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Buckley: a History Changer
Tweet Share on Facebook February 28, 2008 Comment (4)How many editors have changed the course of history? Not many. William F. Buckley Jr., who died earlier this week at 82, was one who did.
“Liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition” in America, wrote the distinguished literary critic Lionel Trilling in 1950. “The conservative impulse and the reactionary impulse do not, with some isolated and ecclesiastical exceptions, express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.”
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Clinton Flips on Superdelegates
Tweet Share on Facebook February 27, 2008 Comment (22)Tom Edsall has the scoop: The Hillary Clinton campaign is urging superdelegates not to endorse anyone. It is obviously afraid of a cascade to Barack Obama. And rightly so, given the latest Quinnipiac poll in Pennsylvania, which shows Clinton leading Obama among primary voters by only 49 to 43 percent. That looks just about the same as Clinton’s current lead in Ohio.
This suggests the following situation if on March 4 Clinton wins in both Ohio and Texas--a dicier proposition every day, given the Texas numbers. As I’ve explained, she’s unlikely to get any significant delegate advantage out of such victories unless her support rises sharply in the next six days. And the Pennsylvania numbers suggest she’s not likely to get much delegate advantage out of an Ohio-size victory there. Pennsylvania selects 55 delegates statewide by proportional representation and 103 delegates by proportional representation in congressional districts. In addition, there are 14 “soft, unpledged” delegates. Including those delegates, a 49-to-43 percent victory would give Clinton a 29-to-26 advantage in statewide delegates. Six of the 19 congressional districts with 26 delegates have even numbers of delegates: probably no delegate advantage for either candidate there; score it 13 to13. The two black-majority districts in Philadelphia have 16 delegates: probably an 11-to-5 Obama advantage. If you assume Clinton carries each of the 11 remaining districts, all with odd numbers of delegates, she gets a 43-to-32 advantage there. Final score: Clinton 90, Obama 82.
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It's Close as Can Be in Texas
Tweet Share on Facebook February 26, 2008 Comment (50)Via RealClearPolitics.com, here are the latest polls on Texas and Ohio:
In Texas, Rasmussen has Hillary Clinton ahead of Barack Obama by a statistically insignificant 46 to 45 percent, a result similar to the Washington Post/ABC poll showing her ahead 48 to 47 percent. CNN headlines its result, with admirable statistical modesty, as a tie, but it's Obama 50 to 46 percent. This is the first Texas poll with an Obama lead.
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Delegate Counting in Texas and Ohio
Tweet Share on Facebook February 25, 2008 Comment (58)Let me take the results of the ABC/Washington Post polls in Texas and Ohio and the terrific graphic in Sunday's print Post and try to estimate the delegate count in the primaries if the vote splits the way it does in the poll. Statewide, the poll showed Clinton ahead by the statistically insignificant margin of 48 to 47 percent.
Texas allocates 127 delegates by proportional representation within the 31 state Senate districts (with a 15 percent threshold, which no one but Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will meet). I have Clinton coming out on top in the delegate count by 64 to 62.
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Two Winnable Wars
Tweet Share on Facebook February 25, 2008 Comment (6)That's what Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies calls Iraq and Afghanistan in an opinion article in Sunday's Washington Post. Cordesman has long been a skeptic about the possibilities for success in Iraq and has been quoted on occasion by those who argue we should withdraw posthaste. In this article, he recommends the opposite—and in the strongest terms. Key passages:
What the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan have in common is that it will take a major and consistent U.S. effort throughout the next administration at least to win either war. Any American political debate that ignores or denies the fact that these are long wars is dishonest and will ensure defeat....
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Ohio and Texas Trend to Obama
Tweet Share on Facebook February 22, 2008 Comment (66)The latest poll numbers from Texas and Ohio are not good news for Hillary Clinton. The realclearpolitics.com average has her ahead of Barack Obama by only 49 to 46 percent. She leads by a statistically insignificant 48 to 47 percent in the ABC/Washington Post poll and 47 to 44 percent in Rasmussen.
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Political Odds and Ends
Tweet Share on Facebook February 21, 2008 Comment (3)• Take a look at the map of the results of Wisconsin's Democratic primary. What do most of the counties Hillary Clinton carried have in common? They're at the edge of the state and in non-Wisconsin media markets. Which is to say, they're counties where Barack Obama presumably didn't have the 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 advantage in ad buys he had in the rest of the state. Note that none of them is in the state's southern tier of counties. Those counties get Illinois media, which has been lavishing favorable attention on Obama for four years, since his come-from-behind victory in the 2004 Senate primary. Implications for Ohio and Texas: Obama appears to be able to outbuy Clinton in both these states.
• Ariel & Ethan, a Washington-area polling firm I'd not heard of before, has E-mailed a report on a survey of 55 uncommitted Democratic superdelegates. Here are a couple of excerpts from the press release:
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No Comeback for Hillary
Tweet Share on Facebook February 20, 2008 Comment (33)In a recent post, I took a look at Hillary Clinton’s chances for a comeback in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Yesterday, the voters of Wisconsin made it plain they weren’t having any of it: They gave Barack Obama an impressive 58-41 percent victory over Clinton. So much for any Clinton best-case analysis. The Clinton campaign continues to look to the Ohio and Texas contests of March 4. But her numbers there seem to be eroding. CNN showed her lead in Texas disappearing, to a statistically insignificant 50-48 percent, while SurveyUSA put it at 50-45 percent, with all of the Clinton lead coming in south and west Texas.
Clinton has spent much of her campaign time in the Lower Rio Grande Valley and other heavily Latino parts of south Texas, presumably on the theory that turnout is highly volatile there. When Tony Sanchez, the head of the leading bank in Laredo, ran for governor in 2002, the primary turnout in Laredo’s Webb County tripled (or something like that). The problem is that there are only so many votes here even if turnout triples. The Lower Rio Grande Valley from Eagle Pass south to Brownsville has about 2 million people, about 80 to 90 percent Latino. But they’re only about 8 percent of the 23 million people of Texas.
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More on a Hillary Comeback
Tweet Share on Facebook February 17, 2008 Comment (293)With the help of thegreenpapers.com the invaluable Green Papers, I made some calculations in a best-case scenario for Hillary Clinton in the Wisconsin, Ohio, and Texas primaries. I assumed that Clinton won statewide in each case, and that Obama carried only congressional districts (or in Texas, state Senate districts) dominated by upscale white voters and/or black voters. This is an especially optimistic assumption in Wisconsin, where Clinton currently trails Obama by 4 or 5 percent in public polls. The results are as follows: a 44-30 delegate edge in Wisconsin, an 83-58 delegate edge in Ohio, and an 82-41 delegate edge in Texas. Overall this is an 80-delegate advantage, based (again I emphasize) on optimistic assumptions.
This would be enough to erase the current 58-delegate edge Obama has in total delegates according to Real Clear Politics. But not enough to overcome the 137-delegate edge he has among "pledged delegates," that is, those chosen in caucuses and primaries. And it doesn't account for the fact that Texas on March 4 will also have caucuses to select another 67 delegates. The Obama campaign has swamped the Clinton campaign in almost all the caucuses and probably has far more in the way of organization in Texas's 254 counties than the Clinton campaign does.
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Is Hillary Due for a Comeback?
Tweet Share on Facebook February 15, 2008 Comment (172)There has been some scoffing at Clinton pollster Mark Penn's memo issued yesterday arguing that Hillary Clinton can still win more delegates than Barack Obama. The memo contains a certain amount of campaign boilerplate:
Hillary is the only candidate who can deliver the economic change voters want—the only candidate with a real plan and a record of fighting for health care, housing, job creation and protecting Social Security.
But, hey, he's paid (and very well) to say things like this. And there's independent polling data that seem to support his argument.
