My little politics blog

As I see it, there are good reasons for Democrats to vote for Obama, and good reasons to vote for Clinton. Personally, I think that there are more good reasons to vote for Obama, but that reasonable people can differ on this score. But there is one argument in favor of Clinton that I've seen around lately, and that I think does not hold water: that the Republicans have already thrown everything they have at Clinton, and so we already know what's out there and what effect it's likely to have. Or, as Clinton herself put it:

"I've been tested. I've been vetted. I have been in the political arena in our country very intensely for 16 years. There are no surprises."

I have no particular reason to think that there are any surprises out there. But I also don't think there is any good reason to think that there aren't. In particular, the fact that the Republicans threw everything they had at the Clintons while Bill Clinton was President would only imply that there was nothing left for them to throw if we assume that no new dirt has come into existence since 2000.

In thinking about this, it might help to read this NYT story, about Bill Clinton helping a mining company get a contract in Kazakhstan, after which the head of the mining company gave $31.3 million to Clinton's charitable foundation, and pledged $100 million more. Alternately, one might peruse TNR's list of Clinton's shadiest donors, and reflect on Clinton's failure to make her tax returns public. One might also ask oneself: if the Republicans knew about some scandal that had developed since 2000, would they be more likely to use it during one of Clinton's Senate campaigns, when she was virtually certain to win regardless of what they came up with, or to hold it in reserve in case she ran for President?

Again: I absolutely do not want to suggest that there is any actual dirt on the Clintons for the Republicans to dig up. Nor am I trying to argue against voting for Clinton. As I said above, I think there are good reasons to vote for her. I just don't think that this is one of them.

"It's a science to know where to look, what to look for, and how to look for it," David Bossie told me recently. Bossie, who was forced off the Burton Committee for being too aggressive, is now the president of the conservative organization Citizens United and an independent researcher, though no less committed to the cause. When I visited his Capitol Hill townhouse not long ago, he was surrounded by stacks of Kerry files, busily scrutinizing Kerry contributors' business dealings for a forthcoming book.

Kerry was clearly not Bossie's first choice of nominee. In his basement he proudly showed me dozens, perhaps hundreds, of boxes marked "HILLARY: WHITEWATER" or "HILLARY: TRAVELGATE." He called them the "Sierra Madre of Hillary oppo," regretfully adding that what could have been "ready to roll in twenty-four hours" will now have to wait until 2008.

NOTE: This is one more [superdelegate] for Obama than the last update. The addition comes because of the endorsement of Obama today by DNC Member Carol Ann Campbell (D-PA), a former Philadelphia City Councilwoman. This brings Obama's post-Feb. 5 superdelegate count to 15 to minus-3 for Clinton.

I'm reminded of an episode of the Simpsons where Homer is chasing a roasted pig improbably rendered airborne, all the time saying "It's still good! It's still good!" as the pig makes one narrow miss after another. I believe Homer finally gives up after the pig, at long last, lands in a reservoir.

In fact, the whole Clinton campaign kind of reminds me of that.

I did this because I had heard one too many people like Chris Matthews talking about Obama's alleged lack of substance, and I thought: I know that's not true, since I have read about Obama's work on non-proliferation, avian flu, and a few other issues. And if people are saying he lacks substance, then surely I, as a citizen, should try to find out whether I just hallucinated all this interesting legislation, or whether this talking point was, in fact, completely wrong. So I sat down with Google and Thomas and tried to find out.

But I'm just an amateur. I have a full-time job doing something else. Chris Matthews, by contrast, is paid large sums of money to provide political commentary and insight. I assume he has research assistants at his disposal. He could have done this work a lot more easily than I did. But he didn't. He was more interested in gotcha moments than in actually enlightening the American people.

So here's a challenge for Chris Matthews, or anyone else in the media who wants to take it up. Go over Clinton and Obama's actual legislative records. Find the genuine legislative accomplishments that each has to his or her name. Report to the American people on what you find. Until you do, don't accept statements from either side about who has substance and who does not, or who traffics in "speeches" and who offers "solutions". That's lazy, unprofessional, and a disservice to your audience.

Do your jobs. Don't leave it to bloggers like me to do it for you.

Though the independent ads could help bring greater parity on television for the Clinton campaign in Texas and Ohio, where they are set to air, they may carry a steep price for the entity behind them. Such a group faces tight federal restrictions on how it can operate and what it can say in advertising. A 527 cannot have as its primary purpose the election of a candidate, and the law limits it to running ads about issues, not ones that plainly advocate for Clinton's election or defeat. The group cannot have any contact with the Clinton campaign. Violations could subject organizers and donors to stiff fines.

Campaign finance reform experts said there are troubling aspects in the American Leadership Project's mission. The group is not part of an established effort to exert political influence in Washington, and it first officially surfaced in filings with the Internal Revenue Service on Feb. 15. It is advertising only in states where Clinton faces competitive primary contests. And the content of its first ad strongly hints that its purpose is to support her candidacy and oppose Obama's.

"This pop-up 527 group clearly has been created to spend unlimited soft money to influence the presidential election," said Fred Wertheimer, of the group Democracy 21, after reviewing the ad. "As far as the duck test goes: It looks like a campaign ad; it sounds like a campaign ad; it's a campaign ad."

Although the Clinton Campaign has been telling the press that they have the ground operations to pull off a win in Texas, those ground operations have not been in evidence when I've traveled to small towns to see how Bill Clinton is doing on the Texas stump. Wednesday evening in Victoria, down in the southeastern part of the state, incipient chaos threatened to overwhelm the "Early Vote" Rally precisely because there was no ground operation. The well-oiled, beautifully constructed state-level HRC campaign machine, focused and determined in Iowa, Nevada and California, is beginning to break down.

"It's a clusterfuck! Just a clusterfuck!" the Corpus Christi producer for a local news affiliate shouts into his cell phone. He's telling his boss that there will be no coverage of Bill Clinton's visit to Victoria for the 6 o'clock news. "Who's running this campaign anyway?" the producer asks, of no one in particular. "And now five hundred people have stomped away mad." He shakes his head. At that moment, twenty well-dressed elderly and middle-aged dignitaries and politicians exit the back of the local arts center and walk slowly for the intersection of Goodwin and Main. Presumably, they are Hillary Clinton supporters; however, given their dazed faces, they look more like commissars who have been turned out by the NKVD and cannot believe how suddenly their fortunes have changed.

Hillary's Texas ground game is evidently in trouble:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mayhill-fowler/clintons-texas-ground-ga_b_87723.html

Beginning:

Quote:

Although the Clinton Campaign has been telling the press that they have the ground operations to pull off a win in Texas, those ground operations have not been in evidence when I've traveled to small towns to see how Bill Clinton is doing on the Texas stump. Wednesday evening in Victoria, down in the southeastern part of the state, incipient chaos threatened to overwhelm the "Early Vote" Rally precisely because there was no ground operation. The well-oiled, beautifully constructed state-level HRC campaign machine, focused and determined in Iowa, Nevada and California, is beginning to break down.

"It's a clusterfuck! Just a clusterfuck!" the Corpus Christi producer for a local news affiliate shouts into his cell phone. He's telling his boss that there will be no coverage of Bill Clinton's visit to Victoria for the 6 o'clock news. "Who's running this campaign anyway?" the producer asks, of no one in particular. "And now five hundred people have stomped away mad." He shakes his head. At that moment, twenty well-dressed elderly and middle-aged dignitaries and politicians exit the back of the local arts center and walk slowly for the intersection of Goodwin and Main. Presumably, they are Hillary Clinton supporters; however, given their dazed faces, they look more like commissars who have been turned out by the NKVD and cannot believe how suddenly their fortunes have changed.

"I'd love to carry Texas, but it's usually not in the electoral calculation for the Democratic nominee. Florida and Michigan are," Hillary Clinton, laying the groundwork for why Texas doesn't count.

It's been a running joke on several blogs I read how the Clinton campaign spins various races that she is about to lose or has already lost as "not counting." This one's a bit of a gobsmacker:

Quote:

"I'd love to carry Texas, but it's usually not in the electoral calculation for the Democratic nominee. Florida and Michigan are," Hillary Clinton, laying the groundwork for why Texas doesn't count.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/02/quote-for-th-10.html
(Patrick Appel, AS is still on vacation, how dare he!)

Attorney and Barack Obama supporter Subodh Chandra has filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commissions against a new special interest group that plans to promote Hillary Clinton in the Buckeye State.

Chandra charges that the group, the American Leadership Project, is violating campaign finance and reporting laws because it plans to exclusively run "sham issue ads" promoting Clinton, violating elections law that prohibits independent groups from directly promoting a candidate.

The California-based group, made up of a handful of consultants and ad makers, has said it does not violate the law will comply with FEC reporting requirements.

Chandra, citing the looming March 4 primary, has asked FEC to investigate immediately.

"There was never any concept of how South Carolina should be addressed in terms of identifying voters and getting them out. The skill set of people in the Clinton campaign was pretty low, and there was no central guidance or direction. They had plenty of resources; money wasn't a problem. They just didn't execute."

"It does seem odd to have someone at the top of the organization who has no campaign experience," one strategist said. "Bill Clinton had people who had run campaigns. Patti and Maggie were there by virtue of their personal loyalty, not their campaign experience."