Progress Illinois

A report today from the South Bend Tribune:

They were, once upon a time, opposing regiments of the same army.

The Sen. Hillary Clinton campaign and the Sen. Barack Obama campaign: two groups of local volunteers fervently working for their respective Democrat, each trying to get a little more support than the other team.

On Thursday night, party officials brought the two sides together for pizza and chatter in hopes, pundits would say, of unifying the party perhaps divided by a contentious primary campaign.

In hopes? Where has the media been, South Bend resident Vera Peele said. "I was unified from the beginning," she said. "I'm a Democrat."

There are some who were quoted in reports immediately after Clinton stopped campaigning as saying if they couldn't vote for Clinton they just wouldn't vote for president.

Chalk that up to emotion in the heat of the moment, said Bev Shelton of South Bend, who supported Clinton during the primary. "Sometimes you're like a volcano, and it erupts," she said.

But now it's about getting a Democrat elected to the White House, Shelton said, wearing a button that says "Do not vote Republican."

Don't assume people who were angry after Clinton's exit from the campaign will remain that way, said Pat McQuade, also a Clinton supporter in the primary campaign.

"We are more than one emotion," she said. "Sometimes people are pigeonholed into one specific response. Loss is grief."

But people get over it, she said. They move on.

(H/T Blue Indiana)

As the summer election season hits its stride, we're seeing more and more evidence that Barack Obama is benefiting from the cross-country battle he waged with Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primary. Yesterday, National Journal's Carrie Dann reported on how the drawn-out contest helped Democrats cement their presence in important battleground states:

A glance at the primary calendar offers a list of red to purple states where Obama and Clinton stumped feverishly after McCain accepted the party mantle against the backdrop of the White House lawn on March 5. Democrats battled in Indiana, North Carolina and Montana -- all states touted by the Obama campaign as potential electoral pickups -- as well as in Oregon and Pennsylvania, Democratic-leaning states where McCain hopes to gain ground. [...]

[T]he difference in simple ground covered in the five contested states that held post-March 4th primaries is striking. In the Tar Heel State, for example, Obama held a total of 14 events over nine campaign days. McCain has spent only three days there, one in a private meeting with evangelical iconBilly Graham and his son. In Indiana, Obama made 26 appearances over 20 days, to McCain's two. McCain trails Obama by more than five campaign stops in Montana, 10 in Oregon and 25 in Pennsylvania.

All told, in those five states, Obama has campaigned for a total of 54 days to McCain's 13, giving Obama a net lead of 41 campaign days. That lead has grown, not shrunk, since Obama clinched the nomination and began campaigning in nontraditional regions as part of his campaign's avowed 50-state strategy.

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Will Hillary Clinton supporters ditch the Democratic Party in order to back GOP candidate John McCain this November? It's a theory repeatedly posited by the media since the New York senator suspended her campaign, but one that should be quickly put to rest.

An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released last week found that women favored Obama over McCain, 52-33 percent. The survey also reported that voters who cast ballots for Clinton in the Democratic primaries preferred Obama over McCain, 61-19 percent. The Los Angeles Times has more:

Now that the Democratic marathon is over, Clinton supporters like [North Carolina voter Marilyn] Authenreith are siding heavily with Obama over McCain, polls show. And Obama has taken a wide lead among female voters, belying months of political chatter and polls of primary voters suggesting that disappointment over Clinton's defeat might block the Illinois senator from enjoying his party's historic edge among women. [...]

"There are women still struggling with a real sense of grief that Hillary is not the nominee," said Maren Hesla, who runs campaign programs for EMILY's List, a group that promotes female candidates who support abortion rights. But that sense "will grow smaller with every day that passes from the nomination battles."

As Frank Rich pointed out in his astute New York Times column Sunday, those leads are substantial. John Kerry won women by only three points, Al Gore by 11. And it's increasingly clear that the narrative of defecting women was itself a product of a sexist media landscape.

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Dick Morris isn't a doctor. He just plays one on morning talk radio.

A former Clinton operative, Morris broke ties with the president in 1996 and went on to make a career of bashing the Clintons as a conservative pundit. Earlier today on WIND's John & Cisco In The Morning, he stopped by to spread the love. Near the end of the interview, the issue of Bill Clinton's campaign behavior came up and Morris made some irresponsible claims that shouldn't go unchallenged.

Citing the former president's recent colorful criticism of Vanity Fair reporter Todd Purdum, co-host "Big John" Howell asked Morris whether Clinton was starting to "go around the bend." Morris responded by suggesting that Clinton's behavior may be the result of brain damage incurred during his quadruple bypass surgery in 2004. Specifically, he remarked that doctors "always say you come out of that [operation] with less IQ than you went into it."

Take a listen:

Internal mp3

Presumably Morris is picking up on Purdum's recent profile of Clinton in which Dr. Thomas Traill of John's Hopkins University is quoted saying that patients' moods can be altered by open heart surgery. (He compared it to postpartum depression.) But it's quite a far leap from Traill's comments about depression to Morris' completely unfounded suggestion of possible brain damage.

If you want a more nuanced, convincing, and even poignant analysis of Clinton's sometimes emotional outbursts on the campaign trail, check out this recent post by Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall. In a nutshell, Marshall paints Clinton as a once agile campaign operator who is way behind the times and unable to adapt to new media technology and our rapid-response political culture. It's a much better starting place to understanding the former president than Dick Morris' snake-tongued insinuations.

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On Saturday morning, Hillary Clinton bowed out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination and threw her support to Barack Obama. She talked about Obama's “strength and determination” and his “grace and grit." She also urged her supporters to “work as hard for Barack Obama as you have for me.” It was a truly classy speech, which you can watch below:

Obama responded with the following statement:

Obviously, I am thrilled and honored to have Senator Clinton's support. But more than that, I honor her today for the valiant and historic campaign she has run. She shattered barriers on behalf of my daughters and women everywhere, who now know that there are no limits to their dreams. And she inspired millions with her strength, courage and unyielding commitment to the cause of working Americans. Our party and our country are stronger because of the work she has done throughout her life, and I'm a better candidate for having had the privilege of competing with her in this campaign. No one knows better than Senator Clinton how desperately America and the American people need change, and I know she will continue to be in the forefront of that battle this fall and for years to come.

The Obama folks have set up a page where supporters can thank Clinton "for her hard work and for supporting this campaign."

Also, be sure to read this piece from Clinton supporter Elizabeth Birch:

It will take some days, not hours. But recognizing the loss of one dream held by so many of Clinton's supporters, Obama supporters can help welcome them to the other equally important goal: electing the first African American President. Senator Obama knows that allowing some room to heal following this acutely emotional contest does not diminish his candidacy, it strengthens it. [...]

But we can be counted on to celebrate the other dream. Barack Obama will be tested in ways he never imagined, and we will have his back. We are just catching our breath.

While Hillary Clinton's Iraq vote opened the door for a candidate who solidly opposed the war, it would be silly to ignore the value of the Obama campaign's comprehensive field work and ground strategy, which focused much of its organizing energy in small caucus states. Tom Schaller highlights this piece by Justin Sizemore which nicely synthesizes the strategy and details why it was so effective:

Caucuses let candidates achieve more bang for their organizing buck, and the Obama campaign would demonstrate that mobilizing a few thousand people in a caucus state can have as much impact as getting several hundred thousand voters to the polls in a primary state. Obama's young, affluent supporters and dedicated activist base gave him an inherent advantage in caucuses. But his overwhelming landslides in those contests were not inevitable: the Illinois senator invested considerable resources to build sophisticated grassroots mobilization efforts in states Hillary Clinton ignored.

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Now that Barack Obama has "officially" secured the Democratic presidential nomination, numerous media outlets are taking their turns asking the obvious question: How did Hillary Clinton -- once seen as the inevitable nominee -- lose her party's primary?

In a front page think piece today, The Wall Street Journal asserts "the mistakes boil down to mismanagement, message, mobilization failures and the marital factor." The Financial Times simplifies it even further, placing the blame almost entirely on her husband. The Washington Post focuses on Obama's "insurgent strategy" that ceded some important battlegrounds while blitzing states where "Democratic candidates rarely ventured." All solid analyses of a complex campaign that lasted 18 months and hinged on countless decisions, strategies, and votes.

But how can you diagnose Clinton's downfall without mentioning her vote on the war? As Atrios writes in his characteristically succinct style, "No Iraq, no way to challenge Clinton." And it's frustrating to see so little discussion of this factor in the post-mortems. The Journal mentions the vote only in the context of motivating anti-war Iowans to turn out in the crucial contest while the other two pieces make literally no mention of the war at all.

Simply put, Clinton made her critical error in 2002. Five years later, with the country mired in this immoral and disastrous war, Democrats were ready to turn the page.

Add another voice to the chorus calling for Hillary Clinton to concede defeat in the Democratic presidential primary. Today, the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board expressed many of the standard arguments for why Clinton should pack it in. On top of observing that it's close to impossible for Hillary to win numerically, and that any last-ditch effort to do so (presumably involving Florida and Michigan) would effectively tear the Democratic Party apart, the Sun-Times also argues that she should drop out for the good of the nation as a whole:

Do it for a nation that is ready for, and has everything to gain from, a vigorous general election campaign, one that pits the Democratic and Republican nominees long enough to really show us who -- Obama or Sen. John McCain -- would be the better president. [...]

A good long contest, as we did learn from this endless primary, can be highly revealing. But every extra day Clinton stays in the race is one less day voters can weigh the comparative strengths and weaknesses of the two men vying for president.

More from Clinton chief strategist Geoff Garin's conference call with reporters today:

GARIN: A few brief comments to put last night in perspective. Indiana was obviously a close outcome, but it's an outcome about which we feel very, very good. It represents first time, I believe, in this race that Senator Clinton has come from behind to achieve a primary victory. And that in the face of very substantial obstacles in terms of a great deal of spending by Senator Obama at the end, including a last-minute $300,000 purchase in the Chicago media market for one day of advertising. The Chicago media market ended up representing over 20 percent of the state. It gave him a substantial head start and we feel, under those circumstances, coming from -- in our internal polling -- 8 points down with seven days to go to a two-point victory is a significant accomplishment, especially when you put it in the context of what happened in the other states neighboring Illinois, including Wisconsin. We think in the sweep of things it represents significant progress for Senator Clinton and it is a good victory under challenging circumstances.

It's easy for the Clinton camp to frame Indiana as a "come from behind" victory when they're pegging that characterization to internal polling. The public polls, however, show Clinton with a rather consistent lead over the past couple months. Check out Pollster.com's rundown, illustrated on the right (Clinton = purple, Obama = orange).

(More after the jump ...)

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According to the Los Angeles Times, if Hillary Clinton doesn't doesn't make big gains in the remaining Democratic primaries, some previously committed superdelegates say they'll switch their votes:

Two of the five superdelegates aligned with Clinton who spoke at the annual California Democratic Convention here said they would reconsider their support if rival Barack Obama maintained his lead in elected delegates and the popular vote after the last contests on June 3.

While hardly reflecting a groundswell, the superdelegates' comments underscored the concerns among some of these officials about the drawn-out Democratic race. It follows the embarrassing defection Clinton's campaign suffered Thursday when former Democratic National Committee Chairman Joe Andrew switched his support from her to Obama, and warned that the negative tone of the campaign was becoming a "catastrophe" that would help Republicans.

As Ezra Klein points out, it's impossible for Clinton to overtake Obama in pledged delegates and highly improbable that she'll eclipse him in the popular vote, even if Michigan and Florida are counted. Once the race is in the superdelegates' hands, that could spell doom for the Clinton campaign.