that label. Obama, barring catastrophe, should win North Carolina handily. Clinton is expected, with somewhat less confidence, to win Indiana — and will likely be forced from the race if she fails to carry the state… With just a handful of smaller states left to vote after Tuesday, the candidates aren’t looking to surprise voters or build traditional political momentum. Rather, they are aiming to impress a small but important audience: the more than 250 Democratic Party officials, or superdelegates, who have yet to publicly back a candidate. That means Clinton, who trails in the overall delegate count, is the one praying for lightning to strike.
NO ENDGAME (Elizabeth Kolbert, New Yorker) Whatever the outcome of this week’s primaries, the pressure to resolve the Democratic contest can only increase. How Clinton will respond is unclear: her campaign seems to have entered a new, almost mystical phase, in which the number of votes received or delegates pledged no longer matters. “We don’t think this is just going to be about some numerical metric,” Geoff Garin, one of her chief strategists, recently told the Washington Post. After her back-from-the-dead victory in Ohio, Clinton committed herself to soldiering on not despite but because of the fact that the situation seemed hopeless. For everyone “across America who’s ever been counted out but refused to be knocked out, and for everyone who has stumbled but stood right back up, and for everyone who works hard and never gives up,” she said, “this one is for you.” That message understandably resonates with voters who, when they are not bitterly clinging to their guns and their religion, are having trouble meeting their mortgage payments. As long as Clinton is willing to fight on simply for the sake of fighting, there really is no reason that this endless campaign has to end.
MCCAIN-JINDAL? (William Kristol, New York Times) A McCain staffer called my attention to this finding in the latest Fox News poll: McCain led Obama in the straight match-up, 46 to 43. Voters were then asked to choose between two tickets, McCain-Romney vs. Obama-Clinton. Obama-Clinton won 47 to 41. That reversal of a three-point McCain lead to a six-point deficit for the McCain ticket suggests what might happen (a) when the Democrats unite, and (b) if McCain were to choose a conventional running mate, who, as it were, reinforced the Republican brand for the ticket. As the McCain aide put it, this is what will happen if we run a traditional campaign; our numbers will gradually regress toward the (losing) generic Republican number. Maybe that’s why, in separate conversations last week, no fewer than four McCain staffers and advisers mentioned as a possible vice-presidential pick the 36-year-old Louisiana governor, Bobby Jindal. They’re tempted by the idea of picking someone so young, with real accomplishments and a strong reformist streak.
RUTHLESSNESS AND GRIT SEEN IN CLINTON’S STYLE (Mark Leibovich and Kate Zernike, New York Times) In recent days, Mrs. Clinton has chided the experts for “counting me out” and Senator Barack Obama for his inability to “close the deal” and declared that no one was going to make her quit. “She makes Rocky Balboa look like a pansy,” North Carolina’s governor, Michael F. Easley, said in endorsing her, and a union leader in Portage, Ind., praised her “testicular fortitude.” This kind of language and pugilistic imagery, however, also evokes the baggage that makes Mrs. Clinton such a provocative political figure. For as much as a willingness to “do what it takes” and “die hard” are marketable commodities in politics, they can also yield to less flattering qualities, plenty of which have been ascribed to her over the years. Just as supporters praise her “toughness” and “tenacity,” critics also describe her as “divisive,” “a dirty fighter” or “willing to do anything to win.” The critics include supporters of Mr. Obama who subscribe to the notion, pushed by their candidate, that Mrs. Clinton, his opponent in the race for the Democratic nomination, represents the fractious politics of the past.
MORE: Hillary Clinton Would Be the Bigger Gamble (Clive Crook, Financial Times) Clintonistas delude themselves that their candidate has been fully vetted, whereas Mr Obama is only now coming under scrutiny. This is an error. Mr Obama is not probing the many scandals of her past, because his campaign is positioned to be above all that. And Mr McCain is not doing it either – not yet – because he expects to be facing Mr Obama in November. If Mrs Clinton were nominated, you can bet that the scandals of the 1990s and before would be dusted down and freshened up. This points to the largest issue for Democrats to bear in mind. In US politics, Mrs Clinton is a uniquely divisive figure. To be sure, division is her element – as one can see, she relishes the fight – and a little of that in a politician is a good thing. But nothing could energise wavering Republicans to turn out for Mr McCain, or de-energise Mr Obama’s bright-eyed new Democrats, so thoroughly as the living prospect of another Clinton presidency.
ABOUT THAT CRUSH ON OBAMA (Kurt Anderson, New York Magazine) With the ten-point loss in Pennsylvania, the latest Reverend Wright eruption, and the shrinkage of Obama’s leads in the polls, the media are feeling lousy, and not just because their guy is taking a beating. If Obama is deemed to be an effete, out-of-touch yuppie, then the effete-yuppie media Establishment that’s embraced him must be equally oblivious and/or indifferent to the sentiments of the common folk. Uh-oh. As the cratering of newspaper circulations accelerates (thousands a week are now abandoning the Times) and network-news audiences continue to shrink, for big-time mainstream journalists to seem even more out of touch makes some of them panic. And … so … it’s all … his fault, that highfalutin Obama! Certain journalistic stars these last few weeks (hello, George Stephanopoulos!), instead of copping to the “elitist” sensibilities they obviously share with him (and the Clintons and McCain)—we travel abroad and read books, we have healthy bank accounts and drink wine; so shoot us—reacted by parroting the Clinton campaign’s faux-populist talking points about Obama’s condescension toward the yokel class.
MORE: Obama’s Chilly Spring (Howard Kurtz, Washington Post) Obama aides, for their part, are somewhat taken aback at the abrupt turn of events. They didn’t mind the pundits declaring for weeks that Clinton had virtually no chance to win the nomination, but now believe the result is a huge imbalance in the level of media scrutiny. The staff is constantly fielding questions from reporters digging into Obama’s background in places from Chicago to Honolulu.
CLINTON CAMP CONSIDERING NUCLEAR OPTION TO OVERTAKE DELEGATE LEAD (Thomas B. Edsall, Huffington Post) Hillary Clinton’s campaign has a secret weapon to build its delegate count, but her top strategists say privately that any attempt to deploy it would require a sharp (and by no means inevitable) shift in the political climate within Democratic circles by the end of this month. With at least 50 percent of the Democratic Party’s 30-member Rules and Bylaws Committee committed to Clinton, her backers could – when the committee meets at the end of this month – try to ram through a decision to seat the disputed 210-member Florida and 156-member Michigan delegations. Such a decision would give Clinton an estimated 55 or more delegates than Obama, according to Clinton campaign operatives.
MORE: Can Hillary Win Without Blowing Up the Party? (David Broder, Washington Post) If the superdelegates should decide to take the risk and cast their lot with Clinton, how would she be able to heal the wounds of a fight to the finish with Obama? The Clinton camp’s answer comes in two parts. First, they say that the institutional party – the unions, the environmental groups, the abortion-rights groups and others who are desperate for victory after losing twice to George Bush and who recognize the potential appeal of John McCain – would exert heavy pressure on the losing side not to sulk or erupt. And second, the Clinton camp hopes that, if he is counted out, Obama, just 46, would think about his long-term future and secure his own status as heir apparent by reconciling his followers to a bitter but temporary defeat and by throwing all his energies behind Clinton. In effect, my friend was saying that may well be beyond Clinton’s power to win the nomination without severely damaging the party. Only Obama can make her winning seem right.
WILL AGE BE JUST A NUMBER IN ‘08? (Jonathan Martin, Politico) Is John McCain Ronald Reagan or Bob Dole? Or, more to the point, will McCain be perceived as the vigorous, wood-chopping proclaimer of “Morning in America” or as a cranky senior senator prone to gaffes and the occasional stage tumble? The sensitive question of age — one of the trickiest and most unpredictable in the political playbook — has been touched upon only glancingly since McCain became the de facto GOP nominee. But it is certain to hover over a candidate who will be 72 by Election Day. For all the ink spilled on whether the country is ready for a woman or African-American, polls indicate that more Americans worry about having a president over 70. And McCain’s public image is unmistakably tied to his age… Veterans of both campaigns agree that with McCain as the GOP nominee, age will again be an issue — and say the Reagan and Dole experiences offer the McCain team some best-case and worst-case scenarios on how to deal with it.
DEMOCRATIC AND REPUBLICAN HEALTHCARE PLANS OFFER CLEAR CHOICES (Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Los Angeles Times) If John McCain becomes president, Americans would be steered toward buying individual health insurance policies, and job-related coverage eventually could decline. If Barack Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton wins, more people would get their insurance from the government – with many workers offered the equivalent of Medicare and employers facing new coverage mandates.
OBAMA SAYS TEAMSTERS NEED LESS OVERSIGHT (Brody Mullins and Kris Maher, Wall Street Journal) Sen. Barack Obama won the endorsement of the Teamsters earlier this year after privately telling the union he supported ending the strict federal oversight imposed to root out corruption, according to officials from the union and the Obama campaign. It’s an unusual stance for a presidential candidate. Policy makers have largely treated monitoring of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters as a legal matter left to the Justice Department since an independent review board was set up in 1992 to eliminate mob influence in the union… Officials at the Obama campaign and the Teamsters say there was no quid pro quo between the union endorsement and Sen. Obama’s position on ending federal oversight.
IN SMALL TOWNS, BILL CLINTON FINDS A CAMPAIGN NICHE (Eli Saslow, Washington Post) After a series of awkward moments and costly missteps while campaigning for his wife, Clinton has finally discovered a role that suits him. He’s become the campaign’s self-proclaimed “ambassador to small-town America,” traveling to places where the mere arrival of his motorcade signals a significant moment in local history, where his charm and affability carry substantial weight among voters.
OBAMA IS GETTING BACK TO GETTING CLOSE TO VOTERS (Christopher Cooper and Nick Timiraos, Wall Street Journal) Sen. Barack Obama has returned to a page in his playbook that served him well during early state nominating contests, ditching arena-style events for thousands in favor of more intimate interaction with potential voters… Using the arena approach in Texas in particular is seen in the campaign as “a mistake,” said Mitch Stewart, who oversaw Obama’s field strategy in Texas and holds the same role in Indiana. Sen. Obama lost the popular vote in Texas by a fair margin, though he eked out a win in delegates. “I think we overworked the rallies, to be honest,” said David Axelrod, Sen. Obama’s top political adviser. “The images were of him talking to people but not people talking to him. It became sort of this monotonous backdrop.”
REPUBLICANS USE OBAMA AS THE BAD GUY IN NEGATIVE ADS (Mark Preston, CNN) Is Sen. Barack Obama the new Sen. Ted Kennedy, Sen. Hillary Clinton or former House Speaker Newt Gingrich? For Republican candidates and political ad makers, the White House hopeful might very well be. A review of political television advertising nationwide shows that Obama has played a starring role or has been mentioned in at least 9 GOP-inspired ads designed to undercut a Democratic candidate in recent months.
