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A Redo for Florida Democrats?
Tweet Share on Facebook January 30, 2008 CommentContravening conventional wisdom once again, I take issue with this Associated Press report coming out of the Florida primary:
"Hillary Rodham Clinton finished Tuesday's Florida Democratic primary with more votes than any other Democrat, but the event drew no campaigning by any of her presidential rivals and awarded no delegates to the winner."
It's not that the story is wrong. It's that all mainstream media outlets are assuming Democratic delegates elected in Florida and Michigan will not be seated, per a fiery edict from the Democratic National Committee. In fact, that decision is set in peanut butter rather than in concrete and may not be finalized until the party convention in August.
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Nonprofits Escape Economic Slowdown
Tweet Share on Facebook January 28, 2008 CommentIt's been a wild ride on Wall Street these past few weeks and from where I sit if we're not in a recession already (it's a retrospective diagnosis, remember) we certainly seem to be heading for at least a mild one.
But one sector of the economy that seems to be thriving nonetheless is the philanthropic sector. According to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, "Twenty donors made gifts of $100 million or more last year, just shy of the record of 21 such gifts made in 2006, according to The Chronicle's annual ranking of the 50 most-generous Americans. And despite a turbulent economy, fundraisers seeking donations of $10 million or more predict another strong year of big gifts in 2008."
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Obama's One-State Wonder
Tweet Share on Facebook January 25, 2008 CommentA day ahead of time, I feel reasonably comfortable doing something I never do: predicting the results of a state primary race. Barack Obama will win the South Carolina Democratic presidential primary. But his campaign will most likely incur a crippling blow on Super Duper Tuesday on February 5, when he loses the California primary.
Obama has a 13-point lead in a South Carolina Zogby poll released today.
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Environmental Friends and Foes
Tweet Share on Facebook January 18, 2008 Comment (2)The foes are the Bush administration's Fish and Wildlife Service. Why? The administration has been petitioned to list the polar bear as "threatened" as a first step toward protecting its habitat under the Endangered Species Act. That decision was supposed to be made earlier this year, and bureaucrats stalled for at least a month.
There's so much melting of polar ice, it's hardly a question among those in the know and those who care whether the bear is threatened or not: Of course it is! Some members of the House Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming ask whether "the delay [is] caused by a rush to sell the polar bears' habitat to oil companies for drilling first."
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Truce and War
Tweet Share on Facebook January 16, 2008 Comment (1)At the same time that the Democratic presidential candidates were calling a truce in their war of words this week, a Republican presidential wannabe was starting one of his own.
The national media paid a great deal of attention to the denouement between candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama:
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Does Obama Really Want 'Change'?
Tweet Share on Facebook January 14, 2008 Comment (13)As someone who has covered Washington politics for a long time, I am more than just a mite skeptical when a candidate for any office promises change, bipartisanship, and unity. Change can happen only if both sides really want it and are willing to compromise on important issues to get it. Congressional and even would-be-presidential Republicans have shown no propensity to compromise on any of their basic issues (guns, God, gays, and taxes). How can Barack Obama promise change unless he plans to give in to the GOP on all issues Democrats hold dear?
But what makes me even more skeptical he's no more capable of change than the next guy is the nasty give-and-take he's gotten into recently with Hillary Clinton. It got even nastier over the weekend, as Clinton went on NBC's Meet the Press and again accused Obama's campaign of peddling a misinterpretation of her comments about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. last week.
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Did Moms and Youth Come Out for Hillary?
Tweet Share on Facebook January 10, 2008 CommentThe Web is awash in media backlash explanations for Hillary Clinton's surprise New Hampshire victory this week.
The conventional wisdom is that she was widely disparaged by the mainstream media and pundits who derided her somewhat teary moment the day before the vote. In addition, noted male pundits were positively gleeful on air over the prospect of a Clinton defeat. So women took offense and voted for her in greater percentages in New Hampshire than they did in Iowa.
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Assessing the Poor New Hampshire Polls
Tweet Share on Facebook January 9, 2008 CommentNew Hampshire voters have a long tradition of ignoring Iowa caucusgoers. I have written in this space several times about the inconsequentiality of Iowa—at least in terms of its representation of American voters as a whole. New Hampshire feels similarly about Iowa.
But Hillary Clinton's historic win in New Hampshire stymied even the most seasoned pundits and pollsters. Why were the polls so wrong?
A refresher course on pre-New Hampshire polling shows us:
Polls released Tuesday had Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., with a 5- to 13-percentage-point lead over Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., in the Granite State, but Clinton defeated Obama.... Pre-election polls...showed Obama and Clinton about evenly splitting female voters and Obama winning men by a margin of 2 to 1. But Clinton won among women by 13 percentage points, exit polls showed.
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How Do You Upend a Phenom?
Tweet Share on Facebook January 7, 2008 CommentJust over the weekend, Barack Obama seems to have vaulted to "phenom" status thanks to a strong performance in the last Democratic debate and an unending surge of interest and support from young Americans. A Democratic source on Obama's campaign told me he had double the number of volunteers he needed to amass his New Hampshire campaign force, and hundreds of mainly young Americans were turned away by the Obama campaign for volunteer slots.
In the Clinton camp, on the other hand, after months of running a campaign that worked seamlessly, Hillary Clinton now seems not to be able to do much right. And her numbers are slipping precipitously. To go from tied to behind by double digits in a matter of days is nothing short of, well, phenomenal.
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Iowa Women Turn the Tide
Tweet Share on Facebook January 4, 2008 CommentWomen played interesting roles in last night's Iowa caucuses:
* Younger Democratic women deserted Sen. Hillary Clinton.
* Republican women at some caucuses opened with a prayer, then voted in large percentages for the preacher Mike Huckabee.
From CNN:
Hillary Clinton has largely courted female voters as she battles to become the first woman president. But in what is bad news for Clinton, exit polling shows [Sen. Barack] Obama beat the New York senator 35 percent to 30 percent among women caucusgoers. Clinton only won among women in the [60-and-older] demographic. Forty-three percent of those women voters went for Clinton, compared to 26 percent for [John] Edwards and 19 percent for Obama. But the Illinois Democrat won among women in every other age demographic.
Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee was the big winner in Iowa's GOP caucuses Thursday thanks to big support from two groups of voters: women and evangelical Christians. Mike Huckabee appears to have benefited from a strong turnout by evangelical Christian voters.... Huckabee also overwhelmingly won the female vote, picking up support from about 40 percent of women compared to only 24 percent for [Mitt] Romney.
Bonnie Erbe
Bonnie Erbe is a contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report and hosts PBS's weekly news analysis program, To the Contrary with Bonnie Erbe. She also writes a weekly syndicated newspaper column for Scripps Howard News Service.
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