Chicago Daily Observer

Almost everyone I know in the netherworld of political hipsterdom either agonizes or exults or plunges into deep swami-like meditation with every presidential poll that pops up on the internet or TV screen.

My advice to all, on either side of the aisle, is save yourself the agony and forego the ecstasy. Worry about gasoline prices, paying off your mortgage, the state or nonstate of your love-life—anything but the polls.

Forget them.

They have no meaning now whatsoever. Do not permit your shorts to get into a bunch about something so fleeting and ultimately without merit as a poll nearly five months from Election Day.

Remember how far ahead of the pack Hillary Clinton was just five months ago? And how Rudy Guiliani was a shoo-in?

So most of the polls show Barack Obama ahead by four to six points. If this were November 1 that might be meaningful. But ... Read More...

Sen. Hillary Clinton has won Puerto Rico’s Democratic primary by a wide margin, CNN projects, giving her the larger share of the territory’s 55 delegates. She swept Sen. Barack Obama in every major demographic group, including groups he generally does well in, such as younger voters and higher income voters, exit polls suggest.

With votes counted from 90 percent of Kentucky’s precincts, Clinton was gaining 65 percent of the vote to 30 percent for Obama.

Almost nine in 10 ballots were cast by whites, and the former first lady was winning their support overwhelmingly. She defeated her rival among voters of all age groups and incomes, the college educated and non-college educated, self-described liberals, moderates and conservatives.

If you watched the entire speech John Edwards gave in endorsing Barack Obama, you might have been struck by the first five or six minutes, which sounded almost like a nominating speech for Sen. Hillary Clinton. This was neither incidental nor accidental.

With the nomination all but wrapped up—despite the protestations from the Clinton camp—one of Obama’s top priorities is to reach out, embrace and win over the votes of Clinton’s key constituencies.

As all the polls showed, following every primary a large cluster of Clinton voters said they would be unhappy if she didn’t get nominated. They threatened to vote for John McCain or sit out the election. Obama voters make similar vows, while history shows that eventually most Democrats come together—but sometimes not all do, as witness 1968.

A key demographic among Clinton voters is, of course, late middle-aged and older women who spent decades awaiting a woman ... Read More...

From the Daily Herald

As the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination battle winds down (despite Hillary Clinton’s massive West Virginia victory) I would like to present “eight” key steps to Barack Obama’s apparent nomination victory.

• Summer 2007—In the multicandidate debate at Soldier Field sponsored by organized labor, most of the Democratic candidates seemed in awe of Clinton. She oozed confidence while the others, including Obama, appeared shaky. However, my notes from the debate mentioned that Clinton generated little positive passion about her candidacy—rather, she played on her experience and the inevitability of her nomination victory.

For this jaded politician-watcher who has been in the peanut galleries for more than 50 years—as journalist, speech-writer, state official, federal official, foreign service officer, corporate executive, university lecturer, radio host and now journalist again—John McCain’s Columbus, Ohio speech yesterday goes down as easily the finest in recent times, equaling the greatest Republican campaign speech made in the 20th century, Ronald Reagan’s 1976 address to the Republican convention in Kansas City that nominated Gerald Ford.

At Kansas City Reagan, though defeated, set the parameters for his 1980 speech by articulating a matchless vision that Ford and no other Republican could have matched, sending delegates home with buyers’ remorse, feeling they had just nominated the wrong man. In his speech, Reagan told the story that became almost immortally tied to him. He was ... Read More...

Why do so many in the party insist that millions of votes in two key states be counted only if they don’t matter — that is, if the result is a fait accompli — and not be counted if they do?

If they were counted now — even if some of them were counted now — things might be quite different. According to the Real Clear Politics total, when one includes estimated vote totals in caucus states (a factor which favors Obama) plus results from Florida (which favor Clinton), but nothing from Michigan, where Obama’s name was not on the ballot, Obama’s lead in the national popular vote is 411,915. That figure is less than Obama’s margin of victory in his home of Cook County, Illinois, where, according to the Illinois Board of Elections, Obama won by 429,052 votes. By other counts, Obama’s lead is far less than his winning ... Read More...

Hillary Rodham Clinton romped to victory Tuesday in the West Virginia primary, burying Barack Obama in a landslide that seemed unlikely to stop his steady march to the Democratic nomination.

Running in a state tailored to her strengths—with a large turnout of white, rural and working-class voters—Clinton posted one of her biggest winning margins. With nearly all of the vote counted, she was leading Obama 67% to 26%.

Money: Even though West Virginia was long expected to go big for Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama still outspent his opponent by more than 2–1 on television advertising, according to the Campaign Media Analysis Group.

. . . your own opinion doesn’t count for much. A couple of weeks ago Barack Obama whomped Hillary Clinton in North Carolina and lost to her narrowly in Indiana, outcomes that were generally expected. Overnight, the media (and apparently the Democratic Party) decided that was that—Obama had wrapped up the nomination. The tone of the coverage underwent a sea change. Clinton was now an object of affection and indulgence:

My column on Wednesday argued for Clinton to gracefully exit the stage now that it looks like there are no more rabbits to pull out of her electoral hat. But readers—not all of them women—pushed back. Let her quit when she’s good and ready, many argued. She’s earned that right. Carol Marin, Sun-Times.

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, after planes had crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Vice President Dick Cheney was in the White House bunker and had to make a momentous recommendation to President Bush, who was in flight aboard Air Force One: that Bush authorize the military to shoot down any civilian airliners that might be hijacked and headed for other targets.

Bush concurred—and shortly after, the moment of truth arrived. A military aide approached Cheney: “There is a plane 80 miles out,” he said. “There is a fighter in the area. Should we engage?” Cheney had thought through the complex implications of that question, had discussed it with his boss, and didn’t hesitate to answer: “Yes.” That plane was United Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania before fighter jets could reach it.

Yesterday The Ticket broke the stunning news of America’s acquisition of seven, maybe eight, new states, according to future president Barack Obama.

He was speaking at the start of a two-day swoop through Oregon, which is already a state.

In Beaverton, which is not a state yet, the Democrat let it slip that during this marathon 16-month party presidential nomination struggle against a bunch of dropouts and this female political zombie from New York who won’t surrender short of a silver stake, he had already visited 57 states with one more to go.

That’s not counting the existing states of Alaska and Hawaii, he said, which his staff decided aren’t important enough to visit. Unless maybe you’re Mike Gravel or Dennis Kucinich, who weren’t very important either, come to think of it.

I inaugurated this column early last fall with profiles of all the candidates of both parties and some predictions about the Dem and GOP races, which were just getting under way. Now that they are all but decided, I thought I’d go back and take a look at some of my calls.

Back on Sept. 20, I noted that Obama had plateaued in second place and was even falling further behind Hillary Clinton. He was definitely in need of a second leg and I wondered where he would find it.

My partially correct answer:

“Will Oprah Winfrey’s support provide him that second leg? Somewhat, but I doubt it will be enough. If, however, she (or some other issue) invigorates his black base, it will deflate Clinton’s numbers—though not in all-important Iowa or New Hampshire.”

Well, Winfrey’s endorsement turned out to be the turning point—and it brought him all-important Iowa, ... Read More...

“Grassroots” campainging reached a new landmark in the Indiana and North Carolina primaries this week. Combined spending by Sens. Obama and Clinton topped $9.5 Million, making the amount spent on the two mid sized state greater than the entire amount spent by the Kerry Campaign in the 2004 primary.

Combining the available spending by 527 Funding organizations (not Lobbyists mind you) with the candidates own treasure, gets the party of the working man up to $10.6 Million mostly in the last week or so in the two states.

Spending per vote by Sen. Obama came in at $4.92 dwarfing the $2.47 per vote that Sen. Clinton was able to shell out. Yet, Sen. Obama got something of a bargain compared to the nearly $10 per vote he spent in Pennsylvania, only to get trounced by a 10% margin by Sen. Clinton (coming in at $2.64 per vote).

It does not ... Read More...