Debate Reaction

Last night, MSNBC hosted their New Hampshire debate. Lots of media reaction:

WaPo: Obama Pulls Punches

New Republic: Edwards More Agressive

Time (Halperin): Win Goes to Edwards

Yepsen (Des Moines Register) : Not Hillary's Best Debate

Perhaps the silliest commentary of the debate came from preeminent Iowa political pundit and noted Clinton critic David Yepsen, linked above. The key quote of the Yepsen piece:

While the evening couldn't have been pleasant for Clinton, it opened a necessary
discussion Democrats must have: If they don't probe her weaknesses, the
Republicans will.

What a rediculous statement. Of course Democrats, being in the middle of a primary battle, are considering the relative weakenesses and strengths of all candidates. This assumes that frontrunner Clinton has more weaknesses than the other candidates (patently false). David Yepsen aside, Democrats and the broader spectrum of Americans seem to be concluding that she is a better potential President than not only her rivals in the Democratic party, but also better than leading Republicans. Note her margin in polling averages over leading GOP candidates, which has been increasing in recent months.

Hillary did fine. She had the memorable moment of the evening (she'll "talk to [President Clinton] later..."), and the instapolls after the debate, whatever they're worth, indicated that she won. Everyone did basically well. The loser of the debate was probably Obama, because he basically conceded the ground of challenging Hillary Clinton to John Edwards. Obama can have all the money in the world, but if he doesn't make a move soon (probably no later than Halloween) he will be the best funded also-ran in American history. Which is fine with me.

Clinton Health Care Plan Unveiled

Senator Clinton unveiled her health care plan yesterday, which seems like pretty sound policy. It is a great leap in the right direction. With health care cost running at roughly 15% of GDP, every serious student of fiscal policy knows that you can't balance the budget without tacking the cost of health care. You just can't. Combine that with the fact that there are millions of Americans who live in fear of a bad diagnosis, a kid with a broken arm, or an unforseen tragedy, and it is intuitive to me that access to health care for everyone is a lofty, but noble, goal. It is also do-able. We live in a country that has the best health care in the world. It is also among the most expensive in the world. Something must be done.

Hillary's proposal is as follows:

- If you have health care insurance and are pleased with it, keep it.

- Provide affordable options for those who are not insured or are dissatisfied with their current coverage.

- Require portability.

The plan has the added benefit of having no element that should cause "Harry and Louise" to revisit the apoplexy of 1993. This isn't 1993, and Hillary learned from the mistakes that she made that year. E.J. Dionne has a piece on that point in today's WP.

The $110 billion a year sticker price might seem steep, but it's a bargain. The cost of treating the uninsured will evaporate.

A few points of perspective on the cost of the plan:

- In FY 2006, the US spent nearly $600 billion on Medicare and Medicaid, costs which would almost certainly go down (Medicaid especially) post-implementation of the Clinton plan.

- We have spend an average of $100 billion on the Iraq war each year that it continues.

This is a good idea. It is going to take Presidential leadership to get it done. It is an affordable, common-sense plan to extend access to health care to all Americans. I have become a cheerleader for Senator Clinton lately, and the "big ideas" candidacy that she is running is part of the reason why. This is a person who is ready to lead, and knows what she wants to do.

Small business reacts well to plan - WSJ
MSNBC wrap

Hillary Continues to Pull Away in New Hampshire

Latest polls show a statistically significant shift in Senator Clinton's direction in New Hampshire. Looks like she put the August recess to good use there.

Franklin Pierce College poll: Hillary at 36%, double her nearest rival.
Rasmussen: 40%- more than double Obama's 17%, and more than Obama and Edwards combined.

The New Hampshire primary is of pivotal importance- it may be her firewall against a loss to Edwards in Iowa. Although, Sen. Clinton's numbers in Iowa are improving dramatically.

So much for those who said she wasn't electable...Democrats seem eager to nominate her.

Hillary Clinton as Goldilocks

Incredibly disciplined campaign, opines Roger Simon at Politico.com. Even imparts the brothers Grimm.

ARG is out with a new round of polling showing large Clinton leads in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. I want to believe these numbers, but ARG is notoriously wrong. The NH numbers particularly are out of line with all other contemporaneous polling.

Sen. Obama- the "experience is overrated" candidate- was subliminally insulting Hillary all Labor Day weekend in Iowa and New Hampshire. Change, change, change, bad foreign policy judgement- the typical and tired Obama mantle.

On the GOP side, Senator Thompson will miss the FOX News debate in NH tomorrow, but will officially enter the race on Thursday. The big question that the talking heads are debating is whether he missed his moment, by waiting so long to enter. And also whether it was wise to wear Gucci loafers to the Iowa State Fair. It was clearly August in terms of news cycles.

Now that Labor Day is behind us, the primaries are officially in full swing. Should be a very interesting autumn.

Hillary: Changing the Map

Fascinating post at Open Left by Chris Bowers. He has taken the most recent head-to-head general election polls to illustrate the invalidity of the "Hillary is unelectable" point and made an electoral map out of these polls. They show huge gains by Senator Clinton over Kerry and Gore, when she is matched against either of the two GOP frontrunners, Guiliani and Romney. She wins by massive margins.

Guiliani is well known nationally, and Romney is not. Therefore, I think that in the Clinton vs. Romney map, the results, while accurate as of this moment, overstate the eventual electoral outcome. I don't think that Hillary would win, for example, Mississippi & Alabama. Based on long term electoral trends, very early polling, and in the case of Arkansas, past residency, I do think that it is more likely than not that Hillary is likely to flip the following previously red states:

(Based in order of my certainty, which is worth basically nothing)

Arkansas
New Mexico
Iowa
Florida
Nevada
Ohio
Colorado
Virginia
Missouri.

Which is enough to win the general election with scores of electoral votes to spare. I think that Obama or Edwards would probably produce largely the same result with the following differences:

* Neither would carry Arkansas.
* Obama would probably several of these based on his propensity to say things that would be easily exploited by the Republican filth machine.
* Edwards might bring North Carolina into play. He might not, based on his performance as a VP candidate in 2004.

Interesting map, though, based on early polling.

Wednesday Roundup

Gallup is out with a new poll: Clinton and Guiliani holding steady leads. USA Today points out that in the internals of the poll, she beats Obama 2 to 1 in a head to head race.

It seems everyone in America has an opinion: I think that Michelle Obama was praising her husband, not necessarily insulting the Clintons. Barack Obama defended her today.

Denny Hastert looks to be resigning in November. An excellent red-to-blue pickup opportunity, claims MyDD.

Daily political roundup

Clinton comfortably in command, says this Times of London piece. It is safe to say that she has exceeded expectations as a candidate thus far, as the author notes.

Senate Guru is up with his Friday roundup of the movement of the week in 08 Senate races.

The Friday Line, via WaPo / Cilizza, ranks the same Senate races for the first time in a while. Still looks good for us heading into next year's elections. CO, VA, NH, MN, KY (you read that right), ME, OR and maybe AK look good for red to blue flips. Recruitment has become a factor in the Republicans' travails. Louisiana (Landrieu) is starting to look more like a missed opportunity for them particularly.

Thursday Roundup

Interesting piece on the debates actually diminishing the standing of Hillary Clinton's challengers for the Dem nomination. I think that this article is spot on.
LINK

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee should leverage his good showing in the Ames straw poll to become the conservative alternative to the current frontrunners of GOP candidates, according to the National Review. They're probably right. Large numbers of likely GOP primary voters say that they are disenchanted with their current choices, but they don't know Mike Huckabee really well. He has been very under the radar so far.

The AFL-CIO Forum: "I'm your girl!"

My favorite clip of the night: Hillary Clinton finally makes the point that she has the most experience fighting the Republican filth machine. Clip here.

There was a lot of piling on of Obama. He was really, really on defense vis-a-vis the Pakistan debate. Edwards was shrill, I thought. Chuck Todd thought so too.

Transcript

I am sure that the spinmeisters will change peoples' viewpoints, but as of now, it seems to me that nothing changed tonight in the fight for the Democratic nomination.

Poll Update

CNN / USA Today / Gallup new poll out this evening. Hillary +22%. (48% support...)

RCP average: Clinton +17.4

Obama camp has put out this humiliating missive reassuring supporters that their candidate is still relevant.

GOP numbers: Guiliani rebounding nationally. (Romney still seems to lead by a good amount in IA and NH.)

Monday Wrap

Interesting details about the evolution of the Clinton / Obama relationship. From the New York Times. Apparently, she doesn't "very much like Barack."

New week, another new high for Hillary in the Rasmussen tracking poll. Rasmussen analysis: Hillary will almost certainly be the Democratic nominee.

More on the controversy about Hillary's poor choice of words vis-a-vis lobbyists at the Yearly Kos convention. From My DD. Her point is well taken, but it did seem like she was defending lobbyists. However, overall, her reception at Yearly Kos, while chilly, was not as bad as it could have been. For a group of liberal bloggers not to throw rotten vegetables at Hillary! as she enters a room is a good day for her.

The Fix's wrap on the GOP's Iowa debate yesterday. I think that Romney is a little nutty, but his "Dr. Strangelove / Jane Fonda" comment about Obama was particularly cutting. Even a stopped clock is right once in a while...

John Edwards in a Hypocrite.

John Edwards took over $800,000 from FOX News employees. This after lambasting another candidate for taking what turns out to be less money from Rupert Murdoch and his employees yesterday. Link to yesterday's story.

It looks like the famed Clinton oppo team is fully operational. The turnaround time on this story was very, very small.

Is this the last flailings of a desperate candidate? He's not even ahead in Iowa anymore. It's now a three way tie.

Different Day, Different Obama Worldview

I am getting dizzy. Last week, Barack Obama was all for meeting with tyrants without preconditions. Yesterday, he was ready to invade Pakistan. Today, he has ruled out using nuclear weapons as commander-in-cheif. This guy would be a dream come true for the Republicans.

Clinton responds to the daily vacillation that is the Obama foreign policy:

"Presidents should be very careful at all times in discussing the use or nonuse of nuclear weapons," Clinton said. "Presidents since the Cold War have used nuclear deterrence to keep the peace. And I don't believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or nonuse of nuclear weapons."

Dodd responds, also from ABC:

"Over the past several days, Senator Obama's assertions about foreign and military affairs have been, frankly, confusing and confused," said Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn. "He has made threats he should not make and made unwise categorical statements about military options."

The New York Post's Brookes calls the wisdom of Obama's Pakistan speech into question. Who's Bush - Cheney Lite now?

What with Rupert Murdoch taking over The Wall Street Journal, John Edwards is calling on Hillary Clinton to return the contributions made to her campaign by News Corp officials.

Poll Report

Clinton's lead is expanding. As of today, the Real Clear Politics average for her is the highest it has been all year.

A new Pew Poll out today confirms almost to the number yesterday's NBC / WSJ poll. Also, the most recent Rasmussen tracking poll has almost identical numbers.

The Christian Science Monitor on the GOP race in South Carolina. Interesting read.

Obama Talks Tough / Clinton Expands Lead

The Obama people crack me up. Last week, a substantial portion of Democratic primary voters were shown how their candidate's lack of experience can manifest itself: naive and potentially dangerous policy making from a debate lectern. So, what's the solution? Get together a few experts and write a wonkish speech on American policy toward Pakistan. And the Oba-media fawns.........

Obama wants to redeploy the forces from Iraq and send two brigades to Afghanistan. And condition assistance for Pakistan on the Musharraf government's cooperation in hunting Al-Qaeda.

The speech is drawing mixed reviews. From the Washington Post's The Trail blog.

John Podhoretz is not impressed.

Obama is all thumbs when it comes to this foreign policy stuff. If I understand correctly, what he wants to do is condition aid. If they don't cooperate, we invade. So, we pull out of what Obama rightly calls a wrong-headed war in Iraq, only to possibly invade another Muslim country, of nearly 200 million people that we know has nuclear weapons and has been cooperating with us in our hunt for Al Qaeda to the extent that the government can politically and survive. What a novel construct.

New NBC / WSJ poll

Apparently, Obama needed to show a little foreign policy gravitas this week. NBC and the Wall Street Journal are out with a new poll today that shows Sen. Clinton's lead nationally to have grown to 21 percent, with another 8 points back to Edwards. I know this is a national poll and not an Iowa / NH / SC poll, but it is hard to see how she loses with numbers like these.

From the WSJ, this represents a net 7 percent increase for Hillary! over Obama since June.

The Friday Mammary Roundup

Hillary! has boobs and she knows how to use them. A fundraising letter about your cleavage seems to be an odd postscript to a week in which she scored lots of points in many circles vis-a-vis being a serious potential President.

From Real Clear Politics: Hillary beats Obama this week.

New York Times weighs in on 2008 Congressional battle.

Finally updated- the Federal Election Commission with findraising totals and an interactive map for the Presidential race through 2q 07.

Thursday Roundup

South Carolina Poll: Hillary +15 (and this was supposed to be Obama's best shot in early primaries....) This is a post-debate poll.

"Don't fuss at me..." Fred Thompson gets heckled and responds. From CNN.

And Romney weighs in on the Clinton-Obama fight.

So much for that Bush economy:

37 million Americans living below the poverty line.
28 million working Americans without any health insurance whatsoever.
Housing starts at a four year low.
The previously strong stock market tumbled today.
Heckuva job.

So it begins...Hillary and Obama's post-debate tussle

Today, Hillary! called Senator Obama's comments in last night's debate regarding negotiations with despots "irresponsible" and "naive." Obama's statement did reflect inexperience: Senator Clinton is correct.

However, I am interested in the Clinton strategy with her follow-up interview. And there is some strategy at work: Hillary Clinton is cautious. She would not accidentally let her feelings about Obama's comments suddenly burst forth as if she had Tourette's syndrome. Her words in the interview with the Quad City Times (IA/IL) were the harshest we have seen from any candidate so far in this cycle.

The conventional wisdom in a campaign like Hillary's would generally be: "You're the frontrunner. You're winning by a couple of touchdowns. Most (if not all) people think that you won last night's debate- and every debate for that matter. The press is making a lot of hay for you at Obama's expense regarding these comments." Why so strong a statement, and why now?

It seems to me there are two possibilities.

1. This campaign, six months before he Iowa caucuses, seems to be at a crossroads. After several months in the spring of having close-ish polls showing Obama nipping at her heels, she has opened up a wide lead nationwide and is probably a little ahead in Iowa. The political media has said over and over in recent weeks that Obama and Edwards need to make a move now or have the race slip totally from their grasp with no hope of retrieval. There is a symmetry to that statement: a bold move by the Clinton campaign could dispatch her rivals and put the race out of their reach for good. Obama's statement last night promising to hold talks with those that hate us most without any qualification whatsoever gives Hillary! the opportunity to exploit Obama's biggest weakness: profound inexperience.

2. She's just doing what the Clintons do best: playing offense. Every day that is bad for Obama is good for her. Getting another news cycle out of the Obama story helps her. This is actually an extension of the first point.

AP's treatment of the dust-up. ABC

The You Tube Debate -- Who Won?

The debate is over. It was an interesting experiment that ultimately, in my view, failed. It is great to have questions from viewers, but the singing rednecks, the talking snowman, the hip-hop No Child Left Behind questioner all were beneath the dignity of a Presidential debate. I hope that when CNN holds its Republican You Tube debate in September, it is a bit more serious. On to the winners / losers:

Winners

*Clinton- As in all the other debates, she was the most Presidential and was very compelling. The Senator's handling of the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton question was masterful. It is clear that any foreign policy question that she gets she answers through a general election scope, and is more knowledgeable than any other candidate except Biden. She got more mileage out of the Edelman letter and also made Elizabeth Edwards look petty for her comments last week.

*Biden - I just find Joe Biden awfully well spoken and brave. It is not a popular thing to do in a Democratic debate to throw water on Richardson's "get out now" rhetoric on Iraq, but it is responsible. In fact (again from a general election perspective) Biden and Hillary! are the only candidates who, throughout the primary season, have shown responsibility and measured ideas for exiting Iraq. They are both plausible commanders-in-chief. Biden makes me wistful: what might have been had it not been for that Neil Kinnock ugliness in 1987...

* Edwards - I will begrudgingly admit that John Edwards improved his standing tonight. In fact, his debate performance was just okay until the health care question came about. His answer on that question was fantastic. His frustration was, I am sure, contrived. His well-known financial security makes any personal concerns about health care remote for him. All of that aside, it was compelling and for perhaps the second time in five years of watching John Edwards, I was moved by something he said. Usually he gives me the creeps.

Losers

Obama - I know that we are six months from the Iowa caucuses. I know that a lot can happen between now and January. I know that he is the great hope of the nation (note the sarcasm), but Obama needs to make a break if he is to stop the increasingly inevitable Clinton nomination. He does attack her a bit, but it is too nuanced for it to make any impact at all. His debate performance tonight was about the same as the others-- just okay. He also needs to start speaking with some specificity about something -- anything. His buzzwords are tired. "Fighting cyncism," "hope," "fundamentally changing Washington" are just words. Without a plan of action, they do not a platform make.

We learned that he is against the war, against deficits, against underinsurance, and is against- gasp!- child molestation. What a marvel! Somebody please rewrite Profiles in Courage! The more of Obama I see, the more embarrassed I am that he is going to even be perhaps the silver medalist in this contest. He simply is not qualified- period. With greater exposure, the more it shows. Hillary made him look foolish for his answer on diplomacy with Iran and Syria. Oh, and ABC caught him exaggerating. LINK

Richardson - He wants to be in the top tier so badly. In the debates, he looks unprepared, ill-informed and uncomfortable. He was borderline inarticulate at times. Senator Biden made him look dangerously ill-informed on his Iraq withdrawal "plan." The Richardson "plan" (essentially to run ripshod out of Iraq in six months with no residual troops) would cost lives both because of the rapidity of the withdrawal and because of the lack of protection for American civilians remaining. Richardson seemed not to have considered this, where a commander-in-chief would have. That is Richardson's problem right now--he appears to be not *quite* President material.

UPDATE: 11:09 PM - The reaction from the debate has begun to flow in:

Hillary wins the InstaPoll from SurveyUSA. Link (And has favorables 10% higher than Obama).

John Edwards hated Hillary's jacket, and says so.

Um, and Mitt Romney had this to say. I really hope that the Republicans nominate this moron. I'm thinking 40 state landslide for Democrats if they do.