PSoTD

Long-shot presidential candidate Mike Gravel told supporters Wednesday he is leaving the Democratic Party to join the Libertarian Party.

No, I'm not stopping blogging, but I'm taking a break from blogging about the primary race until April 1. Six weeks is a LONG LONG TIME to be looking at what's going on here in Pennsylvania, and this is a good way to keep from going insane before election day.

Plus, I'm slowly coming to a conclusion that bloggers are unwittingly making this campaign more divisive than it needs be by trumpeting every nuanced slight in favor of their candidate and against the other candidate. We're so involved in responding to today's events that we fail to take a more overall approach to the campaign. I want some time to think more about what's going on, without feeling the need to post something about it. And so... primary spring break.

And besides all that... there's just way too many places to go for some sort of "he said, she said" blogging. Gotta try to be different...

They meet.

On this presidential rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton can agree: They sometimes disagree with their trash-talking supporters and will try to cool it. Advisers to the Democratic candidates shed some light Friday on the private chat the two candidates had Thursday on the Senate floor.

The talk lasted three or four minutes in full view of reporters watching on the balcony above who could see them talking, but not hear what they said.

"They approached one another and spoke about how supporters for both campaigns have said things they reject," said Clinton spokesman Phil Singer. "They agreed that the contrasts between their respective records, qualifications and issues should be what drives this campaign, and nothing else."

An Obama adviser, speaking on a condition of anonymity about the private conversation, gave a similar account, while stressing that it was Obama who approached Clinton on the subject. They committed to making sure that their supporters don't get overheated in the future, the adviser said.

And as I walked on
Through troubled times
My spirit gets so downhearted sometimes
So where are the strong
And who are the trusted?
And where is the harmony?

Sweet harmony!

How many Democrats are thinking:

If we find a way to screw this up and not win the Presidency in November, I'm leaving the party.

And if the two campaigns can please demonstrate some message control to keep us out of the ditch on this topic from now on, that would be great.

Howard Fineman spent Tuesday evening on Countdown implying that the value of the Ferraro comments for the Clinton campaign was a message to the voters of Central Pennsylvania:

Mississippi has come and gone. We‘re heading into six weeks of Pennsylvania. It‘s said by others, including James Carville, a Democrat who used to work for the Clintons, that Pennsylvania is Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, with Alabama in between, white Alabama, not black Alabama. You may draw your own conclusions about why the Clinton people feel they think they can back up Gerry Ferraro at this moment.

Regardless of the intent of Ferraro's statements, something tells me we're going to get six weeks of Central Pennsylvania trashing by television's talking heads.

You are at risk of making a VERY TERRIBLE mistake in your campaign. You need to get a unified message out that you are behind some sort of DNC-approved, fair method for revoting in Florida and Michigan - and come up with some standards that make sense. This floating of the 50-50 split seating idea makes as little sense as seating the delegates as "elected" in the unapproved primaries - that is, it makes no sense.

Quit being stupid about this, and get ahead of the curve.

It's not the voters' fault. So if a revote can be done, it should be done. Obama's camp ought to clearly get behind a revote now instead of dawdling, and get his team prepared in both states.

Hillary has had bad delegate news since Friday of last week. So Rick Klein's logic is, any time that delegates aren't being won by Obama is an advantage for Hillary Clinton. Agreed. Hillary's best time as a candidate was before there were votes being cast. Once that started, she started losing.

Here's a clue - results matter. Hillary is not only losing in the delegate race, she's running out of time and available delegates, also. And I suspect that six weeks of no elections is TOO much time for Clinton - there's at least as great of risk that she'll turn off available voters with a negative effort than win them. She sure didn't do very well with all that lead up time she had in Iowa.

Mississippi total vote in the Democratic Party Presidential Primary, 1996: 93,788

Mississippi total vote in the Democratic Party Presidential Primary, 2000: 88,602

Mississippi total vote in the Democratic Party Presidential Primary, 2004: 76,298

Mississippi total vote in the Democratic Party Presidential Primary, 2008 (99% precincts): Over 408,000

Let me put this another way - Obama's margin of victory yesterday was higher than the total number of voters in any of the past three Democratic Presidential primaries in Mississippi.

Sound and fury, accomplishing nothing.

All but a handful of states have made preparations to comply with a May 1 deadline for compliance with the federal Real ID law that mandates secure driver's licenses be issued only to legal residents of the United States, according to specialists inside and outside the federal government.

The states’ quiet steps to fall in line with the law appear to contradict state officials’ blustering claims that they will resist the new requirements.

Is that really necessary?

Maybe people forget who she is, maybe people don't care, but it's tough to watch her own party try to pick her bones clean. Strongly criticize her foolish comments but this eye-for-eye stuff is bad mojo. And Obama doesn't need to go there.

Fifty-nine percent of Hillary Clinton supporters favor a quick decision to form a "dream ticket" with both Clinton and Barack Obama, while a majority of Obama supporters oppose the idea and would rather the campaign for the nomination continue.

Putting the sentiments of the two candidates' supporters together (and adding in a few undecideds), the overall results from the latest Gallup Poll, conducted March 6-9, show 51% of Democrats favoring an immediate settlement on a joint ticket between the two candidates, while 45% of Democrats think the candidates should soldier on. (Four percent have no opinion on the issue.)

One possible reason Clinton supporters are more likely than Obama supporters to favor negotiating a joint ticket now is that Clinton supporters may be more worried that she will lose if the campaigning continues. (Obama is currently ahead in numbers of pledged delegates, and most experts believe Clinton will have difficulty erasing that lead if the primaries and caucuses remain close contests.)

Well, that is one possible reason. Here's another - everyone knew that Hillary was going to run for President. So everyone that ran this year believed that they were a better candidate than Hillary, in fact, so much more importantly better that it was worth the hassle of running against a frontrunner with an experienced and previously successful political machine.

Lo and behold, one of those candidates actually is proving superior in the primary process up to this point, and the question is - does that candidate need Hillary Clinton on the ticket? And it appears that a majority of supporters for Obama not only believe they don't need Hillary Clinton on the ticket, but they don't want Hillary as VP if elected.

Hillary supporters, on the other hand, seem to feel they need Obama. What does that say about the relative strength of electability of each candidate?

You know that somehow Spitzer's troubles will turn into a reason to nominate Hillary Clinton.

See what happens when you play too many angles.

See, I was trying to explain to someone the “okey-doke.” Y’all know the okey-doke? It’s when someone’s trying to bamboozle you, when they’re trying to hoodwink you. They are trying to hoodwink you. You can’t say that he’s not ready on day one, unless he’s willing to be your vice president and then he’s ready on day one.

Hanging curveball ... crushed by Babe Obama!

(I'm going for the sports analogy record)

No exaggeration too glaring.

Speaking to the New Yorker, top Clinton strategist Mark Penn boasted that Hillary's wins in the Texas and Ohio primaries, and the campaign's attacks against Obama that led to those victories, mean the Obama machine's progress has been totally halted. "We broke his momentum completely," Penn said.

I guess the game is to get your talking points out in the media but it's still annoying.

I'd say Hillary made goal line stands on first and second down in Texas and Ohio but still has to stop a couple more downs and then somehow get the ball to the other end of the field.

And whatever momentum Obama may have lost, I'm sure Mark Penn can build back up for him in the next six weeks.

All in for Hillary.

Secretary of State Al Sharpton! Now that's creative!!

It seems to me that the nominating convention for the Democratic Party is much more like a caucus than an election. If the Clinton campaign is so convinced that caucuses are undemocratic, how do they feel about the convention?

Hey Ed Rendell...

MR. RUSSERT: Would you accept the caucus in Michigan?

GOV. RENDELL: No. Caucuses are undemocratic. That's another thing. We talk about the superdelegates being undemocratic. If you're a caucus, older people can't vote, older people who vote by absentee ballot. There's no absentee ballots in a caucus. Tim, if you're a shift worker and a lot of our workers, because they're low-income workers, are shift workers, you can't vote in a caucus. So we want primaries. That's the way we elect presidents. We don't have caucuses to elect presidents in the fall. Let's have a primary. Let's decide this. Let's hear from the Obama campaign about a revote in Florida and Michigan.

MR. RUSSERT: So the Iowa caucus, the Nevada caucus were undemocratic.

GOV. RENDELL: Undemocratic compared to primaries, yes.

Maybe Ed would prefer that instead of a convention, we simply take the candidate with the most votes at the end of the campaign? That would be most democratic, right?

I have a question - does Hillary's campaign, given time in a state, start to wear poorly on more and more people? There's been a general credit given to Obama that when he turns his attention to a state, that his numbers go up. But maybe there's a part of this that too much HRC dampens her numbers as well? When Hillary and Obama showed up, her poll numbers in Texas and Ohio initially went down. Was that Obama, was that Clinton, or was it both?

Rasmussen on 3/6 shows Hillary at 52% in Pennsylvania, Obama at 37%, and uncommitted at 11%. How hard is that 52% support?

This is one way to splinter the Democratic Party.

It's clear that for either Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. Hillary Clinton to win the Democratic presidential nomination, they'll have to win the majority of superdelegates at the convention. But what if the superdelegates split right down the middle like Democrats across the nation?

Talk of a joint ticket -- Obama-Clinton or Clinton-Obama -- might be an elegant solution to the problem. But what if Clinton wins the popular vote and Obama wins the majority of delegates? What if the next two months of campaigning turns so ugly they can't stand each other? Would either candidate willingly step aside to take the number two spot?

The answer might be for someone else entirely to step into the race at the convention. The most likely candidate would be Al Gore. Most Democrats think he was robbed of the presidency in 2000 by the Supreme Court and could be the only one to unite the party.

I like Al Gore, and I wish he had run. But he didn't. He's made absolutely no commitment to voters or the country about being President for almost 8 years. There's been way too much work, way too much money, and way too much emotion invested into these campaigns to expect that an appointment candidate, rather than an elected candidate, would be preferable to a large segment of the voters. It would destroy the primary process by rendering it secondary and bypassable.

If there's one thing that both candidates ought to agree on at this point - and they should do so publicly - it is this: Either Clinton or Obama should be the nominee for President of the Democratic Party in 2008. Period.

Is there a post from TalkLeft you won't highlight? Seriously, it's the same thing, over and over and over: Rip Obama, glorify Hillary. BORING. Pick one BTD post per week, everyone will get the gist.

Everybody listen up!

"My responsibility as speaker is to make sure that I have a Democratic majority in the Congress of the United States," she said. "So while I want these candidates to operate on a proper tone so one of them will be in the White House, I have to insist upon it because I can't have their - if you want to call it bickering - have an impact on my congressional races."

Pelosi said she believes that supporters of both Obama and Clinton, after a long and exciting race, have grown strongly attached to their candidate. She worries how those voters will react when - inevitably - one of the two candidates loses.

"So many new people are involved because of Barack Obama, and we don't want them to be disenchanted," Pelosi said. "On the other hand, there is a chance that he might not win, and hopefully he will keep them in the fold. I think it will be about his leadership, too - whether he wins or not - to keep them in the fold and to attract others."

She said the same is true if Clinton loses the fight for the nomination. Many of Clinton's supporters, especially women, are just as passionate about her candidacy, and those voters will be crucial in November, Pelosi said. Tough hides needed

"You have to have a thick skin in this business. You can win or you don't win, but it doesn't mean you pick up your marbles and go away," she said.

Wait until Laura Bush runs in 2016.

One of the things that is becoming more likely - still not likely, but getting much closer to becoming reality - is that this will be the last year I keep the official party affiliation of Democrat. No, I'm nowhere near becoming a Republican. But I strongly believe there should be more than two political parties in this country vying for power, and the fact that there are only two is why we're having such a shitty three weeks of campaigning now. There's only two choices in the campaign, which allows negativity personal attacks to become the campaign tactic of choice and everything else goes out the window.

And, so, if I believe there should be more than two strong political parties in this country, how am I helping accomplish that by sticking in the Democratic Party. Especially because that party hardly ever goes close to prioritizing the issues I'm interested in, or approaching the job of politics in a way I can appreciate? The Pennsylvania state Democrats are a joke. Bill DeWeese? Vince Fumo? Catherine Baker Knoll? Arrrgh.

Nationally, I've never seen the Democratic Party put a Presidential candidate into the White House that I was particularly enthused about. Gore was close but of course didn't win the prize. I was not a fan of Bill Clinton, particularly after he fucked up the last two years with the stupidest sex scandal of history, and also how the Clintons screwed up the health care debate for a decade by their secretive and haughty approach at the beginning of his term. I liked Edwards 4 years ago and this year, but he didn't have a chance. Kerry was only acceptable as a replacement for Bush. I like Obama better than Hillary - I think his demeanor is better for the White House, I think he has a long view and I believe in people power as a counterweight to money power, which is his thing and the greatest difference in my mind between him and Hillary. The Democratic Party could change under Obama. The Democratic Party will not change under Hillary. The Democratic Party is losing me, and will need to change to retain me. And yet, I'm feeling that the Democratic Party can't change, can't embrace the power of people as an equal to the power of money.

I would rather buy into a candidate I could be enthused about, with positions I'm interested in, with beliefs I think are intertwined with mine. Just buying the same old product every time because it has a party label isn't the way to do it. Perhaps being an Independent is a more appropriate approach for me at this time. I'm strongly considering it for the future.

Is this how the Democratic Party ends?

Dial it down, people. We all gotta live together after this nomination.

Alright, that's enough Hillary Clinton campaign for me. She wins, I can no longer go on thinking I might somehow vote for her, she's forced my hand. Perhaps it was only a shadow of a hope, but the past few weeks it has been eclipsed by her campaign's spasms of attack. I want Obama to win Pennsylvania and end this process. Clinton's top campaign people (read Wolfson and Penn) are embarrassments. I don't want those kinds of nitwits near the White House, and I don't trust a decisionmaker who relies on them. Her tax records should be publicly available, and saying so doesn't make Obama another Ken Starr.

Hillary Clinton has not passed the Commander-in-Chief threshold, and neither has John McCain, and neither has Obama, because you have to be one to pass it, and even some that are, such as the current President, fail to meet the threshold. Clinton should quit blowing smoke out her ass that she and McCain are the only two candidates that have passed her mythical standard, because if Hillary Clinton has passed it, then so has Laura Bush. And frankly, that's a damn scary standard to be believing in.

And I think it's time the party give Hillary a mighty assdrop kick for promoting John McCain over her opponent in the primary. She's done it several times. It is not acceptable. It is Joe Liebermanish, but on a grander scale, and it deserves more than the polite reprimand that Lieberman received, but a "what a stupid piece of shit strategy" lambasting. Because if Hillary Clinton wants to promote this Commander-in-Chief focus as the standard for voting for the candidate, she loses to John McCain, and she loses badly.

It's not only not acceptable, it's not credible, and John McCain will call her on it if she's the candidate. John McCain is a war hero, and nobody is going to take that away from him. Hillary voted for a war. Whooptie-fucking-doo, congratulations to you, Hillary. That's her big thing - she voted for a war, a war most Americans don't support, and yet that is a big positive? That doesn't trump being a war hero. At least opposing the war opens the debate.

This scare tactic approach to campaigning is so Bushesque. Democrats have been complaining about Bush doing it for many years. Where are those voices now?

And so now, we have 7 weeks of Pennsylvania Democratic Presidential Primary campaigning ahead of us. I believe this quote is appropriate:

"There's so much time that the candidates are not going to be just flying back and forth between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia," said David Sweet, a Harrisburg lawyer who was manager of Gov. Rendell's 2002 campaign and is now supporting Obama.

"It's going to get down to looking at polls to see if the western part of Washington County is in play, what parts of Allentown to visit, or even the upper vs. the lower portion of Dauphin County," Sweet said.

And don't forget about Cumberland County. Sure, there's a lot of red out here, but there's a few liberal bloggers out on the West Shore as well, and maybe, just maybe we could get our act together to have a Drinking Liberally meeting if Obama or Hillary wanted to visit such esteemed individuals.

Just don't send Mark Penn or any other grouchy members of either campaign.

Seriously, I wonder how much business at local diners the upcoming time will provide Pennsylvania. Meet and greet, meet and greet, meet and greet...

Making sausage with the Clinton campaign.

Penn has been a lightning rod ever since the 1996 campaign. More comfortable with data than people, he promoted a centrist approach that was policy-driven and successful but bloodless. He earned a passel of enemies along the way. Longtime Clinton advisers such as Ickes, James Carville, Rahm Emanuel, John Podesta and Paul Begala openly despise him, and some even nicknamed him "Schlumbo." Ickes and others tried unsuccessfully to get Penn fired from Hillary Clinton's 2000 Senate campaign.

Penn did not make a lot of new friends in his latest campaign, arguing against any apologies for Clinton's vote to go to war with Iraq and generating resentment with PowerPoint survey presentations that did not give colleagues the data they sought. He chastised a campaign aide who described him in a campaign document as "pollster" instead of his title "chief strategist." At the same time, Penn's firm has taken in $10 million from the campaign, the vast bulk of which has gone to direct mail and polling, with about $240,000 for the consulting team. But defenders point to the strategist's record of success and say opponents are too focused on personality.

....

Ickes was characteristically blunt on the conference call after Super Tuesday. It was quite likely that Clinton would lose the next 11 contests, colleagues recall him saying. Cecil had submitted plans for post-Feb. 5 states, but they had been rejected. The campaign had not initially thought the nomination battle would go beyond Super Tuesday and it was out of cash. "We were running on fumes," one aide said.

Nerves were raw by this point. Penn and Grunwald engaged in a 15-minute squabble that later made it into the media over which ad to run in Virginia. He wanted an ominous one called "Freefall" that warned of bad economic times, while she wanted one called "Can Do" featuring the candidate talking against patriotic music about solving problems. Cecil grew so exasperated, he stood up and left. "This is ridiculous," he said, according to people in the room. "You guys need to grow up. You're acting like kids. I've got work to do."

A more explosive example of the stress came a few days later. Phil Singer, the campaign's deputy communications director, emerged from a meeting on Feb. 11 and without explanation started angrily cursing the war room. "[Expletive] all of you," he shouted, according to a witness, then stormed out and did not return for several days.

Penn was growing increasingly aggravated by what he saw as an untenable management structure, which another aide described as an "oligarchy at the top." Penn had no real people of his own on the inside and chafed whenever Solis Doyle or Ickes got involved in his sphere. At one point, he and Ickes, who have been battling each other within the Clinton orbit for a dozen years, lost their tempers during a conference call, according to two participants.

"[Expletive] you!" Ickes shouted.

"[Expletive] you!" Penn replied.

"[Expletive] you!" Ickes shouted again.

If you don't like your job, just remember it could be worse. You could work on a political campaign.

From Evil Blue himself.

Hey Hillary ... what's up with this?

Don't foul the nest.

Who are these people who say they are voting for Gravel?

Two-thirds of Democrats say a victory in either Ohio or Texas would be reason enough for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) to keep her historic bid for the party's presidential nomination alive, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Two losses, however, would dramatically change the equation. Only 29 percent of Democrats said Clinton should drop out if she loses one of the two big states, but that number jumps to 51 percent if she loses both. About two-thirds of men and liberals indicated that she should give up her bid under those circumstances. And among those closely following the campaign, nearly six in 10 said she should quit the race if she loses both Texas and Ohio, states that her husband, former president Bill Clinton, has called must-wins.

This result doesn't make much sense to me. Why would a close two-state loss be worse than a narrow one state victory and a large other state loss? Silly poll structure.

If the race continues after Tuesday, it's going to get more ugly and divisive. I just don't see why Democrats would really want that unless there is a real sea change in momentum.

I think the focus by the Democrats on the "Commander-in-Chief" role in government needs to be much more historical and much less comparative. If there needs to be a general discussion of our wartime Presidents, from Madison to Bush II, great. But it is to the Democrats' benefit to discuss the role in historic, rather than personal, terms.