The spinning by the Obama and Clinton campaigns really is very amusing. Obama’s team says he won Super Tuesday because they project him to win 845 delegates to Clinton’s 836. They definitely won more states. Clinton’s side says they won more votes, which they did … 50.2% to 49.8%. It’s a mandate!
The more significant news, I think, is that Clinton was forced to loan her campaign $5 million in January. She spun it as a vote of confidence: quite right. To me, it seems like desperation — or at least, a recognition of the terrific pressure she is under from Obama. The NYT says the Clintons may pitch in even more. The Obama campaign has bandied about a figure of $20 million. Who knew one could save so much being President at a salary of $400,000 and U.S. Senator. Maybe cattle futures had something to do with it. In the meantime, top campaign officials are going unpaid. That’s very hard to spin.
You can donate to the Obama campaign here. Or click here to donate to the Clinton campaign.
TPM says:
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p>Jaw dropping in context of Clinton’s woes and McCain raising a paltry $7 million in all of January.
Before online contributions, I don’t think anyone could raise such huge sums from so many small contributors. Dean was first, Obama second in time to show how it can be done on a national scale.
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p>Not to belabor the obvious, but this does fit right in with the theme of Obama as something new, and Clinton, insofar as she is relying on larger donations from fewer people i.e. the more traditional fundraising model, as the status quo candidate discussed at length here before the primary.
2. mccain proves that campaigns can skinny down yet rebound nicely in the polls.
3. so what if clinton has tapped out some big donors. there are always more of them. and, she hasn’t even started tapping the nickel & dime crowd yet. many of them vote for her. she needs to get to work on that front, but it is waiting for her. small donors don’t belong solely to obama.
Much of Romney’s money comes from Mitt Romney’s biggest fan base: the Mitt Romney family. Obama’s money, on the other hand, is coming through the donations of a motivated and enthusiastic fan base. Even if Obama’s cash machine does for him exactly what a ton of money did for Mitt, Obama’s money is a symptom of the huge wave of Obama fever, not self financing. Behind most Obama donations is an excited voice telling friends about Barack, many of these voices are attached to bodies who are motivated to volunteer, blog, and donate more money in the future. Behind Mitt’s dollars is Mitt Romney, who can only vote once.
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p>The theme in much of the recent Obama coverage is that the more people see Obama, the more they are in a room with Obama, the more likely people will vote for him. If that is true, Obama will get much more exposure through his insane fund raising and he will have a much better success rate of converting dollars into votes than Willard.
He will lose by a more respectable margin and call it a moral victory.
Classy move to put Hillary’s link too.
If she is the nominee. I like her. I think she is impressive in many ways. I just like Obama better.
It is a classy move including donation information for both campaigns, which is one of the reasons I take the time to read this blog.
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p>As for Romney, he and his family seem to be the only people unaware that it just ain’t gonna happen for him (thankfully). But, if he wants to stimulate the economy by spending a few more dollars…go nuts.
As of about 5:00pm, Hillary has raised 1.3 million (since the primary). They are doing a 3 million in 3 days campaign. I wanted to share for informational purposes. Last check Barack was at 4.2 million.
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p>They have already conceded that they will be outspent by the Obama campaign.
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p>Co-incidence that she wants to do more debates? I think not!
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p>I hear that we won’t really know the actual delegate totals until Friday.
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p>They never owned their home until after Mr. Clinton finished up as POTUS. Their money came in the form of book advances/sales and speaker fees for Mr. Clinton. It sure as hell wasn’t money from before 1992 and it sure as hell wasn’t on government salaries.
an 85 Olds Cutlass.
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p>I think it’s pretty clear that the Clintons were always middle class, especially in how they focused on doing their work successfully, and that just wasn’t good enough for people like Sally Quinn or David Broder, who wanted Washington society to be a 20th-Century Versailles.
If it helps her win, it’s worth it.
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p>47 million Americans live without health insurance–and a sudden accident or virus can put them straight into bankruptcy. She’s the only candidate who has made a commitment to get all those people covered, and if she can lead her plan through Congress, then 47 million people will live their lives with more security and personal freedom.
GALLUP POLL. released this AM:
PRINCETON, NJ — The increase in support for Hillary Clinton at the national level that Gallup saw in interviewing conducted Sunday and Monday continued in interviewing Tuesday night. Gallup Poll Daily tracking conducted Feb. 3-5 now includes three consecutive days in which Clinton has done well, giving her a 13-percentage point lead over Barack Obama, 52% to 39%.
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p>Democratic preferences in Tuesday night’s interviews — mostly conducted before Super Tuesday election results were known — were similar to Sunday and Monday night’s interviews. Gallup Poll Daily tracking will not begin to reflect the impact of Tuesday’s voting on national Democratic preferences until tomorrow.
In the actual voting.
whereas tuesday’s results come from just a subsample of the country. maybe if HLPeary provides a link, we can check on that.
…you keep trying to marginalize Hillary Clinton, and dismiss her impressive victories yesterday. You and your two cohorts at Blue Mass Group, along with Sens. Kennedy and Kerry and Gov. Patrick, did everything possible to promote Obama and to turn people away from Hillary Clinton.
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p>Thankfully, the voters in Massachusetts are smart enough to make their own decisions, and they voted resoundingly in favor of Hillary over Obama.
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p>Why can’t you try to be a little more even-handed in your coverage of the Democratic nominating process…surely, you can see that your unabashed promoting of Obama hasn’t worked at all.
The 3 hosts have gone out of their way to promote a wide-open forum. Views on both sides are respected and given equal coverage. What more could you want short of their endorsement of your candidate.
As we have stated over and over again, we try to be as transparent as we can about where we actually stand. We tell you who we’re voting for, and why, so that folks can make their own assessments. And we try to give significant air-time to those who disagree with us, at least on disputes within the family. (By which I mean we routinely promote pro-Hillary posts; not so much pro-Romney stuff, should anyone take the trouble to write it.)
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p>That’s not the only possible approach to this question — Jon Keller, for example, takes this view:
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p>Jon’s absolutely right to vote — those journalists who choose not to out of some quixotic quest for “objectivity” are being silly. But I think Jon’s refusal to discuss his vote is a bad approach (though it’s no doubt one shared by many journos). Concealing one’s viewpoint does not eliminate its impact; it simply makes it harder for readers and viewers to assess whether that viewpoint is affecting what they’re reading and watching. There’s no point in playing that kind of hide-and-seek. Better to be transparent, and to trust the public.
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p>FWIW, I’d wager that Jon voted for Hillary.
The problem, though, is when transparency becomes license for blatant salesmanship.
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p>You guys sometimes wander closer to that line than suits my taste. I think the recent Obama’s Surging/Obama’s Up in Massachusetts/There is a tidal wave of support swinging to Obama becuase of the Senators and the governor/Obama can win by making Clinton sweat/Hillary did not sweat/Heck, Clinton was up all along, Obama never had a chance progression regarding the results of the Massachusetts primary is a good example of this.
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p>Of course, this is your party, so my taste on this matter is not especially relevant.
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p>Please note, I’m not necessarily accusing you of campiagning outright. I’m just noting that enthusiasm and the heat of the moment can cause the line to be closer than it appears.
There was BMG Obama-mania following Senator Kennedy’s endorsement. But with a track record of endorsing Mondale, Tsongas, Dukakis, Gore and Kerry maybe the Kennedy endorsement is the same kiss-of-death as the BMG.
Only one of the five candidates you mention above, who got Sen. Kennedy’s endorsement, failed to win the Democratic primary. That would be Tsongas, who got beat in ’92 by Bill Clinton. The four others, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry all won the Democratic nomination, which is what he was endorsing for.
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p>four out of five is not so bad eh?
I’m Ted Kennedy and have a great track record at endorsing the runner up for President.
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p>Vote for Obama! He’s # 2!
The three hosts have made clear their support for Obama and their dislike of Clinton. The vast majority of front page posts leading up to Super Tuesday favored Obama and implied that Clinton’s campaign was imploding…which, of course, was not the case.
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p>They quoted polls saying that Obama was surging ahead of Clinton in Massachusetts, which we know now was simply untrue.
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p>Of course, this is their blog…they can say what they want to say. But, be clear about one thing…there is no equal coverage here. This blog looked like barackobama.com in the past few weeks.
But by no means all. And as an early supporter of Obama, I can tell you the BMG editors were pretty skeptical of his candidacy for a long time. Two of them endorsed other candidates first and only settled for Obama when their preferred candidate dropped out.
Your post title starts with “Desperation”. Is that a fair assessment of the Obama campaign and his followers? Perhaps we are watching a different race.
0.4% more,
which means obama was close but still behind
Obama probably got more votes on Super Tuesday than Hillary, but we don’t know the actual numbers so we can’t confirm that.
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p>Those who quote the “popular vote” are quoting a meaningless number, because they’re adding the actual vote totals from states that held primaries, with the precinct delegate totals from states that held caucuses. The ratio of voters present : precinct delegates elected, in caucus states, is very high. One precinct delegate may represent 10, 20, 40, even 100 individual voters. But we don’t have those numbers.
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p>2. Comparing vote counts makes no sense, because we don’t know the vote counts. Caucus states typically don’t give us vote counts, they give us precinct delegate counts. If 100 people showed up to a precinct caucus and the precinct was allotted 7 total delegates to the county caucus, those 100 people count as 7 “votes”.
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p>Obama won all of the caucus states, IIRC. So his “vote” counts are much much lower than the actual number of voters he got, much more so than Clinton’s. If the reported totals are 50.2 to 49.8, then it’s likely Obama won the “popular vote” too. But we don’t know.
who is strongest in which state until the primary has happened? i hope that answer isn’t polls, since polls have been shown to be highly accurate reflections of public sentiment – except when they aren’t.
All of which are part of the NYC metro-area, and within her home media market. In a sense, these three heavily populated states formed her ‘base’ for super-Tuesday. I think Cos is remarking that Obama did far better than expected in these states by winning CT outright, coming in a close 2nd in NJ, and doing far better than anyone thought he might in NY.
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p>Cos, correct me if I’m off.
No, it’s not based mainly on polls, though the can help, especially when it gets really close to the primary (and if you don’t simply take a “who would you vote for” number and believe it, and also don’t cherry-pick the polls that tell you what you’d like to hear). However, we clearly can know. People who understand elections and demographics have been making pretty good predictions about which states are better for which candidates.
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p>To start with the most obvious, home states: We didn’t need polls to know Obama would be favored heavily in Illinois, and Clinton heavily in New York and Arkansas.
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p>Less obvious, but very strong: Obama consistently does better in caucus states. Why? Maybe because he has more volunteers, maybe because his volunteers are more excited, maybe because his support is geographically broader. Whatever the reason are, it’s a pattern we already knew before Super Tuesday, and it held on Super Tuesday: Obama won every single caucus state with more than 60% (several with more than 70%), while he and Clinton each won about half of the states holding primaries.
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p>So when we see that there are three states holding caucuses this weekend, we can guess Obama has a good shot at winning all three.
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p>Here’s one I haven’t seen much in the press, but is one of my own criteria for judging these that I think is pretty solid, and has worked our pretty well so far: The more traditionally solidly blue a state is, the stronger it is for Clinton. That’s because there are a lot more longtime Democrats in those states, with a Clinton habit. People who have voted for and supported Clintons for a long time and are familiar with them. Strong state Democratic parties with lots of elected officeholders, who have longtime ties to the national party, and hence personal and organizational ties to the Clintons. This is why I knew (and, I suspect, why a lot of other observers knew) that MA, CT, NY, NJ, DE, and CA were more Clinton-favoring terroritory. Obama’s ability to win two of those states, albeit narrowly, was a big achievement.
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p>Another one: Demographics. We know black voters strongly favor Obama. We know young white voters strongly favor Obama. We didn’t before Super Tuesday, but we now know that Latino voters strongly favor Clinton. etc. So we can look at the demographic mix of each state and make predictions about which candidate is stronger there.
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p>Obama does much better than Clinton with creative class voters. Clinton does much better than Obama with “lunch bucket Democrats”.
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p>Regional appeal: We know Clinton is stronger in the northeast, Obama in the great plains and mountain west, and in those southern states with a very high black population, while other southern and midwestern states are more of a battleground. Obama also has an advantage in states within Chicago’s sphere of influence (such as Iowa and Wisconsin), which Clinton has an advantage in states neighboring New York and Arkansas.
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p>Note that these are not absolute statements about who will win those states. A lot depends on where the candidates campaign, for example, or which ads they run, or what they say. But we can predict who’s on stronger ground in which state pretty well.
And they did in FLA as well. So we did know before Super Tuesday that Latino voters were going Clinton.
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p>Also not sure what a “Clinton habit” is. Could that be voters who support Hillary Clinton because they think she is the better candidate? After all, Hillary hasn’t been on the ballot in any state other then NY before 2008. How did voters develop this so-called habit?
Who dug into his pocket for funds as Howard Dean was raking in the cash? We all remember how that turned out.
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p>And Dean was far more accomplished in his public record than Obama is today …
Although I think JK’s pockets are deeper than the Clintons and this is a different point in the campaign.
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p>It does seems that right now Obama has a rather large money advantage over Clinton. It remains to be seen how that will actually affect the outcome in the next couple of weeks.
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So I’m sure that was helpful along the way.
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p>BHO bombarded us with ads over the past couple of weeks and in the end, nothing really changed — the Starbucks people and African Americans voted for him, the blue collar folks, Latinos, Asians and women voted for her, among others.
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p>I think we’re getting to the point where primary voters know who these people are, and can make informed decisions without the ad “stuff”. I thought the last “debate” was very good, one winning points on Iraq, the other on the economy and health care — in doing so, they further solidified existing support.
Most of the money being spent by both campaigns is spent on ground operations.
Kerry was in very big trouble at the time, and his campaign was weak.
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p>He fired his campaign manager, hired Mary Beth Cahill, she changed their strategy drastically, and her moves paid off. Though it still required a stumble by Dean to make it work, it was the only chance Kerry really had, she saw it and did the right things, and Dean made the necessary stumble (a highly negative fight with Gephardt in Iowa).
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p>Clinton is in a better position than Kerry was then. Obama’s doing better than she is, but she can certainly turn it around.
$5 mill from a humble, lifelong public servant. It may be about change, but certainly not small change.
The email I received time stamped today at 11:36 AM EST has Clinton getting $4 million from 35,000 donors in 48 hours. Going for $6 million by the end of today.
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p>They both are raising money – so let us see where the votes go.
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p>Obama should have a good weekend vote and delegate-wise this weekend. Kudos to his organization for being better at the caucus fight (with the exception of NV). This race goes to March 4th with both campaigns spinning their litle hearts away.
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p>BTW, while I disagree with our editors on their endorsement this site has been far more balanced then any network or cable “news” operation. I still laugh/puke at MSNBC’s graphic that “Clinton has more votes in Florida then Obama”. In the real world that is called Clinton won Florida.
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p>I am proud of HRC and her campaign. Many of us worked hard in NH and in MA when the polls said it was over and/or close. I really enjoy the fact that for the first time in years volunteers work, time, sweat and lack of sleep actually have impacts on outcome.
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p>Damn but this election is fun. Go HRC