Progress Illinois

Jo Becker and Christopher Drew's lengthy New York Times' article on Barack Obama's "evolution from Hyde Park independent to mainstream Chicago politician" is meant to inform our understanding of how the Democratic nominee will build a viable electoral coalition this year. But the piece is more valuable for it's insight into how an Obama administration might govern if elected.

Take this quote from Will Burns, a former aide who consulted on Obama's now famous 2002 anti-war speech:

“What’s fascinating about Barack is what he’s trying to do is reframe and change the discourse so you build support for liberal alternatives within the electorate. He has an ability to frame stuff so it’s not an all or nothing proposition.”

This statement embodies the hope that his backers on the left see in Obama. Unlike the last Democratic nominee, who was badly damaged by the idea that his rhetoric was hollow and politically opportunistic, Obama seems to understand that a progressive agenda, while favored by voters on its merits, doesn't yet enjoy a popular political mandate. To get there, Obama seems focused on acknowledging and discrediting conservative policies while cultivating support for his own nuanced positions among a variety of voters who hold divergent views.

This "pragmatic" approach is rooted more in his experiences as a community organizer than his rise through Hyde Park. It will hopefully put him in a stronger position to not only win the race in November, but once elected, to push progressive policies more forcefully than any recent Democratic president.

Speaking at The New Yorker Festival this morning, Rep. Rahm Emanuel called Barack Obama the "presumptive nominee." From the Huffington Post:

"At this point, Barack is the presumptive nominee," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel during the New Yorker's magazine conference. "Hillary can't win but something could happen that could effect that Barack could lose the nomination."

Emanuel wouldn't go so far as to say that Clinton should drop out. "Next question!" he declared when asked. But his voice does carry political sway.

The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder offered the following analysis of Emanuel's remarks: "[H]is words reflect the developing consensus of many high-profile Clinton supporters. The race is over, but let's let Clinton will determine when and how to exit."

Shortly after Ambinder blogged about Rahm's comments, House Democratic Caucus communications director Sarah Feinberg walked them back a bit:

I would like to clarify two points:

1. All Rahm said was that Senator Obama is clearly now the frontrunner, which by and large means, because of the calendar, he is the presumptive nominee, at this point. He was stating the obvious. Its about the calendar.

2. The "presumptive" quote is only accurate if you ignore the several sentences proceeding this half sentence and the several minutes of conversation that followed it. I'd call it selective quoting. Congressman Emanuel also stated about 90 seconds after this that he thought Senator clinton can still win the nomination and he stands by that.

Of course, if it were only about the calendar, Barack should have become the "presumptive nominee" a good while ago.

Meanwhile, what MSNBC's Rachel Maddow is calling the "superdelegate drizzle" (not yet a flood) continued today.

This week the eyes of the nation moved from the Democratic Primary to the general election, and the Obama campaign is making the same transition. On Saturday, they are officially kicking off Vote for Change, a massive 50-state voter registration drive. The goal of the project is to harness the campaign's legions of volunteers across the country to drive voter participation through the roof come Election Day in November.

Broad voter registration efforts are nothing new, but as The Atlantic's Mark Ambinder reports, this could really be one for the record books:

I gather that the campaign is constructing an incredibly elaborate online interface to allow its more than a million donors and volunteers to directly persuade their neighbors through a variety of media. Names gathered from the voter registration effort will be merged with names gathered through Obama's primary efforts and the names off of the Democratic Party's integrated voter file as well as lists purchased from outside vendors.

On election day, Obama might have more than a million individuals volunteering on his behalf. That should scare the beejeesus out of the McCain campaign and the RNC.

More than a million volunteers.

As The Washington Post notes, the drive has the potential to not only boost Obama's general election chances, but also to benefit down-ticket Democrats nationwide. That includes Illinois.

In the Prairie State, there are four registration drives kicking off tomorrow. Follow the links to learn more about each event:

Waukegan at 10:00 AM

Round Lake at 10:00 AM

Joliet at 9:00 AM

Chicago at 10:00 AM

If you've never volunteered before, have no fear! Each event features a training on how to register voters before participants hit the streets to ensure a Democratic victory in November.

Rep. Melissa Bean (D-IL) is one of the Obama campaign's congressional whips, meaning that she's in charge of counting and coralling those undeclared or wavering superdelegates on Capitol Hill. Yesterday, Talking Point Memo's Greg Sargent asked Bean: "How often do super-dels raise concerns about Reverend Wright, or about Hillary's claim that Obama struggles with blue collar whites?" Here's her response:

"I have not heard that as a reservation from anybody. I only heard about Reverend Wright in the context of people saying it made them decide to step forward sooner to declare their support for Senator Obama."

If this is true, than the congressional superdelegates are quite a bit more shrewd than the media has given them credit for. For weeks and weeks, the talking heads have been telling us that the Wright controversy would cause superdelegates to second-guess Obama (while ignoring that his skillful handling of the matter might, to the contrary, encourage them). Media figures have also propped up the flawed narrative -- advanced by the Clinton campaign -- that Obama's relative lack of support among working-class whites in the Democratic primaries spelled doom for his general election prospects.

Well, if Bean's account is accurate, the congressional superdelegates didn't bite. Good for them.

In December, The American Prospect's Mark Schmitt wrote a widely-circulated piece on Barack Obama's "Theory of Change." In it, he assessed Obama's calls for bipartisanship, hope, and common purpose not as naive or overly idealistic, but as shrewd and transformational.

As Schmitt explained, by taking seriously Republican arguments and policies, which are often made in bad faith, Obama would be better positioned as president to show voters the true vapidity of conservative solutions and push through a progressive agenda. He would also be better suited to take advantage of Senate math, where three to five Republicans will almost certainly be necessary to break rank and pass Democratic-sponsored programs. To believers of this theory, it's the most powerful way to subvert what Schmitt calls the "unified conservative power structure."

At the Huffington Post, Matt Stoller has detailed another plank of Obama's theory of change: the ground game. By emphasizing the Internet, Alinsky-influenced leadership development, voter registration, and message discipline, he's reworked the fabric of a party apparatus dominated by the Clintons for 16 years:

The primary has been exceptionally good for party building. Obama has created a number of significant infrastructure pieces through his campaign, displacing traditional groups the way he promised he would by signaling the end of the old politics of division and partisanship.

Given the amount of influence Obama has consolidated in such a short time, Stoller asks the right questions: Can he pivot and do the same thing against Republicans? Will he use this influence to advocate progressive causes? How can progressives "put ourselves in a position to help him take the country in a progressive direction?" While those questions are yet to be answered, it's clear that Obama's network and approach to politics are here to stay.

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 ...)

After a convincing showing last night, Barack Obama is turning his attention to the party's superdelegates. Lynn Sweet reports that the Illinois senator has scheduled rounds of meetings with uncommitted delegates in D.C. tomorrow. We can glean Obama's pitch from a memo that campaign manager David Plouffe sent out this morning, courtesy of The New York Times:

With the Clinton path to the nomination getting even narrower, we expect new and wildly creative scenarios to emerge in the coming days. While those scenarios may be entertaining, they are not legitimate and will not be considered legitimate by this campaign or its millions of supporters, volunteers, and donors.

We believe it is exceedingly unlikely Senator Clinton will overtake our lead in the popular vote and in fact lost ground on that measure last night. However, the popular vote is a deeply flawed and illegitimate metric for deciding the nominee – since each campaign based their strategy on the acquisition of delegates. More importantly, the rules of the nomination are predicated on delegates, not popular vote.

On Good Morning America, ABC News chief Washington correspondent George Stephanopoulos predicted superdelegates "will come three, four, five at a time" for Obama beginning today, essentially ending the nomination fight.

"More superdelegates will come out today for Barack Obama – they and this nomination will be locked up.”

With 84 percent of precincts reporting in Indiana, Clinton is ahead by 4 percent, or slightly over 40,000 votes. But Lake County -- which is expected to deliver about 300,000 votes and to lean heavily towards Obama -- is yet to report a single precinct. Tim Russert says those results should start coming in around 11 pm.

It's gonna be a long night ...

From Obama's prepared speech:

Yes, we know what’s coming. We’ve seen it already. The same names and labels they always pin on everyone who doesn’t agree with all their ideas. The same efforts to distract us from the issues that affect our lives by pouncing on every gaffe and association and fake controversy in the hope that the media will play along. The attempts to play on our fears and exploit our differences to turn us against each other for pure political gain – to slice and dice this country into Red States and Blue States; blue-collar and white-collar; white and black, and brown.

This is what they will do – no matter which one of us is the nominee. The question, then, is not what kind of campaign they’ll run, it’s what kind of campaign we will run. It’s what we will do to make this year different. I didn’t get into race thinking that I could avoid this kind of politics, but I am running for President because this is the time to end it.

We will end it this time not because I’m perfect – I think by now this campaign has reminded all of us of that. We will end it not by duplicating the same tactics and the same strategies as the other side, because that will just lead us down the same path of polarization and gridlock.

We will end it by telling the truth – forcefully, repeatedly, confidently – and by trusting that the American people will embrace the need for change.

Obama went on to refer to himself as an "imperfect messenger." In my opinion, this is a really sharp way of responding to the various controversies that have erupted around him in recent months.

Those stories hit Obama so hard because many had come to see him as a prince: pure and valiant and without flaws. While such an image does wonders for early enthusiasm, it's just not sustainable over the course of a rough-and-tumble election year, as Bittergate and Rezko and the Wright controversy proved.

In the wake of all that, he's been knocked off the pedestal and is now overtly acknowledging his imperfections. And I think it's a good thing. He's reminding everyone: Yes, I'm flawed, but that doesn't change the fact that we're doing something remarkable.