Monday, Jan 28, 2008 2:09 PM UTC
John McCain promises there will be "other wars."
By Tim Grieve
John McCain told supporters Sunday that Iraq is a “tough war” that isn’t “going to be over right away,” then warned: “There’s going to be other wars … I’m sorry to tell you, there’s going to be other wars. We will never surrender but there will be other wars.”
As the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein notes, McCain “did not elaborate who the United States would be fighting.”
Monday, Jan 28, 2008 2:02 PM UTC
Kennedy to endorse Obama, despite pleas from the former president to remain neutral.
By Tim Grieve
Memo to Bill Clinton: Yes, Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in 1984 and 1988, but Jackson never won the state by a landslide in a fiercely fought contest there; never won the state when the state’s results really mattered; and never was a serious contender for the Democratic nomination.
Oh, and Mr. President? Jackson never had Ted Kennedy’s endorsement, either.
Kennedy will endorse Barack Obama this morning during a rally at American University in Washington, and this one’s got to hurt. As the Washington Post reports, Hillary Clinton sought Kennedy’s endorsement for months, and her husband appealed to Kennedy “in recent days to at least remain neutral.”
In the Post’s telling, Kennedy has decided to endorse Obama — he had planned to remain neutral through the primaries — in part because of his admiration for Obama but also in part because of his disappointment in the Clintons. The Post says that Kennedy has come to see Obama as a “potentially historic candidate, an African American able to connect across racial lines and to inspire young voters.” As for the Clintons? The Post says Kennedy felt “rising frustration” over their “campaign tactics, particularly comments by the couple and their surrogates in South Carolina that seemed to carry racial overtones.” The Post says that Kennedy registered his complaints with Bill Clinton, but to “no avail.”
With both Ted Kennedy and Caroline Kennedy endorsing Obama — in a New York Times Op-Ed Sunday, the daughter of John F. Kennedy said that Obama could be the kind of president who inspires her “the way people tell me that my father inspired them” — the Clinton campaign Sunday pointed to its own claim on the Kennedy legacy: It released an endorsement statement in which former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend — the eldest daughter of Robert F. Kennedy — said that Clinton “shares so many of the concerns of my father.” Townsed also noted that Clinton has the support of her brother Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and her sister Kerry Kennedy.
Saturday, Jan 26, 2008 10:00 PM UTC
Edwards says there's an "opportunity for a surprise."
By Tim Grieve
Democrats were predicting a record turnout in today’s South Carolina primary — on balance, probably a good thing for Barack Obama — and voting patterns so far are pointing in that direction.
The State is using words like “good,” “strong” and “heavy” to describe turnout, which would be a dramatic change from last week’s Republican primary, where bad weather and a lack of enthusiasm put a lid on the percentage of eligible voters who actually voted. The New York Times reports that turnout appears high today in both predominately white and predominately black precincts.
The candidates continued to campaign in South Carolina even as voters went to the polls. Obama visited a predominately black church and a historically black college in Columbia this morning before stopping by a Columbia restaurant at lunchtime. Hillary Clinton campaigned at another Columbia restaurant, while Bill Clinton hit a third. Stressing his wife’s experience, the former president suggested that it made about as much sense to choose an inexperienced politician for the presidency as it does to hire an electrician for your surgical needs. John Edwards campaigned in Columbia and Mount Pleasant, where he said that voters “deserve a president and a presidential candidate who’s focused on the things that affect their lives,” rather than engaged in “petty bickering.”
Edwards has been climbing in the polls in South Carolina. Campaigning in Columbia Friday, he said there’s an “opportunity for a surprise” in the state.
The polls close tonight at 7 p.m.
Saturday, Jan 26, 2008 7:03 PM UTC
A memo from the Clinton campaign: Hey, look at Florida!
By Tim Grieve
Polls won’t close in South Carolina until 7 p.m., but the Hillary Clinton campaign wouldn’t mind if we’d just skip over all that and move along to what comes next. In a memo to “interested parties” this afternoon, Clinton campaign communications director Howard Wolfson says that, “Regardless of today’s outcome, the race quickly shifts to Florida, where hundreds of thousands of Democrats will turn out to vote on Tuesday.”
Call it Phase II of the Clinton campaign’s “Hey, Look Over There” strategy. As you’ll recall, the DNC stripped Florida of its delegates to the Democratic National Convention when the state scheduled its primary earlier than the party wanted. That turned Tuesday’s Florida primary into the same sort of meaningless affair the Michigan primary was — at least until Clinton issued a statement Friday in which she said that she’d fight to have delegates from both states seated at the convention after all.
Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards have all vowed not to campaign in Florida. But in Wolfson’s message today, he implies that Obama and Obama alone is blowing off the Sunshine State. “Despite efforts by the Obama campaign to ignore Floridians,” Wolfson writes, “their voices will be heard loud and clear across the country, as the last state to vote before Super Tuesday on February 5th.”
As for South Carolina? Wolfson writes it off as an all-but-foregone conclusion. “The Obama campaign has been so confident of winning South Carolina that six months ago they flatly predicted victory in the Palmetto State,” Wolfson says. “Cornell Belcher, Senator Obama’s pollster, stated explicitly to the Politico on July 25, 2007, ‘We are going to outright win South Carolina.’”
What Wolfson doesn’t say: Just last week, the Clinton campaign’s Don Fowler said of South Carolina: “I’m confident with the kind of campaign we’re running next week we’re going to win.”
Saturday, Jan 26, 2008 2:40 PM UTC
As South Carolina goes to the polls, will the media remember the racial polarization of 2004?
By Tim Grieve
As Democrats in South Carolina go to the polls today, the mainstream media will be reminding us incessantly that Palmetto state voters are divided among racial lines.
The Washington Post, explaining that the “recent focus on has stirred considerable angst” in Barack Obama’s “inner circle,” notes that an MSNBC-McClatchy Newspaper poll out this week showed a wide racial divide among South Carolina Democrats. Among African-American voters, the poll had Obama at 59 percent, followed by Hillary Clinton at 25 percent and John Edwards at 4 percent. Among white voters, Edwards led with 40 percent, followed by Clinton at 36 percent and Obama at 10 percent.
The New York Times says Obama’s strategists “worry” that all the discussion about race has “driven whites away from his candidacy.” “If the trend materializes in the voting,” the Times says, “his ability to transcend race could come into question and pose complications in the more than 20 states that vote on Feb. 5.”
While it’s true that a racial divide could spell trouble for Obama in states where African-Americans represent a smaller percentage of the electorate, there’s one semi-relevant point of comparison we probably won’t be hearing much today: Exit polls from the 2004 presidential race showed that George W. Bush got just 11 percent of the black vote nationwide — 88 percent went to John Kerry — and we don’t remember too many next-day headlines marginalizing his victory on the grounds of racial polarization.
Friday, Jan 25, 2008 10:32 PM UTC
Is John McCain a candidate only his mother could love?
By Tim Grieve
“Holding their nose, they’re gonna have to take him.” — Roberta McCain, the 95-year-old mother of Sen. John McCain, explaining that Republicans are going to make her son their nominee whether they like it or not. The elder McCain suggested that the not-quite-as-elder McCain deserves the support of Republicans because he “worked like a dog” to get George W. Bush reelected.
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