DICK MORRIS’ ’08 PLAY-BY-PLAY Volume 1, #33
DICK MORRIS’ ’08 PLAY-BY-PLAY
Volume 1, #33
August 24, 2008
HOW THE CLINTONS FINESSED OBAMA
By sulking in his tent, Bill Clinton has finessed Barack Obama into making the biggest mistake of his candidacy – failing to name Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius as his running mate.
The key to the Clinton game is that they understood, from the beginning, that Obama would not name Hillary to be his VP. They realized that she had far too much baggage and that they came as a package and Bill certainly had too much. They knew that the bad blood between the two camps was such that it was highly unlikely that she would be on the ticket.
That left the Clintons with two objectives:
a. they needed to be sure that no other woman would be nominated; and
b. they had to do what they could to stop Obama from winning
Bill and Hillary need to keep the former first lady at the head of the class among Democratic women. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House is a real threat to her supremacy. They didn’t want another woman to vault over Hillary’s head to the top of the list. They had to prevent Obama from nominating Sebelius.
Obama needed Sebelius on the ticket. His key problem right now is his inability to carry women with nearly the level of support that a Democrat needs to win. In the latest Zogby poll, for example, he is running only two points stronger among women than among men. Normally, at this stage, a Democratic presidential candidate should be at least ten to fifteen points further ahead among women than among men. The fact that there is no gender gap is Obama’s chief strategic problem. The Fox News poll confirms these findings. One Hillary voter in five is now backing John McCain for president.
So the Clintons made a big show of negotiating with Obama for prime time speaking slots at the convention and Bill dropped comments indicating that Obama was not ready to be president. Her delegates were encouraged to speak out and demand a roll call and to insist that her name be put in nomination to celebrate what they called “the historic nature” of her candidacy.
But their real goal was to be so in Obama’s face that he didn’t dare to nominate another woman as vice president. By keeping Obama and his staff on egg shells about what the Clintons were doing and thinking, they bluffed them out of turning to a female candidate for vice president.
Had Obama chosen Sebelius, there is nothing the Clintons could have done about it. Hillary would have had to smile and celebrate the promotion of the cause of women. Her delegates might grouse over Obama passing over Hillary to name Sebelius, but women around the nation would have rallied to his ticket. It is exactly what a great many of them wanted: a woman other than Hillary. For her part, Hillary would have found it necessary to be publicly jubilant that a woman was nominated, much as it would have angered her inside. To do otherwise would have been to admit that her feminism was really ambition cloaked in gender.
Now the Clintons can move on to the second item on their agenda: stopping Obama from winning.
They need McCain to win in order for Hillary to run for president in 2012, just as they needed Bush to win in 2004 to pave the way for a Hillary candidacy in 2008. If Obama loses, Hillary can run for the nomination in 2012 on a platform of “I told you so” pointing to her warnings about how Obama could not win and about how the Democrats would be abandoned by women voters if they did not nominate her. McCain would be 76 were he to be re-elected and the voters might be disinclined to give him a second term, should he even seek it.
Their strategy to stop Obama from winning involved two elements: stop him from naming a woman running mate and hog the convention spotlight.
They could not have asked for a better scenario on the vice presidency that unfolded. Not only did Obama name a man, but he chose one born in 1942 – five years older than Hillary – who would be 70 in 2012, borderline too old to run for president. If McCain wins, he’ll likely give old presidents a bad name and it would make things so much harder for Biden to run. So Hillary not only escaped a woman VP but Obama picked a running mate not likely to pose a future threat to her ambitions.
In the meantime, they used the fact that Hillary would not be vice president to pry from Obama concession after concession in the convention scheduling. On Tuesday night, a film produced by Harry and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, Hillary’s favorite filmmakers, will introduce Chelsea who will introduce Hillary who will then speak in prime time. On Wednesday, Bill will also address the convention in prime time. He is buried on the list with a bunch of other speakers, but you know the cable networks will cut away for his speech and likely not for any of the others, except, of course, for Biden’s acceptance speech. On Thursday, Hillary will be there in spirit as the roll call of the states records vote after vote for Mrs. Clinton, showing how Obama edged out the first woman with a chance to be elected so as to run on an all male ticket. Not a scenario geared to attracting female voters.
Geraldine Ferraro, the only woman to run on a major party ticket, is out there saying that Hillary should have had the right of first refusal. Her contention that Obama should at least have asked Hillary will become a focal point for women throughout the country. In rejection, Hillary can become the feminist icon she never was as she was running.
By making the convention one vast effort to portray Hillary as the victim of an oppressive male establishment, the Clintons will have succeeded in emphasizing who is not being nominated: Hillary Clinton.
But beneath it all, there is likely a real anti-Obama rage in the Clinton household. Since Obama won, he has dissed the Clintons personally in every way he could. Hillary was not vetted in the vice presidential process. She was never on any short list. Obama did not accept Bill’s invitation to have dinner together. When Hillary offered to campaign for Obama, he sent her to New Mexico and Orlando, not places guaranteed to get national media coverage.
So for the Clinton’s it’s the perfect combination: a male VP, Hillary looking like a victim, Obama hobbled by the absence of a gender gap, and all the face time they could want at the convention itself. In defeat, a win-win-win situation for the Clintons.
NOW WILL MCCAIN NOMINATE A WOMAN?
To complete the process, John McCain should nominate Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison as his running mate. While he is thought to be leaning toward Mitt Romney, naming a woman would completely pull the rug out from under Obama. After Obama has so ostentatiously declined to run with a woman, for McCain to take one on his ticket would be the height of skill.
Hutchison, pro-life and therefore acceptable to the Party base, would represent a statement of McCain’s openness to women and their political goals. She would be a continuing reminder to Hillary supporters of who is not on the Democratic ticket. In a swoop, McCain would open up a reverse gender gap and imperil the chances of the Obama ticket.
Were McCain to put her on his ticket, he would likely leave the two conventions with a good and solid lead that he could use all during the fall.
Unfortunately, the men around McCain are slow to see the attractiveness of the Hutchison scenario. They are so mired in their focus on the Republican base that they can’t look at the larger picture and go after swing voters – especially swing female voters.
The frustration of women with the Obama-Biden ticket would power an outpouring of enthusiasm among female voters for a McCain-Hutchison pairing. And their enthusiasm might just turn this election around.
THANK YOU!
***COPYRIGHT EILEEN MCGANN AND DICK MORRIS 2008. REPRINTS WITH PERMISSION ONLY***
DICK MORRIS’ ’08 PLAY-BY-PLAY Volume 1, #32
DICK MORRIS’ ’08 PLAY-BY-PLAY
Volume 1, #32
August 18, 2008
OBAMA TEACHES US: HOW TO LOSE A CONVENTION
For the first time in recent memory, the Democratic and Republican conventions will be held on consecutive weeks. The Democratic gathering, in Denver, will begin on Monday, August 25 and run through Thursday, August 29. The Republican conclave, in Minneapolis-St. Paul, will start three days later on Monday, September 1 and run through Thursday, September 4.
Obama is certain to have a big bounce in the polls after his acceptance speech outdoors to 75,000 spectators Thursday, August 29th. But how will the bump stand up during the Republican convention? It is unexplored territory.
Will the Obama spell linger over the Republican convention, impeding any real gain for McCain? Or will his magic dissipate under the pounding he is sure to receive, day and night, during the Republican convention?
To bring about the quick-dissipation scenario, the McCain campaign has done a good job of laying the groundwork for a dismissal of the Obama acceptance speech. While the night of the speech, it is likely to stoke all the passion that he generated during his campaign in the primaries – and more so – McCain has laid the basis for asking during the Republican convention the classic question Mondale asked of the charismatic Gary Hart in 1984: “where’s the beef?”
By running ads which highlight Obama’s celebrity and charisma, the McCain campaign can dismiss the speech as all sizzle and no steak. They can make Obama’s rock star popularity work against him, much as it did against Bobby Kennedy in 1968. The Senator’s campaign, brilliantly captured in the new book The Last Campaign by Thurston Clarke, was haunted by the kids who engulfed him morning, noon, and night. He had to replace his tie clip and cufflinks several times a day because they were ripped off. Once somebody even took off his shoes! Voters put down his campaign as a youth crusade, unworthy of serious consideration. McCain is trying to marginalize Obama in the same way.
McCain’s polling likely shows that voters distrust the puppy love with which young people greet the Obama20candidacy and worry that he has not been properly vetted. They will probably use the very enthusiasm he arouses against him, portraying him as unsafe and risky.
The days when a political convention actually meant anything are, of course, long over. But the four day and night extravaganza still means a huge amount in our presidential contests. A bad convention (like Bush in 1992) can be fatal. A good convention (like Bush in 2004 or Clinton in 1996) can be decisive.
The average convention gives its candidate a bounce of ten points in the polls — the standard by which conventions are measured.
But Obama is showing, nonetheless, an almost historic inability to control his own convention. He has allowed the Clintons to invade his time and hog the spotlight. The effect will be to reduce his convention to a one night stand. A great convention acceptance speech might give him 8-10 points, but its unlikely to generate more and it is not likely to stand up to the Republican onslaught the following week.
The most likely scenario is a tied race after both conventions and there is even some possibility of a McCain lead.
WHO WATCHES CONVENTIONS?
Network commentators delight in highlighting how few people watch conventions, but they are focused on ratings, which measure what all people watch. Political surveys, which ask what likely voters watch, indicate a tremendous interest in following the conventions.
In 1996, when there was much less interest than there is in this race, about 20% of the electorate followed the gavel to gavel coverage on CSPAN and PBS. Another 30% watched most of the prime time coverage and a total of 75% watched the acceptance speeches. Conventions are the decisive media event of the early campaign, outshone only by the three televised debates.
But to capitalize on a convention, one has to treat each night on its own, projecting a game plan=2 0for that night’s viewers and monitoring how much of a bounce each evening generates. That’s why the Clintons’ expropriation of two of the four nights is so damaging to Obama’s campaign. It assures that Hillary’s candidacy, not his, will be front and center for the bulk of the convention. Obama’s backers and handlers may assume that all anyone watches is the final acceptance speech, but that would be a misjudgment. The fact is that viewership on each of the four nights is very high.
For every ten people who watch the acceptance speech on Thursday, eight watch on Wednesday, seven watch on Tuesday, and six watch on Monday (an average of the Neilson ratings over the past few conventions). So most of the electorate will get a total emersion in what-might-have-been when Hillary and Bill speak, not exactly the warm up Obama needs for his acceptance speech.
CAN EVENTS DERAIL OBAMA?
Asked what could get in the way of his political plans, former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan answered “events, dear boy, events.”
The Russian invasion of Georgia shows how quickly events, particularly abroad, can change domestic political calculations. While American voters are determined to cast their ballots based on domestic issues like the economy, energy, and health care, events may blow them off course and lead to an election based on international problems.
The more attention focuses on foreign and national security issues, of course, the more likely is a McCain victory. Voters would not have trusted the ingénue Bill Clinton in 1992 over the veteran George H. W. Bush had not the international scene been quiescent. It was possible to take a chance on Clinton because no pressing national security issues seemed to be at hand.
But foreign affairs may not be so docile in 2008. With the United States fighting a two-front war in Iraq and Afghanistan and with Russia bent on a program of imperial expansionism in Eastern Europe, events may force Americans to elect the more experienced and seasoned of the candidates.
But the most serious threat to international peace, and to a cakewalk for Obama, may come from the issues triggered by Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and the threat it poses for Israel.
AS ISRAEL GOES, SO GOES THE UNITED STATES?
Facing a potential existential threat in Iran’s nuclear program, Israeli politicians are hotly debating the nature of the Jewish State’s response. Overshadowing the dialogue is the Kadima Party primary to be held in mid-September. The top two contenders are Tizipi Livni and Shaul Mofaz. Livni, the current foreign minister in the Olmert government, has been Condi Rice’s point person in the negotiations with the Palestinian Authority and Syria. An advocate of diplomacy, she generally throws cold water on the need for immediate military action against Iran. Her opponent, Shaul Mofaz, the current Transportation Minister, is the former Chief of Staff of the Army and has said publicly that he believes an air strike against Iran is necessary.
Currently, Livni is ahead of Mofaz, but Olmert, the still serving prime minister, is openly opposed to her candidacy. Olmert has indicated that he will not step aside as prime minister until a new prime minister can be named. That not only means that Livni would have to win the Kadima Primary, but that she would need to cobble together a majority of the Knesset to serve as prime minister. That won’t be easy. Barak, the leader of the Labor Party is highly critical of Livni and Shas, the religious party, may refuse to serve in a government with her (or under any woman). Shas and Labor are key element s of Olmert’s coalition and, if they leave, it is hard to see how Livni would put together a government.
If Livni can’t put together a coalition, then Olmert will stay in power and will be able to exact vengeance on party members who voted for Livni. With such a prospect, Kadima members may vote for Mofaz.
If Mofaz wins, then an attack on Iran is very likely. But when would it happen?
Clearly Israel would want to attack while Bush is in office since he will certainly do all he can to help the attack, while Obama might not. But could Israel wait until after the election? What would happen if President-elect Obama told Mofaz not to attack Iran? Israel could no more ignore the request of the president-elect than it could if the request came from a sitting president. But it matters less what the Democratic candidate says before the election.
So Israel may attack Iran and it may do so before the US election. If that helps elect McCain, so be it.
All this goes to show how fragile Obama’s support is. A deep foreign crisis would drain his candidacy of its glitter and invest it with fears of his inexperience, and naiveté.
AND FOR VICE PRESIDENT?
Obama’s goal in choosing a vice president seems to be to avoid controversy. Picking an Evan Bayh or a Tim Kaine would be a safe choice. (Although some will worry about Bayh’s close ties to Mark Penn and others will be concerned about Kaine’s lack of experience and the absence of any national security credentials).
But he would be better advised to choose Joe Biden or somebody with good national security credentials. If a foreign crisis heats up during the campaign, a vice president who has been through it all would be a reassuring sight to anxious voters.
Kaine has even less experience than Obama. A city councilman, a mayor of Richmond, and now a governor of Virginia, he has hardly set foot in Washington DC. Apart from some time as a young volunteer in Honduras he appears to be without any foreign policy experience at all. While he would emphasize that the Obama/Kaine ticket would be the non-Washington slate, choosing a vice president whose lacks so closely parallel his own could be going too far.
I still wonder why Obama does not give more serious consideration to Bill Richardson. The Hispanic vote is in play this year and Obama has little popularity among Latinos, as his loss of their votes in the primaries makes clear. Richardson’s extensive foreign experience and his service in the cabinet both make him an attractive candidate.
McCain is trying to choose between Joe Lieberman and Mitt Romney. He is worried about either choice. The conservatives, led by the talk show hosts, have vowed to leave the ticket if Lieberman is the vice presidential nominee. But choosing him would so clearly help McCain win swing voters and would send a message of bipartisanship all could hear. Romney would trigger disapproval from evangelicals who are suspicious both of his flip flops on abortion and gays and his Mormon faith. Either choice has its drawbacks.
My guess is that McCain may play it safe and choose Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, a safe choice, although not one that will do much to attract votes.
But there is also some possibility that McCain could score a winning ticket by putting Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison on as vice president. With Obama showing weakness among women over 40, nominating a woman could be a master stroke. Electing a woman vice president has long been a goal of the feminist community and women all over America would be attracted to such a ticket.
A good Senator with a fine record, Hutchison might bring real strength to the ticket and give McCain’s candidacy an historical aspect to compete with Obama’s.
THANK YOU!
***COPYRIGHT EILEEN MCGANN AND DICK MORRIS 2008. REPRINTS WITH PERMISSION ONLY***
DICK MORRIS’ ’08 PLAY-BY-PLAY Volume 1, #31
DICK MORRIS’ ’08 PLAY-BY-PLAY
Volume 1, #31
August 7, 2008
THE VICE PRESIDENCY
Obama has a limited range of pain or gain in his choice of a vice president. With his highly personal and charismatic candidacy, there is little he stands to gain or lose in choosing a vice president.
Unless he chooses Hillary, which would be a total disaster. It would suddenly make him accountable for all of her and Bill’s scandals past, present and future and would bring an uncontrollable element into the equation: Bill.
But since current indications are that Obama has not taken leave of his senses, he will likely not turn to Hillary.
The top three choices seem to be Kane of Virginia, Bayh of Indiana, or Biden of Delaware. My vote would go to Biden. He is a seasoned politician with tremendous national security credentials. He would bring a touch of reassurance to the ticket in the same way that Cheney did to the novitiate George W. Bush in 2000. He is a fierce speaker, a formidable debater, and could lead the attack on McCain.
Kane would simply add another inexperienced ingénue to the ticket. Obama’s got inexperience covered already. Why would he need Kane? His selection could put Virginia in play, but it would probably still go Republican.
I think Obama will choose Evan Bayh, former Indiana governor and now, succeeding his father Birch Bayh, the Senator from the Hoosier state. He seems like a safe choice, but he is a cream puff. I worked hard to get him the keynote speech at the 1996 Democratic Convention but he wouldn’t use the occasion, as every other keynote speaker has, to attack the Republicans in general or Dole in particular. Instead he gave a forgettable and self-serving series of bromides that did him and Clinton very little good.
He can’t be counted on to bring the fight to the other side. He dislikes “getting down in the gutter” and that’s a phobia a vice presidential candidate can’t afford to nurture.
Obama could choose Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius or some other woman. He certainly needs to attract woman voters, especially those over 40. But if he names a woman – other than Hillary – he will have hell to pay with the Clintons. They will see him as deliberately slapping Hillary in the face and will note that he is promoting a rival to the New York Senator. It would be a declaration of war that Obama would hesitate to make.
If Obama’s VP choice doesn’t matter that much, McCain’s could be enormously important.
He needs to jump start his candidacy and inject a “wow” factor. Either choosing a woman (likely Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison – Condi’s not interested) or Joe Lieberman would do nicely.
Its tempting to name a woman and collect all those alienated over 40 women who are not backing Obama. Remember the enthusiasm Geraldine Ferraro generated when Mondale nominated her in 1984? Women who had backed Hillary, will turnout in droves to elect a woman vice president. Even a pro-life one at that. It’s hard to imagine any other VP choice that would produce so many votes.
But…is Kay Bailey up to the job? Would she come across as an old lady to go with an old man? Can she handle the battering of a VP run without making any faux pas? Is she intellectually impressive enough to nominate? I have my doubts.
So I think McCain should choose Joe Lieberman. The first cross-party ticket since Abraham Lincoln named Andrew Johnson in 1864 would send an unmistakable signal of change. It would flag McCain’s determination to transcend the partisan gridlock in Washington and his independence of party orthodoxy. Selecting Lieberman would elevate the national security issue and reassure environmentalists on climate change issues. It would help attract Jewish voters in Florida and Ohio. And Lieberman has proven he can handle the stress of a national campaign. Joe is the way to go.
But McCain will probably choose Mitt Romney who will do him no good at all. Voters are allergic to Romney, perhaps because of his religion. Despite massive spending, topping his rivals by 3:1 in the primaries (largely out of his own pocket) Romney lost Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida and California. The only states he carried were Michigan where his Dad had been governor, Massachusetts where he was, and a bunch of LDS (Mormon) states in the far west. He also carried some Super Tuesday states when his rivals didn’t have the money or time left over after California to fight him.
It is a myth that Romney would stand for economic recovery. He helped the Olympics recover. Big deal.
And Democrats, unlike his primary opponents, will have a field day with the layoffs in the companies Romney “turned around” as a hedge fund guy. They will use class warfare to discredit Romney in a way you couldn’t do in a Republican Primary.
He needs to jump start his candidacy and inject a “wow” factor. Either choosing a woman (likely Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison – Condi’s not interested) or Joe Lieberman would do nicely.
WHAT DOES THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE MEAN?
When George W. Bush defeated Al Gore in the electoral college in 2000, after having lost the popular tally to the Democrat by 500,000 votes, it was only the fourth time such an outcome has happened in American history.
(The others were John Quincy Adams’ defeat of Andrew Jackson in 1824, Rutherford B. Hayes’ triumph over Samuel Tilden in 1876, and Benjamin Harrison’s victory against incumbent president Grover Cleveland in 1888).
So how important are swing states and the electoral college tally? In following the contest of 2008, should we be paying a lot of attention to the individual state polls in places like Florida or Ohio or focus mainly on the national popular vote?
The short answer is that if the popular vote is one half of one percent or closer, the swing states make the difference and it becomes quite possible for the winner of the vote to lose in the electoral college. But any margin of victory in the popular vote that is larger than that is almost guaranteed to be reflected in the electoral vote.
The fact is that most states vote more or less the same relative to the national vote year after year. They are always X percent20more Democrat or more Republican than the nation as a whole.
Take Georgia for example. In 2000, Bush got 48% of the national popular vote and won 55% of the vote in Georgia, seven points above his national showing. In 2004, Bush’s national vote rose to 51% and, sure enough, his vote in Georgia also went up to 58%, again seven points above his national showing. As Bush went up three points nationally (from 48 to 51) he also went up three points in Georgia (from 55 to 58).
So the odds are that any Republican candidate for president will run seven points better in Georgia than he does nationally.
In six of the fifty states, Bush’s vote share rose exactly as much as it did nationally from 2000 to 2004. In eighteen others, it rose by only one point more or20one point less than it did nationally. In twelve states, it rose by two points more or two points less than the national vote and in thirteen states, it rose by three points more or three points less than the national vote.
So Bush’s popular vote in forty-nine states (Hawaii was the exception) rose between 2000 and 2004 within three points as much as it did nationally.
This data shows how marginal is the impact of state-by-state campaigning. In a close election, it can make a big difference, but most of the time in most of the states, a party’s presidential candidate’s vote share in that state is in a fixed relationship to his national vote share.
The chart below shows how much more or less Bush got in each state relative to his national vote share in 2000 and in 2004.
So, to read this chart, begin with Utah, the most Republican state in the nation. Bush ran 21 points better there than he did nationally in 2000 and also ran 21 points better in Utah than he did nationally in 2004.
The states are listed in the order of how Republican they were, relative to the national vote share, in 2000. And you can bet that the chart for 2 008, when all is said and done, will be very similar in ranking to this chart. We just don’t know yet what McCain’s or Obama’s national vote share will be.
HOW STATES DEVIATED FROM THE NATIONAL NORM IN THEIR PRESIDENTIAL VOTES, 2000 AND 2004
| State | % Deviation from National Bush Vote | |
| 2000 | 2004 | |
| Utah | +21 | +21 |
| Wyoming | +21 | +18 |
| Idaho | +19 | +17 |
| Nebraska | +14 | +15 |
| North Dakota | +13 | +12 |
| South Dakota | +12 | +9 |
| Oklahoma | +12 | +15 |
| Alaska | +11 | +10 |
| Texas | +11 | +10 |
| Kansas | +10 | +11 |
| Mississippi | +10 | +8 |
| Montana | +10 | +8 |
| South Carolina | +9 | +7 |
| Indiana | +9 | +9 |
| Kentucky | +9 | +9 |
| Alabama | +8 | +11 |
| North Carolina | +8 | +5 |
| Georgia | +7 | +7 |
| Louisiana | +5 | +6 |
| Missouri | +5 | +2 |
| Virginia | +4 | +3 |
| West Virginia | +4 | +5 |
| Tennessee | +3 | +6 |
| Arizona | +3 | +4 |
| Arkansas | +3 | +3 |
| Colorado | +3 | +1 |
| Ohio | +2 | 0 |
| Nevada | +2 | -1 |
| Florida | +1 | 0 |
| Iowa | 0 | -1 |
| New Hampshire | 0 | -2 |
| New Mexico | 0 | -1 |
| Wisconsin | 0 | -2 |
| Michigan | -1 | -3 |
| Oregon | -1 | -4 |
| Minnesota | -2 | -3 |
| Pennsylvania | -2 | -3 |
| Washington | -3 | -5 |
| Maine | -4 | -6 |
| Illinois | -4 | -7 |
| California | -6 | -7 |
| Delaware | -6 | -5 |
| New Jersey | -8 | -5 |
| Maryland | -8 | -8 |
| Vermont | -9 | -10 |
| Connecticut | -10 | -7 |
| Hawaii | -11 | -6 |
| New York | -13 | -11 |
| Massachusetts | -15 | -14 |
| Rhode Island | -16 | -12 |
| Maryland | -8 | -8 |
| DC | -39 | -42 |
So here’s how to use this chart:
Check out the national polling. If Obama and McCain are in a dead even tie, the states that scored a zero on the chart will be in play (because they tend to mirror the national vote exactly). So if there is a tie in the national polls, expect the swing states to be Florida, Iowa, Ohio, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada, and Wisconsin.
But if Obama moves out to a three point lead nationally, those states will all likely vote for him. The new swing states, at that point would be those states ranked at +3 or +4 in the chart like Colorado, Arkansas, Arizona, Tennessee, West Virginia, Virginia, and Missouri. In a dead even contest, these states would all vote Republican, but in a national race where Obama is ahead by three, they would be in play.
Conversely, if McCain were to open up a three point lead in the national polling, the states that tend to be one or two or three points more Democratic than the national trends would be in play. They would be: Michigan, Oregon, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Washington State.
Got it?
(If it seems confusing and complicated, it is exactly the methodology we used in the 1996 Clinton campaign to target where we would spend our money. As Clinton’s national vote share rose or fell, we shifted resources to the states that came in range. Indeed, we carried it one step further. We figured out which counties in each state would come into play at what percentage of the national vote so as to focus our phone and field operations. For that, a computer comes in handy).
AS ISRAEL GOES, SO GOES AMERICA
Pay attention to the Kadima Party primary in Israel, now scheduled for the middle of September. It could be the pivotal event in the U.S. presidential contest.
With Prime Minister Olmert resigning one step ahead of the sheriff, there is a primary for control of his Kadima Party. Remember that Kadima used to be part of the conservative Likud Party now headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, but it split off to follow Ariel Sharon in his path of trying to trade land for peace. When Sharon fell into a coma, Olmert took over.
The contenders are Livni, the foreign minister, and Mofaz, the former Army Chief of Staff and the current transportation minister. As a woman and a moderate, Livni will get the votes of the left of the Kadima Party while Mofaz captures the right.
If Livni wins, not much will change. She’ll pursue Olmert’s negotiating efforts and will not likely take military action against Iran. She’ll fit in nicely with Obama in trying to appease Iran.
But if Mofaz wins, he is very likely to bomb Iran. He may even cross party lines and form a coalition with Netanyahu to get the support in the Knesset (Congress) he needs to do so without letting the dovish Labor Party, now part of the ruling coalition, slow him down.
If Israel decides to bomb Iran to stop it from getting a bomb, when would they do it?
Obviously, if Obama wins the election, they had better do it before Bush leaves office. The Democrat might not be sufficiently hard line to offer the necessary U.S. assistance and the vital American sanction for the operation.
But can Israel really proceed if the President-elect doesn’t want her to? Hardly. So there is a very good chance that they will decide to bomb Iran before the election. It doesn’t matter what Obama thanks of the attack before the election. And, it might have the ancillary benefit (from Israel’s point of view and ours’) of helping McCain by creating a foreign policy crisis for the U.S.
If a war is raging in the Middle East, it’s hard to see the nation trusting an ingénue like Obama with the presidency.
THANK YOU!
***COPYRIGHT EILEEN MCGANN AND DICK MORRIS 2008. REPRINTS WITH PERMISSION ONLY***
DICK MORRIS’ ’08 PLAY-BY-PLAY Volume 1, #30
WHY HILLARY LOST
It started with the rulebook. Obama read it, Hillary never did. She, who prided herself on her hands-on experience in two previous presidential elections, assumed that 2008 would be like all the others: that one candidate would defeat the other in either one bruising, pivotal primary – or in a series of states on Super Tuesday — and that her opponent, then deprived of the ability to raise funds, would drop out of the race, leaving her on a glide path to the nomination.
But, unlike defeated candidates Mo Udall (1976), Gary Hart (1984), Al Gore (1988), Paul Tsongas (1992), and Bill Bradley (2000), Obama had carefully read the rulebook. He realized that, unlike the Republican Party, the Democrats awarded votes in their primaries on a proportional representation basis. That meant that the Republicans gave the winner in each state all of the state’s votes. But the Democrats awarded the votes by proportional representation. That meant that if a candidate won a state by a landslide – 60-40 – the loser would still get 40% of the votes. That’s a big difference.
To be fair to Udall, Hart, Gore, Tsongas, and Bradley, they would have had trouble staying in the race after the knock-out primary because their funding would have dried up. But Obama combined his understanding of the rules with the lessons he learned from Howard Dean’s almost victory in 2004 – that the Internet could be a viable basis for fundraising.
On line, you didn’t have to drop out if you lost a primary. True online believers stayed hitched even when your candidacy seemed in trouble. Defeats did not deter them. These donors were in for the duration. So Obama set about the key task in modern American politics – amassing an Internet list. Every time he gave a speech, he collected all the email addresses. Federal law did not require the campaign to reveal the names of donors who gave less than $100, so most candidates didn’t bother to collect them. But Obama did. Buy a T-shirt, a button, attend a rally, the campaign asked for your email address. And you entered the list. The list grew and grew. By May of this year, it exceeded one million donors.
Armed with such a valuable list, Obama realized he could not be knocked out by early primary wins by Hillary. He could win by fighting a battle that anticipated a long haul and made allowances for early defeats.
Meanwhile, Hillary assumed 2008 was like all other years. She saw half of the states moving up their primaries and caucuses to Super Tuesday and decided that this was the moment to pounce. Win California, win New York, win New Jersey and watch the other candidate hit the canvass for the ten count.
But, instead of the referee raising her hand in triumph, Hillary found that Wednesday was just the day after Super Tuesday and that Obama just kept on rolling along.
HILLARY AS SAME OLD, SAME OLD
But even before Super Tuesday, in the closing months of 2007, Hillary Clinton and her team of strategic advisors made a huge blunder. Instead of running in the Democratic primary as the candidate of change, as the first woman to run for president, as the dynamic new force that would reshape American politics, she opted for “experience” as her selling point.
Fascinated by Obama’s lack of experience, Hillary decided to become the “un-Cola”, the opposite of Coca-Cola, the beverage that had no caffeine or sugar and was clear and clean. She would be the candidate of experience to highlight Obama’s status as a recently arrived ingénue.
Worrying about whether voters would accept a woman as the next commander in chief in the midst of a war, she decided to emphasize – and exaggerate – her White House tenure and make it the selling proposition of her candidacy. “I can hit the ground running on day one” she said over and over again. “I don’t need on the job training” she repeated, aiming a subtle barb at Obama who clearly would.
But Obama made a brilliant counter move – he turned her flank. Confronted with experience as an argument, he countered by making himself the proponent of change. He capitalized on Hillary’s insider status and dependence on lobbyist and special interest money to portray her as the candidate of Washington, deepening a hole she had dug for herself by emphasizing her time and experience in the capital. At the same time, Obama managed to make his position as the first black candidate much more significant than hers’ as the first woman.
Oddly, he did this by running a post-racial campaign. In the late months of 2007 and January, 2008, he ran, implicitly, as a contrast to Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. He never invoked his race, abjured victim status, and even spoke sharply of the “anti-intellectual” climate among young blacks. He backed merit pay for teachers and suggested diluting affirmative action to base it on poverty rather than on race or gender.
Meanwhile, Hillary looked and sounded like the quintessential establishment candidate, all the time burnishing her Washington image. In the later stages of the Iowa campaign, she tried to pivot to become the candidate who was experienced at making change. But it was way too late. Obama became the charismatic candidate and she was more of same.
After losing Iowa, Hillary moved to inject race into the campaign. In a carefully orchestrated campaign, she and Bill spoke about Martin Luther King as ineffective and her surrogates emphasized Obama’s race, claiming that he would never have won had he been white. Obama, who had struggled to keep race out of the campaign, now was confronted squarely with the issue.
Obama stumbled, losing New Hampshire, but used race to rebound in South Carolina, with its huge black population. Despite Hillary’s later claims, Florida and Michigan passed as non-events since, in the one Obama did not appear on the ballot and in the other, he obeyed the party injunction not to campaign.
And then it was Super Tuesday.
Obama realized that he wouldn’t win Super Tuesday, but he knew he would do enough to hold his own. But when the smoke cleared on Super Tuesday, he had lost all the important states – California, New York, New Jersey – but he had won enough tiny states to stay in the race. And he won many of them by top heavy margins because Hillary had been so focused on the big states and the potential knockout punch they represented that she had ignored these states.
In Colorado, he won 36-19. He won Kansas by 23-9. Hillary won California, of course, but she only won by 204-166. Tiny Idaho, which went for Obama by 15-3, offset New Jersey which Hillary won, but by only 59-48.
In all, Obama left Super Tuesday slightly behind.
And then, he was in his element. February. He had prepared for February for a year, building organizations in a series of states which Hillary barely knew existed. The Clinton campaign, assuming a Super Tuesday knockout, had neglected the February states and Obama had a virtual monopoly there.
And he had the money. His Internet fund raising base responded to the Super Tuesday tie with more and more donations. Obama was raising ten million dollars each week to his war chest.
Hillary tried to parlay her front runner status to raise funds, but her rolodex was exhausted, all of the cards representing maxed out donors who could give no more. She ended up spending $11.6 million of her own money! But Obama’s small donors, still had plenty to give.
And so Obama ran the table in February. He won the eleven states that voted between Super Tuesday and March 4th by 288-165. On one day, he wrapped up Virginia, Maryland, and DC by 108-63. Hillary would never recover.
The February states gave Obama a solid lead in elected delegates which Hillary could never overcome. Bounce back as she might, Obama won enough delegates in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Texas to keep his lead. When he won North Carolina, he offset his minor losses in the northeastern states and Hillary had run out of time and out of states.
Hillary moved more and more into the racist corner. She became the new George Wallace, exploiting racism under the guise of populism. Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s rants opened the door for Hillary to score big wins in Kentucky and West Virginia. But Obama had amassed such a lead that Hillary was sunk.
THE CLINTON MACHINE COULDN’T DELIVER
The Clintons were counting on a win in the Rules Committee to at least give Hillary the argument that she had won the popular vote. By all counts, Clinton partisans had 13 of the i votes and several others were expected to support her position that all of the votes should be counted in both states. But the Clintons had not yet realized that they no longer controlled the Democratic Party. She was not able to force her unsupportable position through the committee.
That may have been the moment that the Clintons finally knew that the end was near.
There would not be a Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton order of succession.
GRACELESS IN DEFEAT
But even after Obama clinched the Democratic nomination last night, Hillary would not admit defeat. Watching her speak, anyone would have thought that she, and not Obama, had won the nomination. Deliberately intruding on his historic victory by organizing her own made-for- TV party, she was introduced by Terry Mc Auliffe as “the next president of the United States.” Throughout the day, she leaked word that she wanted to be the nominee for Vice-President.
It may be that Obama will have to peel Hillary’s fingers off of the podium at the convention in order to finally get rid of her.
BILL CLINTON HAS DEFINITELY LOST IT
Throughout this long presidential campaign, Bill Clinton has set a new standard for inappropriate behavior for both an ex-president and a spouse of a candidate.
He truly is a piece of work.
He’s been revolting in his arrogance, his race-baiting, his personal attacks on Obama, his exaggerations about Hillary’s accomplishments and achievements, and his sarcastic and snide remarks.
We’ve all seen the red-faced, finger-wagging tirades that have been repeatedly captured on YouTube. He often seems like a crazy old uncle who ruins the Thanksgiving dinner with his nutty attacks while everyone else at the table avoids eye contact with him.
He’s become Crazy Bill.
I often saw those same kinds of tantrums in the twenty years that I worked for Clinton. But, for the most part, he was able to keep them out of public view. Now it seems that he’s lost the ability – or maybe it’s the desire – to filter his rage. The former privately angry Bill Clinton is now publicly in everyone’s face.
In responding to a critical article in Vanity Fair, Clinton called respected journalist Todd Purdum “slimy,” a “scumbag,” a “real dishonest guy.”
That’s not what he thought about Purdum when he was President. In fact, he viewed Purdum as one of the best.
One day in 1995, while I was working for Clinton, Joe Lelyved came to see me. As the Executive Editor of The New York Times, he wanted to end the tension between The Times and the White House that had developed over the paper’s coverage of the Whitewater scandal. Assuring me that he wanted to move on, Lelyved asked me to set up an interview with the President for The New York Times Magazine.
I discussed the proposal with Clinton and his press secretary Mike McCurry. After a few phone calls back and forth, the ground rules were established. The only remaining question was which reporter would do the interview and write the piece. Clinton agreed to Purdum and was very happy with the positive piece that he eventually wrote. He never said a single critical word about Purdum to me.
But now he’s a “slimy”, “dishonest” “scumbag.”
Purdum’s article in Vanity Fair raises the same questions about Clinton that I have heard over and over again from so many people who know him and who have been appalled as they watch what he’s become. “What’s happened to Bill Clinton?” they ask. And that’s the question that Purdum raised, too. It’s the question that anyone watching the embarrassing behavior of the former president must ask.
We’ve seen the rage, the sense of entitlement, the mean-spiritedness of Bill Clinton on constant display. But there’s something else here, too. Either Bill Clinton has lost some of his superior intellectual skills or he’s a brilliant actor. I suspect it’s the former.
In the audio tape of the interview about Purdum, Clinton seethes about the journalist’s role in “telling lies to Ken Starr.” He also says that Purdum never apologized to him about Whitewater.
What’s that about?
Clinton is apparently referring to Jeff Gerth, who wrote about (but did not lie about) Whitewater for The New York Times. A review of The Times archives reveals that Purdum wrote only two pieces about Whitewater out of the hundreds of articles that he authored. One questioned the moral authority of the Whitewater Committee Chairman, Senator Alfonse D’Amato, in view of the investigations of his own ethical conduct. (hardly a negative story) A second article reported on Hillary Clinton’s defense of her actions in Whitewater. (also not a negative piece). Where are the lies here? There’s no there there. Clinton’s rantings are just wrong on that score. What makes one wonder about Clinton’s mental state is that he obviously knows that Dee Dee Meyers, his former press secretary, is not married to someone who covered Whitewater. But he seems to be having a serious memory problem, at best.
But Clinton went way beyond just the article in his crazy comments. He claimed that it was all part of a media conspiracy to elect Obama. Then he actually suggested that Obama put the ministers up to their anti-Hillary speeches to “slime” Hillary.
Say what?
Bill Clinton’s paranoid moanings about the conspiracy against him and his downright lies about a respected journalist are nothing new. They are, however, out of place in a presidential campaign.
It’s time for Crazy Bill to go home and take a much-needed rest.
THANK YOU!
***COPYRIGHT EILEEN MCGANN AND DICK MORRIS 2008. REPRINTS WITH PERMISSION ONLY***
DICK MORRIS’ ’08 PLAY-BY-PLAY Volume 1, #29
BARACK OBAMA: HOSTAGE TO HISTORY
When John Kerry dedicated the 2004 Democratic National Convention to a celebration of his role in fighting the war in Vietnam, he became a hostage to the historical reminiscences of every soldier who served with him in the war. Their collective doubts about the efficacy of his performance, the verisimilitude of his medals, and his length of service combined to undermine his credibility and, eventually, take down his candidacy.
Is Barack Obama about to suffer a similar fate courtesy of his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright? When Obama said, in Tuesday’s press conference that the Reverend Wright he saw over the weekend at the National Press Club “was not the same man I met twenty years ago,” he begs the question of what happened in the interim. Did he not go to church? Did he sleep through the sermons, like many a good Christian, or was Wright on his best behavior when the Senator was present? The media will doubtless be crawling over the church, interviewing every attendee who will stand still long enough about his recollections of when Obama was there and what Wright said that Sunday. Doubtless, there will be many eyewitnesses who will remember – accurately or not – that Obama was in the next pew when Wright spoke of 9-11 as the day America’s “chickens came home to roost” or when he blamed the American government for creating the HIV virus or when he announced that our government gives our children drugs to get them hooked.
In the immediate future, Obama’s comments were good ones and his moves important steps in the right (as opposed to Wright) direction. Just as he began his candidacy for president by implicitly contrasting his agenda with those of his predecessors as black candidates, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, he now defines himself as the opposite of the views expressed by Rev. Wright. Since Wright has now become the poster child for everything whites fear in radical blacks, Obama can position himself as the reasonable alternative and profit by the comparison.
But it’s a long way until election day and Obama’s denunciation of Wright now makes his credibility, and therefore his candidacy, hostage to the question of what did he know and when did he know it about Rev Wright’s political views.
It is clear as we get to know the Reverend that politics, race, and religion are bound tightly together in his mind. There appears to be no easy way to parse one away from the others. His theology is based on his view of God, man, and government and his notion of sin rests squarely on public, as well as private, misconduct. It is impossible to imagine such a man preaching 52 sermons a year without frequently letting his spiritual views bleed over into the political and it is equally hard to understand why Obama is so shocked – SHOCKED – to see Wright’s views fully elaborated.
Politicians must always fear getting “stuck” in a rut, hewing inflexibly to a given position, unable to maneuver or dodge incoming bullets. Johnson got stuck in Vietnam. Nixon got stuck in Watergate. Carter got stuck in the hostage crisis. Reagan got stuck in Iran-Contra. Bush sr. got stuck in the recession. Clinton was deprived of the ability to maneuver by the Monica scandal and Bush jr. is now stuck in Iraq. Is Obama now stuck in the controversy about Wright? Will his implicit claim not to have realized how much of a “caricature” (Obama’s word) Wright has become stand the test of scrutiny and time?
An issue like this acquires a life of its own. Granted we mostly now believe that Obama’s views are not akin to those of Rev Wright. But this controversy has gone beyond issues and ideology. It now relates to credibility and integrity. Is Obama telling us the truth when he says that he did not realize how extreme Wright had become until he heard him before the National Press Club? Or is he trying to fool us and to feign innocence?
And the controversy also goes to strength and leadership. Did Obama fail to separate himself from Wright because he was too weak and indecisive to do so? Is he too much the Hamlet to be capable of decisive action? Did he stay with Wright too long, both before and during his presidential candidacy? Did he show himself to be a strong leader or a weakling in the way he handled the controversy.
These questions, more than Wright’s ideology, are likely to determine the future of the Obama candidacy.
OBAMA’S NOMINATION IS NOT IN DANGER…BUT HIS ELECTION IS
Hillary Clinton cannot win the Democratic nomination even with the latest eruptions from Mt. Wright. He is like the ball team that wins a bunch of games after its rival has already mathematically clinched the pennant.
With 450 or so delegates yet to be selected (130 North Carolina, 70 Indiana, 50 each in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Oregon, 65 in Puerto Rico, and 20 in North Dakota and Montana combined), she has no chance of closing Obama’s 150 vote lead among elected delegates. In all likelihood, Obama will regain the ten votes he lost to Hillary in Pennsylvania next week when North Carolina and Indiana vote. Even if Hillary wins Indiana, Obama will probably win North Carolina by a sufficient margin to offset both Indiana and Pennsylvania.
With Obama well ahead among elected delegates, the superdelegates are not going to overturn the will of the voters.
The end game is pretty clear. Speaker Pelosi (who has great influence over the 230 superdelegates who are Democratic Congressmen), Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Party Chairman Howard Dean will ask the superdelegates to make up their minds shortly after the final votes are counted on June 3rd. They will insist that the superdelegates make their preference known in the first few weeks of June.
Then a mob psychology will take over. Obama will leave the primaries with about 1,925 delegates of the 2025 he needs to win the nomination. Super delegates will clamor to be counted in his column before he wins the nomination. Nobody will want to be the 2026th delegate to commit to Obama. There is no patronage or favor in being in such an unenviable position. With Obama so close to victory, the superdelegates will fear that they will be left off the bandwagon and they will line up to be counted for Obama.
Hillary will then face 2025 commitments for Obama and will have to withdraw. If she persists despite Obama’s statistical majority, Democrats will accuse her of sabotaging McCain, perhaps because she wants to get the nomination in 2012 and cannot if Obama is president. Hillary will not be able to stand up to the pressure and will pull out and the race for the nomination will be over before the end of June.
AND CAN MCCAIN BENEFIT FROM THE WRIGHT CONTROVERSY?
Let’s always remember that this is a Democratic year. The recession and the war guarantee an electorate heavily predisposed to vote for the Democrat. Bush will enter election day with an approval rating below 30%. Translated, this means that a successful Republican will draw almost half his votes from people who don’t like bush and disapprove of his performance.
A Republican can still win but his success hinges on two factors:
a) His ability to distance himself from Bush; and
b) The decision America eventually comes to about Barack Obama.
McCain’s job is not to consolidate his base. Obama will do that for him very nicely. Breaths there a Republican with a soul so dead that he is not terrified by Obama? Obama is the best thing that could have happened to the Republican Get Out the Vote (GOTV) campaign.
His job is to persuade Democrats and Independents that he is sort of like them. He has to narrow the synapse over which they must jump in order to vote for McCain. If they feel that McCain is a right winger in the tradition of Bush, they won’t vote for him even if their fear of Obama is palpable. They may have held their noses and voted for Hillary in the primaries, but to vote for a Bush acolyte would be carrying things too far. But if McCain takes positions on important issues that are acceptable to Democrats and Independents, he can harvest a bushel of votes driven his way by worry about Obama.
McCain needs to run as a populist and be the same kind of candidate he has been a Senator. In the US Senate, it was McCain who, virtually alone among Republicans, battled against tobacco, supported tough reforms of corporate governance that went way beyond what ultimately passed, fought for energy independence, and battled global warming. It was McCain who opposed the use of torture in interrogation of terrorists. This record might have limited appeal for Republicans, but it is the ideal record for a candidate who is in search of Democratic votes.
(Indeed, the reason McCain won the nomination in the first place is that the Republican electorate showed itself to have moved to the left along with the rest of America. It is fortunate for the GOP that they chose a candidate ideally positioned to beat Obama).
But the election will hinge on how we perceive Obama and that will be intimately tied to how he comes out of the Rev. Wright issue. Obama could win 40 states or lose 40 states, all depending on how he handles this mortal threat to his candidacy.
THANK YOU!
***COPYRIGHT EILEEN MCGANN AND DICK MORRIS 2008. REPRINTS WITH PERMISSION ONLY***