Time to kill the rhyme

First off, just because something rhymes does make it wisdom. So let's put a bullet into the tired phrase "No drama Obama" so no more lazy political writers can use it to evaluate the president-elect's cabinet choices and campaign style.

I say this as Hillary Clinton's people confirm to the New York Times that she will take the secretary of state job. Much has been written about the Clintons introducing drama into Obama's drama-less inner sanctum were she to accept the position.

Obama is a drama magnet. The very nature of his candidacy - first African-American presidential candidate - was dramatic. His win was dramatic. His win in the midst of great economic upheaval and two wars is dramatic. His beating Clinton in the longest primary ever recorded followed by an election campaign that made "palling around with terrorists" a household term is dramatic. Rev. Jeremiah Wright surfaced in a most dramatic way and Obama responded with a dramatic speech. And the entire campaign was compared to a television political drama (The West Wing).

The fact that his campaign aides didn't leak much information is not "no drama."

If you want to argue that Obama prefers to be the calm in the midst of a roiling storm, then you might have an interesting point. Then you might ask: Doesn't he court drama? If so, isn't Hillary Clinton a natural choice for secretary of state?

To be the calm at the center of a storm one needs a storm.

You had me at secretary...*

It was only a matter of time. The Guardian is reporting that Hillary Clinton will accept the job of secretary of state (h/t Drudge Report).

Of course you have to ask yourself: Is the Guardian really the paper that's going to break this story?

*UPDATE: Not so fast. Glenn Thrush at Politico.com reports Hillary Clinton isn't so sure she wants the job. Patience appears to be wearing thin on both sides - either this is the first test of wills between President and Secretary of State or the calm before the big breakfup.

Shorties

An interesting couple of maps.

Can Oprah save newspapers? (Hint: The answer is no.)

Dee Dee Myers explains why Bill Clinton is in the way no matter what his wife does.

Meetings and questions

President-elect Barack Obama met with Sen. Hillary Clinton yesterday, apparently to gauge her interest in becoming secretary of state, and he meets with Sen. John McCain on Monday.

Which of these two meetings is more important to Obama's agenda? Which of the two politicians would he rather work with in the Senate?

Does Obama want to bring Clinton into his administration to clear the way for his domestic agenda, avoiding a showdown over health care reform? Would her nomination make it easier for Obama to nominate Larry Summers as Treasury secretary? With Clinton out of the way, would Obama be free to ask McCain to carry the first major bill - maybe immigration or earmark reform or climate change - right out of the gate?

How do you like your accommodations?

According to the New York Times, the Obama campaign has agreed to let Hillary Clinton submit her name for the Democratic nomination in Denver as a symbolic gesture to satisfy some of her more vocal supporters. The open question: Will the vote be merely symbolic? Or has Obama opened the door to shenanigans?

Is this a case of political appeasement? Or a sign that Obama is going to pick Clinton as his VP?

Reverse psychology

Does Hillary Clinton (aka, the Salutatorian) really want the VP slot? Well, the New York Times finds her strenuously signaling she'll twist no arms and make no unwanted advances:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton today disavowed a campaign by some of her supporters to pressure Senator Barack Obama into choosing her as a running-mate, saying they were acting on their own and the decision on who to pick was "Senator Obama's and his alone."

No pressure, Obama. I'll be over here with my 18 million primary votes, my cabal of working -class whites and Denver-chanting women, waiting for you to make up your mind. On your own. Without my influence.

Game over

Obama wins the nomination, McCain finds his smile, Hillary bookends her non-concession speech with "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" and "I Won't Back Down," and The Economist's Democracy in America gets the last word: At the risk of bolstering the reporters-mooning-at-Obama stereotype, if this evening's speeches were a video game, a wrinkled wizard would be hollering "Finish Him!" to Barack Obama while a dizzied John McCain wobbled. And Hillary Clinton would be frenetically mashing the buttons on an unplugged controller.

Hillary and free trade

Like anyone desperately seeking acceptance, Hillary Clinton gave in to peer pressure over the weekend while campaigning at a bar in northern Indiana and downed a shot of whiskey after sharing a beer with "regular folks."

If you thought Barack Obama looked awkward holding a bowling ball...

Clinton, who has expressed deep skepticism about free-trade agreements, including Nafta, chose for her shot Crown Royal, a Canadian whiskey produced on the shores of Lake Winnipeg and bottled in Ontario.

I'm not sure if choice of drink is a good measure for evaluating a candidate, but I've never liked Crown Royal. It tastes cheap, despite the velvet bag and hyper-monarchical name, and has to be masked with a heavy ice pack or soda to be stomached. In the case of whiskey, buy American. Or Irish.

Penn dumped on road to Pennsylvania

Hillary Clinton's chief strategist, Mark Penn, has stepped down from the campaign after reports that he had lobbied for a trade agreement his boss had opposed.

From John Broder at the New York Times:

Mr. Penn, long a divisive figure within the Clinton camp, lost his pre-eminent position after revelations that he met with Colombia’s ambassador to the United States last Monday in his role as head of Burson-Marsteller. The Colombian government hired the lobbying firm last year under a $300,000 one-year contract to help secure passage of a bilateral trade treaty with the United States.

Mrs. Clinton strongly opposes the treaty, as do many Democrats in Congress and many American trade unions, who believe the treaty is unfair to American workers. Mrs. Clinton has also cited the Colombian government’s history of suppressing the labor union movement in that country.

Several American union leaders called for Mr. Penn’s dismissal on Friday and top officials within the Clinton campaign grumbled loudly that Mr. Penn had given the campaign a black eye at a critical moment, just two weeks before the Pennsylvania primary and the final series of contests that will likely decide the nomination.

The architect is gone but the question remains: Would Clinton have done better had she dumped Penn months ago?

A mythic race

Sporting a new beard, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a native of Pasadena, endorsed Barack Obama for president today. It was welcome news for Obama, who desperately needed the beasts in cable television to find something to feed on other than his old pastor's sermons. (The passport breaches uncovered by the Washington Times didn't hurt either.)

But does the Richardson endorsement matter? I don't ask as a way to evaluate Richardson's influence in Democratic politics. I ask as a way to evaluate whether there is even a Democratic primary battle going on anymore.

The boys at Politico call it the Clinton myth.

One big fact has largely been lost in the recent coverage of the Democratic presidential race: Hillary Rodham Clinton has virtually no chance of winning.

Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates. That means the only way she wins is if Democratic superdelegates are ready to risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party’s most reliable constituency.

snip

As it happens, many people inside Clinton’s campaign live right here on Earth. One important Clinton adviser estimated to Politico privately that she has no more than a 10 percent chance of winning her race against Barack Obama, an appraisal that was echoed by other operatives.
In other words: The notion of the Democratic contest being a dramatic cliffhanger is a game of make-believe.

At what point does this assessment start to become conventional wisdom within the party? At what point does the Clinton camp hang it up?

Maybe it was 3 a.m.?

When they include your name in the correction, it's likely you're getting fired.

At least that's my best guess as to the fate of poor Tribune-Chronicle reporter John Goodall, who seems to have confused Hillary Wicai Viers, a communications director for Ohio Rep. Charlie Wilson, with Hillary Clinton, a candidate for president.

My question: Who the fuck edited the story?

As embarrassing as this episode might have been, the paper had the foresight to include a link at the bottom of the page asking readers to "Subscribe to the Tribune Chronicle."

will.i.am, where.r.you?

Hillary Clinton wins Texas (according to CNN). Barack Obama now has to hope that headline writers run out of Comeback Kid cliches sometime before the start of April.

News cycles will be cruel to Obama, who has already suffered four days of drubbing without an effective response. Spinning your delegate lead isn't all that sexy. And now he can't even fire his economic adviser without inviting more criticism.

Will Wyoming and Mississippi kill the Clinton fire?

And don't forget Clinton's Florida card. If they re-vote there and she wins, could she take the delegate lead?

Who knew democracy could be such a pain in the ass?

Hillary springs eternal

Hillary Clinton wins Ohio, she's closing in Texas, and nothing will be decided (probably) until Pennsylvania on April 22.

I'll put my money on a Clinton v. McCain November general election campaign.

Obama, Clinton and the long hard slog

John King at CNN just used his magic delegate board to show that neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama has any chance of winning a majority of delegates at this point - mathematical proof that superdelegates will decide this election. The only question is, what will sway them?

Money? Momentum? Fatigue?

Probably all of them. But only time, and tonight's results, will tell.

As of 5:11 p.m. PST, Obama has won Vermont, Clinton looks solid in Ohio, and Texas is a jump ball. Rhode Island is expected to go to Clinton, but no results are in.

National Journal's The Hotline has given us one of the inevitable story lines for tomorrow (unless Obama can pull it off in Ohio): Going negative works.

Prepare for a long and ugly brawl on the road to Pennsylvania.

Getting freaky*

The boys at Politico credit SNL and a deft Howard Wolfson for throwing Barack Obama under the media bus in the days leading up to today's Ohio and Texas primaries. But Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com has a different theory, and urges Politico Editor John Harris to go back to the book he wrote about how to win the White House in 2008, titled, creatively enough, "The Way to Win".

Here's the relevant passage from Greenwald's post: The reality is that the Clinton campaign has been complaining bitterly for months and months that the media has not subjected Obama to any real critical scrutiny. For the most part, that fell on deaf ears. The only thing that has changed over the past couple of weeks is that the right-wing noise machine, which now sees Obama as the likely Democratic nominee, began complaining just as bitterly that the media is "in the tank" for Obama. That is what moves them. As Harris himself wrote in his own book, it is Drudge -- not Howard Wolfson or SNL -- who rules their world.

*Speaking of freaky, Clinton must hate Anne Kornblut.

In case you care (I'm not sure I do) *Updated

I predict Hillary Clinton wins Ohio by 5-8 points, loses Texas by a hair and stays in the race with the argument that Pennsylvania looks a lot like Ohio, Florida could hold a do-over and enough superdelegates dig her style to put Barack Obama's inevitability in doubt.

She's just getting warmed up after all.

Obama needed a sharp stake and a hefty hammer to finish this one off. I don't think he brung it. In the last several days, Clinton has owned the news cycles, with her red phone ad, her campaign's leak of Obama in foreign garb, her re-ignition of a story that Obama's adviser told the Canadians he wasn't really serious about renegotiating Nafta, and the Tony Rezko trial starting today.

All of this comes on top of her successfully convincing the media that it had indeed developed a crush on Obama, which, as in real life, caused them to act out in strange ways to prove they don't really like him like that. *(Here's some proof of this phenomenon.)

Obama needs a stronger argument coming out of tomorrow's results than "she needed to win by a bigger margin." He appears to have New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson on his side to ask Hillary to step aside, but he'll need stronger surrogates than that. After all, she has Bill Clinton mounting her defense and this is where he will be most effective, working the party insiders.

You're no daisy

Hillary Clinton wants to answer the phone.

Going foreign

Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton tonight in Wisconsin, according to CNN. John McCain also won.

Interestingly, in his speech tonight McCain picked up the experience vs. change mantra that seems to be failing Clinton. The difference is he wants to make the campaign about foreign policy, and it's a good week to do it, with Cuba, Pakistan and Kosovo in the news - all places where U.S. policy matters, but where no Americans are presently dying.

Clinton, meantime, wants to make the campaign about the economy. She may still gain traction with that approach in Ohio, and possibly Texas as well. But the numbers out of Wisconsin suggest Obama is winning on the issue of the economy.

I wonder if Obama can stay with the change message if foreign affairs - foreign affairs that aren't Afghanistan and Iraq - remain in the headlines?

In my own job I'm already seeing economy fatigue - people tired of talking about it, thinking about it, analyzing it. How is this playing out over the broader electorate?

Texas, Ohio and other states of being

A Republican stronghold concerned with immigration and a state with a rising Democratic electorate frighted by disappearing manufacturing jobs could decide the Democratic presidential primary on March 4.

My guess is that Texas, thick with colleges in the liberal stronghold of Travis County, will be more welcoming to Barack Obama than Ohio, even though Texas has a relatively large number of Latino voters.

Ohio, as this story indicates, appears to be suspicious of audacious hope. Obama's biography and skin color may not play well with struggling white blue-collar voters. Hillary Clinton has experience, race and family ties on her side.

Yes, race still matters in America.

In other news:

John Broder at the New York Times gives a historical overview of how the two parties chose to select their delegates. It's an interesting commentary on the philosophies that drive the two parties. The GOP favors winner-take-all, Democrats proportional allocations.

Writes Broder: In other words, the Republican who kills the buffalo gets all the meat; the Democrat has to crouch around the campfire and share it with his brethren and sistren.

Robert Reich, secretary of labor under Bill Clinton, blogs about the four circles of hell politicians must successfully navigate on their way to the White House. As Maureen Dowd did before him, Reich argues that Obama needs to find his dark side and learn to tell stories of fear to complement the stories of hope. I don't think he's wrong.

The Big O*

If the anecdotes and exit polls are correct, Barack Obama has solved the Clinton calculus and is starting to make headway into her base. This should make Mark Penn shiver.

From the New York Times: Mr. Obama’s strength crossed a range of demographic groups, as he gleaned majority support from voters regardless of age, income and education. He was backed by independents and Democrats, liberals, moderates and conservatives.

Another point in Obama's favor is that he appears to have taken a few independent voters who might otherwise have crossed over to help John McCain.

An object in motion tends to stay in motion.

*O-lectible: Morning reports of yesterday's Potomac/Chesapeake primaries confirm Obama did indeed cut heavily into Clinton's base, making big gains with women and Latinos. Whether or not this carries over to states like Texas and Ohio remains to be seen, but at this point the nomination is Obama's to lose.