Category: The Dish

Noam Scheiber has an excellent piece on David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign manager. Just as interesting is this reader comment:

Plouffe is calm, highly knowledgeable and disciplined. Businesslike in the best sense of the term. I heard him speak and answer questions in June and October of 2007 and he said almost the same thing both times. Consistency is an underreported strength of the Obama campaign (and Obama himself) and Plouffe deserves a lot of credit for maintaining that consistency. They devised a strategic plan early and have stuck by it. Today, they are on the precipice of completing one of the greatest upsets in American political history. PS – That leaked February 6 delegate spreadsheet continues to amaze with its accuracy and insight, only underestimating the Obama margin of victories. It lays out the minimum path to victory for Obama in pledged delegates. The final delegate spread shown on June 7 is Obama +67. If you include the pledged delegates of Michigan and Florida (giving the 55 Michigan uncommitted to Obama), the Obama margin becomes +1.

I’ve been struck by how calm Obama seems in the face of all this Clinton drama. It helps to recall that he never expected this to be easy or anything but extremely close. And he’s still ahead. And still the overwhelming favorite. Against the biggest brand in Democratic politics as a freshman senator. WIth a little perspective, the calm makes more sense.

It’s been legal since 1978, but voluntary shifts have made it rarer and rarer:

Between 2003 and 2007 the number of gynecologists claiming the conscience clause to avoid carrying out abortions rose from 58.7 percent to 69.2 percent, according to the report.

For anesthetists helping in abortions, the figure of those refusing to participate rose from 45.7 percent to 50.4 percent.

"In the south, this increase is even more pronounced and in certain areas the rate has almost doubled," the report adds. In Campania, the region around Naples, the proportion of gynecologists refusing to carry out the procedure reached 83 percent, and in Sicily 84.2 percent.

Meanwhile, the number of abortions has dropped slightly. Between 2006 and 2007 it fell from 131,018 to 127,038, a decrease of three percent.

Money quote:

The television advertisement you are planning to air degrades our civics and distracts us from the very real differences we have with the Democrats. In the strongest terms, I implore you to not run this advertisement. … There is no doubt that we will draw sharp contrasts with the Democrats on fundamental issues critical to the future course of our country. But we need not engage in political tactics that only seek to divide the American people.  Once again, it is imperative that you withdraw this offensive advertisement.

The local GOP will keep running it. If McCain wants to run a campaign that is not based on McCarthyism, racial fears, and polarized labeling, he probably shouldn’t be trying to lead the current GOP. It’s all they really care about.

On the money, I’d say:

Clinton won Pennsylvania for two key reasons: Only Democrats could vote in the primary, and the Keystone State electorate is dominated by the elderly, who are staunchly for Clinton. Despite her claims of electability, Hillary has never done well among independent voters. And Obama usually loses the Democrats. Pennsylvania’s closed-primary rules gave her a key advantage.

Older voters are flocking to Clinton as fears mount of what Obama might do as president. But those under 45 – less focused, perhaps, on race – are moving toward Obama. Here, that split helped her.

Does anyone believe that the big difference in voting patterns between the young and the old have nothing to do with residual racial attitudes?

Unfortunately, Ross is probably right about Kmiec’s musings on the 95/10 plan:

…while I would be delighted to see Obama endorse the plan, since it’s always nice to have pro-choice politicians on the record suggesting that abortion is a bad thing and we ought to have less of it, I have a tough time seeing it happening…I suspect that Obama simply doesn’t have enough feminist cred to even tiptoe off the liberal reservation on abortion. But I’d be happy to be proven wrong.

Part of what’s coming. McCain doesn’t like it. He has more integrity than the Clintons:

Fingerprinting goes global. One of the worst effects of 9/11 and governmental response to it has been to treat all travelers and tourists as potential criminals. But the US has pioneered this authoritarian approach to immigrants and tourists and travelers. The world follows.

Thought-controlled video gaming.

The chatter suggests that California’s State Supreme Court may mandate equal marriage rights in June. The governor has said he’ll abide by the court; the legislature has already voted to extend civil marriage to gay couples twice. But those who believe that gay couples are a threat to social stability and to heterosexual families have managed to get enough signatures to get a measure on the ballot this fall that would ban all such marriages. It would effectively forcibly divorce all those gay couples who got married in June by November.

In the middle of this campaign, we could be facing a major civil rights battle – in which all the major candidates oppose equality for gay couples. Those of us who do not believe that our relationships are evil or destructive of society had better get our armor on. The attack is imminent.

They’re the core Clinton constituency, and she’s holding on to them:

Per the exit polls, 47% of the Pennsylvania Democratic electorate last night was made up of white women, higher than any other race/gender subgroup. Clinton ended up winning them by more than 30 points, 66%-34%; in Ohio, she won this group, 67%-31%.