The problem with Jay Cost

I always read eagerly Jay Cost's blog over at RealClearPolitics. Now that the Democratic primary is over, I awaited his take on the race between McCain and Obama, and I caught his post last Sunday just as he was putting it online. I have to say I was disappointed.

He starts off by admitting that the macro-conditions for Republicans are terrible this election year. He then asks, incongruously, whether the parties can "master" the conditions they find themselves in. It is at this point that his post goes south. Politicians can't master conditions, no matter whether the "explosion of information technology" provides them up-to-the-minute updates on whatever.

Cost writes:

The Republican Party seems to understand that it faces a bear market. After all, it has nominated a bear market candidate. John McCain is not the first, second, or even third choice of most Republicans. However, they believe he has cultivated a stable image as an anti-Bush Republican. Whether this belief is accurate, we do not know for sure. What we do know is that there is a non-trivial probability that it is accurate. Therefore, we can conclude that nominating McCain was the safe choice for the party, given the macro environment and the party's goal of electoral victory.

This is nonsense. First of all, groups don't have consciousness such that they "understand" this or that. What does a "bear market" candidate mean? Cost describes it as being an "anti-Bush Republican." I shake my head in disbelief--Cost is usually so careful to distinguish between the average level, even among voters, of political knowledge (extremely low) and the knowledge of those who study politics daily, in order to not confuse the two. Can he seriously tell us with a straight face that a run-of-the-mill voter thinks of McCain as "anti-Bush"? This is Karl Rove spin. Frank Rich in a Sunday NYT op-ed came much closer to the truth:

In the woe-is-us analyses by leading Republicans about their party’s travails — whether by the House G.O.P. leader John Boehner (in The Wall Street Journal) or the media strategist Alex Castellanos (in National Review) — Iraq is conspicuous by its utter absence. The Republican brand’s crisis is instead blamed exclusively on excessive spending, scandal and earmarks — it’s all the fault of Tom DeLay’s K Street Project, Jack Abramoff and that Alaskan “bridge to nowhere.”

This transcends denial; it’s group psychosis. Nowhere is this syndrome more apparent than in the profuse punditry of Karl Rove, who never cites Iraq as a problem for Mr. McCain (if he refers to it at all) and flatly assured George Stephanopoulos last Sunday that Mr. McCain has no need to make a “clean break” from Mr. Bush.

The whole strategy of the Democrats is going to be to paint McCain as BushIII, as has been documented here. Cost's conclusion that the Republicans "got lucky with McCain" is such a stretch I can't believe I'm reading it on his blog. As Rich points out, McCain is most identified with the number-one unpopular Bush policy, Iraq. And that's his strength. He's weak on everything except campaign finance reform (yawn) and immigration (for a voting block that won't vote for him anyway).

McCain is not the strongest candidate the Republicans could have picked. A candidate who could pivot on Iraq would have been better. If that distinction is fudged, then the electorate could be willing to go GOP. But with McCain it's crystal-clear.

McCain did not win because of any Republican "thought process" such as Cost describes. He won by a whisker because he was the last man standing in a flawed field. Had he lost SC, it probably would have been Romney.

Cost then tries to explain why the Dems did not go with the "safe bet" Hillary. He never mentions the obvious--Obama did not vote for the war. What a chasm operating at the heart of Cost's analyses! According to Google, he's mentioned Iraq only 4 times on his blog in the last 6 months. His blog is not about issues, to be sure, but strategy. But this blog is too, and I've mentioned Iraq ten times more over the same period.

The crucial stat

No, that's not a typo. PA is the crucial state right now, but the crucial stat is below:

From ABC News:

In a recent Gallup poll, almost 30 percent of Clinton supporters say they'd go for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., over Obama if Clinton loses the nomination; 19 percent of Obama supporters say the same.

Yikes. This is a rock and a hard place. Blacks are a crucial Dem constituency, voting for Kerry 9-1 in '04, and making up 20% of his voters. If they jump ship for a Hillary candidacy, this would be disastrous for the Dems in the general. I have been listening to these callers to C-Span bashing the Clintons and making just this threat. Not that the Clintons don't deserve it, after the ghettoization strategy in SC (though this was Bill off the reservation, not a calculated campaign tactic, if we believe the NYTimes).

Yet there could be even more white voters who would jump ship with an Obama candidacy.

Things change daily, but Clinton is suffering right now from her enhancement of her Bosnia trip. This is literally what killed Gore's candidacy in 2000. If Gore hadn't been caught in those petty lies which I don't even remember anymore, he would have been president. Hillary's fumble is in the same category. This kind of thing just reminds people why Obama is so attractive--change from Bush without having to go back to all the Clinton rehash.

I think the superdelegates are going to close their eyes and go with Obama, hoping that he'll bring the party together better than Hillary could.

Obama on top

Saturday night was such a big night for Obama; it was the first time I really thought he could win this all. Throughout this process I've been an Obama-skeptic. I was skeptical of his ability to motivate young caucus-goers to turnout. That was proved wrong big-time in Iowa. I was shocked by Iowa, but I wondered whether he wouldn't be a one-hit wonder after Hillary won in NH.

The plan of the Clintons to turn Obama into the black candidate after South Carolina I thought was despicable, but would be effective. It turned out to backfire on them. Obama got 31% of the white vote in New Jersey, 39% in Missouri, 40% in Delaware and Massachusetts, 43% in Georgia, and 48% in Connecticut. This was a lot more than his 25% in South Carolina (albeit in a 3-person race).

Obama has cobbled together a coalition of black voters and upper-class liberals and moderates. The ideological pattern is not as clear as it is in the case of McCain on the Republican side, who attracts moderates and independents. McCain is disliked in his own party because he's not a true-blue conservative. Huckabee has positioned himself as the anti-McCain, but only too late--he lost talk radio in his bloodbath with Romney, and McCain's overwhelming lead in delegates will lead to a nominee the Republican base is none-too excited about. Obama on the other hand has a plain-vanilla liberal voting record, which is brilliant triangulation in my book, because it enables him to run against Hillary on personality. Apparently Hillary showed very little personality in her 60-minutes interview last night. People really don't like her. Obama is the anti-Hillary. But he's also very charismatic himself.

The reason I haven't been impressed by that charisma thus far is that I didn't think sheer charisma could translate into votes when you're relying on a coalition that is smaller and less likely to turn out (black vs. white voters, young vs. older voters, male vs. female voters). But Obama's coalition includes that other element of class--better educated and higher income voters like him. And they are more likely to turn out. That's an angle the media likes to ignore; the reason is, it just sounds bad to talk about Hillary being the candidate of "lower-class voters." They don't want to label her like that. Talk of class is Verboten. This is true beyond presidential politics. We're supposed to be a classless society.

The other reason I haven't been as impressed with Obama up to now is that his entire campaign has one really major substantive difference with Hillary--he opposed the Iraq war and she voted for it, so he offers better judgment compared with her political posturings and hesitations. This has been an effective tool in Obama's arsenal all along. Whenever he's down, he can always bring it up and she doesn't have an answer for it.

I got an email and telephone call from an Obama supporter and reader of this blog making this case yet again. He wrote that Hillary didn't even read the full NIE report on Iraq before casting her vote. The original story on this ran in the Washington Post, and The Hill did some follow-up reporting and concluded the following:

Whether the number of senators who read the document can ever be known is also in dispute. The Washington Post reported in 2004 that only six senators had read the NIE, citing logs that senators were required to sign, but the Intelligence panel now says no such proof exists.

“There is no record, committee or otherwise, of who read the NIE,” said Wendy Morigi, spokeswoman for Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), now Intelligence Committee chairman, who read the NIE before the pivotal fall vote of 2002.

When Rockefeller referred to the half-dozen number during a 2005 Fox News interview, Morigi added, he was citing the Post’s report. Spokeswomen for Intelligence vice chairman Christopher Bond (R-Mo.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.) also said that the number of senators who read it is unknowable.

But the former senior congressional intelligence staffer, who asked to comment anonymously due to the sensitivity of the subject, said that knowledgeable aides can estimate the approximate number of senators reading the NIE.

"It’s probably pretty hard to say with 100 percent certainty how many read it,” the senior staffer said. “You can say with 100 percent certainty that it’s less than 10.”

The Hill put Clinton in the "Did Not Read/Could Not Recall" category. More than likely she did not read it. But is this so damning? A whole lot of other congressmen and women didn't either.

The answer is yes. The reader says the media has not picked up on this--I disagree. It's widely known that Hillary supported the war and voted for it, and it has hurt her campaign to death. I don't see Obama's candidacy surging without the prop of Hillary's war stance. It's been covered ad nauseum. The reader objects to the lack of coverage of her reading the full NIE, and fudging the issue with her claim that "the best intelligence available said" x, y, and z. Fair enough, but that's the kind of nuances that don't get widespread reportage because they're more difficult for people to understand. The fact remains that Hillary has been damaged greatly by her war vote, and Obama has benefited.

Edwards' thinking

Edwards is out. From the NY Times:

“Having the first serious African-American running against the first serious female — it’s a hard story to get into,” Mr. Moylan said. “There was an alignment of the stars this year, and it wasn’t for us.”

So Mr. Edwards’s pitch to voters came down to the personal. Over and over, he spoke of his hardscrabble upbringing, his rise from poverty and what he described as the deeply held determination that led him out of difficult circumstances, growing up in mill towns in the South.

He pitched himself as a populist, but it was hard to overcome what became known as the three H’s: his haircuts ($400), his house (28,000 square feet in Chapel Hill, N.C.) and the hedge fund where he worked after his 2004 loss (which invested in companies that foreclosed on mortgages of Hurricane Katrina victims in New Orleans, the city Mr. Edwards was trying to make the emblem of his antipoverty work).

Also, he got more votes from rich people in Iowa and SC, the two states he wanted to win in the worst way.

Why did he jump ship? Again from the Times:

“He wanted to have a shot at being president,” said Joe Trippi, a senior adviser. “He wanted to have a chance to change people’s lives, not be a spoiler or a kingmaker and not play political games.”

Right. He's out of money, which is always the prime consideration for a candidate leaving a race. Also, the Prince of Darkness reported a week ago that Obama would name Edwards Attorney General if he won.

Also Edwards, it seems to me, doesn't want to alienate Clinton too much. By dropping out before Super Tuesday, he takes less votes away from her and thereby gets on her good side.

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.

Edwards' support in SC

Edwards pounded Obama in South Carolina among whites, 40-24. Edwards says he's in it for the long haul. He wants to be the kingmaker at the convention.

But if this doesn't happen, and Edwards drops out, do his voters go to Obama or to Hillary? The simple assumption that he's picking up the "anti-Hillary vote," a majority of which would then go with Obama, doesn't necessarily hold water.

Edwards' voters were a reverse mirror-image of Obama's in South Carolina. Edwards' voters were overwhelmingly white, Obama's black. His voters were old, Obama's young. Edwards' support went up with income, Obama's down. Obama did best, and Edwards worst, with single women.

These are Hillary's voters. Obama needs Edwards, in other words. If Edwards can continue to hive off Clinton voters, Obama can end up top dog.

More on Thompson's voting block

Thompson got 13% in Iowa. A large majority of his voters (nearly 10%) were "very conservative." Romney beat Thompson by 12 points, but it would have been a near-tie between them if only "very conservative" voters counted. He got 1% in NH and 4% in Michigan. In SC he got 16%. Nearly half of that was "very conservative" voters, who are a third of the whole electorate.

The other thing that strikes me is the electability perception. For both Thompson and Huckabee, of the people who voted for them, nearly 9 out of 10 thought that their candidate was the best general-election candidate.

The media goes ga-ga about the Republicans nominating McCain as such a great maneuver for winning in November, but only 7 out of 10 of his own supporters in SC thought so. Do they know something the media doesn't?

When the positions of two opposing candidates are similar, the personalities and experiences they have become more important. McCain is old--he'll be 72 in August. When I saw him on TV touring a factory in SC, I thought he looked like an elderly man. Huckabee has the likability factor, which is a potent general election asset, as long as he can tone-down the religious stuff and triangulate his positions.

All this is interesting, but it doesn't tell us where the Thompson voters are going. I think they'll be split between Romney and Huckabee, with an edge to Huckabee. He's a southern politician like Thompson, his voters think he can win, and he's (slightly) more successfully cultivated the conservative vote than Romney.

This question is so important, it seems to me, because I think it will determine the Republican nominee.

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.

SC Debate

The debate last night in SC turned testy.

Obama on Hillary: "One of the things that's happened during the course of this campaign, there's a set of assertions made by Senator Clinton, as well as her husband, that are not factually accurate."

Hillary on Obama: "It is very difficult having a straight-up debate with you, because you never take responsibility for any vote, and that has been a pattern."

Obama on Bill Clinton: "I can't tell who I'm running against sometimes."

Hillary on Obama: "It is sometimes difficult to understand what Senator Obama has said, because as soon as he is confronted on it, he says that's not what he meant."

Obama on Hillary: "While I was working on those streets watching those folks see their jobs shift overseas, you were a corporate lawyer sitting on the board at Wal-Mart."

Hillary on Obama: "I was fighting against [conservative] ideas when you were practicing law and representing your contributor [Antoin] Rezko in his slum landlord business in inner-city Chicago."

Edwards on Blitzer: "Are there three people in this debate, not two?"

Edwards on the Debate: "This kind of squabbling, how many children is this going to get health care? How many people are going to get an education from this? How many kids are going to be able to go to college because of this?"


Major Garrett thought Edwards won. So did this blogger and this one and this one.

Here's Steve Clemons:

One thing that was weird for me in this debate is that Hillary Clinton is clearly not mimicking her husband in any way. John Edwards is. Bill Clinton is the master of anecdotes and "let me tell you all a story" moments. Hillary is dense with facts, details, experiences -- but it's not warm and fuzzy.

I watched Ed Rendell one night at a 4,000 person DNC dinner in the final year of Bill Clinton's tenure introduce Al Gore in a kind of passing the torch evening from Bill Clinton to Gore. Both Gore and Clinton walked on to the stage at the same time -- and Clinton sat meekly behind Gore while the then hoping-to-be 43rd President literally "lost the crowd" which began speaking at an embarrassing volume over his rambling speech. Clinton walked up after Gore who introduced him warmly (though the two were not speaking to each other in real life) and started his talk with "let me tell you all a story. . .", and the room went completely quiet. John Edwards tries that in these debates, and has heartwarming moments -- particularly when he spoke about his mill working father tonight -- but overall, neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama really do Br'er Rabbit stuff. . .and I think I like that.

And while I didn't like Hillary raising the slum lord issue with Obama, I was surprised to hear him refer to Rezko as "that indivdual." That individual is someone Barack Obama has known for 17 years and someone who has raised more than $14 million for him and who was on his Senate campaign finance organization. Now Hillary Clinton had Norman Hsu -- but while I didn't expect Obama to embrace Rezko, he might have just said that he was surrounded (as they all are) by people who are not always what they seem to be. At that moment, Barack Obama using "that individual" sounded a lot like -- well -- you know who.

McCain's momentum

The Prince of Darkness was all McCain last night on Fox News. Is McCain now the front runner for the Republicans? The answer is yes. Can he win the nomination? Anything can happen, but my answer is still negative.

Take a look at the exit polls for SC. McCain won on the backs of people who thought abortion should be legal (28% of the electorate), go to church monthly or less (35% of the electorate), have a negative view of the Bush administration (30% of the electorate), don't think illegal immigrants should be deported (48% of the electorate), self-id as independents (18% of the electorate), and liberal or moderate (31% of the electorate), and who live in cities (8% of the electorate).

McCain's support Saturday was skewed by the fragmented Republican field. This from Smirking Chimp:

In 2000, McCain drew 237,888 votes in South Carolina, 42 percent of the total against 301,050 for Bush, 53 percent. In 2008, McCain drew only 143,224 votes in South Carolina, 33 percent of the total . . . the arithmetic of the divided field was inexorable. This time, he faced six opponents whose combined total beat his by two to one--a much more substantial margin than that of GWBush in 2000--but no one of whom got enough to beat him.

As soon as traditional, conservative Republican voters have a candidate (by default), McCain doesn't stand a chance. He needs the field to remain divided. Likewise, if it came down to the Huckster vs. Romney, the Huckster would be hard pressed to win. Hence the alliance between McCain and Huckabee.

Romney's retreat

I saw the news early yesterday morning on the Politico that Romney was ceding South Carolina and focusing on Nevada. I've been thinking about that decision since then.

My first reaction was that this was a great tactical move. He's playing the expectations game--he can't loose if he doesn't try. Nevada is much more friendly to his candidacy. Finishing fourth in SC would be a huge blow if he was campaigning hard. He can play it off as Nevada having 10 delegates more, so he looks like a business-type who's concerned about the hard results, not media fluff.

But this morning I'm wondering if this won't be looked back upon as the moment in which Romney lost the presidential race.

First of all, the "you can't lose if you don't try" means that I personally am in a great spot to win the presidency. Giuliani's trying it and it's failing. Of course it hasn't failed yet, and I could be proven wrong in my contention that it was a miserable strategic decision to skip all these early states. But you don't win the presidential nomination by shying away from the tough fights. That's what so appealed to me with Romney's kindling strategy. Don't ignore Iowa and NH but get in there, get your hands dirty, mow people's lawns for them if that's what they want, and earn every vote.

The playing with the expectations game would work better if Romney had said all along he wasn't going to contest SC. But of course that would make him look rather weak if he said earlier that he didn't think he could win the primary that's chosen the Republican nominee since 1980. It would work better if the other candidates would play along and try to contest Nevada. The expectations game is always a matter of media perceptions. The media have to play along, in other words. It began in 1988, when before the second presidential debate between Bush and Dukakis ABC News and the Washington Post released a 50-state poll announcing that Bush had an electoral college lock. Dukakis had to blow Bush away in the debate, or he was thought to be finished.

I don't know that the media's going to play along with Romney's show tune. The stories will be the Democrats in Nevada, and the Republicans in South Carolina. Oh yeah, Romney was in Nevada. What was he doing there? He knew he couldn't win in South Carolina. I don't think that this works for the Romney campaign.

What does it say about Romney's willingness to spend his own fortune? As John Ellis noted yesterday, Romney's got a huge advantage in being able to outspend his broke competitors.

I don't think it would be a damaging blow to Romney to campaign hard in SC and not do well. Huckabee did pretty miserably in NH and Michigan, and he's still in this thing.

Perhaps his team is looking at the polls and seeing not much of a possibility of a bump from Michigan, and a downward trend from early December (21%) to now (16%) with the possibility that it could trend lower. If he campaigned hard and lost to Thompson, finishing a distant fourth, that would be brutal.

But after winning Michigan, to abandon a primary everyone has always believed to be important is a strategy that doesn't settle well with me at all. Fight for everything, I say, take your lumps and try to spin the results in the concession speech.

Romney was quoted as saying that he'd be shocked if McCain doesn't win SC, that it's McCain-country. This is also expectations management. He knows McCain'll be hard-pressed to beat Huckabee, and he's trying to knock McCain out of the race. That's not a bad strategy--if it comes down to Romney vs. Huckabee, Romney will more than likely edge him out.

Romney in the driver's seat

We are now in an unprecedented situation, with three different Republican candidates winning the first presidential contests.

New Hampshire was good to Romney. His Michigan numbers rocketed up in the aftermath, from 20% to the final tally of 39%. Huckabee's numbers dipped, from 19% to the final result of 16%.

Romney is now in a great spot thanks to Michigan. His money (thanks to personal wealth) is doing better than the other candidates. (We'll find out everyone's cash-on-hand numbers after Jan. 31.) His support is centered in the Republican base--the voters who can carry a candidate through to the finish.

McCain has the same problem he had in 2000, of not attracting these voters. Here's Chris Bowers:

In all three states, McCain has done better with voters who say they are either "dissatisfied" or "angry" with the Bush administration. He has lost those who are "satisfied" or "enthusiastic" with the Bush administration in all three states. If McCain has really made his comeback on the surge, then why are his voters so unhappy with Bush? Also, he has also virtually swept newspaper endorsements. Would McCain have any chance at all without the established media?

McCain won the Democrats and Independents in Michigan. That was a third of the total electorate. It's not enough to win; you need the Republican base.

Meanwhile the Huckster is not expanding on his base. He used the phrase "God's standards" when talking about gay marriage and the constitution. Another gaffe, on top of others. It makes you wonder if he really wants to be president. That is a real consideration--he might just be positioning himself as a public leader of evangelicals, and pushing up his speaking fee in the process. (He currently is listed in the $20,000-$40,000 range.) It's a much nicer life than being president.

Mitt Romney wants it. He's willing to do or say (and spend) whatever it takes to win. Giuliani doesn't. McCain does. You have to be an ego-maniac of Brobdingnagian proportions to really think you can be president.

Huckabee should consider giving a major speech on church and state. It worked for Romney.

Romney and McCain cleaned Huckabee's clock on senior citizens in Michigan. The gap was even wider in NH. These are the people with the highest turnout, so it should be a focus for his campaign. (Over 65 was 15% of the electorate in NH, and 16% in Michigan.)

McCain and Huckabee were in a tight contest in SC before Michigan. McCain's loss helps Huckabee in the short term, by weakening him in SC, but not in the long term. Romney's his real competitor, and now Romney is in the driver's seat, SC or no SC.

Romney needs this one

Michigan's voting is today, and the conventional wisdom is that Romney disparately needs a win. I'm going to go ahead and echo the conventional wisdom. If Romney finishes second, that really, objectively, shouldn't be the end of his campaign. He'll have finished second in three contests back to back, and have won Wyoming. He should still be in it with a strong chance to win. The problem is the media pundits will all be sounding his death knell, and this is going to impact South Carolina and Florida. Romney says he'll continue in SC. Perhaps he'll just want to spite the Huckabee campaign, and campaign against him in SC. But there's no way he'll win in SC if he loses Michigan. He's 3rd at 16% right now. He needs Michigan badly. The problem is, he's running as the authentic conservative candidate in an open-primary state that doesn't have a Democratic contest. Advantage: McCain. The polls are too close to call between the two.

An interesting sidenote: Democrats in Michigan might be trying to sabotage the Republican race by voting for the weakest candidate. Who would they choose? Probably Huckabee.

From the Miami Herald:

''In 2000 when McCain won Michigan, the pundits didn't give it that much credibility because it was an open primary, and this one is even more open,'' Johnson said, noting that Hillary Clinton is the only leading Democrat on the ballot. That's because Michigan, like Florida, was stripped of its delegates for moving up its primary, and most of the Democrats pulled their names off the ballot there.

Rival camps, however, suggest that Romney's political obituary will be written if he loses Michigan, the state where he was born and his father was governor.

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.

Giuliani tacking to the right

Giuliani wants to end illegal immigration. He also has been backing away from civil unions. This is the first semblance of a strategy I've seen from Giuliani. Cruising with a national lead in a contest that is not about national polls at all is a very tenuous position.

The New York Times had a piece about Hillary and the war, which I've discussed here, about her lack of an "I'm sorry, real sorry" moment concerning her vote in October 2002 on the war, and how it was shrewd for her to modify her positions gradually without a flip-flop label being able to be placed on her.

Giuliani would be well advised to do the same thing. The two issues mentioned above are placed he can go right with it fitting his image. It's smart that he's starting to do it now, instead of just coasting without a strategy, which was my impression of his campaign thus far.

But can he do it on abortion? I think he can. First of all, he was perhaps smart to recognize that to have a conversion like Romney looks artificial. That's Romney's weak point--he's too slick, too polished. Giuliani comes across as much more genuine. So for the latter to stay with his pro-choice position keeps his authenticity intact.

But now why can't the Giuliani camp start a hard tack to the right on abortion, such that he ends up more pro-life than pro-lifers but without the label? He's already started this process by promising to champion conservative federal judges.

The difficulty is obvious--it's too subtle. Elections are not about subtlety, they're about labels, stereotypes, short and simple messages being pounded into the heads of whoever's listening.

But Giuliani could conceivably pound a pro-life message across in all but its name. In so doing he could exploit a weak point in the pro-choice argument. That argument is genuinely personally opposed to abortion. A politician running for federal office will not proclaim abortion to be a positive good, a happy thing, that every woman should get. The vast majority of the time it is portrayed as a tragedy, yet one in which some (religious) people should not be able to impose their beliefs on others.

That's a very powerful argument, and Giuliani accepts it. But why could he not focus on his personal opposition, as well as his position that conservative judges are needed, and come out basically in the same place as pro-lifers? If he hammered that message day in and day out, it would be tough for pro-lifers to criticize him. It would also still be authentic. It could very well not work, but it is Giuliani's best shot to capture the base of the Republican party. That will become necessary in South Carolina--there's a good article about that state's role in the Republican primary process here.

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.