Welcome to the Hillary Bloggers!

Good to see you here, NewHampster and campskunk (among others). Hope you all have it in your hearts to cast your ballot for president for the same person that Hillary will.

You are probably wondering about something.

The truth is that everything I know, I learned from the Clinton campaign.

Ann Lewis told me everything.

Everything

There Really Is No Such thing as a Pledged Delegate

The Associated Press (hate the source but it's the only one I can find) reported in early April that Hillary Clinton was going to start going after the "pledged delegates" (the delegates to the Democratic National Convention chosen based on voter preferences in the primaries and caucuses)

“There is no such thing as a pledged delegate,” Clinton said at a news conference in California, where she has been fundraising.
...
Pledged delegates are “misnomer. The whole point is for delegates, however they are chosen, to really ask themselves who would be the best president and who would be our best nominee against Senator McCain,” Clinton said. “And I think that process goes all the way to the convention.”

Well, it turns out that Senator Clinton was right.

Prince George's County Executive Jack Johnson, who'd been chosen as a Maryland pledged party leader and elected official delegate for Hillary Clinton, has decided he will vote for Barack Obama instead.

"I cannot in good conscience go to the convention and not support Barack," Johnson said in an interview. "She ran a great campaign, but she fell short of the line."

This is Johnson's second change of heart in the race. He had allowed his name to be listed as a supporter by the Obama campaign in December.

Now, I'm guessing that the 79% of the vote that Obama got in Prince George's County (66% black; granted, he did pretty well in the white DC suburbs as well, and didn't lose a single precinct in the city itself) helped push Executive Johnson to change his vote.

Still, it's pretty ironic that Hillary's "no such thing as a pledged delegate" is hurting her instead of Barack.

But yeah, I don't like this. Obama will win the pledged delegates as pledged delegates. He doesn't need this.

Obama got only 3,500 less votes than Cazayoux

I've just added up the numbers (which are slightly off due to absentee counts not being by precinct, so in the split counties of Iberville, Ascension and Pointe Coupee, the numbers are slightly off) and Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton in LA-6 (of course), with ~46,200 to her ~24,400

Don Cazayoux got 49,702

Obama actually got 3,500 more votes than Cazayoux in East Baton Rouge (37,179-33,634; where he got 70% of the vote versus Clinton); he only got 9,000 votes outside of East Baton Rouge, whereas Cazayoux, got 16,068.

East Baton Rouge [which contains the second-biggest city and capital of Louisiana, Baton Rouge] Parish is 45.7% black. The district as a whole is 35.5% black, and the district outside of East Baton Rouge is 18.6% black.

To recap (since apparently it's unclear):

1) Obama voters in Louisiana tended to overwhelmingly be black (crunching the exit poll numbers tells us that 75% of those voting for Obama were black.
2) In 45.7% black East Baton Rouge Parish, Barack Obama got 10% more votes in the Democratic primary than did Don Cazayoux in the 5/3/08 special election.
3) In 18.6% black non-East Baton Rouge parts of Louisiana's 6th district, Barack Obama got only a little more than half as many votes in the primary as Don Cazayoux did in the special election. In fact, Obama and Clinton combined got only a few more votes than did Cazayoux in non-East Baton Rouge LA-6.

Therefore, there is very strong evidence that black turnout tonight was pretty darn low, comparatively.

And yet they ran some strong ads attacking him for being too Obama-like, and he still won.

With Obama on the ticket black turnout in the general will be through the roof.

I guess that's good news for Obama not hurting down-ticket Democrats.

We'll see for certain on May 13th. If Travis Childers wins, Republicans may have to find a new tactic to use in their futile effort to win back the House.

Wavering African-American Superdelegates in Virginia

State Delegates (and convention superdelegates) Lionell Spruill(D-Chesapeake) and Jennifer McClellan(D-Richmond) are wavering in their endorsements of Senator Hillary Clinton for president.

The pressure being put on African American superdelegates who support Clinton, such as McClellan and Spruill, appears to be having an effect.

Raymond H. Boone, editor and publisher of the Richmond Free Press, the city's African American newspaper, said McClellan and Spruill "are opening the door to trouble" in their next election if they do not support Obama.

"I think there is going to be heavy retaliation against both of them," said Boone, whose newspaper endorsed Obama.

McClellan is struggling to balance her constituents' wishes with her support for Clinton, who helped her get started in politics. "I'm being asked to go back on my word," she said.

That's true, you are being asked to go back on your word. But you are also being asked to respect the wishes of the people who, you know, GAVE you your start in politics by electing you to office, in addition to not overruling your state's (and almost certainly your country's) elected delegates.

Per my tallies, Obama won McClellan's district 77.3%-21.9% and Spruill's district 82.4%-17.0%

But in addition, Boone is likely correct. Their primaries for re-election are in mid-2009, less than a year after the Democratic convention. Given the Clinton's campaign's success in turning the black community against them and the fact that a Clinton nomination will require the superdelegates to overturn the pledged delegates, that could certainly spell serious trouble should an ambitious younger Obama supporter in the district take advantage of it.

Brilliant Flyer On the Gas Tax

Links the Minnesota bridge disaster with the gas tax holiday proposed by Clinton and McCain.

Which, of course, is the case. Our infrastructure has been chronically underfunded due to low gas taxes. As a result, our rail & other mass transit infrastructure is limited/non-existent, and our bridges aren't safe enough.

Of course, Pawlenty's push for the Twins stadium instead of bridges hurt as well.

Props to Eric Brandt for making it.

The Insanity of the Gas Tax "Holiday"

That's the only word to describe the Clinton-McCain proposal to "temporarily" suspend the gas tax.

First of all, it's almost guaranteed to do absolutely nothing to lower gas prices

Cuts in gas taxes would not lower gas prices because the supply of gasoline is close to fixed -- the oil industry is already operating its refineries at near maximum capacity (or so they claim). As we teach our econ students, if the supply is fixed, then the price is determined on the demand side. This means that, if the industry produces about 400 million gallons of gas per day, the price will continually adjust to the point where all consumers put together purchase about 400 million gallons of gas per day. Therefore, if the gas tax is reduced or eliminated, as McCain has proposed, the price consumers pay will stay the same, but more money will go to the oil industry.

And even if that wasn't true, and it would save people $30 a year, the rationales Senator Clinton and Senator McCain are using for this proposal are still insane.

Campaigning in Cleveland, Mr. McCain suggested that low-income families were hit hardest by the cost of fuel because they typically drove longer distances to work in older-model automobiles.

“Why not give them a little break?” he said. “Instead, with all due respect to those who travel around in chauffeured limousines, you’d think that we are destroying the economy of America.” Mr. McCain acknowledged that the proposed gas-tax holiday did not take on bigger problems.

Of course, the poor in Cleveland tend to use the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority to get around.

The heavy rail and light rail uses no foreign oil at all, as it's electric (it's likely powered by a coal-fired power plant, which has it's own problems but at least we're a net exporter of that particular resource)

The bus uses foreign oil, but significantly less per passenger mile than an automobile.

The sane goal is to get more people to ride mass transit, so that the federal government doesn't have to subsidize operational expenses like it did in Cleveland as of 2006 (while all transit systems have to be subsidized because you want public transit to be available at all times, not just peak times, and you want to keep it affordable even for the very poor, Cleveland's transit system is underutilized, and so fares only cover 18% of operating expenses [most of operating expenses are salaries, wages and benefits, fuel-related costs are a pretty small percentage]; in Chicago, fares cover 43% of operating expenses) and can instead spend more on subsidizing capital expenses (keeping the system safe and expanding it and other systems).

By the way, the funds for subsidizing mass transit?

They come from that gas tax McCain and Clinton want to repeal.

Federal purse strings. Part of the squeeze stems from the failure of federal funding to keep pace with the relative explosion in the number of transit systems under construction. Even as more cities build or expand their systems and ridership hits a 50-year high, the amount of federal funding has remained constant. And now, the federal transportation trust fund, paid for largely through an 18.4-cent-per-gallon gas tax, is scheduled to run out of money next year. The federal fund will have a $3 billion surplus this year, which will become a $3.9 billion deficit by 2009. When Congress proposed raising the gas tax to close the expected gap, the White House called for cuts in spending. The tax has not been raised since 1993.

The Congressional proposal for raising the gas tax was not a bunch of "crazy far-left Democrats," by the way.

This was a bi-partisan commission's recommendation

And that commission was not "bipartisan" in the sense of having Democrats, Joe Lieberman [who's decent on transit issues] and Bernie Sanders.

It included:

1. Bush Transportation Secretary Mary Peters (Republican)
2. Jim Doyle's Secretary of Transportation and former Teamster Frank Frank Busalacchi (Democrat)
3. Bush appointee and former RNC Deputy Chairwoman Maria Cino (Republican)
4. Rick Geddes, Hoover Institution Fellow (Republican)
5. Steve Heminger, Pelosi choice for commission (Democrat)
6. Frank McArdle, Hillary Clinton choice (Democrat)
7. Steve Odland, Office Depot CEO & business mogul (Republican)
8. Patrick Quinn, Bill Frist choice (Republican)
9. Matthew K. Rose, Railroad Baron (Republican)
10. Jack Schenendorf, Bush transition team member (Republican)
11. Tom Skancke, chosen by Harry Reid (Democrat [kind of])
12. The very far-right Paul Weyrich, co-founder of the Heritage Foundation (Republican)

So that's 8 Republicans and 4 Democrats.

“I’m a conservative Republican,” said Weyrich, a panel member. “The orthodoxy in the conservative movement is don’t raise any tax. But in this particular instance, I don’t see any alternative.”

Granted, Paul Weyrich is actually pretty good on transportation issues (plus he already said he wouldn't vote for McCain vs. Hillary, although he may have changed his mind, especially after this, his pet issue).

And there are other right-leaning pressure groups opposed to this, including the National Association of Manufacturers (probably) and construction companies (definitely).

And there is bipartisan opposition to such a holiday, even in rural states (John Thune and Tom Harkin and both said to oppose it in the NYTimes article).

At any rate, it is utterly insane.

Bill Clinton Echoes Barack Obama

Not a surprise, since after all, Obama's comments about Reagan were merely toned-down, less praiseworthy versions of Bill's comments about the man while he was running for president

Bill now claims that "We’ll unite this country by doing things together, that’s what’ll happen,"

This is despite Senator Clinton's divisiveness and their criticism of Obama's promise to do the same as naive.

Moreover, he's echoing Senator Obama on the job of the president.

Obama said this, and Hillary criticized him:

But I'm not an operating officer. Some in this debate around experience seem to think the job of the president is to go in and run some bureaucracy. Well, that's not my job. My job is to set a vision of 'here's where the bureaucracy needs to go.'"

Yet Bill agrees

The President is not called the Chief Executive Officer of America for nothing. You don’t run the bureaucracy but you are responsible for seeing that your ideas turn into positive changes in other people’s lives.

Perhaps he should support the candidate he seems to agree with, rather than the one he doesn't.

Michigan Dem Exit Polls: African-Americans 70% Uncommitted

The exit polls are pretty interesting in Michigan.

If everyone had been on the ballot, the exit polls say it would have been Clinton 45, Obama 37, Edwards 12, but 41% of Edwards supporters and 17% of Obama supporters chose either Clinton or Kucinich.

Most things were pretty unsurprising. Uncommitted did better among the young, the urban, those with more education, and those making at least $50,000 a year.

But the African-American vote going 70% for uncommitted compared to 26% for Clinton was very surprising.

I'm not sure what the shift away from Clinton (and it is away from Clinton in this case since Obama wasn't on the ballot) was due to.

I have two theories:

1. African-Americans have solid, hardcore support for Obama to such a large extent that they'd prefer a proxy vote for him to a vote for Clinton
2. The Clinton campaign's tactics and remarks have been disastrous for her among African-Americans.


What are your thoughts?

Clinton Campaign Bribery via Charitable Contributions

I wouldn't bring this up except that the Clinton campaign has accused Barack Obama of bribery & violating campaign finance laws due to the PAC having given money it had left to the campaigns of Democratic candidates in early states.

Turns out the Clinton campaign has done the same thing via charitable contributions

Recipient	City/State	Amount	Date
African American Museum of IA	Cedar Rapids, IA	$90	9/18/2007
Assumption Greek Orthodox Church	Manchester, NH	$175	7/13/2007
Bobby Stephens' Fund for Education	Manchester, NH	$500	3/16/2007
Capital Pride Festival	Washington, DC	$125	6/8/2007
Capitol City Pride	Des Moines, IA	$100	6/12/2007
Democracy Fest, Inc.	Pittsford, VT	$250	6/7/2007
New Hampshire Polit Library	Concord, NH	$1,500	3/16/2007
Reno-Sparks NAACP Branch #1112	Reno, NV	$100	5/25/2007
Rich Eychaner Charitable Fndn	Des Moines, IA	$250	6/12/2007

That's 3 donations to Iowa, 3 to New Hampshire, and 1 to Nevada, in addition to one to D.C. and one to Vermont. Is the extreme disproportion a coincidence? Very hard to believe.

Now, why is the Clinton campaign making charitable contributions in the first place? My guess is that it was money received from criminal sources that they didn't want to directly return.

After all, they've pledged to donate the $23,000 Norman Hsu had given Hillary in the past to charity. Will that money be going to Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada as well? They need to answer this question now, because the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries occur before the 4th quarter filing deadline.

The Problem with Hillary: On Openness

I've been cursed with a lack of ability to "read" people. I'm always wondering, "How does she feel about me?", "Is he offended by that remark?", "Is there a subliminal meaning behind that?" Those are the good days, though. Many days I'm left to stare blankly and think (or say) "Whaaaaaaaaaaaatttt?" or "I don't get it ......." (both of these remarks made my CTY class t-shirt in 2003, mostly thanks to me).

However, when it comes to politics, I'm in the same boat as everybody else. One of the primary goals for a politician has become to prevent anybody from finding out anything about you.

Consider, for instance, the job of the president's press secretary. Initially, this position was to facilitate the dispersal of information from the presidency to the American people at large, as the president was too busy to be constantly interviewed.

Today, this job requires someone with the ability to give non-answers to every conceivable non-softball question.

Scott McClellan was the master of this. He was able to give extremely long-winded non-answers to every non-softball question, and this usually satisfied our current excuse for a White House press corps.

Of course, members of Bush's cabinet have done the same thing, dancing around or simply "not recalling" things. Alberto Gonzales did this to such an extent that even Arlen Specter was getting furious, although he remained too cowardly to actually support taking any action.



Senator Clinton has been doing the same thing at the last few debates. Consider her answer to the driver's license question at the October debate.



Or consider her inability to recall Ross Perot, who ran against her husband twice.



The American people are more fed up with Washington now than they were when Perot got nearly 20% of the vote [and would've gotten more if people hadn't figured that he had no chance] than they've ever been before.

As Bill Richardson has put it

"The Congress today is at an 11 percent approval rating. You know what's higher than the Congress? Dick Cheney," he said. "The only entity that is less popular than Democrats is Republicans in Congress and the president."

No matter how progressive Hillary may be, this is a serious problem.