QUOTE:
My apologies for being contentious so early in my non-lurking OTF life. I'm generally a pretty friendly guy, but, living in DC, this primary campaign has driven me a bit batty.

No need to apologise at all, Gyuri. I thought your posts on this thread were well argued and of great interest. OTF at its best kinda stuff.

And welcome, of course.

Thanks, G-Man (I hope I've kept up with the name switching and got that right). It's always a bit difficult to figure out the right tenor for online posting. I think this is especially true for me here, as I've been lurking on this site since UA mentioned it to me in 2002 (I had just moved to Germany, and was trying to find a place to help me get up-to-speed on football in Europe). As a result, I already have a partly formed conception of many OTFers online personalities and would instinctively post with a sense of familiarity (or ease) that couldn't match everyone's (lack of) familiarity with my newbie self. I planned to slowly dip my toe in the water here as I would were I meeting new people in person, and that earlier post was a bit more contentious than a get-to-know you conversation would normally be.

To return a bit to the topic, Richardson's endorsement apparently drove the Clintons around the bend.

Gyuri, are you from Philadelphia?

And to return to the topic, is Hillary still going after delegated already pledged to other candidates? That's really disturbing.

Coffy,

I've always answered the Philly question with a yes, though in reality I moved from there to S. Florida when I was 10 (but really, who wants to admit they're from Ft. Lauderdale?). I've always maintained my childhood sports rooting interest, though, and still pop up from DC from time-to-time to catch games.

I think Hillary's plan is to go after pledged delegates at the convention, though, if it gets that far, Obama would be doing the same thing. I think the purpose of her people mentioning pledged delegate switching now is to try and continue to cast doubt on Obama's inevitability. Basically, this strategy is what Josh Marshall has called the "fog of nonsense".

This line from the article is fairly amusing:

QUOTE:
The fact is that, until now, candidates have rarely, if ever, faced such a concerted movement (featuring prominent names, such as Bill Richardson, and a column in Slate titled "The Hillary Deathwatch"), urging them to drop out before their rival has clinched the nomination.

It is amusing because I'm positive that supporters for the leading candidate have always suggested that the other candidate drop out (see McCain/Huckabee as far back as six weeks ago); it's not as if prominent unaffiliated political figures have suggested Clinton drop out. It's also amusing because it cites a Slate feature that is trying to gauge when she'll drop out as evidence of a "concerted movement". First, there is no "concert" between Obama's campaign and Slate. Second, Slate is not close to a major national opinion-setter. Third, it's a web magazine without historical precedence in any of the cited races. Finally, the Slate feature isn't suggesting she drop out, just trying to determine when/if she will.

As for the substance of the article. What the article refers to as pressure to drive Clinton out is really two distinct phenomena. The main request is that she stop driving up Obama's negatives with divisive personal attacks and stop saying that McCain is a better qualified candidate than Obama. This isn't a request to drop out, and it has some actual party support. The second motivation is that she should drop out so the party can begin to unite and fight against McCain. Outside of Obama supporters who had been suggesting she drop out (though Obama hasn't, and his supporters have stopped this), the unity plea is not so much that Clinton should drop out, but that superdelegates should decide this thing after the primaries, but well before the convention (see Pelosi, Reid and Dean).

The suggestion that superdelegates should decide this before the convention (which is the real ground that Clinton is fighting against; the claims of victimization against dropping out are mainly a fundraising tactic) can't be compared to the cited historical record, because superdelegates did not exist in any of the cited races other than 1988 (in fact, they came into being partly as a result of the inability of the party to decide on a nominee pre-convention in 1980), and 1988 is really a terrible analogy. By this stage in the process, there was no question that Dukakis was going to win, and there was widespread acknowledgment that Jackson was staying in to try and ensure that the party platform paid attention to African-American issues. In other words, Jackson's goal wasn't to win the nomination, so he didn't spend the campaign driving up Dukakis's negatives, and so people didn't call for a quick end because his remaining in had no real detrimental effect to the party.

My personal opinion is that Clinton should quit, but that's only because I don't want her to be president (for a whole host of reasons, most of which derive from my belief that she will be far too hawkish), and I would have preferred she quit six months ago.

The clintons have finally released their taxes. They made $109,000,000 in the last 7 years, mostly on the talk circuit.

I love it when Hillary turns on her fake folksy scrappy side, the one that won her Ohio.

I'm somewhat surprised that that didn't get more play over the weekend. From this distance it seemed to be around for a single news cycle and then pretty much disappear. If I was a newspaper editor, I would have sent a hack around to get some quotes from the numerous small businesses the campaign has been stiffing on bills lately.

And now HRC has maybe, sort of, thrown Mark Penn under the bus, a bit.

Do those closer to the situation think that either of these developments is going to have any lasting impact on the race?

The clintons have finally released their taxes. They made $109,000,000 in the last 7 years, mostly on the talk circuit.

Fuck me!

So we now know your price...

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Do those closer to the situation think that either of these developments is going to have any lasting impact on the race?

I don't think Penn's leaving is going to have any real effect on the race, mainly because it seems that his strategic influence has waned a bit over the past couple of weeks as Clinton has cut back the negativity of her campaign (of course, the week before PA this is likely to change, but that would likely be true regardless of Penn's influence). Also, it's not like his leaving the campaign altogether (he's still doing polling) and he and the Clintons are close enough, that I expect his voice will still be heard.

As for releasing the taxes, I'm not sure the entire story is dead. I think there's going to be some chasing down of sources of income for the early portion of this week. I don't think that the $109mm number is going to have any real staying power as a news story, although it may have an effect with some lower-income voters.

The weasels did release their tax info on a late Friday afternoon, timed for minimal impact and bundled with the Penn dump.

I think the Penn fiasco will have some impact, it will provide more substance for the labor unions who are backing Obama.

In any case, HRC's lead in PA is now down to 5%-7% after it was about three times larger last month, while Obama is opening up a huge lead in Carolina. It looks like Obama might actually increase his delegate lead in the last leg. Obama's lead in the overall nationwide democrat polls is now around 6%-7%, much larger than it was last month.

Quote from AG's linked article:
But a larger factor is that Clinton is being held to a different standard than virtually any other candidate in history.

The author loses all credibility here, that's total BS. The Bosnia episode alone would have sunk most candidates. He's sounding like Clinton appologist Geraldine Ferraro, who has been pimped on Fox to rally Archie Bunker types with the victimization/reverse racial discrimination shtick (the implied premise is that the media is favoring Obama because he's black and ravaging HRC because she's a white woman...) Fox BTW has been remarkably supportive of Hillary, and their motives there are quite transparent...

Linus,

Oddly, the latest Survey USA poll of PA has Clinton up by 18.

This is a significant outlier from the most recent polls, but SUSA has been one of the most accurate pollsters in this cycle so it's hard to dismiss.

I still think Obama will lose PA by about 10-12%, and hope the recent closer polling doesn't set unrealistic expectations for him.

Losing PA won't make a difference in the actual delegate count, because Obama would nearly recoup that deficit in NC where he's running 15-20 pts ahead and come out ahead if you add the other states. Obama could deal her a knockout blow if he actually wins in PA but I doubt that will happen.