Can Obama lose Appalachia and win the Presidency?

It's a question that's been on my mind for over a month.  Can Obama just cede all of Appalachia and still pull off a victory?  He ran so weak there in the primaries, as Jay Cost has documented with the first map above.  Appalachia was an ocean of blue--blue for Hillary Clinton.  

What if Obama loses all of Appalachia in the general election?  That is to say, every state with a portion of the region in it, within reason (i.e., excluding NY and Maryland).  This would include the swing states of Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania.  What if McCain wins all three of these, West Virginia, and the southern states he'll win anyway?

This scenario, based on the polling we have today, would give McCain 243 and Obama 219 electoral votes.  There would be 7 swing states left outstanding.  Obama could win 6 out of the 7 and still lose--if McCain won Florida.  So McCain would be pretty close to winning in this scenario; he'd only have to win Florida to clinch it.  Or he could lose Florida, but still win Indiana (Bush won in 04), Nevada (Bush won in 04), Colorado (Bush won in 04), and New Hampshire (Bush lost in 04 by a paltry 9,000 votes).  If McCain picked off Minnesota, where the race has tightened over the summer and is currently tied, and the Dems in the state might be dragged down by Al Franken's Senate candidacy, then he's in even better shape because he could then win with just Indiana and Colorado, or Indiana, New Hampshire, and Nevada.  

Hillary Clinton was a tougher candidate for electoral college reasons.  But so much can change.  I still think Obama could win in a blowout.  McCain cannot win in a blowout.  But I would not be surprised with Obama wining in a blowout.  He is a realigning candidate, which we might see in 2012 even more than now.  But now I'm getting way ahead of myself.  

2008 is not 1988

In that year it was Al Gore who brought up William Horton in a debate with Dukakis, which the GOP then used to great effect (first of all by changing his name to "Willie"). Twenty years later, it was Hillary Clinton who hammered Obama for his pledge to meet with foreign leaders in a debate.

McCain thinks he can use this position of Obama's to score some points, as you can see in the ad above. Of course, the ad was on the Jerusalem Post website, a nice piece of targeted advertising to get money and votes from Jewish voters (esp. in FL). But McCain will emphasize it to larger audiences, no doubt.

But he's wrong, as Dick Morris has said. Obama's comments polled well with Democrats after he made them. The whole point of his answer in the debate was to contrast needed diplomacy to Bush's Texas shoot-first-ask-questions-later foreign policy. Hillary tried to make it into a blunder, but it wasn't really. Contrasting a careful diplomatic style to cowboy diplomacy is a winner for Obama and the Dems. On the one issue that McCain should best Obama on, he's a miserable failure.

Crist as veep if McCain needs Florida

Race 4 2008 has a good post up today pushing for Charlie Crist as McCain's running mate, on the thinking that it takes Florida out of play, limiting the possibilities for Obama to flip Republican states.

He writes: By taking Florida out of play, McCain limits possible red state defections to seven states: Missouri, Virginia, Iowa, Ohio, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico. The geographical concentration of these states into two distinct regions would make multi-state campaigning easier on the part of a cash-strapped Team McCain, and would force Obama to make inroads into the very sorts of voters who are most suspicious of him in order to win. In this scenario, McCain could simply spend the entirely of the fall campaign jumping back and forth between Missouri, Virginia, Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, knowing that whoever wins the majority of those five states probably wins the election. And we all saw how far Obama’s millions went in places like Ohio and Pennsylvania during primary season.

The swing states can be seen at the bottom of this blog, with the margins from '04. If Obama wins Pennsylvania (and at this point seems like he probably will) and Michigan, he can win without Missouri, Virginia, and Ohio only by batting 75% in Iowa, New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado. That's difficult, but not impossible. As Chris Bowers has posted, Obama has had a lead in Iowa in every poll since January 2007, is ahead in every Colorado poll, currently leads by over 5 points in New Mexico, and is down over 2 points in Nevada.

So Obama is likely to win today. But oh how the polls can change!

The Battleground States

The video posted below shows David Plouffe (the genius for the Obama campaign who saw early on that the primary could come down to delegates, and urged aiming for delegate-rich contests) mapping out Obama's strategy in the general. That strategy is, hold on to the Kerry states, and go on offense against some Bush '04 states.

He claims that Obama is doing well in the Kerry states, so that McCain doesn't have many opportunities to go on offense. He's right. The WSJ poll above of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan show Obama with leads right now beyond the margin of error. Of course that could change. But as of right now it looks good for Obama to hold onto the Kerry states.

Kerry got 251 electoral votes, 19 shy of winning. Where can Obama get these 19 votes? I've posted my analysis of swing states at the bottom of this blog for easy reference. Of course Ohio or Florida would do it. A combination of Iowa, New Mexico, and Colorado would do it as well.

I'm going to be doing a series on this blog on the political situations for the campaigns in the states, starting with the battleground states. It's a fun way to pass a lazy summer. [I am no longer planning on doing this. Jay Cost is doing a great job of this over at http://www.realclearpolitics.com/horseraceblog/]

Obama must attack Hillary; he also can't attack her

Obama is in a pickle. He can't attack Hillary without denting his golden boy image. Obama resisted attacking for exactly this reason. But he also has problems attacking Hillary in general.

Johnathan Chait hits the nail on the head:

While [Hillary] likes to claim that she beat the Republican attack machine, it's more accurate to say that she survived with heavy damage... But, because she earned the intense loyalty of core Democratic partisans, Obama has to tread gingerly around her vulnerabilities. There is a big bundle of ethical issues from the 1990s that Obama has not raised because he can't associate himself with what partisan Democrats (but not Republicans or swing voters) regard as a pure GOP witch hunt.

What's more, Clinton has benefited from a favorable gender dynamic that won't exist in the fall. (In the Democratic primary, female voters have outnumbered males by nearly three to two.) Clinton's claim to being a tough, tested potential commander-in-chief has gone almost unchallenged. Obama could reply that being First Lady doesn't qualify you to serve as commander-in-chief, but he won't quite say that, because feminists are an important chunk of the Democratic electorate. John McCain wouldn't be so reluctant.

The second part of the pickle is that Obama has to attack. He has to. People have to be reminded of the Clinton negatives if he's going to win.

Here's Hillary's argument to Obama on why she's more electable, according to Noah Millman: Obama's lost Democrats overall, working-class whites, key swing states like Ohio and Florida, and he is polling losing them in the general election too.

That is a convincing argument. Obama's "respect the process, I got more votes" is uninspired if lacks all momentum coming out of OH, Texas, and PA. Hillary's is the smarter argument, because it is grounded in the turnout-the-base theory of elections rather than the woo-the-independents theory. The latter is bunk, in my view, in an election year so heavily tilted towards the Democrats. Play it safe. Go with the known quantity. Ride the dissatisfaction to victory by turning out your base and the legions of voters disaffected with the Republicans.

So Obama has to attack. It will have to be done carefully and indirectly and by surrogates. But it could get very nasty quickly.

Hillary could be president

Ohio has turned out to be Hillary's New Hampshire. The race has turned on a dime. Hillary is now up in the popular vote count that includes FL and MI, 13,606,283 for Hillary to 13,568,983 for Obama.

The Prince of Darkness reports on how the stage was set for Ohio and Texas:

Assuming that Sen. Clinton at best would eke a victory in Ohio Tuesday to end her long losing streak, prominent Democrats were organizing a major private intervention. A posse of party leaders would plead with her to end her campaign and recognize Obama as the Democratic standard-bearer. To buttress this argument, several elite unelected super-delegates (including several previous Clinton supporters) were ready to come out for Obama. Those plans went on hold Tuesday night.

To avoid carnage at Denver, Democrats have been telling me for weeks that a majority of delegates would somehow align themselves behind whichever candidate has the momentum.
But who has the momentum? Clinton will claim it, particularly if she wins in Pennsylvania to give her every major state except Obama's Illinois. But Obama will point to his advantage in the number of states and delegates. A showdown in Denver may be unavoidable.

Every big state but Obama's Illinois! Marie Cocco writes this:

Clinton's stunning performance on Tuesday, particularly in Ohio, makes Obama's argument that superdelegates should automatically back the will of the voters -- and not use independent political judgment about who can best compete against Republican John McCain in November -- look like an awfully simplistic calculus.

In Utah, Idaho, Nebraska, North Dakota, Kansas and Alaska -- all states the Obama forces point to with pride as evidence of an emerging "50-state strategy" -- no Democrat has won the general election since 1964.

So how has Obama fared in those states that are the crucial building blocks of a Democratic general election strategy? He's won his home state of Illinois, plus Wisconsin, Washington and Minnesota. Together, these states account for 51 electoral votes. Clinton has won her home state of New York, as well as California, New Jersey and Michigan, representing a total of 118 electoral votes. This sum deliberately leaves out Ohio and Florida, which will be hotly contested in the fall.

And Hillary won them both. They are the battlegrounds of battlegrounds for the past two presidential elections, elections that have been very close. The elections were close nationwide, and the battleground states were close because they mirror the composition of the whole country.

Let's take a look at the exit poll data from the last presidential election:

• In 2004, both states were at the national average of the female proportion of the vote: 54% of the electorate was female in Florida (53% in OH)
• Both electorates had an about average percentage of black voters: the FL electorate was 12% black (15% in OH), and nationally it was 11%
• The states added together had an average number of Hispanics: in FL 15% of the electorate was Latino (3% in OH), while it was 8% nationally
• Both states were about average for lower-income voters: FL 46% earned less than 50 grand a year (48% in OH), and it was 45% nationally
• Finally, in FL 57% did not graduate from college (63% in OH), and it was 58% nationally

You can see that these states are bellwethers for a reason. Winning Ohio by double-digits adds immensely to Clinton's moral argument, as winning Florida did not as much, since turnout was dampened from lack of campaigning.

One final point. Jerome Armstrong writes: "I agree ... that Obama has to win in PA, but I don't think he will. It's also true that Clinton has to win in PA, and she probably will." But PA is at a different stage of the race. I think part of the Ohio result--not all of it to be sure, but part--is the New Hampshire effect. That is to say, after Iowa voters in NH took a second look, and they thought, "We don't want to end this thing at this point." They didn't seal the nomination for Obama on forth down, but they punted. This is exactly what I thought might happen, and what I wrote back on Dec. 2 (seems like ages ago). It's the Democrats year, and we don't want to blow it on someone who's untested, so lets keep the process going. That is a different sentiment from, "I want Hillary to be president." Democrats in OH struggled with this. The man behind me in the voting line said he still was unsure who he was going to vote for when he got in the booth (which was in 90 seconds)!!! He wanted Hillary, but he thought Barack might be the best candidate, but he really liked Bill... The point is, PA is at a different spot in the calendar, and Hillary will not benefit from the "let's keep the process going and not end it right here" sentiment.

The Republican race

Is it a race? McCain has 1016 delegates, and needs 1,191 to win. He proclaimed himself the nominee after Wisconsin. He's leading Huckabee in Texas by 12 points, which would give him 140 more delegates.

Still, there's a report from the LA Times that Romney still might rejoin the race. One of his sons said it was "possible." I always wondered why Romney said he "suspended" his campaign instead of "terminating" it. That is now explained--he thought there was a possibility that conservatives might deny McCain the nomination and there would be a brokered convention, in which he could come out on top as a compromise candidate. He endorsed McCain, which only confirmed what we've known all along which is that Huckabee was his real rival, and would position him to salve conservatives with his positions, and moderates with his endorsement, and straddle him in the middle as a compromise most Republicans could accept.

McCain seems like he's got it solidly in the bag now. His early victories in NH, SC and FL were just crucial, and he pulled off the kindling strategy that Romney was (rightly) attempting. The importance of the early contests have been affirmed and reaffirmed in this election. The two candidates in the final round for each party were the victors in Iowa and NH.

But things can change, and will change if somehow Huckabee started winning. Stranger things have happened. Because everyone thinks it's in the bag for McCain, wins for the Huckster in Texas or Ohio would be huge upsets. Questions would start to be raised about McCain, and fast. McCain would have to then win his 185 delegates from states that include a number of Huckabee-friendly areas like Mississippi and North Carolina. Pennsylvania (74 delegates in a closed primary) would be huge. It would be a close-run thing. A day is a lifetime in politics, and things can turn on a dime. They're not likely to, but they could change.

Then there's the NY Times story about the romance with the lobbyist Vicki Iseman. The paper has got a deserved beating for running the story because it was weak, including criticism by its own public editor. But if it turns out that McCain is not telling the truth about the Iseman matter, his presidential hopes are over, and we could be looking at a brokered convention on the Republican side.

Making Sense of Super Duper Tuesday

First a word on the primary process. I've speculated here about the effect that frontloading would have on the presidential races, and was convinced that Super Duper Tuesday would be too big to matter. It turned out to be the opposite from what I thought--it didn't pick a nominee, not because the early states would have already decided it, but because they hadn't, and there wasn't enough time yet to sort things out. So the later states get to choose the nominee. Here's Marc Ambinder:

Had Michigan remained on Feb. 9 and Florida on March 4, their influence would have been considerable. Instead, their haste to go first wound up lessening their influence, rather than giving them a louder voice. Now, an array of new states and their tens of millions of voters will find their interests well represented in this campaign: Maryland, Virginia, Wisconsin, Texas, Ohio and maybe even Pennsylvania, whose voters go to the polls on April 22.

Now, what the heck happened on Super Duper Tuesday? Well first of all, Obama won 13 states, Clinton 8. (New Mexico's still up in the air.) Obama won 845 delegates, Clinton 836. Clinton has an overall delegate lead of 79, but this is due to her 83 delegate lead in superdelegates. The political markets thought it was a win for Obama.

Adam Nagourney parses the exit polls:

[O]ne of the most intriguing finding in the surveys of voters leaving the polls across the nation on Tuesday was when they arrived at their final decision. Throughout a week when Mr. Obama was campaigning with members of the Kennedy family, when there was a sense that he was creating a movement that cut across racial and generational lines, there was a steady movement of Democrats toward Mr. Obama, the survey suggested. But those who reported making their decision on the last day bucked the trend, tending to vote for Mrs. Clinton, of New York.

The Obama Democratic Party is made up of younger voters (under 44), blacks, white men (to a more limited extent) and independents whose show of support accounted for his victories in states like Missouri. Their level of enthusiasm for Mr. Obama — their excitement about the possibility of an Obama White House — is palpable in their response to him, or in any conversation.

The Clinton Democratic Party is the party of women, older voters, Hispanics and also some white men. A Clinton rally may not have the energy of a rock concert the way an Obama rally does. Yet the older women who have embraced Mrs. Clinton as the culmination of years of hope and other core supporters are no less passionate in their intensity and devotion.

The Hillary voters mentioned, in other words, are more solidly reliable. They turn out to vote in greater numbers, except Hispanics. But the reason why I've consistently favored Hillary to win is because of her voting base, and why I was in for a huge shock with the Iowa results. I underestimated the enthusiasm on the ground for Obama with young voters generating actual caucus-goers. But I'm not surprised by the decision-timing statistic, at least in the abstract. I always thought the Clinton machine would be able to stage a comeback if needed in the states after Iowa and NH. But it was surprising given the recent press Obama was getting.

But there's other factors Nagourney doesn't mention at all: Obama does better with wealthier and better-educated voters, and they turnout in greater numbers. Clinton's voters have less income and less education, and these voters have lower turnout. Obama and Clinton split college grads in CA, but Obama beat her 2-to-1 with college-or-more voters in Missouri, and that's why he narrowly won. Similar story in New Mexico.

Nagourney continues:

Mr. Obama split the white male vote nationally with Mrs. Clinton, but there was an important geographical disparity there: White men in California voted for Mr. Obama but white men in Southern states like Alabama did not. The question is what white men in Ohio will do next month, during what is shaping up as a critical showdown for Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton.

Ohio becomes crucial! When's the last time that happened? I'm sick and tired of the constant refrain of "the primary process is broken." A nationwide primary would be a disaster, and the current system is far preferable. As for rotating the early states, I think it's cool that Iowa and NH have a great tradition going, and that they are used to seeing presidential candidates every four years. What's wrong with having experienced voters decide? They don't decide anything, they just winnow the field of the terrible candidates. If you want your voice to be heard, then move there.

Dissecting Florida

OK, here goes. First of all, 34% of the electorate were late deciders, and McCain edged out Romney with them. The momentum he got from SC was definitely a big factor. This is how you win elections--not by skipping primaries (Romney) or avoiding the early calendar altogether (Giuliani), but by contesting for every vote. I've exculpated Romney from skipping SC, but you could argue that in the short-term it might have hurt him--what if he took votes away from McCain by campaigning harder resulting in a Huckabee win? Then could he have won Florida? Perhaps that's not such a stretch, but in the long term he needs to knock out Huckabee first, and then take on McCain. This must be his long-term strategy. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

So I refuse to abandon my inside-outside paradigm of the Republican race. That is to say, the liberal-moderate vote (38% of Florida's Republican electorate) or the Democrat-Independent vote (20% of Florida's Republican electorate) is not enough to win the nomination, and a candidate like McCain needs to broaden his appeal in order to win in the end. McCain has been doing that, by attacking Romney's flip-flopping on social issues. He's been emphasizing national security, and has done well with people who served in the military (27% of Florida's Republican electorate) which he won heavily in Florida and also won in SC.

So can McCain pull it off? He's just passed two huge tests, SC and FL. In SC he relied on a split Republican field. But Florida included a candidate whose voters track McCain's: Giuliani. Both candidates did better with Hispanics, better with seniors than middle-aged voters, better with secular voters, better with pro-choice voters, and better with liberals and moderates. Giuliani's voters would to a greater degree support McCain rather than other candidates, I'm guessing, even though McCain tied with Romney for Giuliani voters' second-choice.

As a side note, Thompson voters' second choice was heavily for Romney.

Ever since Michigan, McCain's national standing in the polls has dropped, and Romney's have increased. Florida was a closed primary, which McCain had difficulty winning in 2000.

The conclusion is that McCain is the front-runner, having bested the two more conservative candidates in consecutive contests, and eliminated the other two top candidates. But this race is still wide open. If Romney had won, he would be in the drivers' seat, but he didn't.

Voting in Florida Today

I have to confess that I believe now that I was wrong to post a week and a half ago dire predictions concerning Romney's skipping of SC right after his Michigan win. They have not come to pass; Romney's gotten away with it. The reason is that McCain won South Carolina. That was perfect for Romney. Instead of momentum for Huckabee, it set up a contest between Romney and McCain in Florida, one that Romney might win, though McCain has the momentum. But as Time points out that national security has receded and the economy come to the forefront, and this benefits Romney. See the video below.

Also Romney's spending the cash. From Marc Ambinder:

Mitt Romney's had an 8 to 1 television ad advantage in Florida... part of the reason why he's made the [race] competitive. Heck, most of the reason he's made the race competitive has been his ads. According to Neilsen, he's run 4,475 ads compared to John McCain's 470 through 1/22. McCain did not run a single ad until January; Romney ran more ads in September than McCain has run to date.

Having been proven wrong concerning the success of a campaign strategy I thought was too cute, I want to go double-or-nothing: if Romney wins Florida big, by 7-points or more, I predict he'll be the nominee. It seems right now like it'll be much tighter. The polls have Romney and McCain are within the margin of error of each other. But the polls were wrong on the Democratic side in Iowa and NH, and they might be wrong here too, though with the smaller, earlier states surprises are more likely perhaps.

A Romney win would be remarkable, beat all expectations, rain down the plaudits of the pundits, and propel him to the nomination, as it would be sustainable in a way a McCain win won't be. He's got more money than McCain and he's got conservative Republican street cred in a way McCain doesn't. If McCain wins, this race is still wide open. If Romney wins, bye bye Huckabee (except for a few Southern states perhaps).

The war and the Republicans -- the Florida debate

Thompson voters redux

I appreciate this fascinating comment on my last post:

As a long time member of Thompson blogs and sites I can promise you very few 'Fredheads' will be going to Huckabee! And why should they? Huck's made it very clear how he feels about Fred and Rollins has been down right nasty towards Fred. Huckabee's push polling of Fred in SC doesn't help him either.

I can tell you that from the blogs and the postings I have seen that Mitt has the lion's share of support, but it’s a very reluctant support I assure you.

Steve Dinan reports the same thing. Taegan Goddard reports this: "Since Fred Thompson exited the race, McCain is up 5, Romney is up 9, Giuliani is down 2 and Huckabee is flat." Seems like Romney's benefiting, though it's tough to say so early. Jay Cost thinks the impact on Florida might be marginal only.

I can see Thompson's voters going for Mitt, albeit reluctantly. They are both conservatives in the traditional mold. It's also easy to suppose that for a lot of them Mitt is less offensive that the Huckster.

Robert Novak and this blog makes the point that Thompson's exit is bad timing for the Huckster, who could move in and capture some of Thompson's voters, but can't because he's out of cash.

Thompson hasn't endorsed anyone yet. He was an informal adviser to McCain before he ran. He endorsed McCain against W. in 2000 and might do so again.

If Romney wins Florida it will be huge for him and back for the Huckster. Huckabee has to hope that McCain wins instead.

Michael Brendan Dougherty has this on Huckabee:

Even if Huckabee fails to capture the nomination, he may still effect significant change in the GOP coalition. In 2004, Republicans nabbed three out of four white evangelical votes. Karl Rove credited them with Bush’s re-election. But just as these voters demonstrated their power, their leadership was disappearing. James Kennedy and Jerry Falwell have passed away; others like James Dobson are on their way out of public ministry. Carter believes Huckabee can easily fill the void of evangelical leadership, but he warns that Republicans shouldn’t expect another compliant pastor who will shepherd the masses to the polls then otherwise leave them alone. “Because Huckabee doesn’t come from the establishment, he doesn’t owe them any favors. He has the potential to lead a new movement—and not just evangelicals alone.”

If the affable preacher consolidates his influence over the largest bloc of voters in the GOP, he’ll have the whip hand in the Republican coalition. No wonder the establishment is wincing.

Thompson out

From the NY Times:

At first blush, his decision would seem potentially to help Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, who has competed for many of the same conservative voters that Mr. Thompson sought to appeal to. Mr. Huckabee said Tuesday that he might have come in second in South Carolina precisely because Mr. Thompson had siphoned off much of his support, permitting Senator John McCain of Arizona to win.

“The votes that he took essentially were votes that I would have most likely had, according to the exit polls and every other analysis,” Mr. Huckabee said on MSNBC.

The development could prove unwelcome to Mr. McCain.

Here's analysis from one blogger:

[On TV last night] Kondracke was of the opinion that his votes would mostly go to Mitt Romney, with some going to Huckabee. Until I heard him say that, I assumed that Thompson's votes would go to John McCain, as I see them as essentially political brothers. But Kondracke is probably right, in that the national narrative/impression is that Thompson is an orthodox conservative, while McCain is not. I actually see both Thompson and McCain as unorthodox Republicans in the same general mold of Lindsay Graham. Nevertheless, I think most of the people that were supporting Thompson were supporting him because he fit the bill on the social/fiscal/national security troika in a way that none of the other candidates could convincingly pull off. With Thompson out of the way, Mitt Romney most nearly fulfills the requirements of the troika (albeit, with some fairly severe credibility problems on the social arm).

I think it definitely hurts McCain. Thompson's voters will not vote for McCain. Will it be a boon to Romney? In SC, the bulk of the Thompson vote was self-identified conservatives. That's true for both Romney and Huckabee. It's hard to tell.

The Presidential Race

The next three contests on the Democratic side is Nevada, South Carolina, and Florida to finish the month. There are around 69,000 registered black voters in the state of Nevada. There's 180,000 registered Hispanic voters in Clark County alone (where 70% of Nevada residents live). About half the voters in the SC Democratic primary will be black. 15.5% of Florida's population is black.

Here's the numbers nationally from the NYTimes: "About half of black Democratic primary voters — 49 percent — said they planned to vote for Mr. Obama, while 34 percent said they backed Mrs. Clinton. Among white Democratic primary voters, 42 percent said they were supporting Mrs. Clinton, while 24 percent said they backed Mr. Obama." According to the census, nationally, 71% of whites are registered, 61% of blacks, and 54% of Latinos. In 2004 whites had 67% turnout, blacks 60%.

Bill Clinton's remarks about Obama's record on Iraq as a "fairy tail" have been taken out of context and given a racial overtone, as if he was talking about Obama and the dream of Martin Luther King, Jr. Edwards is perpetuating this confusion.

The larger context though is Hillary's remarks about King and LBJ:

“Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” Clinton told FOX News last week in remarks that sparked the current conflict. “It took a president to get it done.”

On Sunday, Clinton complained that Obama has been misrepresenting her words and their meaning. She said Obama has been comparing himself to King and President John F. Kennedy, who began the process that led to landmark civil rights legislation. But unlike King, who Clinton noted had marched, organized, protested, and was gassed, beaten and jailed, Obama is merely giving speeches about his commitment to racial equality.

“(King) understood he had to move the political process and bring in those who were in political power,” Clinton told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“And he campaigned for political leaders, including Lyndon Johnson, because he wanted somebody in the White House who would act on what he had devoted his life to achieving . So I think it’s important to set the record straight. Clearly, we know from media reports that the Obama campaign (is) deliberately distorting this.”

Clinton added that King deserves “the lion share of the credit” for moving the country and political process forward, but he couldn’t have done it without “partners who were in the political system.”

“I think it is such an unfair and unwarranted attempt to misrepresent and mischaracterize what I’ve said,” Clinton added.

Obama's response:

Later, in Las Vegas, Obama said he was "baffled" by Clinton's suggestion that his campaign has tried to make hay out of her statement.

"She made an ill-advised statement about Dr. King, suggesting that Lyndon Johnson had more to do with the Civil Rights Act," Obama said. "I did not make the statement. I haven't commented on the statement. For them to suggest that we're injecting race as a consequence of a statement she made that we haven't commented on is pretty hard to figure out."

I heard a lady call into Morning Edition a couple days ago and complain about what she called the Clinton campaigns "racist tactics" and claim that her view was widely shared in her circle. She lives in Ohio. She didn't cite any of the above, but rather the Clinton campaign's earlier bringing up of Obama's drug use. Here's Robert Novak's column on it:

Agents of Sen. Hillary Clinton are spreading the word in Democratic circles that she has scandalous information about her principal opponent for the party's presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama, but has decided not to use it. The nature of the alleged scandal was not disclosed.

This word-of-mouth among Democrats makes Obama look vulnerable and Clinton look prudent. It comes during a dip for the front-running Clinton after she refused to take a stand on New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's now discarded plan to give driver's licenses to illegal aliens.

Experienced Democratic political operatives believe Clinton wants to avoid a repetition of 2004, when attacks on each other by presidential candidates Howard Dean and Richard Gephardt were mutually destructive and facilitated John Kerry's nomination.

Gay issues a drag for Democrats? A new poll...

There's a debate tomorrow night between the Democratic presidential candidates on LGBT issues, raising the question of how this issue set plays in presidential politics. This article from the Politico reported on a Quinnipiac poll in the crucial battleground states of Florida, OH, and PA. As the article points out, " No one has won the White House since 1960 without carrying two of those three states."

It goes on:

The Quinnipiac poll of voters in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania asked whether they would be more likely or less likely to vote for a candidate supported by various interest groups. The margin of error in the polls was 3 percent.

In Ohio, 10 percent of voters said it would make them more likely, 34 percent said less likely -- a more than 3-1 ratio -- while 54 percent said it would not make a difference. Among independent voters, perhaps the key to the state’s 20 electoral votes, 12 percent said it would make them more likely, while 28 percent said less likely.

Florida voters were similarly disposed. Ten percent of them said they are more likely to vote for a candidate backed by gay rights groups, while 28 percent said they were less likely and 60 percent said it would not make a difference. Among independents, 9 percent said more likely, 18 percent said less likely.

Pennsylvania is the one of the big three states that Democrats carried in 2000 and 2004 but there, too, more than twice as many voters -- 28 percent -- said it would make them less likely to support a candidate as the 11 percent who said it would make them more likely. Among independents, 14 percent said more likely, 19 percent said less likely.

In all three states, sizeable majorities of voters said they believe that homosexual behavior is "morally wrong" rather than "morally acceptable" -- 55-30 percent in Ohio, 53-34 percent in Pennsylvania and 51-35 percent in Florida. Yet more than half the voters in each state say they favor some form of legal recognition for gay couples.

I'm reminded of a particularly striking comment made by a caller into C-Span two years ago. He said he'd like to be a Democrat, but that party had been "tacking against Western Civilization for so long that voters like him are forced out." And he ended by saying: "And we're not coming back."

The conventional wisdom on the gay rights issue is that young people are more tolerant than their elders, and thus the inevitable drift of policy is in favor of gay rights. There's some data here from Pew. That could well be true. A lot of things could happen to affect the drift of policy and culture on this issue set. But there is also the life-cycle effect, which makes it more difficult to extrapolate what exactly their opinions are in the future. People tend to become more conservative with age. As you settle down, get married, and start building a family one's outlook changes. I remember a graduate student telling me a number of years ago about how her whole perception of life changed when she had a child. Suddenly, you care more about good schools, about crime, about preserving certain standards in the local community where that was not the case before.

Whatever the future holds, in this presidential election the question is whether the Democratic or Republican side of the coin holds an electoral advantage. The story quoted above is somewhat underwhelming, as the percentages of people saying it would make them less likely are more than likely going to be voting Republican anyway. But then you get to the part about independent voters. The percentages of more likely to less likely were 28-12 in OH, 18-9 in FL, and 19-14. This is not a winning issue for the Democrats in the presidential election ahead. The debate this week comes early enough that the eventual nominee can perhaps deemphasize his or her positions by the time November '08 comes around, but as 2008 Central put it when they blogged the last Democratic debate and this issue came up, "The Republicans are taping this." For the people for whom the issue makes a difference, the other side can pound away at it through targeted messages.

There's also the question of turnout. An LA Times blogger has this story about turnout in the gay and lesbian community. Here's the crucial portion:

The study this spring by San Francisco-based Community Marketing Inc. found that an eye-popping 92.5% of gay men reported that they voted in the 2004 presidential race, and almost 84% said they cast ballots in the 2006 midterm election. Among lesbians, the results were almost as impressive; nearly 91% said they voted in 2004; for the midterm, the figure was 78%.

By comparison, the Washington-based Committee for the Study of the American Electorate put the turnout for all Americans eligible to vote at about 61% in 2004 and roughly 40% in 2006.

Taegan Goddard got this response from a political scientist:

As a political scientist, the gay turnout story infuriates me, because it ignores everything we know about how people over-report their turnout behavior. In the American National Election Study (the highest quality election survey done in America), over 70% turnout is reported. Considering that Community Marketing is a no-name polling outfit which may have low response rates (and hence nonrandom selection), and that a survey targeting gay respondents has political undertones, it is not surprising that such a high (inflated) turnout rate was gotten. The miniscule margin of error is irrelevant—the survey is subject to much greater errors beyond sampling error including social desirability bias, non-response bias, etc. Based on these concerns, I really doubt that gays turnout at a higher lever than non-gays. I think it would be good to caveat these stories in the future

Campaign strategy, some random notes

The Republicans have not yet been campaigning in Nevada.

Romney and Giuliani have been spending lots of cash in Florida.

Uncertainty reigns for candidates due to Florida moving up its primary date.

There also might be a straw poll in Florida for Democrats in October.

Clinton and Romney at this point look like the favorites in NH, but only 10% of Democrats and 7% of Republicans have made up their minds so far in NH.

An op-ed in the Washington Times advises Fred Thompson to skip Iowa and even NH and concentrate on SC, California, Florida, and Georgia.