Democratic Primary

Discuss to your heart's content.

What are your predictions for tomorrow's Primary elections?

I'll refrain from predicting a GOP winner, as I'm too closely involved, but for the rest mine are:

Dem Governor:

• Hynes - 54 percent
• Quinn - 46 percent

GOP Senate:

• Mark Kirk - 72 percent
• Pat Hughes - 12 percent
• Others - 16 percent

Dem Senate:

• Giannoulias - 41 percent
• Hoffman - 29 percent
• Jackson - 25 percent
• Others - 5 percent

What are your predictions?  What other races have caught your attention?

PPP says, via CapFax, that Kirk Dillard and Dan Hynes have opened up narrow leads in the race for their respective parties' nominations for Governor:

A primary loss for Illinois Governor Pat Quinn is looking more and more possible. He trails Dan Hynes 41-40 in our poll of the race.

Hynes’ slight advantage is due largely to a 45-38 lead with African Americans, suggesting that a controversial ad featuring former Chicago Mayor Harold Washington making disparaging comments about Quinn may be working to Hynes’ advantage. The two candidates are tied among white voters with Quinn holding a 44-36 lead with Hispanics.

Quinn’s approval rating even among Democratic primary voters is just 38%, with an equal 38% disapproving of his job performance. 35% of voters view Hynes favorably to 25% unfavorably.

This race could still go either way but the momentum is in Hynes’ favor given his huge deficit in polling just a month ago.

The Republican race is even more up for grabs with five candidates polling within eight points of each other. Kirk Dillard is at 19%, followed by Andy McKenna with 17%, Bill Brady with 16%, Jim Ryan at 13%, and Adam Andrzejewski at 11%. Of the remaining candidates only Dan Proft with 7% is not in double digits.

Full poll here.

(Disclosure:  I am helping the Kirk Dillard for Governor campaign.)

I can argue all sorts of reasons why Dan Hynes is a better candidate than our current governor, but I imagine any readers here can check out the candidates' policies on their pages and history themselves for such a determination pretty quick. I'd just like to add to that consideration, especially those leaning towards or on the fence about Quinn, something that honestly should not be forgotten.

Our last election led to Illinois being center stage of a national embarrassment. This was not some unexpected shocker given that the guy who won the last Democratic Party primary was already under state and federal investigation with several corrupt acts in the public domain. And while Quinn personally vouched for the integrity and honesty of that man, and would love to get away with playing dumb now... don't let him.

I'll let the guy who ran the anti-corruption campaign against Blagojevich in that primary explain why people like Quinn simply do not deserve re-election in the State of Illinois let alone any position of trust over Illinois citizens (in its entirety here):

In 2006 I challenged Rod Blagojevich in the Democratic primary for governor. I ran because Blagojevich sold out the public for piles of campaign cash.

 

I said “no” to Blagojevich when it mattered.

 

A very savvy pol recently said to me, “Ed, if we only knew then what we know now.” I replied that we did know it then. He laughed and admitted it was so. That’s a far more grown up response than the “I-knew-it-was-bad-but not-this-bad” dodge that’s in vogue.

 

They all knew. The majority of the House impeachment report cited documents that were public before the election — the same documents I cited when arguing the governor should not be re-elected. Instead of standing with me at the time, the party leaders poured over my petitions to see if they could keep me off the ballot.

 

The governor had spent his first term raking in campaign cash at the astonishing rate of $2,667 per hour, giving him millions to spend on re-election. (I won’t here revisit how he raised this cash, who is already jailed because of it, or what services the people of Illinois were cheated out of to secure these gifts.)

 

Nearly all of the state’s Democratic politicians calculated, correctly but shortsightedly, that rallying around the governor would ensure their re-election. Voters count on their leaders to stand up when it matters. Voters also deserve choices. With the 2006 election looming, Democrats could look forward to neither.

 

...

 

I ran a tough but underfunded campaign and came up short. Still, by the time the election came I had a lot more company than I did at the beginning. A handful of Democratic politicians began to distance themselves from the governor. A few were quite helpful. Many others publicly worked for the governor’s re-election but privately wished me well. Several editorial boards endorsed my campaign. More than a quarter of a million ordinary Democrats voted for me and I carried a handful of counties.

 

On election night 2006 I talked about our values and the better angels of the Democratic Party. I said we would ultimately prevail and clean up our state. A reporter followed up asking me if that was a concession. I certainly was conceding the night. But I never would, and never will, concede the fight to change the poisonous culture of corruption in Illinois.

 

Edwin Eisendrath challenged Rod Blagojevich in the 2006 Democratic Primary. Eisendrath served as HUD regional administrator in the Clinton administration and two terms as a Chicago alderman.

Quinn played a central role in ensuring Blagojevich's re-election. He threw away his reputation and dignity. The choice is simple: hold Blagojevich's enablers responsible this election season, or send them a clear message that voters no longer care about accountability.

I'm voting for accountability. I'm voting for Dan Hynes on February 2nd.

From today's Trib:

Three-term state Comptroller Dan Hynes has told top Democrats that he intends to seek the party's nomination for governor, setting up a February primary challenge to Gov. Pat Quinn, sources familiar with Hynes' conversations said Thursday.

The comptroller starts the race with a major fundraising advantage. Hynes has $3.5 million banked after raising more than $905,000 in the first half of the year. Quinn raised more than $860,000 in that time period but had a little more than $700,000 left.

If Hynes runs for Governor (and I think he probably will), he will almost certainly have the support of Illinois labor, in part because of the long-standing relationship he has developed there, but also because of Quinn's tap dance earlier this year on the pension funds.

Dan's been one of the strongest voices for fiscal sanity over the last decade, and has consistently proven an ability to get cooperation from the legislature when he's needed it. 

I was honored to help out as Hynes' point person in Champaign County when he ran for U.S. Senate, and will do whatever I can to help him regardless of which way he goes this year.

Edwin Eisendrath, the Democrat who ran against Rod Blagojevich in the 2006 Primary election, has an op-ed today explaining just how effectively Illinois Democrats closed ranks to support Blagojevich in 2006, despite knowledge of Blagojevich's corruption:

The insiders’ reaction to my entry into the campaign was swift. Soon after they determined my petitions would withstand any challenge I received a call from a longtime friend who leads a non-profit that is partially funded by the state. She was being pressured to sign a letter asking me not to run. The letter, originated by a legislator with especially close ties to the governor, was co-signed by several good people and a few well regarded politicians. It said that running against Blagojevich could jeopardize everything for which Democrats have fought. Pressuring state grantees to write political letters to prevent contested elections? That’s not the sort of thing Democrats like me have fought for.

My phone rang again and again. A national party leader warned me that running would only “de-politicize the charges against the governor.” He meant, of course, that it would be better to write off any allegations in an election year as just Republican name-calling. The head of one of the most powerful unions in America warned that loyalty and unity were the things that mattered in politics. Both made it clear I would lose and pay a price for the effort. Turns out we all paid the price.

I found the influence of Blagojevich in unexpected places. In a suburban Chicago township, a place known for its open politics, I won enough support among party members to block an automatic endorsement of Blagojevich.

The township party leadership endorsed him anyway, telling everyone in a letter that the community stood to lose out by not endorsing Mr. Blagojevich. In another example, a state representative told me after a church service we both attended how much she disliked the governor and loathed his brand of politics. I was surprised when that legislator appeared as the governor’s surrogate at an endorsement session later the same day.

Only the pervasive influence of corruption can make decent people campaign against their own moral judgment.

Wouldn't it have been remarkable - and welcome, and praiseworthy - if the Illinos Democrats had policed their own corruption by refusing to support Blagojevich's run for re-election?

I just saw this from House Speaker Michael Madigan's press conference today:

Asked several times about his co-chariing of Blagojevich’s 2006 campaign, Madigan finally said: I can’t say I knew he was under intense scrutiny at the time.

Oh, come on.  Blagojevich's corruption was a huge issue going all the way back to too 2005.  His opponent in the Democratic primary made it the focus of his campaign.

Almost every single one of Illinois Democratic leaders supported Blagojevich's re-election in 2006.  It's just breathtakingly arrogant for them to claim now that they were unaware of the corruption.

Katie Couric, on the media coverage of the 2008 Democratic Primary.

However you feel about her politics, I feel that Sen. Clinton received some of the most unfair, hostile coverage I've ever seen.

Two thoughts:

For me, the most refreshing thing about this otherwise disappointing election season is the shocked realization by some Democrats (Clinton supporters, mostly) that the legacy media is absolutley politically biased and terribly monolithic, and that when they want to push their narrative, they will do so without shame and without relenting.  Republicans have been dealing with this for at least as long as I can remember, while getting a Democrat to admit to a left-wing media bias was difficult.  Now, maybe not so much, at least among Clinton's supporters.

Couric ain't seen nothing yet: I'm no McCain shill, but the media's treatment of McCain will be much, much more unfair than that of Clinton.

Is there any other reason for him to not give in to Hillary's demands on the Florida and Michigan delegates?  As it stands now, with the 50% deal that was struck yesterday, Obama is 66 delegates short of locking up the nomination.  In the last two months, I think he's far outpacing Clinton in super delegates, even though Clinton has had the best of Obama in the primary contests.  By appearances, Obama needs just to wait this thing out and he'll continue to rack up the super delegates necessary to get the nomination.

By my calculation, if you gave Florida and Michigan their full allotments, and gave Hillary the share that she demands in Michigan, then the new number for nomination would be 2198, and Obama would have 2112, putting him just 86 short of the nomination.  Wouldn't a magnanimous move by Obama to seat all those delegates take a legitimate argument away from Clinton?  There seems to be little doubt that the current Obama position will foster some hard feelings among some Clinton supporters, and perhaps some voters.  Why take that chance when it seems apparent that you're going to put the nomination away anyway?

Two more primaries, and two more relatively static results in the Democratic race for President.  The media meme about yesterday's results is that Obama beat expectations, so Hillary should drop out, but the racial breakdowns in IN and NC remained almost unchanged from earlier Primaries.

Obama won black voters overwhelmingly, getting 91 percent in NC and 90 percent in Indiana.  Clinton won white voters convincingly, getting 60 percent in NC and 61 percent in IN.

As race seems to have the most consistent correlation with vote preference in this primary, the actual results from state to state aren't varying that much from what can be predicted by the demographics and turnout projections.  FiveThirtyEight.com had some long predictions yesterday, using polling and some complicated statistical analysis, but they came very close to being right simply by using racial breakdowns and turnout predictions.

I'll also note the strange meme wondering whether Obama can collect enough votes from whites motivated by race, even while nobody is mentioning that black voters are consistently and overwhelmingly supporting the candidate who shares their skin color.

As I've said since Super Tuesday, the Dem race seems pretty static to me, despite the roller coaster of coverage.  The 2008 general election will likely hinge on whether the eventual Democratic nominee (still almost certainly Obama) can win over enough of Clinton's supporters, given the unprecedented length and vigor of the Democratic race.  Yesterday's exit polls indicated yet again that Democratic voters are becoming more attached to their candiate and more averse to the other candidate:

Nearly six in ten Obama supporters in Indiana say they would be dissatisfied if Clinton were the nominee -- that's (I believe) the high percentage of Obama supporters who have ever said that.

In both IN and NC, two thirds of Clinton supporters say they'd be dissatisfied if Obama were the nominee -- I believe that's the highest number recorded for that question, too.

The percentage of Clinton voters who say they'd choose McCain over Obama in a general election is approaching 40% in Indiana. Put it another way: in North Carolina, less than HALF of folks who voted today for Hillary Clinton are ready to say today that they'd definitely vote for Obama in a general election.

The general election will be decided based on this.  Obama supporters are convinced that Democrats will come home, because they're motivated by issues and Obama is right on their issues.  I understand the importance of issues, as you've seen from criticisms of the GOP over the years, yet I still think many voters are motivated by personalities and biographies, and while I don't doubt that many Clinton supporters will eventually support Obama, I think a significant percentage (10 percent?  20 percent) will not, due to the animosities and attachments created during this Primary.

And those are the key questions for November:  How many Clinton supporters will not support Obama, and how well can Obama do with white voters, given his inability to win them in the recent Democratic Primaries?

cnn.com; politico.com

Tim Russert reports Hillary Clinton has cancelled all morning show appearances.  MSNBC reports Clinton has cancelled all events scheduled for tomorrow.  The folks on Ben Smith's blog at Politico are cheering for a Clinton concession and pull out of the race.  Allegedly, 7% of her votes in Indiana were from folks planning on voting for McCain in November.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0508/Russert_Clinton_cancels_morning_show_appearances.html#comments

according to CNN, Obama picked up 4 more delegates than Clinton tonight. 

Terry McAuliffe refuses to answer any questions about another loan by HRC to her campaign.  Bill Clinton's face is said to be redder than a tomato. 

A shame I don't have cable; sounds like I'm missing a lot of fun.

(And is Monroe Co., Indiana where IU is?  It went 66% Obama-33% Clinton.  Lake County was a disappointing 55% Obama-45% Clinton.)

Obama may have only won 9 counties in Indiana, but I'm almost tempted to say they were the right ones.  Same he couldn't have gotten one or two more big ones, or several of the smaller ones. 

http://online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html

"Mr. Wright seems to me to be part of the great "barbaric yawp," as Walt Whitman called the American people fighting, discussing, making things and living. I like the barbaric yawp. I don't enjoy it when it makes me wince, but at least when I am wincing, I know the yawp is working."

For several weeks, though the Rev. Wright and "bitter" stories, that I doubted they would have much impact among Democratic Primary voters (who I think mostly have made their decisions weeks or months ago), and that I wanted to see exit polling from Pennsylvania to see if those stories had any impact among Democratic Primary voters:

They didn't, as most of these figures are close echoes of the exit polling for other recent Democratic Primaries in midwestern states, and are eerily similar to Ohio's exit polling:

Clinton has now won white men in 12 states and Obama has done the same in 10 states.

Obama did win more than nine in 10 black voters, continuing his unbroken support of African-Americans. And Clinton continued her trend of winning white women in all but a couple of contests.

There are other breakdowns, among education level and income, which were also roughly as expected and as we've seen before.

To me, the great determining (and unanswered) question of the 2008 general election is who wins white voters, especially white male voters.  If Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee (which I still think is a near certainty), can he convince white voters who haven't supported him in Democratic primaries in key states like Ohio and Pennsylvania to support him in a general election?  Or, to put it another way, which factor will have a stronger correlation to candidate support in November - demographic factors like race, gender, income, etc. or partisan/issue factors?

UPDATE:  Here's another more explicit and detailed comparision between OH and PA exit polls.

And both Clinton and Obama can now make the case to superdelegates that they lead in the much-ballyhooed popular vote.

In the absence of anything new or interesting to say about tonight's Pennsylvania Primary, I wanted to share one of my new favorite polling/election analysis sites, fivethirtyeight.com.

About today/tonight:

Two things you should not pay attention to tomorrow without proper context:

(1) Leaked exit polls, which have been way off this cycle, and been slanted an average of 7 points in Obama's direction. A substantial Clinton lead in the exit polls might be taken modestly more seriously than, say, something that showed Obama three points ahead, but these things aren't designed for what you think they're designed for -- just ignore them.

(2) Very early returns, such as in the first hour after polls close. Because there are such profound regional differences in the way that Pennsylvania polls, the results will be almost entirely a function of where the numbers are coming in from. Odds are that rural areas will report their results before the cities, which means that the early numbers should favor Clinton (this may actually be a nontrivial advantage to her in terms of media narrative; the race could very easily be called for her when the ticker shows Clinton ahead by 14, but things could close to within 8 points once all votes were counted).

Good stuff.  If you're a junkie like me, you can just go there and keep reading.

UPDATE:  Question for discussion:  Why does Obama do better in exit polling than in actual results?  Or, to ask it another way, why does Obama do worse in actual voting than in exit polling?  And does that tell us anything about other polling for Obama?

Found this at opinionjournal.com (adjunct of the Wall St. Journal)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120873309012529689.html?mod=hpp_us_inside_today

David Brooks, in the cratering NY Times, has an Op-Ed in which he discusses Barack Obama's transformation during the Democratic Presidential primaries:

Back in Iowa, Barack Obama promised to be something new — an unconventional leader who would confront unpleasant truths, embrace novel policies and unify the country. If he had knocked Hillary Clinton out in New Hampshire and entered general-election mode early, this enormously thoughtful man would have become that.

But he did not knock her out, and the aura around Obama has changed. Furiously courting Democratic primary voters and apparently exhausted, Obama has emerged as a more conventional politician and a more orthodox liberal.

I know it's the New York Times, and it's heretically critical of The One, but read the whole thing.

(As a matter of fact, yes, I do seem to remember someone writing something similar some time ago...)

Bill and Hillary Clinton have finally released their income tax returns for the years 2000-06.  In these years, they list an income of almost $109,000,000.  (Do all the blue collar voters supporting HRC feel like chumps yet, or will they quit voting for her when they learn she's been slow to pay the health ins. premiums for her campaign staff?  Remember, helath care issues are very important to her!)

It made the front page of the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune.  I quickly scanned the News-Gazette and the Chicago Sun-Times,  but didn't see mention of this in either paper. 

I'm left wondering how late Friday this was released, and do they honestly hope people will have forgetten about this by Monday? 

Did either John Edwards or Mitt Romney make this much in the same time frame?  The Clintons are among the 14,500 richest people in the U.S.

Peggy Noonan has the week off at the WSJ; I can't wait to see what she writes about this next Saturday.

Sorry that I'm posting so much about Barack Obama lately.  There's just not very much else that has captured my attention.

About that popular vote margin which Obama's campaign is claiming as somehow nearly binding on Democratic superdelegates:

In the race for the most popular votes in the Democratic Party's presidential primary contests, Sen. Barack Obama's lead over Sen. Hillary Clinton is about 711,000 votes -- not including Florida or Michigan -- according to Real Clear Politics.

Of Sen. Obama's 711,000 popular-vote lead, 650,000 -- or more than 90% of the total margin -- comes from Sen. Obama's home state of Illinois, with 429,000 of that lead coming from his home base of Cook County.

That margin in Cook County represents almost 60% of Obama's total lead nationwide.

Interestingly, Sen. Obama's 429,000-vote margin in Cook County alone is larger than the winning margin of either candidate in any state.

Interesting stuff.  First, congratulations to the Cook County Democrats.  They should be proud of carrying their hometown candidate to such an overwhelming margin, and their political operation may just be the best in America.

Second, some other interesting figures (Figures from Real Clear Politics as well.):  Clinton's margin in New York state was 317,000.  Her margin in California was 421,000. 

Using vote totals that include Florida and Michigan (giving Obama credit for Michigan's "uncommitted"), Obama's margin is about 87,000 out of some 27 million votes cast.

Mandate?

It's always strange to see names which are well-known only to Illinois politics (like Senate President Emil Jones) pop up in national politics.

From TalkLeft, which I assume is supporting Clinton (or at least the author of this post is):

Barack Obama frequently cites his impressive record as an Illinois state legislator as an indicator of his experience in running for President.

Turns out, according to former Chicago reporter Todd Spivak, all of his legislative accomplishments were in his final 7th year and were handed to him by his mentor, Ill. State Senate President Emil Jones.

The TalkLeft post is mostly quotes from a longer piece in the Houston Press, which is just brutal.  Our old local boogeyman, Chicago State University, also features prominently.

Last week, I received the Petition for Leave to Appeal on the Reynolds v. McGinty case.  I'm nott sure how the case will be decided, and when.  And I'm thinking that we'll have to wait until such leave is granted before we learn just what kind of relief will be requested (a big question considering that the election has already been held).

On the motion Wyman brings up interesting points.  As I noted in my post on the appeal, the decision of the Appellate Court really offered little in guidance and in some ways made things more confusing.  At the Electoral Board, we approached the two questions of mandatory vs. directory and noncompliance vs. substantial compliance as questions of law.  The Appellate Court implied that the question of compliance was a question of fact when it gave deference to the decision of the Electoral Board. 

The particular issue of what constitutes substantial compliance seems to be ripe for greater explication.  My reasoning for finding the petitions not substantially compliant was based on the idea that substantial compliance was not met if the petitioner could have met the standard without any effort to meet the standard.  So for example, in the McGinty case, the peitions were numbered 1,2,1,1.  If such numbering is accepted, then a petitioner could just go ahead and number all their petitions with either 1 or 2 prior to distrribution and then not need to worry about the numbering later.  It appears that the Appellate Court's reasoning is that in this particular instance because of the small number of petitions there is no question of identifying the petitions.  So, from the decision it seems likely that a statewide filing of a thousand petitions numbered with 1 and 2 would be stricken.  At what number of pages we cross from noncompliance to substantial compliance is still up in the air.

The Supreme Court could take on this case and clear up some of the loose ends of the 4th District decision.  If not, we'll be left with the opinion that clearly states that the page numbering provision is mandatory and that the way in which that provision is met is murky.