GOP SENATE MASSACRE OF ’08
Published on TheHill.com on May 20, 2008.
While Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) hangs in there, locked in a tough race with Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), the Republican undercard is facing obliteration in the 2008 general elections for the Senate. Polling suggests that a massacre may be in the offing – and one that’s possibly even greater than the worst of previous GOP years: 1958, 1964, 1974, 1986 and 2006.
Scott Rasmussen, whose site, www.rasmussenreports.com, follows these races closely, is producing truly hair-raising polling data.
OBAMA HAS THE UPPER HAND, BUT MCCAIN CAN STILL TAKE HIM
Published in The Washington Post on May 18, 2008.
John McCain is America’s favorite kind of candidate. With his record of extraordinary patriotism and his distinctive Senate tenure, McCain is a nominee whom voters from both parties — and independents, too — could easily support.
But he has been dealt a terrible hand: a tanking economy, an unpopular war, a Republican incumbent whose approval ratings are at their all-time low and a gloomy national mood, with 82 percent of Americans saying in a Washington Post-ABC News poll last week that the country is on the wrong track. Political scientists add all that up and predict that the Democrats are destined to win the White House. But I don’t do political science; I do politics, and I’m convinced that McCain can still win — if he’s willing to follow the road map below.
OBAMA: WRONG ON IRAN
Published on FOXNews.com on May 16, 2008.
President Bush is absolutely right to criticize sharply direct negotiations with Iranian President Ahmadinejad. Barack Obama’s embrace of the idea of direct negotiations is both naïve and dangerous and should be a big issue in the campaign.
The reason not to negotiate with Ahmadinejad is not simply to stand on ceremony or some kind of policy of non-recognition. It is based on the fundamental need to topple his regime by increasing the sense the Iranian people have – that he has isolated Iran from the rest of the world, to its severe and ongoing detriment.
EDWARDS CATCHES THE LATE TRAIN
It took Edwards four months to make up his mind to belatedly endorse Obama for president. His backing, now, is really an effort to play catch-up and to avoid being consigned to irrelevance should Obama win the election. But the process which led Edwards to act is emblematic of that which will assure Obama of sufficient delegates to win the nomination. No longer is it a question of whether to endorse Obama or Hillary. Now the professional politicians who are the uncommitted superdelegates have to rush to get seats on the late train for Obama before it leaves the station. With just shy of 1900 delegates, the Illinois Senator is only about 140 votes short of the nomination. With about 50 delegates likely to come to him on Tuesday when Kentucky and Oregon vote, that leaves 90 slots on the bandwagon still open. Super delegates will be vying with one another to get in their reservations so they can be for Obama before he gets the majority.
NO VEEP SLOT FOR HILLARY
Published on TheHill.com on May 13, 2008.
It would be an act of terminal insanity for Barack Obama to name Hillary Clinton as his vice presidential candidate. It would not help him get elected, it would drag all the Clinton controversies into the general election, and having her down the hall in the West Wing would be a recipe for disaster, dissension and civil war. Other than that, it’s a hell of an idea!
WHY HILLARY WON’T GET OUT
Published on FOXNews.com on May 8, 2008.
Bill and Hillary Clinton have always believed that they’re very different than the rest of us. Over their more than 30 years in politics together, they’ve learned one important and consistent lesson: that rules don’t matter. Rules don’t apply to them. Rules are for other people. Rules can be bent, changed, manipulated.
And that philosophy has worked very well for them.
So it’s particularly ironic that they are now turning to the Democratic Party Rules Committee to try and steal the presidential nomination that Hillary has already definitively lost to Barack Obama in the popular vote, the delegate count, and the total number of states.
HILLARY WON’T ADOPT THE HUCKABEE OPTION
Published on TheHill.com on May 8, 2008.
OK, so Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) is staying in the presidential race despite losing among elected delegates, facing a slimming lead among superdelegates, losing the popular vote and behind by 2-to-1 in the number of states carried. She slogs on, hoping against hope for a sudden turnaround in the race.
Apart from the psychological reasons for her stubbornness, is there a more subtle political calculation going on?
Is she continuing her race so as to have a platform from which to continue to bash Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) in the hopes of so damaging him that he can’t win the general election? Is she doing this to keep her options alive for the 2012 presidential race?
IT’S ALL OVER, SEN. CLINTON
Published in the New York Post on May 7, 2008.
She lost hard in North Carolina, and barely held on to win Indiana. Hillary Clinton just doesn’t have enough straws left to clutch. The best (or worst) she can hope to do the rest of the way is bloody Barack Obama enough to make him lose in the fall, allowing her to come back in 2012.
In fact, Obama basically clinched the nomination with his string of 11 straight primary and caucus wins in February, many by wipe-out margins – giving him a lead in elected delegates that Clinton couldn’t hope to close, especially given the nutty proportional-representation rules that govern the Democratic Party.
Do the math. Last night’s results leave him with a lead among elected delegates of 150 or so, and among all delegates of around 130.
