Is it the Democrats' year?

So much interesting campaign news, so little time.

First things first. The NYTimes had a great article on Hillary's campaign on the front page on Monday. Among other things, it gave us these nuggets, which if true are fascinating:

• Hillary talks to a small number of people in the campaign, leading to resentments
• Hillary was going to replace Patti Solis Doyle after Iowa, but kept her around after NH before finally cutting her loose last month
• Maggie Williams' first move when taking over as campaign manager was to tell Mark Penn not to appear on TV anymore
• Hillary had no clue that her campaign was out of money right before Super Duper Tuesday, despite getting daily email updates on finances
• Hillary was also surprised at that point to learn that she was all but conceding the next 11 contests
• And, most fascinating of all, Bill Clinton has been uncontrollable, "campaigning" in South Carolina despite the decision of the campaign to write it off
  

Amazing. The ghettoization strategy I was shocked, in my naiveté, to witness in SC was not a master plan of the campaign at all, but something only in Bill "I don't take no directions from nobody" Clinton's head.

Moving on. Jay Cost has a great post today on reading the primary results. His conclusions:

• Just because Hillary won Democratic primaries in the big states doesn't mean she is more likely to win them in the general
• Just because Obama wins Republicans in the primaries doesn't mean he'll win more of them than is usual for Democrats in the general
• Just because more Democrats are going to the polls doesn't mean anything as far as predicting which party will win in the general, though an "enthusiasm gap" will translate into raising more cash

Cost explains that many more Democrats than Republicans are voting in primaries as being not that unusual historically (more Dems vote in primaries normally), and it being a function of more dramatic primary battles. "This year is no exception," writes Cost. Aha, yet it is also a year which saw the most dramatic primary battle for Republicans, with three different candidates wining the first three contests, two other major candidates to choose from, and Ron Paul. McCain just barely squeaked by with the nomination. It was not lacking in drama. Cost's point is well-taken, and the graph he has informative, but he can't spin his way out of the pretty obvious conclusion that this is Democrats' year. As Bill Kristol reminds us, only once since World War II has one party won three straight presidential contests, in 1988.

Obama's caucus strategy

Obama has done so well in the Democratic race so far in part because of his performance in caucuses. The pattern at the beginning of the race, Obama wining the Iowa caucus, Hillary winning the New Hampshire primary, has repeated itself throughout the country.

Obama's won 8 out of the 9 caucuses held so far--and the only caucus Hillary won (Nevada) she actually lost, because while getting more votes Obama actually got more delegates. Obama won every caucus on Super Duper Tuesday, while Hillary won a majority of the primary states. Obama has won more primaries than Hillary (15 to 10), but the caucuses have been crucial to his edge in delegates.

Part of this is strategy; Obama's focused on caucus states, according to news reports. But he's focusing on them because he can win them for other reasons.

Nicholas Solter writes that Obama's edge in caucuses is due to basically two factors. First, Hillary is more difficult to support publicly, and second is that caucuses favor the upscale demographics within which do not break Hillary's way.

There are two reasons why Hillary's difficult to support publicly--she's polarizing and unlikeable, first of all, and secondly because Obama is the cool, in-candidate with "momentum."

Caucuses are hard to attend for working folks, because you have to take time off work, get a babysitter, etc. etc. It takes more effort to get there, and those with less of an interest in politics won't show. Lower-class demographics have less interest in politics, and barriers to turnout mitigate against their turning out. Clinton's supports are mainly in the lower-level demographics.

To organize supporters and get them to the polls, it helps if they are interested in politics and have the means to get to the caucus site/polling place. It also helps if they are passionate about their candidate. Obama is three-for-three on these counts.

Basically Obama's leveraged the passion, baby.

USA Today writes:

Clinton and her allies point to the nature of a caucus. Blue-collar and shift workers, they say, don't have the time or flexibility to show up at a certain time and stay for a couple of hours. If you're out of town, you're out of luck. Ditto if you can't get a babysitter.

Political analysts say passion and organization are key to caucus wins and Obama has them in greater measure. "He's got both an army of campaign workers and an operatic presentation" that excites people, says Lawrence Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota. "It's a very potent, very unusual combination."

Clinton has targeted early and large states. On Super Tuesday, she focused on — and won — New York, New Jersey, California and Massachusetts.

Romney's campaign--a postmortem

What was wrong with Romney's campaign? I think commentators have been generally right on in assessing what happened to him. Basically, he was vulnerable because of his record in Massachusetts. He tried to switch to more conservative positions, which made sense tactically, but opened up the vulnerability of coming off as a faker. Voters are loathe to trust their votes to a faker. This vulnerability became a festering open wound with Huckabee's rise. Here was a candidate whose strong point was his seeming genuineness--the polar opposite of Romney.

Jay Cost, the best election blogger out there, was right on when he wrote that Romney's negative attacks hurt him:

How might these negative attacks have hurt Romney? My sense is that it likely kept him from winning over those who supported McCain or Huckabee. That is, at its most basic level, it backfired; not only did it fail to convince Huckabee or McCain voters to back Romney, it alienated those voters from him.

That's exactly right. Supporters of the other candidates got angry about Romney digging the dirt on them, when at the same time he was asking them not to believe the dirt on him in his past record.

Cost has also argued that Huckabee was not taking away votes from Romney, enabling McCain to win. His conclusions go against the inside-outside theory I've held all along, about McCain's coalition being too small to win the nomination. Cost writes:

I do not think one can argue that McCain's wins have been dependent on a divided field. Independents, moderates, and Bush disapprovers have certainly formed the core of McCain's voting coalition. However, McCain has done what most winning candidates do: win his base by large margins while stealing plenty of voters from the other guy's base. McCain does not win conservatives or Bush supporters outright - but he has done well enough with them that he could probably win New Hampshire, South Carolina, or Florida in a head-to-head match up.

While it is difficult argue that a narrower field would turn any of McCain's wins into losses, the fact remains that each race would probably have been tight. Under my assumptions, McCain never would have won more than 54% of the vote - and his victory in South Carolina over Huckabee could have shrunk to a little less than one-half of one percent. So, McCain has been building a voting coalition that can trump the coalitions of other candidates - but not by much.

This analysis is true for what it's worth. But what it ignores is the bloodbath between Romney, Huckabee, and Thompson which ground down all those campaigns, leaving them short of cash, damaged from attacks, and abandoned in two cases. If the Huckster hadn't run, things would have been different for Romney and their kindling-strategy might have worked. Had Romney or Thompson not been in the race at all, or dropped out sooner, the situation would be a lot different for Huckabee now. In six contests since Super Duper Tuesday, McCain has won two by large margins, two by tight margins, and lost two. I predicted bumps in the road based on the inside-outside theory, and it has proven correct.

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.

Obama's big night

Obama won more than double Hillary's vote in Washington and Nebraska, and clobbered her by a mere 20-points in Louisiana.

The Politico writes:

[I]n what was a test of enthusiasm and organization, Obama showed an ability not just to win but also to rack up the landslide margins necessary to build a delegate lead. He seemed set to gain on Clinton by a margin of well over 40 delegates Saturday night, according to preliminary estimates. (A Democratic candidate needs 2,025 delegates to claim the nomination.)

Dick Morris argued after Super Tuesday that Hillary was able to tie Obama because of the Hispanic vote, allowing her to win NY heavily, NJ, Massachusetts, and Arizona. She won Bill's home state of Arkansas, Tennessee (gets a lot of Arkansas media), Oklahoma. But Obama won the rest. Texas is Hillary's firewall, with only 11% black voters and 32% Hispanic.

The Louisiana electorate (the only one we have exit polls on) was half black and only 4% Hispanic. The electorate was a female one by a 3-to-2 ratio. Hillary won white women big, and got a majority of white men, but lost heavily amongst blacks. The only age demographic she won was senior citizens. Obama continued to trounce her amongst better-educated voters.

Also from the Politico:

The Obama campaign on Friday released a strategy memo that made explicit an argument that the senator has increasingly been making on the stump. It was titled, “The Candidate Who Can Win: Barack Obama is beating Hillary Clinton with Independent voters and can beat John McCain in November.” The memo points to the general election as a reason for Democrats to support Obama now — encouraging activists to consider Electoral College math nine months ahead of time. “On Super Tuesday, in six red states that had primaries or caucuses for both Republicans and Democrats, Obama won and got more votes than the top two Republicans combined,” the memo said. “These states — Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota and South Carolina — account for a total of 53 Electoral College votes.”

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.

Romney's a loser

Stephen Stark articulates what I've been thinking for a little while now, and what was strikingly confirmed by the Super Duper Tuesday results:

The problem for conservatives isn't that their vote has been divided (though some of it has been split between Romney and Mike Huckabee). It's that Romney is too unpopular to be the standard bearer of anything. Romney tried to win the nomination the old-fashioned way: by buying it. Yet even though he overwhelmingly outspent all his opponents, he's never showed much vote-getting ability. In complete contrast with Obama, the more voters saw of Romney in Iowa and New Hampshire, the less they liked him. He achieved the singular feat of having failed to receive the endorsement of a single newspaper editorial board in New Hampshire. He pretty much bombed out on Super Tuesday, failing to win as many primaries as Huckabee. In fact, his most noteworthy contribution to politics this year is the way he has united every candidate in the Republican race around their personal dislike of him. Now it comes out that, despite Romney's being the candidate who has been the most supportive of the incumbent, even President Bush is angry with him for his flip-flip on immigration. Romney also faces an awful calendar in the next few weeks, since McCain should run strongly both in the DC-area primaries next week and in the larger states in early March. So while Romney and his allies may not realize it yet, he's never going to win the nomination -- and he's not gaining any friends, either, by continuing to contest the race. Better to join the bandwagon and position himself for a potential place on the McCain ticket. (Yes, that's likelier than it seems today.)

The Republican campaign has been dominated by this one single fact: the establishment candidates (Romney, Thompson) are/were lousy. They couldn't convince people to vote for them. Thompson was such a lethargic campaigner, and Romney comes off as fake and just not likable. I did think that Romney would turn things around with Super Duper Tuesday, since Huckabee didn't have the cash or time to effectively campaign (I thought) and Romney was pushing the vote-for-an-electable-conservative argument, which I thought would be effective (it wasn't).

McCain's big win

McCain won tonight in NY, Illinois, NJ, Arizona, Connecticut, Oklahoma and Delaware. Five of these were closed primaries: Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Oklahoma and New York. Only Illinois and New Jersey were open. Arizona of course is his home state. He's a third of the way towards the nomination in terms of delegates (without California, where he's up).

McCain continues to lag amongst conservatives. The states he's winning are not Republican-base red states. James Antle argues McCain can win due to the lack of a viable alternative.

From the Guardian:

James Dobson, the founder of the hugely influential evangelical group Focus on the Family last night became the latest right-wing conservative to denounce McCain and say he would not vote for him "under any circumstances".

On C-Span this morning a number of callers-in on the Republican side voiced this opinion. One didn't, and excoriated those who did. But it was an interesting straw-poll of sentiment. McCain still needs this to be a 3-man race.

Super Duper Tuesday first reactions

This is why I shouldn't make predictions. My dour expectations for Huckabee in the wake of what I thought was an effective argument by Romney have not panned out. In fact its the opposite. Romney has continued his favorite-son pattern, winning Massachusetts and Utah. Loosing the West Virginia convention was very hard for him. The story of the race on the Republican side has been Romney's inability to attract a following. He's just failed as a candidate. Outspending Huckabee 12 to 1 should have made more of a difference. Romney vowed to stay in in his speech: "We're going to take this all the way to the convention and win the White House."

Huckabee's winnings are very striking since he hasn't won since way back in Iowa. In Huckabee's speech tonight he also vowed to stay in until the end: "Until that magic number of 1,191 is won, there will be one guy answering the bell." There's only one more state in the South left to vote, and Huckabee doesn't do as well with evangelicals in the north. However, he could do well in Louisiana and Florida in four days.

The analysis given at this point is that people are voting for personalities, not issues. That seems to be true to some extent on both sides. However, the three-man race perhaps obscures the importance of issues on the Republican side.

On the Democratic side it is a slug-fest right now. Clinton and Obama won their home states. Obama had the momentum going into the contest, in large part because of favorable media reports. Here's Dick Morris:

The USA Today headline on Monday said it all: "Obama Erases Clinton Lead." The press on the day before Super Tuesday has been the best that Obama could hope for. In a race dominated by perception, you could not buy more favorable publicity than the published reports of his closing the gap with Hillary. He will also benefit from the companion articles in most papers showing that McCain enjoys a comfortable lead over Romney. With Independents able to vote in either party primary in half of the Super Tuesday states, this information may induce many anti-Hillary voters to back Obama rather than McCain as the most likely way to beat her. They may figure that McCain no longer needs their votes but that Obama needs them badly as he is now within striking distance of victory.

California is crucial, and the polls have just closed there.

My Super-Duper Tuesday Prediction

The biggest primary day in American history is today. Turnout looks to be huge.

The Democratic race is too tight to predict, but Obama looks like he's surging in CA and nationwide.

Here's Marc Ambinder:

According to campaign sources, polling and stealing off other analysts, Hillary Clinton has an edge in New York, New Jersey, Tennessee, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Arkansas. Obama has an edge in Idaho, Colorado, Minnesota, Kansas, Alabama, Georgia, North Dakota and Illinois. Tossups: California, Connecticut, Democrats Abroad, Arizona, Missouri, Delaware, Utah, American Samoa, Alaska, Massachusetts.

On the Republican side, it will be a bad night for Huckabee I think, perhaps resulting in him dropping out soon thereafter.

McCain Gaining

McCain seems to be gaining. He's shot up in the national polls since Florida (from 27% to 43%). National Review has this update:

In the McCain pile, he keeps all of his big winner-take-all states (Arizona, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut) and while I'm taking some out of his previous total in California, he's doing much better in the South (Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee). In this count, the polls hold, and he wins the winner-take-all battleground of Missouri. In addition, he should get the most delegates out of Illinois, Minnesota, and Oklahoma.

Before I put McCain somewhere north of 400 delegates; now I'm calculating out to 500 and change.I'd give Ron Paul a majority of Alaska's 29 delegates, and a few here, a few there in states without the 15 percent threshold. He may break 50 delegates for the day.

That would put things at about McCain at 600+ total delegates, (needing 1,191 to be the nominee), Romney a bit under 400 total delegates, Huckabee at 150 delegates or so.

Under this scenario, the race won't be over, but McCain will have a clear lead, and time will be running low for Romney to close the gap.

Meanwhile Romney and Huckabee are bickering. Huckabee had harsh, harsh criticism of Romney. This is understandable on Huckabee's end. Romney's making the "A Vote For Huckabee is a Vote for McCain" argument, which is very persuasive to conservative voters wanting to vote for a winner. Huckabee knows he has to counter this. But his harsh criticism undercuts his nice-guy image. His venom against Romney and love-fest with McCain underscores just the point Romney's making.

Huckabee is likewise undercut by his continued appeal to evangelicals. His inability to broaden past this base was the strategic mistake of his candidacy starting in December 2007.

A note from Time: The night of the Iowa caucuses McCain called Huckabee to congratulate him, and Huckabee told McCain, according to aides: "Now it's your turn to kick his butt," "his" referring to Romney.

State of the Democratic Race

Everything's a dead heat between Clinton and Obama, except that according to the polls Georgia and Illinois are going for Obama, and Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Oklahoma, and Tennessee are going for Clinton.

The momentum is in Obama's favor, however. That could be big, as we've seen throughout this process. Huckabee had the momentum in the endgame in Iowa, Clinton had that weekend-before momentum in NH, McCain had momentum going into the tight Florida race. Polls only show a snapshot in time. They're wrong because people still haven't made up their minds yet.

Even if Hillary wins more states, it will still be a dead heat in delegates due to the proportionality rule. For example, she won Nevada but Obama actually won more delegates. For example, here's how California works:

Each of the 53 congressional districts will get from three to six delegates based upon the district's population and presidential voting in 2000 and 2004. The 241 district-level delegates will be allocated in proportion to the popular vote in that district to candidates receiving more than 15 percent.

This could favor Obama.

Nationally, Obama has an edge with Independents, and Hillary with Democrats.

Super Duper Tuesday: The Republican Side

At this point, Huckabee is doing serious damage to Romney. Romney needs the Huckster out fast, like yesterday. Huckabee staying in keeps McCain's campaign on top. Here's Romney's top strategist:

The coalitions that John McCain assembled in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida have been strikingly similar—and are strikingly tenuous. Public polling shows McCain ahead in many states, but we are now in a two-man race and a few points’ movement among conservatives is all that’s needed to tip the scales in favor of Gov. Romney. In all three states where he was victorious, McCain’s margin of victory rested on moderates, self identified independents, and voters who disapprove of the Bush administration. None of these groups is a majority of the Republican electorate. In fact, every GOP primary this year has been at least 55% conservative, 61% Republican, and 50% supportive of the Bush administration— explaining why McCain has failed to win more than 36% of the vote in any of them.

Huckabee might be thinking of being chosen McCain's running-mate. I can't believe I haven't thought of this one before; it's so appallingly simple, and I feel incredibly stupid. Huckabee is young (53 in August), so a shot at being Veep is perfect for him. It is the natural endpoint of the Huckster--McCain lovefest/alliance. And since the Republicans are probably going down in the general anyway, Huckabee won't be the loser at the top of the ticket, but he'll have a platform to work from for the rest of the year.

National Review has this:

In the Romney pile, we’ll probably have about five to seven wins, and the delegates most of Massachusetts, all of Utah, all of Montana, most of Colorado, all of Missouri, and if that poll is correct, all of Delaware, and perhaps most of North Dakota's. And he’ll get some of California’s. I put him at about 200 to 250 delegates.

In the Huckabee pile, we’ll have Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, Georgia, and maybe he’ll get some of California’s. I put him around 200.

In the McCain pile, we’ll have all of Arizona, all of New York, all of New Jersey, all of Connecticut, probably the largest chunk of California’s, probably most of Minnesota's, probably majorities in Oklahoma and West Virginia.I put him around somewhere north of 400 delegates.

Alaska may go for Ron Paul, and he may get a majority of their 29 delegates.

That would put things at about McCain at 500+ (needing 1,191 to be the nominee), Romney at 325, Huckabee at 230 or so.

Marc Ambinder has this:

[Romney's] strategy eschews big states and concentrates on smaller states where the delegate selection processes favor conservatives. They include Colorado, a caucus state, West Virginia, Alaska (which is why Romney mentioned McCain's support for ANWR drilling last night), and Oklahoma and Georgia, two states where delegates can be extracted from congressional districts.

The goal is to minimize the delegate gulf between McCain and Romney headed out of Feb 5 and give Romney a pretext to continue to campaign if McCain suddenly falters.

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.

After South Carolina: Obama as a running-mate

A Clinton operative has spoken about the possibility of Obama being Hillary's running-mate. More and more this seems like what has to happen. It will unify the party in the aftermath of all these divisions. The only downside is that Obama and his team loathe Clinton and her team, and vice versa.

In SC, Clinton beat Obama by 20 points among non-black women. She (and Edwards) also won the older non-black vote. Obama won young (28-29) whites overwhelmingly. But they were only a sixth of the over-45 non-black vote.

Obama won Iowa because young voters turned out in unexpectedly strong numbers. That is very atypical. Hillary has the edge going into Super-Duper Tuesday.

How the caucuses work

The caucus starts at 7:00 local time for the Dems and 6:30 for the Republicans, so result will start coming in after 7:00. (That's 8:00 Eastern time.) ABCnews.com will be posting results in real time with a searchable database of exit polling updates.

To back up a second, the ultimate goal of any presidential primary candidate is of course to win enough party delegates to the national convention to gain the nomination.

Iowa seemingly doesn't matter too much by that calculation. Only 57 of the 4,051 total Democratic delegates and 40 of 2,380 total Republican delegates are at stake in Iowa. And since they are caucuses and not primaries they don't decide anything. They only elect delegates to a higher-level meeting, at the end of which is the state party convention.

The next few paragraphs break down the actual process in detail.

For the Democrats, delegates are elected on Jan. 3 to county caucuses. (There are 99 counties in Iowa, all of roughly the same size.) The winning candidate on Jan. 3 for the Democrats will be the candidate who wins the most of 2,500 delegates at stake. This is why Congressional Quarterly writes, "In the 2004 Democratic caucuses, Kerry’s reported total of 37.6 percent reflected his anticipated delegate strength at the state Democratic convention. It did not mean that Kerry was supported by 37.6 percent of all Democratic caucus attendees." In other words, the percentage reported on the Democratic side will be delegates, not actual voters. Each precinct has a certain number of delegates, based on how many people voted there in the top-of-the-ticket (president, governor) race in the last two elections. So it's conceivable that a candidate could turn out more voters and yet lose in the delegate count, if the new voters turn out more heavily in precincts that have less delegates. In 1988 for example, Gephardt won the delegate count but we're not sure if he actually won the most caucus-goers.

The delegates elected on Jan. 3 then got to the next step, county caucuses. On March 15, the Iowa Democratic county caucuses elect delegates to the next step, district conventions (the districts are the five congressional districts). On April 26, the district conventions choose 29 delegates to the national convention, as well as 3,000 delegates to the state convention. On June 14 the state convention chooses 28 delegates to the Democratic convention (16 of them are "pledged" to support a candidate, and 12 are "unpledged" party leaders).

For the Republicans, instead of the complex procedure the Democrats use caucus night (described below), everyone just puts the name of their preferred candidate in a hat. It's called a "straw poll." They also elect delegates to county conventions. Those are held March 1, and they chose delegates to the (Congressional) district conventions. Those are then held April 26, and their only job is to instruct the delegates to the state convention which presidential candidates the district delegates prefer. On June 13-15 the state convention district caucuses meet, and select 15 delegates to the Republican national convention (three per Congressional district). They are allocated proportionately. Finally, the state convention is on June 14, which elects 25 delegates to the national convention. 22 of them are pledged (proportionally) to candidates, and 3 are unpledged party leaders.

Whew! You see why the media skips over the boring details and just report winners and losers. That's why Iowa is so important--for the media spectacle. It's the first presidential voting anywhere, so the winners get to look like winners and get lots of free media throughout the country.

So what's going to happen in this first round of caucuses?

Here's a good graphic on how the precinct caucuses work. There are 1,784 precincts in Iowa. Some of them are so small they have to combine with other precincts.

Here's a description of the process for Republicans, from HuffPo:

The Republicans have an actual paper ballot. It doesn't list any candidates... [they] just write in whoever you want. There's a little speaking time where folks makes a short pitch for their candidate, then you vote. It's a secret ballot, with none of the standing in front of the neighbors and bargaining that the Democrats have. This means second choices matter less to Republicans than they do to Democrats.

After voting is done, the Republicans count up their votes and call a touch-tone hot line in Des Moines to report the vote count results. "Ronald Reagan 76 votes, Abe Lincoln 44 votes, Eisenhower 27 votes, and Nixon 1." Unlike the Democrats, where a precinct's impact on the caucus result is frozen based on a delegate count, higher caucus turnout in a Republican precinct means more influence on the outcome.

Once the votes -- remember, "straw poll" votes, they're called -- are counted, the delegates are elected by all the caucus goers who choose to stay. Then the caucus moves on to election of party officers and debate of the platform, just as the Democrats do.

Here's what the Democrats do, from NPR:

Unlike a primary — where your vote is private — in a caucus, you declare your support for a candidate in plain view of everyone around you. Candidate Smith's supporters go to this corner of the room, candidate Jones' that corner, and so on. If no candidate at a particular caucus site receives the support of 15 percent of the attendees, his or her supporters need to form a coalition with another candidate's supporters to reach the vaunted 15 percent threshold. Otherwise, the candidate ends up with no support at all.

Here's a description of the vagaries of the Democratic process from John Fund:

Not all local caucuses are equal. The "entrance" polls of voter preferences that you will see reported Thursday night are likely to be from urban areas, which may shortchange candidates like John Edwards, Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson, who have campaigned more heavily in rural areas. "It's entirely possible that John Edwards could come in a stunning second when all the votes are in, but the country will have gone to bed thinking he only took third place," says Howard Fineman of Newsweek.

Rural Iowa matters for another reason in the Democratic contest. In order to encourage candidates to campaign in farming areas, state Democrats have tilted the delegate allocation so that rural areas are disproportionately represented in the final results. This sometimes can lead to bizarre results. As Roger Simon of Politico.com notes, "the turnout in some precincts is so small that a single family--let's say four people--can determine the winner. In other precincts, only one person will show up and win for his candidate by being the only person in the room." In small-turnout caucus meetings, ties are resolved by a coin toss or drawing lots. In 2004, four precincts saw literally no one show up to vote in the Democratic caucus.

Iowa is even more important this year, because in a very short period of time (a little over a month) there is a ton of delegates who will be chosen. For instance, for Democrats, Super Duper Tuesday features 22 states with 2,075 delegates, more than half of the Democratic total. As I've argued, Super Duper Tuesday might be too big to matter.

Here's some notes on the calendar after Iowa.

Huckabee's rise

Huckabee is now in a dead heat with Romney and Giuliani in Florida. He's in a dead heat with Giuliani nationally. Romney is flailing away with attacks which smack of desperation, and more than likely won't change anyone's mind. Establishment Republicans are also desperate.

New York magazine compares the Huckster to Pat Buchanan:

In 1996, after all, the economy was in the midst of a historic boom, one that was on the verge of kicking into overdrive. Today, the situation is the reverse: Recession looms, the Dow sags, the housing and credit markets buckle. The economy has elbowed aside Iraq as the central locus of voter anxiety.

Hence the reason why the rise of Huckabee is causing so much consternation, even panic, among his fellow wannabe nominees. Though nobody sober believes that, even if he emerges triumphant in Iowa, Huckabee can win New Hampshire, his prospects in the next two contests (Michigan and South Carolina) are considerably better. Both are states whose industrial bases have been ravaged by foreign competition. Both have seen their property markets hammered by the credit crunch and the recent wave of foreclosures. And at least in South Carolina, the state that is often the sine qua non for securing the GOP nomination, the Evangelical vote is nearly as significant as it is in Iowa. If Huckabee wins there—and he currently leads—his momentum could prove unstoppable.

There are, naturally, a raft of reasons to doubt this scenario. Huckabee’s lack of money might trip him up on Tsunami Tuesday, February 5.

My prediction has always been that Super-Duper Tuesday is going to be about free media, not advertising, so I don't accept that last part.

Huckabee is starting to look like Buchanan in another area: foreign policy. He has written an article for Foreign Affairs magazine that's very interesting. In it he has strong criticisms of Bush's foreign policy and leadership style. Here's the highlights:

The United States, as the world's only superpower, is less vulnerable to military defeat. But it is more vulnerable to the animosity of other countries. Much like a top high school student, if it is modest about its abilities and achievements, if it is generous in helping others, it is loved. But if it attempts to dominate others, it is despised.

American foreign policy needs to change its tone and attitude, open up, and reach out. The Bush administration's arrogant bunker mentality has been counterproductive at home and abroad. My administration will recognize that the United States' main fight today does not pit us against the world but pits the world against the terrorists.

The Bush administration has never adequately explained the theology and ideology behind Islamic terrorism or convinced us of its ruthless fanaticism. The first rule of war is "know your enemy," and most Americans do not know theirs. To grasp the magnitude of the threat, we first have to understand what makes Islamic terrorists tick.

Although we cannot export democracy as if it were Coca-Cola or KFC, we can nurture moderate forces in places where al Qaeda is seeking to replace modern evil with medieval evil. Such moderation may not look or function like our system -- it may be a benevolent oligarchy or more tribal than individualistic -- but both for us and for the peoples of those countries, it will be better than the dictatorships they have now or the theocracy they would have under radical Islamists.

If I ever have to undertake a large invasion, I will follow the Powell Doctrine and use overwhelming force. The notion of an occupation with a "light footprint," which was our model for Iraq, is a contradiction in terms.

[On Iran:] Many Iranians are well disposed toward us. On 9/11, there was dancing in the streets in parts of the Muslim world but candlelit vigils and mourning in Tehran. When we invaded Afghanistan, Iran helped us, especially in our dealings with the Northern Alliance. Hoping for better bilateral relations, Tehran wanted to join us against al Qaeda. The CIA and the State Department supported this partnership, but some in the White House and the Pentagon did not. After President Bush included Iran in the "axis of evil," everything went downhill fast.

The conclusion:

Our history, from the snows of Valley Forge to the flames of 9/11, has been one of perseverance. I understand the threats we face today. When I am president, America will look this evil in the eye, confront it, defeat it, and emerge stronger than ever. It is easy to be a peace lover; the challenging part is being a peacemaker.

"The peacemaker" is the image the campaign would like to portray. Some strong rhetoric against Bush's policies from Huckabee, and it is earning him more denunciations from establishment Republicans. But it's precisely the establishment Republicans that messed up big-time in Iraq. Despite their declinations, that was precisely the reason for the 2006 result. After the primary race is over, whoever the Republican nominee is, he will have to start shifting on Iraq towards a better general election position. Huckabee is doing that right now. He could be playing towards Ron Paul supporters as well.

The rise of Huckabee should, in my opinion, help John Edwards. Huckabee is a dangerous commodity for Hillary to run against. The likability factor could be exploited against her. Huckabee's liberal-leaning positions would triangulate well against Hillary's liberalism. Edwards and Obama are another story. I think Huckabee might beat Hillary, would have less of a chance against Obama, but wouldn't beat Edwards. They are too much alike so that voters would just vote for the party (Democrats) that they want to control the White House. Edwards himself is now talking about his electability.

Iowa even more important

The Politico has an article on the increasing importance of Iowa to Democrats. I've talked before about Super-Duper Tuesday becoming too big to matter, and it seems that this is becoming the case, as frontloading has made the early primaries/caucuses more important, not less.

Here's the points made in the article. First of all, the level of activity for Democratic candidates is enormous--96 total campaign posts open in the state. Second, six candidates are campaigning heavily in the state: Hillary, Obama, Edwards, Richardson, Biden and Dodd. The conclusion is that Democrats are not focusing on larger states at the expense of Iowa; the article names Iowa as "the central battle of the Democratic primary."

The pattern started with Carter. Since then every candidate to win Iowa on the Democratic side has won the nomination, with two exceptions, 1988 and 1992. The last one was of course due to the state being ceded to the favorite son Tom Harkin. In 1988 a candidate from a neighboring state, Dick Gephardt, beat Paul Simon and Dukakis as he was expected to do, and the media story was Pat Robertson's finish over George H. W. Bush. The big mo will go to whoever wins Iowa this time, since everyone's campaigning heavily and it's up in the air (59% in the latest poll said they might vote for someone else).

Super-Duper Tuesday

Super-Duper Tuesday's placement might have an unintended effect...

Michael Brendan Dougherty of The American Conservative writes this about the frontloaded primary schedule in the July 2 issue:

In recent times, only one true long shot successfully navigated the slower-paced primary season. Jimmy Carter's name recognition sat at 2 percent when he began carrying his own garment bag around Iowa in 1976, yet he finished second in the caucus to "uncommitted." But that year featured no obvious frontrunner, and Carter's legion opponents either dropped out early, were knocked down in key states, or split the more liberal anti-Carter vote.

More recently, insurgent campaigns have consistently failed to overtake the candidates deemed most acceptable by party elders.... On the other hand, discussing Buchanan's 1996 run, [Political analyst Roger] Simon argues that the new schedule will make it easier for outsiders to crash the party. With over a month between that contest and Super Tuesday, Simon notes, "in those days, the establishment had time to rally. And on March 12, Dole easily beat Buchanan in all seven of the 'Super Tuesday' states holding contests that day. Back then, Super Tuesday was a classic firewall. If you got burned early, you had the time to gather your forces and beat out the flames."

This round, there is a strong chance that the primary season will end right at the beginning. Chuck Todd, political director for NBC News, thinks so: "If either Giuliani or Clinton win their respective caucuses, they will have essentially won the nomination. If Obama or Edwards can't beat Clinton in Iowa, they will have a hard time beating her anywhere. Ditto for Mitt Romney, John McCain and Fred Thompson in their attempts to stop Giuliani.... Iowa is a must-win for anyone not named Giuliani or Clinton."

Super-Duper Tuesday too big to matter

Super-Duper Tuesday too big...

The WSJ had a must read article earlier this month about the primary schedule. It claims that "Super-Duper Tuesday" only increases the importance of the early states. I've put the map included with the story at the bottom of this page. The article states:

On Feb. 5 -- widely called "Super-Duper Tuesday" -- nearly two dozen states, from New York to California, may hold what approaches a national primary. In 2004, just nine states had voted by then. The crush in 2008 will mean that no contender has the time and money to stump in all the Feb. 5 states with anything near the intensity candidates do in states with January contests.

This means free media will be everything. The money candidates are raising now, though in record amounts, will not realistically be able to combat the attention winning in the early states will get for those winners. Media buys in over 20 states is too expensive. In 2004 Howard Dean blew $40 million on Iowa and New Hampshire alone! The money race is really part of the perceptions race, and what it means for actually succeeding in Super Duper Tuesday is very marginal. By then things will probably be already decided.