Jeremiah Wright - from Sekhar

The Wright church is apparently the largest in the United Church of Christ. Wright is very highly regarded by other UCC leaders. He is also considered very progressive on gay issues, though he, too, is a victim of some AIDS conspiracy theories.

Matthew Iglesias talks about Wright's Nagasaki reference. Andrew Sullivan on Wright and gays.
Another LA Times story on Wright. An LA Times story on Chicago residents' reactions to Wright. Clinton's pastor defends Wright. Excerpts from Clinton's pastor's Easter sermon. A piece by a former professor and parishioner of Wright's.

hillary, truth and right-wing conspiracy - from Sekhar

Not much is written about how the Clintons have reached out to the people who hounded them most fiercely during the 90's. Hillary's attempt to revive the Wright story in Pittsburgh is helping to bring it back.

TPM points out that when Clinton made her remark about Wright, she was being interviewed by Richard Mellon Scaife's newspaper, with him present -- photo at TPM. Marc Ambinder mocks the Clinton-publicized American Spectator article claiming McPeak (Obama's advisor) is anti-Semitic.

The New Republic points out that Clinton is strengthening her ties to the far right that demonized her and her husband ten years ago. Politico says that reporters knew Clinton's Bosnia story was bogus, but didn't report it until the video. The Obama camp is asking that Clinton reject a letter to Pelosi from her donors demanding that Pelosi state publicly that superdelegates (actually, all delegates) can make whatever decision they wish. The NY Times blog says that Carville stands by his Judas remark about Richardson. Carl Bernstein points out that Hillary has always had a problem with the truth.

Obama's VP choice - from Sekhar

Unlike the other posts "from Sekhar," which are extracted from his voluminous emails, this one is from conversation.

How is Obama going to win back the Hillary voters? On the assumption that most of the die-hard Hillary voters are supporting her not because of her policies (hard to distinguish from Obama's on the surface), or because they hate Obama (a lost cause anyway), but because they like the idea of a woman president, and object to Hillary's treatment in the campaign, a good way to do it would be to choose a woman (white, naturally) as a running mate. Not Hillary -- the Clinton's have done as much as they can to scotch that possibility. Katherine Sibelius of Kansas, despite her anemic response to the State of the Union, or Janet Napolitano, despite her inability to bring along Arizona, given McCain, are likely possibilities. If only Jennifer Granholm of Michigan hadn't backed Clinton. Of course, given the noises from Maria Cantwell in Washington about switching away from Clinton, who knows what will happen if Obama starts to put out feelers.

clinton fibs, obama speech follow-up, etc. - from Sekhar

A Washington Post blog deconstructs Clinton's "sniper fire" story. Jake Tapper at ABC points out that Clinton's White House schedule shows her meeting with women to drum up support for NAFTA. A blog at The Nation says Clinton is a liar on free trade, and can't be trusted. ABC News thinks Clinton may be pushing the Wright story to superdelegates. Adam Nagourney at the NY Times writes about the obvious -- that it will be almost impossible for Clinton to win the nomination. The NY Times blog points out that Clinton is in debt, even after record fundraising. A blog with background about Jeremiah Wright, thank-yous and photos from Presidents, and Wright's full 9/11 speech. The Huffington Post reports that Wright's comments about 9/11 were drawn from those of the Ambassador to Iraq under Carter, made on Fox News. Newsweek has an article on Trinity, Obama's church. Mike Huckabee is the most reasonable commentator on TV about Wright. Sam Harris says the problem with Obama's speech is that he didn't renounce religion. Bob Ostertag points out the pandering Obama had to do about Israel in his speech. At the NY Times, Roger Cohen continues his love affair with Obama.

Obama responds, part 2 - from Sekhar

The more widely viewed version of the speech on YouTube is the CNN feed with the annoying junk at the bottom of the screen. Now, there is a better link for Obama's speech. The original footage complete with intro etc is at C-SPAN. But this requires RealPlayer or some other program that can play the .rm filetype.

Obama had a post-speech interview with Nightline.

The Chicago Tribune has a pre-controversy profile of Jeremiah Wright.

The Daily Kos has a compilation of editorial and other reactions.

At Salon, Glen Greenwald thinks Americans might not be ready to discuss things like adults, and a responder thinks that even without adult Americans, the speech might still work. The NY Times has the reaction in Chicago, near Obama's church, a positive news analysis, and an op-ed by Maureen Dowd. The Post has another positive analysis, as well as an article about the many Youtube reactions to Wright's sermons. The LA Times compares Obama's speech to Lincoln's, as well as FDR's and JFK's.

Obama responds to race/redbaiting - Sekhar

The big news last week is Obama's pastor Jeremiah Wright's "greatest hits" video compilation by some rightwingers. Obama immediately denounced them and went on every news show, every talk show that would have him (I caught him on Hannity, one of the worst rightwingers on TV/radio). But he didn't just leave it there and hope the issue would die away over the next
month; the next primary is not till April 22. Instead, he delivered a major speech on race today. I don't know how long he worked on this speech. If, indeed, he did it in the last few days, it is a remarkable achievement. People on the left can criticize it. For one thing, he is unwilling to endorse Wright's rational remarks about the link between 9/11 and US policy on Palestine and
about the oppression of Palestinians. But that would be ignoring the realities of US politics. Even before the speech today, there was a panel organized by a Jewish group where Obama was the target; there is a snide report in the Washington Post.

I have not tried to see what left and black critics of Obama have to say about the speech. Let us see. What I have below are some commentaries and reactions, two articles on what people think of Wright, Wright's Audacity speech in 1990, and Obama's speech.

Obama's site has the video as well as the prepared text. I don't know if it is correct, but the Youtube site says there have been over 200,000 views of the speech - that is in seven hours! [update: 1,230,086 in 27 hours]

The Nation on Obama's "teaching moment."
Washington Post blogger likes Obama's speech.
So do the editorial boards of the New York Times and the Boston Globe.
Politico on the audience of the speech.
Press release by the UCC on Obama's church.
Wright's old church defends him.
The text of Wright's "Audacity to Hope" sermon.

The LA Times says the increasing role of web video is affecting the real world.
The New York Times on an interview with an Obama supporter and the supporter's follow-up.

Sekhar: michigan, penna, obama tidbits

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5igrYLRrHG3P6lIbs2E7pSH0bxhvgD8VG1KH81 talks about the problem of a closed primary disenfranchising Michigan voters.
http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/03/more_on_imminent_death_of_mich.php quotes Michigan legislators on the death of the revote.
http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/03/michigan_primary_trouble_the_f.php talks about a law passed by Republicans in Michigan to make it harder for first-time voters.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0308/9070.html points out demographic and economic differences between Pennsylvania and Ohio
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=aomovfB7iaZ8 has anecdotes about black corporate leaders not giving to Obama.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2008/03/obama_tells_vets_no_lower_drin.php has an account of Obama's talking with veterans on MTV.

What Can Clinton Win?

Hopefully, previous posts have shown pretty conclusively that Clinton cannot hope to win the total delegate count, with or without Florida and Michigan. She also can't win more states than Obama. Of the standard measures, that leaves popular vote. But Max Fletcher has a very convincing analysis that shows Clinton really has no hope of catching Obama in that either. Note that that analysis is pre-Mississippi, and actually underestimates Obama's victory by 50,000 votes.

So Clinton will be down in states, delegates, and votes. How, exactly, is she supposed to win the nomination?

Protesters in Berkeley

I just can't help myself...



Sometimes, this city makes me crazy.

From Sekhar again

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-david/on-the-red-phone_b_90338.html
is for amusement.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=cu_wCrisIJY is a remix for Obama.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ryan-j-davis/barack-obama-the-musical_b_91150.html
gives the background to the music video.

The Clinton camp is trying to poison the electoral process big time by having one of Hillary's advisers/fundraisers (now resigned) play the race card. The rationale for all this is that the Republicans are going to do it anyway, so why not Clinton? But it is also a way to appeal to conservative white men. Of course, it may just show frustration that Obama is able to appeal to whites at all.

There is also the curious darkening and widening of Obama's image in a Clinton ad. By itself, it is a little screw-up, but along with Ferraro's "lucky to be a black man" riff, may be something more.

Then there is the new phenomenon of Republicans voting for Clinton in the Democratic primaries. She won big among Mississippi whites partly because of the cross-voting (her 80:20 white vote becomes 70:30 or less without the Republicans), and this apparently helped her quite a bit in the delegate count: Because the Democrats assign most delegates by Congressional district (or something similar in other states), if a district has 4 delegates (typical), they are split 2-2 between Clinton and Obama unless one wins more than 62.5% (half-way between 50% and
75%) and gets 3 of the 4. In quite a few districts, Obama would probably have got that without the Republican cross-over. This cross-over is quite different from earlier states where many Republicans and Independents voted in the Democratic primaries because they actually liked Obama. This time, the exit polls show that the Republicans who voted for Clinton have a low opinion of her.

There is also the Clinton experience claim, which is being debunked.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/11/obama-camp-clinton-forei_n_90894.html has a former State Department official's assessment of Clinton's involvement in foreign policy.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/30048.html has a summary of Clinton's experience claims, with debunking.
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/sleuth/2008/03/sinbad_unloads_on_hillary_clin.html has Sinbad's recollection of his time in Bosnia with Clinton.

http://www.236.com/blog/w/election08/hillary_clintons_press_team_we_5056.php has a video by the "Clinton campaign" about Obama's race.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/berni_mccoy/249 is about the darkening story.

http://www.dailybreeze.com/lifeandculture/ci_8489268
http://www.dailybreeze.com/ci_8533832
have links to Ferraro's comments. About one of them:

"Sexism is a bigger problem," Ferraro argued. "It's OK to be sexist in some people's minds. It's not OK to be racist."

This comment is factually incorrect; one just has to count the number female vs black senators, representatives, governors, etc., etc.
postscript: Ferraro has stepped down from the Clinton campaign, perhaps freeing her to play the race card even more.
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=03&year=2008&base_name=what_if_1 dissects the counterfactual issue of Ferraro's claim.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/geraldine-ferraros-ugly-_b_91075.html attacks Ferraro and the Clinton campaign for her comments.
http://www.ohiodailyblog.com/content/kickin-tires-electoral-auto-mall is a parable about the election, with some race thrown in.
http://www.jedreport.com/2008/03/hrc-website-pus.html attacks the Clinton tactic of disparaging Obama's supporters using race and class.

http://www.jedreport.com/2008/03/republicans-now.html is about Republicans in Democratic primaries.

Does it matter?

After the 3am advert, the VP innuendo, and the Sun-Times calling on Obama to "join Hillary in the gutter," the hot question amongst the talking heads seems to be: are Obama and Clinton tearing each other apart and thus paving the way for McCain in November?

No matter what the polls say remember what has happened so far in the primary:

Popular Vote (inc. FL & MI)
McCain: 7,453,596
Clinton: 13,721,977
Obama: 13,745,541

Note that following Super-duper-ultra-fantastic-yet-still-disappointing Tuesday, McCain has been the favorite to receive the nomination. Yet with such disappointing GOP turnout, clear apathy towards McCain amongst much of the evangelical base, and the leading purple state/conservatively vetted VP candidate spending too much time at the Green Iguana, McCain's got lots to worry about this Fall.

Update 3/13 - New Wall Street Journal/NBC poll finds that voters overwhelming prefer a Democrat to be elected president over a Republican by a margin of 50% to 37%. Although when asked for either candidate against McCain, both candidates show a statistical tie, this early result is a good indication that the Dems are in good shape when a candidate is finally chosen.

Republicans for Clinton

Sounds like Rush Limbaugh's plan to extend the Democratic nomination process is being heeded by at least some people -- exit polls for Mississippi show that Republicans went 75/25 for Clinton. In Alabama, Republicans went 52/45 for Clinton, and in Louisiana, 53/17 for Obama. Republicans made up 12% of the exit poll. We'll see if they deny Obama any delegates, and, if they do, if the Clinton campaign will voluntarily cede them, since those votes weren't by true-blue Democratic voters.

Pennsylvania Poll Numbers

I don't have high hopes for Obama in Pennsylvania -- maybe he can do it, but it looks like the odds are against him. One thing to note, though, is that the poll numbers right now can't be trusted too much. For instance, Survey USA's latest result, showing Clinton up by 19, says that blacks favor Obama by 3 to 1 -- in other words, 25% Clinton, 75% Obama (it's actually 22/76). But looking at all the past states, there's no way that holds. Clinton is polling George W. Bush-like numbers among blacks -- in Wisconsin, for instance, she got an amazing 8%. In Ohio, she got 13%, in New Jersey 14% (New York is her exception, 37%). Who knows whether Clinton's white support will move. But her black support will almost certainly desert her. Since blacks make up about 15% of the electorate, a 10 point swing inside that doesn't mean much overall, but it's something to keep in mind.

Counting Game, part II

The Clinton campaign has started citing a rather remarkable statistic -- as the lovable Mark Penn said before the Ohio and Texas primaries:

Democrats, the majority of whom have favored Hillary in the primary contests held to date,

So let's break this down. Penn can't talk about overall votes in caucuses and primaries, because even without scaling the caucuses up to primary-type numbers, Obama is beating her (see earlier post). Obama is even beating her if we just look at primary votes. So what is Penn talking about? Ah, it's the "Democrats." And maybe even the "favored." Turns out Penn is referencing a little spreadsheet at The Perfect World that took all the exit polls, scaled up the self-identified Democratic voters' preferences and added them up. So if Democratic voters made up 80% of the respondents in the exit poll, and 60% went for Clinton, then to get Clinton's total you'd multiply the total votes cast in the election, say 1,000,000, times .8 times .6 to get 1,000,000*.8*.6=480,000 Democratic voters for Clinton. Doing this, we get a pretty sizable lead for Clinton among these voters. There are 5 reasons why this is bullshit and anyone referencing these numbers should be ashamed. In ascending order of number-crunching geekiness, they are:

1. States determine their primary voting rules. If a state decides that it wants independent (or even Republican) voices in the primary, a campaign doesn't get to ignore them. Would the Clinton campaign care about this number if it was losing among Democrats? Why not restrict just to people who have voted in the last 5 Presidential elections, to make sure they're really Democrats.

2. There's no good way to account for caucuses with these numbers. Because fewer people vote in caucuses, they can't be added in directly, which is what the spreadsheet does. Caucus states count too. Just as silly, the spreadsheet includes Michigan. Michigan!! Obama wasn't even on the exit poll, let alone the ballot, and you want to count those voters? Of course, it includes Florida too, as well as excluding DC because there were no exit polls there. Guess it's Obama's bad luck to win votes where there weren't exit polls. Oh, and by the way, the spreadsheet numbers for New York are totally wrong, and gave Clinton an extra 200,000 votes. No biggie, I guess.

3. Exit polls are unreliable. They're supposed to be used to predict outcomes, not to select the winner. As an example of how unreliable they are, look at the New York exit poll. People who "usually think of [themselves] as " Democrats voted 60/37 for Clinton, while independent or something else went 55/40 for Obama. There's just one problem. The New York primary is a closed primary -- you can't vote in the Democratic primary unless you've been a registered Democrat for at least 25 days. In other words, those "independents" who went for Obama just "usually think" of themselves as independents -- they're actually registered Democrats.

Think about what this means. These numbers are no longer talking about what Democratic voters want -- they're talking about what "people who usually think of themselves as Democratic voters" want. Is that the test now -- the Democratic nomination should be decided by only those people who really feel Democratic, not those people who are registered Democrats, but like to think of themselves as independent-minded?

4. To continue on this line, if you add up the votes from the closed primaries (CT, DC, DE, LA, MD, NM, NY), which is the only reliable way to count the votes of just Democratic voters, Obama is winning (note that this includes New York, which Clinton won by a quarter of a million). Of course, we should really include the closed caucuses as well, but we'll leave the crying about caucuses for another day.

5. The spreadsheet overestimates Clinton's support by assigning all Democratic voters to either Clinton or Obama, when in fact a few percentage points backed other candidates. Take away that and the weirdness in Michigan, and Clinton doesn't have a "majority" of Democratic voters, period. Actually, I'll do you one better. Include Michigan, and don't include Texas/Ohio, which hadn't happened when this memo was written. She still doesn't have 50%. Throw in the caucuses (which are hard-core Democratic voters, you would think), and you can add in all of Clinton's states, she still doesn't have 50%. So Mark Penn's statement was just flat-out wrong. There is no legit way to spin it to be correct.

Counting Game, part I

The Clinton campaign is trying hard to find numbers that support her as the "popular choice." One tactic is bought into by a post at talkingpointsmemo that starts with the assumption that Clinton is winning in the vote count if you ignore caucuses. This is just wrong: the New York Times has a graphic showing that Obama is ahead by 400,000 in the primary states, excluding Florida and Michigan. If you include Florida, which Clinton won by 294,000, Obama is still up by over 100,000. Granted, these numbers are incredibly close, but you can't claim to be the popular vote leader if you're second. Only if you include Michigan, where Obama wasn't even on the ballot, do you get more for Clinton. Given that Michigan is expected to break evenly when it inevitably revotes, Obama will still be ahead. There's also a post showing that Obama will almost certainly win the popular vote overall.

From Sekhar

No question Obama lost in 3 of 5 primaries last week. But the net Clinton gain was just 4 delegates:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/3/10/151122/998/240/473676

This was partly because Obama won the Texas caucuses big and so ended up with more delegates from there. Overall, Obama actually won more delegates last week because 12 superdelegates declared for him and 4 for Clinton. If superdelegates are indicative of where the
leadership is, Clinton led by 97 a month back; the lead is down to 30 now, according to the same webpage.

For people interested in minutiae and arithmetic, two webpages explain the near-inevitability of an Obama win:
http://openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=4449
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/3/9/184226/0219/795/473137

Other links:
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/03/10/obama_im_no_vp_1.html has Obama's rejoinder to the Clinton's VP talk.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/obama-hits-back-on-vp-chatter/index.html?hp
has a link to Obama's comments on the vice-president scam.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/audio/politics/20080310_obama_audio.mp3
has just the audio.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-borowitz/hillary-obama-not-ready-_b_90542.html
has Andy Borowitz's analysis of Clinton's inconsistency re the VP.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/3/10/174538/523/145/473771 calls Geraldine Ferraro on her appeal to white resentment for Clinton.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/182621.php points out Clinton's attempt to separate "caucus" and "elected" delegates.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/us/politics/10cnd-nagourney.html discusses Clinton's decision to go negative on Obama.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/03/clinton-went-on.html has the story that Bill Clinton went on the Limbaugh show, after Limbaugh urged Republicans to vote for Clinton to keep the Democratic primary going longer.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/03/clinton-and-the.html wonders why gays support Clinton, after the poor record of the Clinton Administration.
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/03/taxing_questions_for_clinton.html wants to know about the Clintons' tax returns.
http://www.king5.com/topstories/stories/NW_030708WAB_hillary_ad_KC.328ab14f.html reveals that the girl used in stock footage in a Clinton ad is an Obama supporter now.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/political-earthquake-in_b_90666.html points out that Obama will help Democratic races across the country.

The Krugman Game

The Krugman game is, of course, where you read Paul Krugman's latest column, and try to see where the swipe at Obama will come from. Before Edwards dropped out, it tended to alternate between praising Edwards and hitting Obama, but now it's all Obama. Of course, columns explicitly about Obama or the presidential race are disqualified. Today's column on the financial markets is a great one for the game -- manages to do it without mentioning the candidates once:

Nobody wants to put taxpayers on the hook for the financial industry’s follies; we can all hope that, in the end, a bailout won’t be necessary. But hope is not a plan.

Brilliant, in its way. In fairness to Krugman, I love it when he does this with Bush -- the column that starts out discussing some massive economic problem and then neatly relates it back to some combination of Bush Administration incompetence and malfeasance. And also in fairness to Krugman, he's been very clear on the need to fight back against what he considers to be the fundamentally undemocratic conservative movement (undemocratic because it doesn't recognize the legitimacy of the government it's trying to take over), and he isn't happy with Obama's rhetoric. What he seems to be ignoring is that Obama is not to the right of Clinton on almost any policy issue, and that it doesn't hurt to have a candidate who at least talks the talk of national unity. Krugman's lesson from Bush seems to have been that candidates with talk of bipartisanship shouldn't be trusted, but maybe it should be that, regardless of your ideology, you should talk about bipartisanship because that's what Americans like to hear.

Will 1% of the voting population donate to Obama's campaign?

Obama's campaign announced last week that it had set a new fundrasing record in February of over $55 million, surpassing the previous record holder... Barack Obama circa January 2008.

More interesting is the number of donors contributing to Obama's campaign. This past month his campaign surpassed 1 million contributors, most of whom have given online in dollar amounts less than $100. Joe Trippi, the campaign strategist who pioneered the bottom-up fundraising and organizing in Howard Dean's 2004 campaign, has said of Obama's strategy, "We pioneered it and Obama perfected it." I'll leave it to people like Ari Berman to discuss the totality of the Dean legacy, but in 2004, Dean and Trippi brilliantly capitalized on the social networking power of the internet to get hundreds of fed up citizens to "buy into" the campaign.

Now, Obama is poised to hit a previously unheard of benchmark in fundraising: a contribution from over 1% of general election voters. How does he get there? Well in 2004, over 121 million people voted in the general election. Being extremely loose and liberal, lets say that 150 million people will vote in this election (NB: This estimate is probably exaggerated by about 15-25 million). Since Obama's fundraising emails have a flash applet that updates and timestamps the total number of donors to the campaign, many people have been tracking the donor totals online (see here and here). Using this data and assuming that the number of new donors to his campaign continues to increase at its current declining rate, Obama should reach this goal by sometime around June 13th (making it an extra special birthday for me). Consequently, if the present delegate trends in the primary election continue (see Janak's postings), Obama will deliver his nomination speech in Denver on August 25th to a county where over 1% have already bought a stake in seeing him succeed.

What Clinton Needs

With the Wyoming results looking like a net pickup of 2 for Obama, he is about 156 delegates up. There are a total of 599 pledged delegates yet to be determined. Let's throw in Florida and Michigan, for 912 total. For Clinton to make up the delegate lead entirely, she'll need to win 912/2+156 = 612 delegates, or 67% -- pretty much impossible. She could plausibly get within 100 of Obama -- 56% is what she needs. Mississippi on Tuesday won't change these numbers much. Of course, if Florida and/or Michigan stay out, her task becomes much harder -- 60% of the vote just to get within 100 of Obama, and an unreal 76% to get even. Note that, while these are delegate percentages, voting percentages have pretty accurately predicted delegate percentages.

Obama Delegates

Another goodie from Brad DeLong:

More HRC Infighting?

By way of a shocked Brad DeLong:

Peter Baker and Anne E. Kornblut: For the bruised and bitter staff around Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Tuesday's death-defying victories in the Democratic presidential primaries in Ohio and Texas proved sweet indeed. They savored their wins yesterday, plotted their next steps and indulged in a moment of optimism. "She won't be stopped," one aide crowed.

And then Clinton's advisers turned to their other goal: denying Mark Penn credit.

With a flurry of phone calls and e-mail messages that began before polls closed, campaign officials made clear to friends, colleagues and reporters that they did not view the wins as validation for the candidate's chief strategist. "A lot of people would still like to see him go," a senior adviser said.

The depth of hostility toward Penn even in a time of triumph illustrates the combustible environment within the Clinton campaign, an operation where internal strife and warring camps have undercut a candidate once seemingly destined for the Democratic nomination. Clinton now faces the challenge of exploiting this moment of opportunity while at the same time deciding whether the squabbling at her Arlington headquarters has become a distraction that requires her intervention.

Many of her advisers are waging a two-front war, one against Sen. Barack Obama and the second against one another....

[W]hile many campaigns are beset by backbiting and power struggles, dozens of interviews indicate that the internal problems endured by the Clinton team have been especially corrosive. They fought over Penn's strategy.... They fought over deployment of assets and dwindling resources, pointing fingers over the failure to field organizations.... They fought over how to handle former president Bill Clinton....

At the center of much of this turmoil has been Penn, the rumpled, brusque, numbers-crunching strategist respected even by his foes for his intelligence, if not his social graces. A trusted adviser to the Clintons since helping orchestrate Bill Clinton's reelection campaign in 1996, Penn mapped out a strategy emphasizing strength and experience and, in the view of critics, did not adjust adequately.... "I think about all camps think it's Mark's fault," said a Clinton White House veteran close to the campaign. "I don't think there is a Mark camp." Another person who has advised the senator from New York said: "Penn should have been let go. He failed the campaign in developing a message and evolving the message as things changed."...

Penn... has been firing back... arguing that he never had control of the campaign's finances or organization, instead blaming Ickes, Solis Doyle and her deputy, Mike Henry, who resigned.... And so strangely enough, a moment of victory for the Clinton camp somehow feels less than triumphal. "Mark blames Patti and Patti blames Mark in a circular firing squad," said an adviser who has worked for both Clintons and watched Penn, Solis Doyle, Ickes, Wolfson, Grunwald and others go at it for months. "What they don't realize is that everyone else blames them -- all of them."...

The Centennial Hotel in Concord, N.H., was a grim place the night of Jan. 7. Fresh off a third-place finish in Iowa on Jan. 3.... When word got around, there was a "parade to the doorstep" of the candidate by other top aides urging her to keep Solis Doyle or accept their resignations, a senior adviser said. "There was virtual universal agreement that if there was fault, it should be laid at the door of Mark Penn, not Patti Solis Doyle," the adviser said. "People thought change should be made, but the wrong person was being fired. And it created enormous resentment within the campaign."...

"The greatest challenge going into the campaign," sighed a senior campaign aide, "was the management of Bill Clinton."... "You had your Hillary people, and you had your Bill people," said the top campaign official. "There were some crossovers, but very few. The Hillary people could never tell him to cut the [crap] because they were Hillary people -- and vice versa."...

During South Carolina, Clinton friends in Massachusetts such as longtime operative John Sasso and former Kennedy family aides began blitzing the Arlington headquarters with warnings that Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.) was planning to endorse Obama. But the camp was slow to react, they complained. "People in Boston were apoplectic," a Clinton fundraiser said. "I got the sense it never got high enough up in the organization. And then they realized, 'Oh, my God, this can't be happening.'"...

Clinton, feeling burned by Iowa, had become allergic to caucuses, deeming them unfair. Ickes and political director Guy Cecil argued that such states were important because even if she lost, she would pick up delegates with a strong showing.... "That was one of the biggest blunders we had," a senior official said.

Obama invested in Idaho, for example, while Clinton did not and as a result he won 15 delegates to her three. In New Jersey, on the other hand, Clinton won 59 delegates to 48 for Obama. So the net 12 delegates Obama picked up in Idaho offset the 11 net delegates she earned in the much bigger state of New Jersey. "You end up canceling out everything we had done in New Jersey," said Hassan Nemazee, the campaign's finance co-chairman. "All that work in New Jersey was essentially nullified"...

Florida/Michigan superdelegates are out

Because everyone, including the Times, seems to have problems understanding this, let's look at the language of the DNC delegate selection rules (last sentence is key):

Violation of timing: In the event the Delegate Selection Plan of a state party provides or permits a meeting, caucus, convention or primary which constitutes the first determining stage in the presidential nominating process to be held prior to or after the dates for the state as provided in Rule 11 of these rules, or in the event a state holds such a meeting, caucus, convention or primary prior to or after such dates, the number of pledged delegates elected in each category allocated to the state pursuant to the Call for the National Convention shall be reduced by fifty (50%) percent, and the number of alternates shall also be reduced by fifty (50%) percent. In addition, none of the members of the Democratic National Committee and no other unpledged delegate allocated pursuant to Rule 8.A. from that state shall be permitted to vote as members of the state’s delegation. [emphasis added]

The Rule governing unpledged delegates is actually Rule 9.A (8.A deals with district-level pledged delegates), but that's just a typo. It's quite clear that the rules call for the complete barring of the superdelegates, regardless of the fate of the normal delegates. Of course, the Rules Committee can do whatever it wants, but if it simply reverses its earlier decision to unseat all delegates, and seats half of them, the superdelegates will still not be seated.

Those who do a close reading of Rule 9.A. might object that this clause does not bar unpledged add-on delegates, which are discussed in Rule 9.B. Florida has 3 such delegates, and Michigan has 2. (A TPM post notes that these add-ons are actually a tricky issue, and not really "unpledged.")

How much do Florida and Michigan really matter?

The Green Papers says that Clinton gains 38 delegates from Florida, if they're all counted. If the Rules Committee reverses its action, and seats half the Florida delegates (as would have happened if they hadn't acted to strip all the delegates), that will be a 19 delegate boost for Clinton. In Michigan, Clinton has 73, and Uncommitted has 55. Again, halving the delegates gives Clinton a max of 37 delegate gain, ignoring the fact that probably more Uncommitted delegates are going to go for Obama than Clinton. Therefore, Clinton can hope to get at most 56 delegates from these two states. That still puts her about 100 delegates behind Obama, meaning she has to win the remaining primaries at a 66% clip to catch him in pledged delegates -- higher than any state she's won so far besides Arkansas. Note also, that according to 20(C).1.a, of the DNC delegate selection rules, all unpledged delegates are stripped from states that violate primary timings, so the superdelegate count will not change.

Rules Committee looks good for Clinton

Things don't look great for Obama with the Rules Committee, if it comes down to it -- the count is about 14 to 9 of Clinton's supporters on the committee versus his.

Below is a list of all DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee members, organized by whether I think they will back Clinton or Obama in a rules fight. Some are in a column because of their general stances on seating these delegates -- Brazile has been very strongly against it, although she hasn't endorsed Obama, and I assume the Florida and Michigan members will be in favor of seating, which is why Allan Katz and Mark Brewer are in the Clinton line (even though Katz has endorsed Obama). Most, though, are just pulled from the Times' superdelegate count.

Of course, the remaining 9 undecided could swing it. And there's no telling how many of Clinton's endorsers were those early, automatic endorsers who may well be reconsidering now. But still, it doesn't seem far-fetched for the Rules Committee to reverse itself, if Clinton really twists some arms.

Clinton	Obama	Unknown
Harold Ickes	Donna Brazile	Alexis Herman
Donald Fowler	Carol Khare Fowler	James Roosevelt
Allan Katz	Janice Griffin	Ralph Dawson
Elizabeth Smith	Thomas Hynes	Alice Germond
Mark Brewer	Sharon Stroschein	Jaime Gonzalez
Hartina Flournoy	Everett Ward	David McDonald
Alice Huffman	Sarah Swisher	Jerome Segovia
Ben Johnson	Martha Clark	Yvonne Gates
Elaine Kamarck
Eric Kleinfeld
Monica Pasquil
Mame Reiley
Garry Shay
Michael Steed

Some people can't read

Or, at least, shouldn't be allowed near legal documents.
A MyDD post
quotes extensively from the 2008 DNC delegate selection plan. The poster thinks that (1) the Rules Committee was under an obligation to create a process to select Florida delegates, and (2) the Rules Committee needs to hold hearings to see if Florida's Democrats could have stopped the primary move-up, and (3) if it found that they tried and couldn't, the Rules Committee can't penalize Florida additionally. These are all wrong. You can read it on page 26 of the pdf (page 22 in the text numbering), or on the poster's page. The key phrases are, "including, without limitation," when discussing what the Rules Committee can do, "after an investigation, including hearings, if necessary," when discussing how the Rules Committee should determine if the state Democrats made every effort to comply, and "may determine," when discussing what the Committee should do.

Simply put, the Committee acted completely within its rights as laid out in the DNC rules. It actually held a hearing, which it didn't have to do. Everything else in the rules says they may do things, not they must. Geez. Florida may get seated some other way, but not by close parsing of the DNC rules -- especially if you can't parse.

What is up with the 5 recorders the woman on the right is holding?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/06/us/politics/06obama.html