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Karl Rove tells how to prevail at a contested convention.
After the last Democratic Primary is held in early June, neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama will have enough votes from delegates elected in caucuses or primaries to be declared the nominee. Obama would have to win 76 percent and Clinton 98 percent of the 535 delegates that are at stake in the final eight contests. Neither will happen.
Both sides are frantically wooing the 330 uncommitted superdelegates, who will decide the race. Obama supporters emphasize that he’s ahead in the popular vote and argue that superdelegates should respect the wishes of the primary voters (except in the states he lost, of course). They suggest Obama would do better with independents and Republicans in the fall; they argue Hillary Clinton is a flawed, secretive candidate who was wrong on Iraq and dissembles about her experience. Clinton partisans point to her victories in big battleground states and say superdelegates should act in the best interests of the party. They paint Barack Obama as an inexperienced, untested, overly ambitious candidate with a thin résumé who will fall to the Republican attack machine.
It’s highly unlikely that these undecided superdelegates will tilt one way or the other before June, unless one candidate reels off a string of strong, unexpected victories. There has been talk of a “superdelegate primary” that month, whereby they’d be forced to make a decision and bring the increasingly vitriolic race to a close. But the Clinton camp in particular is talking about the “months” to come until a decision is reached, and it’s even possible the Democratic nominee won’t be decided until the Denver convention in late August.
It’s been a while since the last contested convention. So, drawing on the 180-year history of presidential nominating conventions, let me suggest a few rules for winning in Denver. …
Fox News has pictures of Jeremiah Wright’s new $1,600,000 house. Getting well, by doing good.
Peggy Noonan says everybody understands Hillary now.
I think we’ve reached a signal point in the campaign. This is the point where, with Hillary Clinton, either you get it or you don’t. There’s no dodging now. You either understand the problem with her candidacy, or you don’t. You either understand who she is, or not. And if you don’t, after 16 years of watching Clintonian dramas, you probably never will.
That’s what the Bosnia story was about. Her fictions about dodging bullets on the tarmac — and we have to hope they were lies, because if they weren’t, if she thought what she was saying was true, we are in worse trouble than we thought — either confirmed what you already knew (she lies as a matter of strategy, or, as William Safire said in 1996, by nature) or revealed in an unforgettable way (videotape! Smiling girl in pigtails offering flowers!) what you feared (that she lies more than is humanly usual, even politically usual).
But either you get it now or you never will. That’s the importance of the Bosnia tape. …
… What struck me as the best commentary on the Bosnia story came from a poster called GI Joe who wrote in to a news blog: “Actually Mrs. Clinton was too modest. I was there and saw it all. When Mrs. Clinton got off the plane the tarmac came under mortar and machine gun fire. I was blown off my tank and exposed to enemy fire. Mrs. Clinton without regard to her own safety dragged me to safety, jumped on the tank and opened fire, killing 50 of the enemy.” Soon a suicide bomber appeared, but Mrs. Clinton stopped the guards from opening fire. “She talked to the man in his own language and got him [to] surrender. She found that he had suffered terribly as a result of policies of George Bush. She defused the bomb vest herself.” Then she turned to his wounds. “She stopped my bleeding and saved my life. Chelsea donated the blood.”
Made me laugh. It was like the voice of the people answering back. This guy knows that what Mrs. Clinton said is sort of crazy. He seems to know her reputation for untruths. He seemed to be saying, “I get it.”
Who else is turning on Hillary? How ’bout Frank Rich.
MOST politicians lie. Most people over 50, as I know all too well, misremember things. So here is the one compelling mystery still unresolved about Hillary Clinton’s Bosnia fairy tale: Why did she keep repeating this whopper for nearly three months, well after it had been publicly debunked by journalists and eyewitnesses?
In January, after Senator Clinton first inserted the threat of “sniper fire†into her stump speech, Elizabeth Sullivan of The Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote that the story couldn’t be true because by the time of the first lady’s visit in March 1996, “the war was over.†Meredith Vieira asked Mrs. Clinton on the “Today†show why, if she was on the front lines, she took along a U.S.O. performer like Sinbad. Earlier this month, a week before Mrs. Clinton fatefully rearmed those snipers one time too many, Sinbad himself spoke up to The Washington Post: “I think the only ‘red phone’ moment was: Do we eat here or at the next place?â€
Yet Mrs. Clinton was undeterred. She dismissed Sinbad as a “comedian†and recycled her fiction once more on St. Patrick’s Day. When Michael Dobbs fact-checked it for The Post last weekend and proclaimed it worthy of “four Pinocchios,†her campaign pushed back. The Clinton camp enforcer Howard Wolfson phoned in to “Morning Joe†on MSNBC Monday and truculently quoted a sheaf of news stories that he said supported her account. Only later that day, a full week after her speech, did he start to retreat, suggesting it was “possible†she “misspoke†in the “most recent instance†of her retelling of her excellent Bosnia adventure.
Since Mrs. Clinton had told a similar story in previous instances, this was misleading at best. It was also dishonest to characterize what she had done as misspeaking — or as a result of sleep deprivation, as the candidate herself would soon assert. The Bosnia anecdote was part of her prepared remarks, scripted and vetted with her staff. Not that it mattered anymore. The self-inflicted damage had been done. The debate about Barack Obama’s relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was almost smothered in the rubble of Mrs. Clinton’s Bosnian bridge too far.
Which brings us back to our question: Why would so smart a candidate play political Russian roulette with virtually all the bullet chambers loaded? …
New Republic’s The Plank says Hillary should do a fade like Huck.
Andrew Sullivan says the dirt Clinton is flinging is sticking to her.
Politico says the Clinton campaign is not paying its bills.
Hillary Clinton’s cash-strapped presidential campaign has been putting off paying hundreds of bills for months — freeing up cash for critical media buys but also earning the campaign a reputation as something of a deadbeat in some small-business circles.
A pair of Ohio companies owed more than $25,000 by Clinton for staging events for her campaign are warning others in the tight-knit event production community — and anyone else who will listen — to get their cash upfront when doing business with her. Her campaign, say representatives of the two companies, has stopped returning phone calls and e-mails seeking payment of outstanding invoices. One even got no response from a certified letter.
Their cautionary tales, combined with published reports about similar difficulties faced by a New Hampshire landlord, an Iowa office cleaner and a New York caterer, highlight a less-obvious impact of Clinton’s inability to keep up with the staggering fundraising pace set by her opponent for the Democratic presidential nomination, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. …
Samizdata tells us about the Hillarys and the Huckabees.
As only he can do, Michael Barone bangs the numbers and drops a bombshell. Says Hillary Clinton will win the popular vote in the Dem primary season while BO will win the delegate count.
… These two projections, if they come to pass, seem likely to cause maximum pain among the superdelegates. Clinton will be able to claim a lead in popular vote. But only because of Puerto Rico—and because Puerto Rico this month replaced its caucus with a primary. Obama will be able to claim a lead in pledged delegates. But only because he gamed the caucuses better. His lead in caucus-selected delegates is currently 125, as best I can calculate it; that would mean Clinton would have a 35-delegate lead among delegates chosen in primaries. Both sides will be able to make plausible claims to be the people’s choice.
Let me add that my projections don’t leave much room for a cascade of superdelegates to Obama. On each day’s contests I have Clinton leading Obama both in delegates and popular votes (because North Carolina would be outvoted by Indiana on May 6 and Oregon outvoted by Kentucky on May 20). She would be getting closer to the nomination, not farther away.
Of course my projections could just be plain wrong. Clinton could win Pennsylvania by an unimpressive margin on April 22 and get clocked in Indiana as well as North Carolina on May 6. Then you might see a cascade of superdelegates toward Obama, and the race might effectively be over. But if all those three things don’t happen, then I am sure the contest will go on through June 3. And in that case I think my projections are within the realm of possibility.
WSJ BizTech Blog says Wikipedia hits 10,000,000 truthy entries.