Smacking Down Newsweek

John McCain's campaign evidently wasn't too happy with Newsweeks recent Obama-gasm cover story. So, Mark Salter, one of McCain's senior advisors decided to shoot off a response to the story to Newsweek. To their credit they printed it, since it paints them (rightfully so) in a horribly biased light.

Salter calls out not only Newsweeks shoddy job of reporting and fact checking, but the Obama campaign, DNC and a few 527 groups and Unions. It's about time someone did.

In the letter Salter, and McCain's team basically tossed off the gloves, and said enough tap dancing around. Instead of asking talk radio folks to shut up when they decided to scream "Barack HUSSEIN Obama", it sounds as though McCain's will probably ignore it, and let Obama deal with it.

When the NC GOP wants to run montages of Rev. Wright and Obama, instead of asking them not to McCain is probably going to use the DNC line on 527's and state parties "we really don't have any control over them".

Newsweeks article also let out the Obama (and general Democratic) complaints about the "GOP Smear Machine"®. That phrase got a lot of traction in 2004 with the "Swift Boating" of John Kerry. But, as Salter points out, the Democrats, not the GOP were the recipients of most 527 money in 2004. (They still are by a large margin)

In fact, the top liberal 527 in 2004 raised more than twice as much money as the top 2 conservative 527's. The top 5 liberal 527's outraised the top 5 conservative 527 by nearly $225 million. Here's Open Secrets list of the to 50 federally focused 527's from the 2004 cycle.

Which brings me to another of Salters points. If the liberals are outspending conservatives by those amounts to get their message out, and still lose elections, maybe it's the message.

Read The Full Post!

It's Going to Go Nuclear

Looks like today's primary results won't result in Hillary Clinton leaving the race. While she's only winning Indiana by 5-6%, she "only" lost North Carolina by about 14%, or 10% better than she'd been polling there a few weeks ago.

I think the party leaders will be screaming before next weeks primary in West Virginia for Clinton to drop out. They've been asking kind of nicely up until now; but she'll probably win that in a landslide, and Kentucky on the 20th; and they don't want her to reload the "I'm more electable" cannon and start shooting it off. Considering she's moved up in most polls by 5-10 points in Oregon, and could make that a close race, the leaders want her out.

The more I think about it, the more I think that there is going to be a nuclear war in the Democratic Party, with Clinton lobbing the missiles. And, while I dislike both of them, she's got not only a right to do it, but a point.

The "Electability Arguement", whether Obama supporters like it or not, is a valid one. And, again whether they like it or not, he hasn't done well in any large state that Democrats "have" to win to take the White House except Illinois, which isn't a surprise. When it comes to swing states, he's hasn't done particularly well and doesn't poll well against McCain.

Expect to start hearing from Hillary's folks about electability, and the popular vote, with Florida and Michigan counted, since with those votes she's ahead in the popular vote. In fact, expect her to fully channel Al Gore's 2000 mantra of "every vote must count" on a regular basis for the next week or so, fighting to get the delegates from those states seated.

One other bomb waiting to be dropped on Obama before June is the Tony Rezko verdict. That case rested yesterday, with closing arguements next week and then to the jury. If there is a conviction, expect Clinton's folks to quietly remind Superdelegates that the "GOP Attack Machine"® will have commericals up faster than you can say Swift Boat to remind folks that Obama is a good friend of Mr. Rezko.

I'd like to say I feel sorry for the Democrats for having this long drawn out primary, but I don't. As I've said before, they've brought this on themselves by insisting that everything be "fair" and now it's biting them in the ass.

Read The Full Post!