The Two Ironies of Public Funding; How the Electoral Map Favors Obama

The big news over the last couple of days is Obama opting out of public funding for the Presidential Election. (Not Michelle Obama’s dress. I can’t believe this stuff gets on the air.) McCain has claimed this is evidence that Obama “is just another typical politician,” which is ironic because he’s the first to opt out of public funding since the system was established in 1972. By definition, that makes him atypical.

In fact, the biggest reason why Obama has opted out of the public funding is due to his unique ability to raise large sums of money from small donors. Truth is, there is absolutely nothing “typical” about this decision.

Of course, that is merely a point of irony, and not what McCain was referring to at all when he stated this is just an example of political expediency. Obama had famously stated that he would accept public funding if the Republican candidate and he could work out a reasonable system for doing so. But since he no longer needs to do so, McCain argues, he is going against his word and taking the path which will allow him the most money to spend come September and October.

Still, the decision to opt out of funding has few objective detractors in and of itself. And if the system is as broken as Obama believes it is, this decision may provide him with the perfect opportunity to scrap it and begin anew. Former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough presents the perfect illustration of the real issue the press has with Obama: opting out was the right decision, but he’s using the wrong explanation to justify it. Earlier this morning, he said the appropriate explanation would be to just say that due to the millions of small donors online, things have changed to a degree he just couldn’t have imagined a year ago. Dan Rather agreed, saying the reason why he did not do so is because politics at the top is like “dancing like you’re barefoot on August asphalt.”

You have to love Dan Rather.

Finally, Wednesday Quinnipiac University released an interesting poll which showed Obama ahead of McCain in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida. The margin was all below ten points so, while they were all above the margin of error, the data’s not entirely useful this far from the election. However, it has to be comforting for Obama.

But the interesting data was not the leads in these three states, but the impact that Clinton has, or more to the point has not had, on the general election. In these three points, Obama leads McCain among women . . . by ten to twenty-three points. What’s more, when asked if Obama should put Hillary Clinton on the ticket, Democrats in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania say yes by margins of 57-33, 58-31, and 60-31 percent, respectively. However, independents in these two states oppose the idea by wide margins: 46-37, 47-31, and 49-36 percent, respectively. And the biggest Republican support she gets for the Veep nod in any state is 20%, in Pennsylvania.

So it would be safe to say the fact that Obama is not Hillary Clinton is not going to cause McCain to carry those states. But perhaps more importantly, it would actually be a detriment to him to put Hillary on the ticket.

If Obama carries all three states, it’s going to be virtually impossible for McCain to win. Quinnipiac seems to be generous to Obama in Florida. Realclearpolitics.com has an average polling line of +5% for McCain. And I’ll be honest; I don’t see Obama winning Florida. I didn’t think Kerry could win it, and I don’t think Clinton could have won it. It would certainly make things easier if Obama can grab it somehow, but I’m more than willing to concede it to McCain. However, the average line for Obama in Ohio is +5.3%, while in Pennsylvania it’s 7.3%. Ohio has 20 electoral votes, and Bush won that in 2004. If Kerry had carried Ohio he would have won. So hanging on to these two states means he doesn’t have to win Florida.

But looking deeper into realclearpolitics.com’s website reveals something even more interesting, and exciting for the Obama fan. It may not come down to Ohio after all. They list the battleground states for 2008 as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Virginia, Missouri, Florida, Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada. Of these states, the only ones McCain currently have a polling lead in are Michigan and Florida. Obama and McCain are tied in New Mexico and Nevada, though several others are virtual ties (leads of less than 2%). This includes Michigan, New Hampshire, Virginia, Missouri, and Colorado.

So let’s say that the map stays the same from 2004 to 2008 with the exception of these states and Iowa, which very narrowly went to Bush but Obama is currently leading. And let’s give Florida, New Mexico, and Nevada to McCain, let him keep Michigan, and throw Colorado and Virginia to him for good measure. Under this scenario, Obama would win the election by accruing 273 electoral votes.

And if the leads all hold up and McCain takes New Mexico and Nevada? Then Obama

wins easily, 295 – 243. With ten electoral votes up for grabs in those two states, Obama could win over 300 electoral votes.

In fact, if he wins any two out of the seven “tied” states he would win the election. More interesting, though, is if he wins only Michigan he could lose all the others and still get to 270. Of course, this is all predicated upon him winning Ohio and Pennsylvania. So the big trifecta for Obama is Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. Win those three, and it’s in the bag. Win two of those, and it would be virtually impossible for McCain to win. McCain has to win two of those three in order to have a legitimate chance of winning the election (though at that point it’s unlikely he would lose).

With that in mind, I would not be willing to say at this time that any single state is going to determine the election. However, if it’s close, and certainly if McCain wins, I predict it will all come down to Michigan.

You heard it here first.

McCain’s Iran Ignorance: Updated

Late last night (technically early this morning) I wrote that McCain doesn’t even know who runs Iran. The point I was trying to make was that he (and Bush, for that matter) are trying to scare Americans into a Cold War-type fear of Iran using their eccentric (and crazy) President, Mahmoud Ahmanidejad. Of course, Ahmanidejad doesn’t actually run the country; he doesn’t even have control over the country’s nuclear or foreign policy. Iran’s Supreme Leader, currently Ayatolla Ali Khamenei, is named by the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran as the highest ranking official, and dictates the country’s policies in these two areas. To be honest, I didn’t actually think McCain was unaware that President Ahmanidejad held a mostly ceremonial post, but was using a high-visibility official most Americans thoroughly despise as a way to garner support for his viewpoint. Pretty bad, that one would lie about such things in order to slant public opinion. And since he made the claim, I thought the tongue in cheek comment of “how can we expect McCain to appropriately deal with the leadership of Iran when he doesn’t even know whom the leadership is?” was legitimate.

Well, it turns out that I was wrong. Not that it was a low blow, but that McCain apparently doesn’t know who Iran’s real leader is. In fact, when confronted with this information, he not only admitted he was unaware that Ahmanidejad was not the de facto leader of the country, but even denied that Ayatolla Khamenei held that post.

Now, lest you think John McCain might be better informed on such matters than I, you don’t have to take my word for it. The CIA lists the “Chief of State” as Khamenei. According to, you know, our own government, evidently he is appointed to a life term by the “Assembly of Experts,” has control over the appointment of “more sensitive ministries” in the Cabinet, and appoints many of the members of the Executive Branches’ three oversight committee. Oh, and he also determines the country’s foreign and military policy (did I mention that?)

Time Magazine’s Joe Klein, a member of the Council of Foreign Relations (so what would he know, anyway?), broached the subject to McCain because it turns out, in contrast to the Senator’s statements, Barack Obama didn’t actually ever say he was going to engage in formal discussions with Ahmanidejad. McCain objected to this correction, at which time Klein promptly informed him that he had said meeting with the leaders of the country may be appropriate, but not necessarily Ahmanidejad himself. McCain laughed, and alerted us to the (incorrect) fact that Ahmanidejad is the leader. And when Klein said that he “might be mistaken,” McCain’s response was “he’s the person that comes to the United Nations and declares his country’s policy . . .”

Of course, the President of the United States very seldomly goes to the United Nations to declare our policies. Currently, the person who does that job is Zalmay Mamozy Khalizad. So by McCain’s logic, Mr. Khalizad, and not George W. Bush, is the leader of the United States. (Boy, if the people who don’t like Obama because they think he’s Muslim ever find out about that . . .)

But the fact that he speaks in front of the U.N. was not the only evidence McCain brought out to support his position. He reinforce the accuracy of his claim by stating “I think if you asked any average American who the leader of Iran is, I think they’d know.” So evidently countries half way around the world determine who their leader is based upon public opinion in the United States. Now, six out of ten 18-24 year olds in the United States can’t even find Iraq on the map, so these countries may want to think twice before picking their leaders based upon what Joe Sixpack in Biloxi thinks.

Of course, 68% of Americans think that the war in Iraq was a bad idea, and the same margin thinks we should either withdraw all or some of our troops in Iraq, so I’m guessing a McCain speech detailing a shift in policy regarding the war will be forthcoming very shortly.

Senators are weighing in on the feud between Obama and McCain. Take these two partisan comments, one by a Republican Senator and one by a former Democrat Senator, and try to guess which one made which.

First: “I’m very upset with John with some of the things he’s been saying. And I can’t get into the psychoanalysis of it. But I believe that John is smarter than some of the things he is saying. He is, he understands it more. John is a man who reads a lot, he’s been around the world. I want him to get above that and maybe when he gets into the general election, and becomes the general election candidate he will have a higher-level discourse on these things.”

Second: “There are of course times when it makes sense to engage in tough diplomacy with hostile governments. Yet what Mr. Obama has proposed is not selective engagement, but a blanket policy of meeting personally as President, without preconditions, in his first year in office, with the leaders of the most vicious, anti-American regimes on the planet.”

I’ll give you a hint – you’re wrong. The first statement was made by the Senator of Nebraska Chuck Hagel, a Republican. The second was made by the Senator from Connecticut and former Democrat Vice President candidate Joe Lieberman. Lieberman, in case you forgot, was the one who clued McCain in that Iran wasn’t providing weapons to al Qaeda because, to put it bluntly, Iran hates them. (Also, his claim that Obama has “a blanket policy of meeting personally as President” is incorrect. He stated that the Obama White House would meet with leaders, not necessarily Obama personally. I’m quite certain that’s not even logistically possible.) The good news for Democrats is Lieberman might end up being on the McCain ticket.

Finally, an interesting story came across the wire today that two superdelegates were bribed into endorsing Clinton with a one million dollar contribution to their organization, Young Democrats. They declined the, um, “offer.” Man, she can’t even buy votes these days.

McCain’s Foreign (to Reason) Policy, Fun with Math

John McCain thinks that Iran has the power to be every bit as threatening to the United States as the Soviet Union in its prime. If I was Russian, I’d be pretty insulted.

At the time, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were competing for supremacy in mid-Europe, the Mideast, Central America, and Southeast Asia. Iran and the U.S. are fighting for supremacy in a couple of areas in Iraq. The Soviet Union had a nuclear arsenal larger than every other country on earth combined, including the United States. Iran doesn’t even have a nuclear power plant, let alone a nuclear weapon. The U.S.S.R. had the world’s second largest economy; Iran doesn’t have the second largest economy in its region. The United States was fearful of Soviet weapons in space. Iranian space travel requires the use of heavy psychedelics.

But where McCain’s statements turn from moronic to Iranic (get it?) is that he made them to illustrate the fact that negotiations with Iran should not be on the table, that the U.S. needs to take a hard line with the country and not engage in discussions which “would confer both international legitimacy on the Iranian president and could strengthen him domestically.” I tried to find some quote in which McCain explains how a country which is so powerless they need open negotiations with the U.S. in order to “confer international legitimacy” poses such a great threat to us.

More to the point, McCain seems to forget that when confronted with a foe as dangerous at the Soviet Union, intense discussions were necessary for thirty years in order to prevent war between the two states. If Iran poses such a great danger, shouldn’t similar policy be enacted to confront it? And wouldn’t the policy of “bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” be a little, um, crazy?

The truth is, McCain doesn’t really seem well prepared to deal with Iran at all. Forgetting for a moment that he seems to forget what side they fall on in the whole “shiite vs. sunni” thing, the primary focus of his fear-mongering against Iran seems to be the dangerous and unstable leader, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Funny thing about that is the President of Iran is largely a symbolic position, with no power over the country’s military capacities and no authority over its foreign affairs. That honor goes to Ayatollah Alie Khamanei. How can we expect McCain to appropriately deal with the leadership of Iran when he doesn’t even know whom the leadership is?

And in another showing of complete international idiocy, he chided Obama for claiming that dialog should be initiated between the U.S. and Cuba; on Cuba Day no less! He claims: “These steps would send the worst possible signal to Cuba’s dictators — there is no need to undertake fundamental reforms.” Instead, he says his Presidency will ensure that Cuba releases all political prisoners; legalizes all political parties, labor unions, and media; and holds internationally monitored elections. All very good ideas. Of course, since we’re not going to have dialog with the Cuban government, evidently he’s going to wish these reforms into existence. The United States policy in Cuba has not worked for fifty years; Fidel Castro was the world’s longest leader until he finally had to give up his position . . . to his brother. If the United States truly wants reform, we’re going to have to engage in open discussions with the leadership of Cuba. Otherwise all we’re doing is enabling the continuation of the dictatorship which McCain so despises.

By the way, one interesting little note about how much McCain values labor unions in Cuba. On the same day, the exact same day, he insulted Obama by claiming he was merely “a tool of organized labor.” So labor unions in Cuba good, labor unions in the U.S. bad. I’m sorry, but I’m missing the connection.

Obama is a big jerk, a “tool of organized labor,” if you will, because he has the audacity of being against free trade with such wonderful countries as Colombia. Evidently Colombia is a “beacon of hope” in the region and deserves the free trade agreement because they have illustrated such wonderful worker and human rights activities as the murder of thousands of union leaders, illegal child labor, arbitrary arrest and detainee mistreatment and torture, and, of course, the largest provider of narcotics to the United States. But, in showing his fanatical devotion to American labor unions, Obama seems to think that American jobs are more important. Tsk, tsk.

I learned some fun delegate math!!:

Right now the number of pledged and superdelegates required to win the Democractic nomination stands at 1026. If that number holds, Obama could actually have that wrapped up on June 3 with solid showings in the two remaining states and Puerto Rico. Probably not, but it will certainly be close enough that Clinton could concede that night. However, the Clinton camp argues the magic number should be 2209, which would include Michigan and Florida. That number doesn’t quite hold up, though, because if Michigan delegates were to be awarded based solely upon election results, some 58 delegates would be in limbo as they would be awarded to an “uncommitted” candidate. So the total would really be 2151. But Florida and Michigan won’t be awarded in full; Clinton’s own campaign manager (Terry McAuliffe) says the “rule is fifty percent” while Howard Dean and members of the DNC have made it very clear that Michigan and Florida need to be punished in some way. The specifics will be hashed out on May 31, when the DNC Rules Committee meets. Probably the most likely scenario is that Michigan and Florida are halved, and if the full amount of superdelegates are awarded (which should be in Clinton’s favor) the magic number will be 2131. If delegates are halved, I would expect the pledged delegate counts to be 35-29 in favor of Clinton in Michigan, and 62-31 in favor of Clinton in Florida (estimations are made using Slate’s handy-dandy delegate calculator). Obama will probably end up with about 1700 pledged delegates from the other states and providences, giving him 1760 total. Clinton will have about 1545, giving her a total of 1642. He already has 305 superdelegates to her 281 (per NBC’s count, which is the most pro-Clinton of the major news companies), meaning Obama will need to pick up 66 more superdelegates while Clinton would have to pick up 208. In other words, under the best conditions, Clinton would have to pick up over three times the amount of superdelegates Obama has to pick up to win the nomination. Just over 75%

Considering most of the remaining undeclared superdelegates in the Congress have said the winner should be the candidate with the most pledged delegates, and Obama will win the pledged delegate count under any scenario, it is certainly not unreasonable to see the total amount Obama would need to clinch the election less than two or three dozen within the next week after May 31. This could push the margin of victory required for Clnton to take over the nomination well over 85% going into June. And keep in mind that’s with things more or less working out for Clinton.

As it stands right now, there are 314 total delegates (counting both pledged and superdelegates) yet to be allotted. Obama needs 72, or a mere 23%. Clinton needs Florida and Michigan not to win, but to merely survive.

More fun with math: With Clinton’s big win in Kentucky and Obama’s large but not-so-big win in Oregon, two things have become clear in regards to the popular vote. It will be virtually impossible for Clinton to win the popular vote without counting Michigan, where Obama is not on the ballot, and virtually impossible for Obama to win it counting the Wolverine State. Of course, this is ignoring the caucus states. Still, an interesting little tidbit, albeit meaningless (is Michigan going to sway the superdelegates, who are more likely to decide upon the nuances and intricacies of the party rules than a candidate’s notion of fairness? Obviously not.)

Politics (mostly) Riff

A few news stories that I find interesting but not necessarily worth a full blog:

First, according to Jonathan Alter of Newsweek, the fight over seating the Michigan and Florida delegates has actually led superdelegates to support Obama. Mostly his piece is about how Clinton could use the issue to help define her role in the convention, or even the party as a whole, in a post-Hillary ticket. But he does say the effect will be limited because, at the end of the day, the people who make the decisions in the DNC don’t really feel sorry for Michigan and Florida, and view Clinton’s stance on it as somewhat hypocritical, given that she agreed the votes shouldn’t count last fall and her chair (Terry McAuliffe) held a similarly hard line against Michigan when he was running the DNC. It’s been so distasteful for some, that Simon Rosenberg of the New Democrat Network said it was “instrumental” in securing many of Obama’s superdelegate support.

Now, the New Democrat Network is a combination of a (527) group and a PAC, and that’s always dangerous. But Simon Rosenberg was a finalist for the DNC chair in 2004 before ceding the position and putting his support behind Dean, so he obviously has some high-powered information. It’s not surprising that the superdelegates didn’t put much weight on the role of Michigan and Florida when casting their decisions. One thing that has always confused me is Clinton keeps making public arguments out of the nuances of the nominating process, when her only hope now lies in the superdelegates. She can try to sway her supporters into believing that caucuses aren’t democratic or that Florida and Michigan Democrats did nothing wrong and shouldn’t be punished, or that we should only count the votes in a certain, convoluted way, but she’s had the delegate count lost for quite some time now and her campaign has admitted for the last couple of months that she would need strong superdelegate support to win the nomination. The problem is, these superdelegates are party insiders; they know how the system works, are (assumedly) very well informed of its developments, and have gotten their prestigious jobs from this process. It’s absurd to think they’ll bite into the propaganda just because the Clinton’s ask them to.

But to hear that it not only didn’t sway support to Clinton, but actually led to support for Obama, did take me aback. Evidently, they were just as insulted by the rhetoric as I have been.

In related news, Democrat Rules Committee Member, former chairman, and Clinton supporter Donald Fowler said that Obama could pretty much let Hillary have her way, within reason, without “threatening his postion.” In other words, a very powerful Clinton superdelegate admitted that Obama’s more or less got this locked up and Florida and Michigan cannot make a meaningful impact. “If he thinks he’s threatened, he won’t do it, and I don’t blame him. But unless something unusual happens between now and then, he will be in good shape.” Not only is the writing on the wall, but Peter Parker took its picture, printed it in the Daily Bugle, and it’s now on page 537 of your son’s high school history book.

To her credit, Clinton has done her part and laid off the rhetoric lately, apparently abandoning her “kitchen sink” strategy for one which, while ultimately ineffective (of course, so was the kitchen sink), should help make her case without damaging Obama for the general election. Yesterday she went so far as to express regret for saying that he won’t be able to win over “hard working Americans, white Americans.” In an interview with ABC News, she was told that Congressman Charles Rengel from New York called the remark “the dumbest thing you could have possibly said.” Clinton’s response? “Well, he’s probably right.”

Her only real argument for staying in the election seems to be that she’s “not a quitter,” and it would be wrong to leave before every state votes. This was pretty much Mike Huckabee’s argument before McCain won the nomination. As long as she continues to be more Huckabee than, let’s say, Hillary Clinton, this thing should end pretty smoothly.

Though Clinton supporters will have another “Obama’s sexist” log to throw on the fire. Evidently, Obama had to call a reporter and leave a voice mail (he’s been leaving a lot of voice mail recently) to say he’s sorry for calling her “sweetie.” This is really a non-story; I don’t know how many times a black woman has called me “honey.” I find it rather endearing. But since some of these Clinton supporters (in my belief, a very small but much too vocal minority) seem to want to find sexism in every thing about this nomination, I’m sure it will come up. Be forewarned. I guess I can’t seem to blame them too much. A person they thought was entitled to win the nomination lost, and of course that can’t be the candidate’s fault. Human nature. How can the Patriots lose the Super Bowl? Obviously they weren’t outplayed; the officials must have screwed up the timing, or something.

Finally, I would like to say something about fantasy baseball. I love fantasy sports. I’ve been in two leagues; I was the champion in my football league debut and took home the (digital) third place trophy in my baseball debut. And now I’m tearing up, absolutely shredding, my second baseball season. How good am I? Jake Peavy, one of my starting pitchers, was hit hard by the Cubs, giving up four runs in only four innings of work. Then Kerry Wood, one of my closers, gave up a run and let four people reach base in his only inning of work, which wasn’t even a save situation. And yet my lead against my poor opponent increased from 6-5 to 9-2. Last week I won 12-0 in the league’s only shutout of the year, and over the last two weeks my record was 22-2.

That, my friends, is a powerhouse.

Edward’s Isn’t Important; Race and Gender in 24 Hours

Evidently John Edwards is not a very important person. I know this, because he told me so.

In two interviews given today, on the Today Show with Matt Lauer and on Morning Joe, he downplayed his importance with, well, everybody. Stating several times that he doesn’t have much, if any, influence on either campaign’s strategy or who people are going to vote for, and claiming on both shows that “Barack Obama has done very well without John Edward’s endorsement” he quelled any hope that an endorsement would be forthcoming prior to a candidate being named. There seems to be a lot of speculation why, ranging from an ongoing feud between him and his lovely wife, Elizabeth, to a push for a vice president seat (again). His argument seems to be that it doesn’t matter much anyway, so why muddy up the waters.

It’s an argument that seems to be well shared. Much to the chagrin of the Obama campaign, many in the media report there are a number of potential supporters who have not sided with Obama because the race is going to be over soon enough anyway. To this end, Obama may have actually hurt his case by more or less declaring himself the presumptive nominee. It’s hard to go to the superdelegates and say “I need you to support me now to end this” when you’re telling the public the contest is over, even if there’s still a few more minutes left in the game. Why not just wait those extra few weeks? After all, better safe then sorry.

I’m not sure that Edwards has any ulterior motives to withholding an endorsement. There’s not really a “poverty czar” in the U.S., so a cabinet position is probably not going to be in the cards. And I highly doubt he’s going to be a finalist for any candidate’s veep. To be frank, Obama doesn’t need him. Obama has won over the majority of the crowd that Edwards could help him pull in; he does very well in the deep south and Edwards didn’t help Kerry bring in the “Mason-Dixon” states like Kentucky or North Carolina. And he wasn’t really an effective running mate for Kerry; many people in the Democrat party blamed him for Kerry’s loss because he did not fight hard for Kerry and seemed more interested in using his candidacy as a stepping stone to the Presidency than winning the 2004 campaign. Personally, I think this argument, and the same was given to Lieberman in 2000, has some merit, but the biggest problems of Kerry and Gore have more to do with bad Presidential candidates than bad V.P. choices (to say I think Gore would have been a terrific President is a bit of an understatement, but didn’t exactly run a flawless campaign). So it’s difficult to see either candidate opening up to him.

However, I do think Edwards is doing some political posturing. He does want to be important; by his admission he’s gotten a taste of what it’s like to not be, and is not putting it past Clinton to somehow squeak out the nomination. One thing the Clinton’s have made clear so far is their (mythical) administration is not going to be kind to the Obama supporters. So if Edwards does respect Hillary Clinton and also thinks she has even an outside chance of pulling an upset (and I do not doubt either claim), then it really doesn’t make any sense to endorse now.

And I would certainly hesitate to say he is unimportant. Edwards was the only white male candidate who seriously contended for the Democratic nomination. Given the length of the race, that is really saying something. And I do believe an Edwards endorsement would make other superdelegates think long and hard about the candidate he gets behind, and may be enough to drag some other committed “uncommitteds” away from their faux-neutrality. Further, Edwards does have a very important role to play in the future if a democrat wins the Presidency. He may not get a cabinet position, but I think it would be an error for either candidate not to keep him close by in some sort of official advisory role. Especially through the nomination. Relying on a populist message doesn’t win a lot of elections in its own right, but having a populist surrogate doesn’t hurt anybody, either.

Not that there aren’t very good signs of who he’s leaning towards. On Morning Joe, he was asked if he would endorse the candidate he voted for in North Carolina’s primary. His response: “It’s highly likely.” He stood by the remark later in the program, after he said that it was “clearly likely” that Barack is going to be the nominee. So this really only leads to two conclusions: either he voted for Obama, or it’s highly likely he’s going to endorse the candidate that ends up losing, after she already lost.

Fortunately for Clinton, his endorsement doesn’t really mean that much.

I must say, Clinton has really gone off the deep end. I’m sure she’s more stressed out than she’s letting on. Her campaign aides are saying things like: “There is a profound sadness . . . I don’t think anyone sees that there’s a clear path to victory here.” Ouch.

But in justifying her own existence in a race which, to put it bluntly, she’s not going to win, she’s started to really lay it out on the line. And it ain’t pretty. Yesterday she said “I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on . . . Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.” She did not speculate on why she’s losing if her coalition is so much stronger, nor did she explain why people who completed college or non-whites should not be insulted with the implication that we aren’t “hard working Americans.” The day before, she justified her continuation by claiming “Too many people have fought too hard to see a woman continue in this race, this history-making race, and I want everybody to understand that.”

So putting two and two together, I guess blacks will be too busy sitting on their lazy asses to go to the polls, while us “college folk” are too persnickety to vote, so only white women have really worked hard enough to get “their” candidate elected. Meanwhile, you’ve played the race card and the gender card in less time then it takes Jack Bauer to save the world. Wow. Congratulations on hitting a new low, there. (And that’s quite an accomplishment, as the Clintons could beat Hermes Conrad in a limbo contest.) Well, I guess when you’re losing on the issues, losing the popular vote, losing the delegate count, running out of cash, and no less than the American government itself treats your opponent like he’s a “rock star,” race and gender are all you’ve got left.

Trouble at the Pump

I was trying to ignore Clinton. I really was. I figure, like it or not, this primary is pretty much in the books. And since Clinton is really just delaying the inevitable, why not just forget about her and focus on McCain? But her little “misadventure” at the gas station had me rolling, and I just couldn’t resist. (Besides, this gives me a chance to talk about him, as well.)

Not that she’s been the first democrat who’s had a bad photo op. Remember Kerry’s ridiculous hunting trip? I find it hard to understand why politicians don’t realize that they look much better in situations which look random and unscripted, and an obvious photo op trying to appear like a “commoner” is demeaning and pretentious. Maybe that’s why the Republican’s have the “average Joe” label; Bush looked right at home moving shrub. Like that’s actually what he wanted to do with his day. Okay, he looked like a dunce coming out of that fighter plane. But does it compare with Dukakis in the tank? Not even close (at least he used to be a pilot. And by “used to be” I mean by all accounts he showed up for training class at least two or three times.)

At any rate, Clinton pulls up to the gas station to talk about fighting the cost of gas, in a truck bigger than my house (a Ford F250) followed by six Suburbans, two squad cars, and an SUV (evidently completely unaware of the irony), and let the whole crowd know that while she hasn’t actually pumped gas in quite a while, or even really knew what the price was, she has “heard from a lot of people” that it is starting to get pretty bad.

“Sixty-three dollars,” she said while shaking her head, “for just about a half a tank of gas.” Yes, well, that’s what you get when you’re practically driving a Kenworth.

She also had a mishap with the coffee machine; we have those at our gas station and let me tell you, sometimes pushing that little button can be quite a harrowing experience. If anybody in her campaign has any sense at all, this will be the last we hear of her calling Obama “elitist.”

But Hillary Clinton made the stop so people would start talking about her gas tax holiday, so I’ll bite.

This little gas tax vacation is meaningless. Absolutely meaningless. First of all, neither Clinton nor McCain are going to be President this summer. They’re both sitting there talking about this thing like it’s going to be their Presidential policy, even though they will take the oath of office (or watch Obama do so) four and a half months after the thing ends. Neither of them has the power, or more importantly the time, to shove this thing through Congress, and neither of them are going to attempt to do so. And Clinton really takes the cake, because she wants to offset the cost with an increased tax for oil companies. I’m not against windfall profit taxes for Chevron, but there’s not a chance in the world that gets through Congress this summer. And if it does, is there anybody who actually thinks Bush will sign it? (I actually heard that as a punchline in a Bill Engvall joke. “No, sir, Bush actually signed the tax hike for the oil companies. Here’s your sign!”)

But let’s just say, for the sake of argument, the vacation does pass Congress. What would be the effects? They both want to pass it so people won’t be so burdened by the added expense of gasoline. Well, this tax vacation would take effect from Memorial Day to Labor Day, which is thirteen weeks. Let’s say I have to fill up my sixteen gallon Taurus once a week (which I don’t. And since I drive from Chicago to Peoria and back every week I put about four hundred miles on the car a week; a sum which I’m guessing is a touch higher than the national average). The federal gas tax is 18.5 cents, so that would save me $38.48. Now, you could give that to me in a lump sum and I would barely even notice it. Spread out over the whole summer and I wouldn’t think you did anything for me at all.

Which it won’t. But it will do something to me.

This money is used to build our highway infrastructure. Road, bridges, tunnels, things like that. And this infrastructure is in severe need of help. So much so, that Popular Mechanics recently ran a cover story on it. And according to the Associated Press, the Highway Trust Fund, which helps build and upkeep the infrastructure and which gets about two thirds of its funding from this tax, is going to be in debt by 2009.

The U.S. Government’s Energy Information Administration predicts that the U.S. will use 9.4 million barrels a day of fuel this summer, which at 42 gallons per barrel equates to 394.8 million gallons of gas. Taxed at 18.5 cents per gallon, this tax holiday would remove over $73 million a day from our road’s infrastructure just when we need it the most. That’s well over $6.5 billion dollars.

So next time you’re driving down the highway ask yourself; is the deterioration of this road, and the decreased safety, increased travel headaches, and additional gas your car will burn as a result of it, worth about forty bucks this summer?

Didn’t think so.

Why Clinton’s “Big” Win Isn’t So Big After All.

Hillary Clinton won Pennsylvania. She won it big. It’s a huge, “tide-turning” victory that is going to be big trouble for Obama and is breathing new life into Clinton’s campaign. It’s the first victory in the new day of the 2008 Democrat Primary, one that will certainly spell defeat for Obama and continue the Clinton legacy.

That will be the story for the next two weeks out of the Clinton camp, and the press will be remiss not to give it some legitimacy.

But if you take Pennsylvania out of the microcosm the Clinton camp wants to keep it in, and put it in the larger picture, it’s not too difficult to see why it doesn’t change a whole lot at all.

The word among the press (and to Clinton’s credit, I highly doubt this would have materialized into much more than the word among the press) is that a five point victory would have spelled the virtual end to the Clinton campaign. The “magic number”, given by people whom I fully respect (most notably Tim Russert), was about eight points, give or take a point or two. Anything over that is a resounding victory for Clinton, anything under was a resounding defeat.

Of course, Clinton won by ten.

This is certainly disappointing to the Obama camp, but I doubt they’ll lose much sleep over it. At the end of the day he still has a commanding lead. And despite the spin coming out of Clinton, she still has a long way to go before meaningfully cutting into it.

The problem is ten points doesn’t actually do much. She has gained ten delegates so far, with eighteen left to designate. When all the delegates are awarded, she can expect to win an estimated fifteen or sixteen total. Not that this gain is not meaningless. But even after you include a net gain of sixteen delegates, Obama will still be leading the pledged delegate count by an even 150. This is bad news, because out of the remaining contests there are only 258 delegates left. To break even, she would have to win 204 of those remaining delegates. Obviously that’s not going to happen. It’s not even quasi-realistic.

And it’s doubtful that this advantage will even be around longer than two weeks, when the next primaries occur. Right now Obama is enjoying a fifteen point lead in the polls in North Carolina. If he wins by that margin, according to Slate’s Online Delegate Calculator, he will win 17 delegates. So this “huge” victory will be negated in a state with less than 75% of the total delegates Pennsylvania has. And the gains she made in the popular vote (a little over 200,000 votes) will be cut into significantly, as well. Meanwhile, Indiana is still a very close race. Clinton is leading the polls right now by two points, which will net her only two delegates. So in two weeks the delegates she won last night at best would be a net of only a few (I’d say her netting ten is a stretch of imagination) and at worst she could be losing by even more than she was last night (which isn’t a stretch at all, though Obama picking up a net of ten isn’t much more realistic than Hillary doing so).

We’ve been down this road before. Remember her “game-changing” wins in Ohio and Texas? You know, the ones where Clinton only came out ahead by two delegates and even after you included her win in Rhode Island on the same night Obama had made up for her net gain within a week in Wyoming and Mississippi? Where did that get her? Exactly where she started. By the next big primary, in Pennsylvania, the general consensus, even out of her own camp, was she had to win in order to stay viable.

Except there was a big difference back then. Notably, there were a few more primaries, one other big race, and she was still operating in the black. Now she’s pretty much down to Indiana, and her campaign is operating with a $10 million deficit (Obama has $40 million in the bank, by the way). She needed a huge victory. And instead she got the same thing she got last time she had a “big” victory; a nice talking point but little to nothing in the way of delegates or popular votes to take home.

Of course, her campaign has more or less given up on winning the delegate vote, anyway. So maybe it’s a little unfair to say that, just because she’s losing in the manner by which both major political parties use to determine their candidate, it actually means she’s losing. Ultimately, the Clinton campaign is going to try and persuade enough superdelegates with the argument that she’s the more electable candidate.

Ultimately, Clinton’s victory (as it impacts her ability to receive the nomination) is three fold. First, one of the big arguments coming from Clinton is that Democrats need states like Pennsylvania to win the general election. Her victory here seems to prove her case that she’s the most electable in the general election because she can carry these states. But the argument that since Obama lost Pennsylvania to Clinton means he’ll lose it to McCain is specious. First, it’s not sensible to think that all the people who voted for Clinton are going to defect to McCain. As the drama in the GOP nomination pointed out, as soon as one candidate is picked, the party will rally around them. Clinton admitted that herself. But more to the point, Pennsylvania is a closed primary, which means independents don’t get to vote. And left-leaning Republicans don’t get to vote. Much has been made of the turnout in the Pennsylvania. Which is good; it was a record turnout and that’s something both candidates should be proud of. Over 2.3 million people cast votes in the primary last night. But over 5.7 million people voted in the general election in 2004. Bush, who lost the state, received almost half a million more votes than the total Democrats who voted in the primary. Only about 40% of the total populace voted last night, and many of those were first time voters (ever, not just in the primary) who everybody agrees Obama received the majority of. So Obama has a lot of room to make up votes by November, and millions of voters who didn’t participate last night to work with.

Secondly, it cuts into Obama’s popular vote lead. This dent in Obama’s lead should be lessened by the vote in North Carolina. At this point he’s winning by over 500,000 votes, which is a lot with only nine contests left (especially considering there are some small contests in those nine). But of course, she argues that this lead is even less if you count Florida, and even less still if you count Florida and Michigan. In fact, if you count both those states, then Hillary Clinton is actually leading by just under 122,000 votes. But Obama has a pretty good counter for that argument. First, I would expect him to make up that 122,000 margin by the end of the campaign. But right now those vote totals aren’t counting the caucus states of Iowa, Nevada, Maine, and Washington. Since Clinton is the “every vote should count” candidate, I’m sure she has no problem counting the vote totals in those states. If those votes are counted, he’s still winning by just under 195,000 votes. And if you don’t count the Michigan’s votes, since he wasn’t on the ballot there won’t be a lot of people outside the Clinton camp that do, he’s still winning by over 300,000 votes. So the popular vote is not really in Clinton’s favor unless she counts two states she agreed not to count when she thought her nomination is inevitable, and ignores four states with caucuses, three of which just happened to lose.

The final big talking point to the superdelegates is that Obama can’t “finish her off.” If he’s such a great candidate, she will ask, than how come he can’t wrap up the nomination? Again, Obama can argue that if she’s such a great candidate, why can’t she make any meaningful impact when she’s winning these supposedly game-changing contests? It also places emphasis on certain contests. She argues that he can’t win because he narrowly lost in Texas and lost by ten in Ohio and Pennsylvania. But the argument ignores the huge inroads Obama made in those two states (gaining over ten points in both) and also places the burden of Obama winning in states which the Clinton camp thought was an inevitable victory for her, without placing any pressure on her to win in states which Obama had an even moderate lead (which she has been unable to do, save New Hampshire. Remember New Hampshire? That was like, forty five states ago.)

So all of these arguments have their faults. And as evidence, the very morning after Clinton’s “game-changing” victory, Obama picked up yet another superdelegate.

I did see yet another new way to view the primary season on Morning Joe (which I was unfortunate enough to wake up to. I really, really don’t like Joe Scarborough, and need to remember to set my DVR to switch to Cartoon Network in the mornings. The Mr. Men Show is the best children’s program since Sesame Street.) After she said that “this is an election, where people get to choose” (well, the superdelegates get to choose, the people just get to keep it close enough to let them), she told us we need to look “at the election backwards.” This really gets to the root of why I’m not worried about the superdelegates. Obama is going to get to point at the primary and say “look, I won the most states, the most delegates, the most popular votes. And I’ve been able to win in states with open primaries, illustrating that I am better at bringing in independents to the party.” Clinton, meanwhile, will be saying, “But if you don’t count the small states, and don’t count the caucus states, and don’t count the red states, and place more emphasis on certain large states, and then look at it all backwards, I’m obviously the winner!! After all, this is an election, where [certain] people get to choose!” Give me a break.

The win wasn’t wholly unimportant. It does give her a reason to continue the race, when a loss would have made her sticking around very, very unpopular. But if this was football game, then she’d be down by two touchdowns late in the fourth quarter, and she just scored a field goal. It helped, but she’s still down by two scores.

Why 2008 Should Be the Superdelegates’ Last Run

One thing that has absolutely amazed me lately is how Hillary Clinton is making herself out to be the “democratic” nominee because Obama allegedly doesn’t want to count the votes in Florida or Michigan and doesn’t want to finish the primary season because he’s afraid when all the votes are counted Hillary could win.

The problem with this assertion, of course, is when all the votes are counted it’s extremely unlikely that Clinton will be winning the popular vote, virtually impossible that she will be winning the delegate vote, and mathematically impossible that she will be winning the state count. So for the past six weeks she’s been working on a campaign to get the Democrat superdelegates to overturn the results of the primary.

I’m trying to figure out how that’s the “democratic” candidate. If you have any ideas, please let me know.

The whole idea of superdelegates seems very, for a lack of a better term, Republican to me. It’s essentially based upon the idea that the people don’t always pick a good candidate. According to Wikipedia (and how could an encyclopedia which anybody can edit possibly be wrong?), superdelegates were created in response to changes made to the Democrat Party nominee process which, get this, actually made the “composition of the convention less subject to control by party leaders and more responsive to the votes cast during the campaign for the nomination.” The party elders thought this weakened the ticket of George McGovern and Jimmy Carter (I’m not sure which Carter ticket was weakened; the one when he won or the one when he was the incumbent). The superdelegates were enacted in 1982 to help the Democrats create more viable tickets to beat the Republicans. The “new and improved” system promptly lost the next two elections. In fact, the only state the Democrats carried in the 1984 election was Minnesota (home to future U.S. Senator Al Franken). And the only Democrat to become President since that time was impeached. So common sense would say this system doesn’t work too well, right?

In fairness, you can’t pin the problems of the Democrat Party on the superdelegate system. While the superdelegates did get to flex their muscle almost immediately, choosing Walter Mondale over Gary Hart in 1984, the perception that they decided this election is not exactly accurate. Mondale was leading in popular vote and was only about 40 votes shy of clinching the nomination, so it’s not like they overturned the results of the primary. And other than 1984 they haven’t even had the chance to do so, as the winning candidate had clinched the nomination before the convention.

Until this year.

It is very unlikely that Obama will get the 1025 delegates necessary to clinch the nomination. He probably will be down by quite a bit more than 40, as well. Which means Clinton will be trying her damndest to get them to overturn the will of the people. Her primary argument will be that she’s more electable, as evidence that she has won the “important” states. (That’s another funny thing about Clinton’s claim she’s the more democratic candidate. The only states that seem to count are the ones she wins.) Clinton also says she should be the nominee because she’s won more states with closed primaries. I’m not quite sure how her claim that Obama wins only because of independent voters somehow makes her more electable in a populace where a third of the voters are independent, but there’s a lot about Clinton I don’t understand. Like her St. Patrick’s Day scarf.

I’m not worried about the superdelegates, to be honest. Since Super Tuesday, Obama has been winning at least one or two a week, while Clinton is at a net loss (she did pick up four this week, according to MSNBC). He has turned her 100+ lead from at most 30 (according to MSNBC) to at least 12 (according to the NY Times). I don’t think that she has any chance of convincing enough superdelegates to her side unless she wins the popular vote, which would be disappointing but at least it would make the decision somewhat legitimate.

It’s also not likely to happen. Despite her claims to the contrary, the popular vote is not favorable to her. She’s losing by over 700,000 votes. She’s not going to make that up. And that’s if you don’t count the caucus states. And even if you count Florida she’s losing by over 400,000 votes. If you count Florida and Hillary’s Michigan votes, and if you say Obama only gets 85% of the “Uncommitted” votes in Michigan (which is an insanely pro-Hillary assumption), and if you don’t count the votes in the caucus states, Hillary would be losing by 296,261 votes. Not so bad in early February, but this is April and there are only ten contests left (and that’s a lot of “ifs”). She won’t make that up. Her only real hope to win the popular vote is to somehow count Florida and Michigan without a revote, as Obama’s name was not on the Michigan ballot. Either that or win out by unrealistic margins.

But even if Obama wins enough superdelegates to win the nomination, and he will, why should the party of the people, as I think the Democrats are, use such an elitist method to determine the nominee? Doesn’t this play into the Republican’s claims that the Democrats are, in fact, the party of elites? Say what you will about the Republicans, but voters decided to nominate John McCain and even though the party was not particularly fond of the idea, their will was granted. How could Hillary Clinton possibly defend her nomination when McCain asks why, when after thirty million people voted to chose a victor, it ended up being decided by 800 individuals, some of whom don’t even hold an elected office? By saying if you crunch the number just right, she only lost by less than one percent of the popular vote?

How can the party that feels victimized when five individuals overturned the will of the people just eight years ago now overturn the will of the voters for a mere few hundred? Is this irony lost on the Clintons? Or do they just not care? This should not be the party of the Clintons. This should be the party of Al Gore. The Clintons have been embroiled in so much scandal they actually use it as a reason to vote against Obama (“At least you know all the terrible stuff we did!! We can’t even find any real good dirt on Obama! Is that the type of person you want elected??”) Meanwhile, Al Gore wins a Nobel Peace Prize. And yet some would ignore the lessons of Gore and strip the right of their own people to determine the leader of this country for the second time in three election cycles.

The rules are the rules, and it’s too late to change them for this election cycle. But I don’t think anybody can argue that all this talk about the superdelegates this year has been good for the Democrat’s image. Thomas Jefferson once said that a government should “consider the will of the society enounced by the majority of a single vote as sacred as if unanimous.” That definition of a republic does not lend itself well to the final vote being merely a suggestion for a committee of one quarter of one one-thousandth of the total population to follow at their discretion. It’s time for the party created by Thomas Jefferson to elect their President by the criteria he established. Or it’s time to give way to a party that will.

As for me, I will not spit in the eye of the voting public just for the “honor” of four more years of the Clinton/Bush oligarchy.

Hillary Clinton Can’t Answer Conflict of Interest Question

As I explained quite a while back, a Hillary Clinton White House could be duplicitous, indeed. And this concerns me. It concerns me a great deal, to be honest. So when she passes up an obvious opportunity to explain why that won’t be the case, and instead laughs the suggestion away, I have to take the time to note it.

A reporter asked Hillary Clinton if it was possible that $800,000 in Clinton income paid for by a group that supports free trade between the United States and Columbia could be a conflict of interest, since she claims to oppose such a deal. (Hopefully more than she “opposed” NAFTA.) After a gaudy laugh (and this wasn’t her “gee, that was funny” laugh, but that annoying “I would like to avoid that question so I’m going to obviously fake laughter and hope my cheerful smile draws your ire away” laugh. Watch one of her debates sometime. The difference is so obvious it’s almost insulting. I mean, can’t she at least practice making it seem sincere?), she asked “How many angels dance on the head of the pin?”

This originally got my attention, because that was the same point the “fictional” Governor Stanton from Primary Colors, a book written by Joe Klein about the 1992 Clinton Presidential campaign, made to his campaign aide, the protagonist Henry Burton. After looking for dirt to dig up on the only other candidate who presented a roadblock between Stanton and the nomination, he was convinced not to take it to the presses by an old friend who committed suicide. So he decided to use it to convince his foe to quit, instead. When the argument was used that it would have been taken to the press had their friend not recently perished, Stanton answers (in an ever-so-slight paraphrase as I could not find the exact quote): “But those are fine little points. We’re talking about angels dancing on a pinhead points.”

When I think of that movie, I always think of two parts. The first is when Stanton’s wife (played by the beautiful Emma Thompson) finds the cell phone Stanton threw out the window in the brush, when he insisted it landed in the trees. His response? “Shoot, you wouldn’t have found it if I hadn’t thrown it out of the window.” I laugh just thinking about it. But the other is that line. For some reason that scene, summed up succinctly by that line, always had a lasting impact on me. So it really struck me that she was using the same line which may or may not be attributed to Bill Clinton during a likewise potentially shady situation.

But at any rate, that was a movie and this is real life. Ultimately her response to that question was, and this is not paraphrased at all, “How do you answer that?”

Perhaps by describing how a group which paid your family a third of what you lent to your campaign will not have any kind of sway over your policy decisions? Just a stab in the dark, here. Maybe by not completely blowing off the question? Just a hint.

She did reiterate she was against the deal, even though Bill Clinton is for it. Her response to that was “Everybody is entitled to their opinion.” Fair enough. But when a person with no prior political office experience has such a large role in their spouse’s White House as she claims she had, how can we not expect the spouse which actually held that position will not have a similarly large role?

By not answering the question, but more so by discounting the legitimacy of a very legitimate question, she did nothing to show that this significant contribution to her economic well-being will have no effect on her decision making capabilities.

In other Clinton news, Bill got jealous of Hillary’s monopoly on lying about Bosnia. Seems he said “[T]here was a lot of fulminating because Hillary, one time late at night when she was exhausted, misstated, and immediately apologized for it, what happened to her in Bosnia in 1995.” He went on to say, “I think she was the first First Lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to go into a combat zone.” Well, Hillary Clinton had “misspoke” on that several times, did not immediately apologize for it, didn’t even immediately admit it was a mistake for that matter, went to Bosnia in 1996 and not 1995, and wasn’t the first First Lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to visit a combat zone. Although, classifying Bill’s comment as a misstatement would be contingent upon what the definition of “one,” “immediately,” “1995,” and “go” is.

Some Props for Hillary

On leap day, Hillary Clinton did something I do not believe either McCain or Obama has done since they started their run for President:  she introduced legislation into the Senate.  And not some bill to commemorate the architect of a bridge, but real legislation that would have a concrete and meaningful impact.

This legislation, tilted “United Nations Population Fund Restoration Act of 2008” would restore U.S. funding to the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA).  Evidently (according to Clinton) funding was cut off by the Bush administration after they claimed that the organization used funds to promote abortions in China, something which a committee enacted by the White House itself to research the claims determined was untrue.

This is not a bill without controversy, either.  Even though the bill is really intended to provide health care to protect mothers from reproductive-system illnesses and the medical dangers accompanying having children, it will have some trouble passing into law because it allows American money to be used to provide contraceptives in areas where they are not currently available.  It’s a relatively minor part of the bill, but there are enough people in Congress who won’t vote for spending money on any birth control measure that doesn’t begin and end with abstinence that it will be a battle to get through.  So it’s not like it’s a safe, watered-down, “gimme” bill that is often used for political gain in Washington. 

Now, I have positive and negative opinions on it, and I have strong opinions on the effect global poverty has on the issue of maternal health and I could write pages upon pages putting this topic into a broader context.  But I didn’t write this post to discuss the measure.

The real point of this post was to give Hillary some credit for proposing meaningful legislation at a time when she’s running for President.  There is not much, if any, talk of this bill in the press.  And it’s not because the press is ignoring it.  Hillary has not talked about it.  I looked for information regarding the bill on her website.  It’s not located prominently anywhere.  There is a press release about it on her website, which I only know because it came up during a Google speech; it’s not listed on her “Press Releases” page.  She has four speeches posted on her site since she introduced the legislation, and it was not mentioned once in any of them.  I would bet most Hillary supporters don’t even know about it.

To be honest, I’ve never wanted a Hillary Presidency.  I always wanted a woman from the Clinton White House to be President; I was just hoping it would be Janet Reno.  And this isn’t an Obama thing, by the way; I didn’t like her well before I even heard of the guy.  (She didn’t do any favors ditching my Cubbies for the Yankees to win a Senate seat.  Talk about selling out.  I mean, the Mets maybe, but the Yankees??  Tsk, tsk.)  But the more I thought about this, the more I felt compelled to commend her.  Hillary Clinton, despite being enthroned in a battle for the White House, is taking time to introduce real “meat and potatoes” legislation.  And even though this could be a popular move among her base during a primary she’s losing with time running out, she’s not using it as a way to rally voters.  She seems to be doing this because she thinks it’s the right thing to do.  Which isn’t always the smartest thing to do in politics, but it is refreshing.