Bayh Backs Hillary

Bayh Backs Hillary

Today's horse race headline: almost candidate Evan Bayh to endorse Hillary Clinton. He had all the machinery in place, including a couple dozen staffers and an always at the ready Election Day 2004 map that showed all the Bush counties he carried in his Indiana re-elect, but then surprised everyone by -- rather candidly -- admitting he couldn't break into the rock star tier. Take a trip down memory lane to his 10/1/06 Coralville visit that has a great regular guy football moment.

Other clippings:

Sioux City Journal of all people looks at caucus dates and college semester schedules.

This Washington Post piece is no doubt circulating sotto voce from the other campaigns:

Both (Obama and Clinton) are significantly underperforming against the generic Democratic edge in the presidential and even against party identification," Lake and Gotoff wrote.

But IMHO the multi-way race favors Hillary even though she's no one's second choice. I don't have the exact math but here's a rough approximation: There's a rock solid 40% for Clinton, dominated by the Vote For A Woman vote, and 60% pretty much ABC. If the race is straight on Clinton vs. Not, Not wins. But Not is split almost dead down the middle between Edwards and Obama, let's say maybe 25-25 with the last 10 scattered among the rest. (Again, all this is approximate)

So basically the only way anyone other than Hillary gets nominated is if either Obama or Edwards gets knocked out fast and all their support flows to the survivor. If both survive to Uber Tuesday, with one staggering like Wes Clark did in his last weeks, they split the vote, just like the fizzling Clark hurt Edwards by siphoning off anti-Kerry votes in `04. Actually, the dying Howard Dean did the sam ething to Edwards in Wisconsin. They divided, Kerry conquered with under 50%.

Chris Dodd cancelled on Prairie Lights on Friday for Senate votes. This New York Times piece gives us a taste of what we would have had: presidential campaign as rehabilitation for your father. Maybe Bush should have tried the write a book approach instead of, oh, starting a war with Iraq...

War support is fizzling even in the rah-rah world of country music. Come back, Dixie Chicks, is all forgiven?

NPR has a neat series on the first campaigns of the presidential candidates -- Bill Richardson's failed congressional race in 1980, Huckabee for Senate 1992, etc.

And Florida is really, really defiant:

State Senator Steven A. Geller, the minority leader, used the news conference to rail against Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina, which he called “rogue states” for putting pressure on the presidential candidates to skip campaigning here for a January primary.

“If they choose not to campaign here and they lose? Not our problem,” Mr. Geller said.