The big buzz today is the Ted Kennedy Obama endorsement. He still has a lot of ooomph among the party activists; back in `03, he came to the Johnson County Dems barbecue with his chosen candidate, John Kerry. Then-frontrunner Howard Dean was there too, but folks around here still call that one "the Ted Kennedy barbecue."
It might have been the lede any other day, but author Toni Morrison, the woman who famously called Bill Clinton "the first black president," is endorsing Obama too.
Does all this trump Hillary's win tomorrow in the uncontested, maybe official maybe not, Florida primary? She has been pumping it up as much as possible, starting with the seat-the-delegates memo and rolling out the Bill Nelson endorsement Friday. She made darn sure to to mention Florida in the five seconds of concession she offered Saturday night. Sunday Clinton was prominently filmed coming in and out of the state for "fundraisers":
With a wink at the (no campaigning in Florida) deal, Clinton carefully staged her arrival so she left her airplane with palm trees in the background for photographers. Asked if she was happy to be in Florida, she said: "How could you not be. It is absolutely glorious. It is a perfect day here in Florida."
Clinton has also, as anticipated, scheduled a Tuesday night flight down to Florida to celebrate. Kind of like holding a victory parade after a forfeit.
But the Florida delegates she'll sort of win don't truly count toward victory, whether you think they should or not. They would only add to the score of an already-winning candidate in Denver. msn1 at MyDD notes what should be obvious, but I haven't heard elsewhere:
If Clinton can get a majority of delegates to support the Minority (credentials committee) Report, than she has a majority of the delegates supporting her anyway, and she doesn't need Michigan and Florida.
But if she doesn't have a majority of the delegates supporting her, it's hard to see why delegates supporting other candidates would vote to seat the two delegations, essentially helping her out. After fighting for the nomination for 2 years, why would Obama or Edwards and their delegates give up the fight in this way? It's just not going to happen. The delegations will NOT be seated if the nomination is contested.
So Clinton's count-the-delegates rhetoric in Florida is not about the Florida delegates themselves. It's about running up the score in Florida to get a slingshot into Tsunami Tuesday.
Her Florida score depends in part on how many absentee ballots are already in the box, and how those are being accounted for . (Most pollsters have no freakin' clue how to account for high absentee voting rates.) And her post-Florida momentum depends on three things:
1) The media buys into the Florida Counts rhetoric. If Hillary's spin is too obviously spin, the press will play it as, well, just spin.
2) No drama on the Republican side -- which is unlikely. There's already going to be a bias toward a GOP story tomorrow. Tuesday the 22nd was a bye week (remember way back when in the summer of `06 when that was originally supposed to be New Hampshire?) So there hasn't been the fresh meat of actual results in the GOP race since Saturday the 19th, and the balance the story bias of objective journalism will kick in.
Plus it's just plain a better story. With the GOP candidates all in Florida actually campaigning for already official delegates (albeit a half-share), and Rudy betting everything on Florida, Tuesday night could well be a Republican story.
3) Ted Kennedy is treated as Monday's old news on Tuesday, and Florida is bigger than any cards Obama has up his sleeve to play Wednesday:
Okay, let’s drop another hint for those taking notes: What famous Tennessean might we see soon from California to New York Island, so soon after getting out ahead of his party’s presidential candidates to support gay marriage?
Al Gore is the one remaining 800 pound gorilla in the Democratic Party. If I'm Barack, I have that lined up and ready to leak on Tuesday night, right about the time Hillary hits the stage, with a big rollout Wednesday.
A Gore endorsement would further underscore a rapidly emerging theme in this contest. Months and months and months ago, I was predicting that the issue in this contest was Hillary, and it would come down to Hillary vs. Not Hillary. The bipolar dynamic has in fact emerged, and Iowa selected Obama over Edwards and the second tier as the Not Hillary.
But with his increasing, and increasingly divisive, involvement and presence, to some extent this election is becoming about Bill Clinton. And a Gore endorsement of Obama would be the ultimate underscore to the Clinton vs. Not Clinton divide in the Democratic Party.
I have absolutely no objectivity about Bill Clinton. He literally, personally, played a dramatic role in changing my life. I truly admire the man for all his complications. On the whole, I think Bill Clinton is potentially a positive.
But either he's been misused or has gone off-message on his own. He needed to carry a certain above-the-fray aura of the ex-Presidency about him, but instead he became Attack Surrogate Number One. Hillary's got loads of lower-level people who could play that role. But instead, the campaign's asset of the greatest living campaigner in the Democratic Party has been poorly used.
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