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Super Tuesday: As clear as mud

I've been working really hard at this, but I have to admit it. I simply don't know which Democrat is going to come out on top on Super Tuesday.

Mark Blumenthal does his best with the data on his polling site. But his best is to say it's all to play for.

One big problem is that while the trend is to Obama (and to the unscientific eye it seems pretty fast to me) it is difficult to estimate how big it is. As Professor Robert Shapiro puts it:

I would trust the trends but not the magnitude - [it] could be greater or less.

Thanks for that, Professor.

The other big difficulty is that Democratic positives are high for both candidates, indicating that voters are able to move with ease and speed from one to the other.

Then there are smaller difficulties - 13 per cent of delegates are allocated by states without proper primaries. And delegate allocation is quirky - with the concentration of the vote being critical in some places.

Perhaps by tomorrow morning things will be clearer.

Probably not.

Everybody's talking at me.... especially Obama

Chris Dodd's team take a look at who monopolised the airwaves in last night's Democratic debate. Dodd was surprisingly silent, Clinton lived up to her reputation as a wordy speaker but it was Obama who stormed into the talk-time lead. No one word answers from him, then.

Alice Fishburn

Take your pick

a. This is a brilliant idea, providing an unknown candidate with a cut-through gimmick that helps him be remembered. The campaign strategist is a genius.

b. This is a lamentable idea, making a no-hope candidate look ridiculous, diminish his effectiveness as a Senator and reduce the chances of the only hope he has - that he might make VP on someone's else's ticket. The campaign strategist is a buffoon.

It's b for me.

Obama vs Clinton: money won't buy you happiness

How much should one read into the stories that Barack Obama is raising more money than Hillary Clinton?

There is certainly a strong relationship between money and election results in the US. If you like this sort of thing, you might want to read a study of the North Carolina House and Senate elections of 1998 and 2000. The main conclusion was:

Among the findings we found a statistically significant and positive relationship existed between campaign expenditures and the total number of votes received by a candidate. Our model specification enabled us to estimate the net price of a vote to be $33 for Republican candidates, and $37 for Democrat candidates.

But Jay Cost of RealClearPolitics explains why we shouldn't get carried away. He argues:

Is it [money] a necessary condition for electoral success? Yes. Is it a sufficient condition? No. It is a necessary, but insufficient condition. If you don't have enough money, you won't win. But it doesn't mean that if you do have enough money, you will win.

By turning the race for dollars into a proxy for the race for votes, pundits implicitly turn fundraising into a sufficient condition, not a necessary one. They see that Obama has raised more than Clinton, and assume that Obama somehow has an advantage. In reality, the question that they should ask from the money is: are these candidates on track to raise enough to compete? And the answer is yes, they are! Obama is on track to raise enough, and so also is Clinton.

For all the Obama hype it remains striking that Clinton retains a double digit lead.

Lessons from the UK: Why Hillary should stick by her war vote

What should Hillary Clinton do about the war? Should she tack against the war to secure the party nomination, or stick to her guns to show she is a leader and consistent.

In as superb piece of analysis on Real Clear Politics, Kathleen Parker shows just how much trouble these questions are giving the Senator:

Early on during the anti-war surge, she stood bravely by her vote. Then under pressure from the Democratic base, she said she wouldn't have voted the way she did had she known then what she knows now. By the first Democratic debate last month, she said she regretted trusting Bush when he said he would let U.N. weapons inspectors do their work. By Sunday's second debate, Clinton's Iraq War vote was really for "coercive diplomacy."

So can I offer her some advice based on our experience in Britain?

At the last General Election, it became clear that Iraq was Tony Blair's most significant political liability. The Conservatives were desperate to exploit it. Just one problem - they too had voted for the war on Iraq.

So Tory leader Michael Howard tried this line - I wouldn't have voted for the resolution to go to war if I had known the full truth. Yes, I support the war, he said. But, now I know the full story I wouldn't have given my backing to Tony Blair's explanation.

Funnily enough this was not a mere political ploy. He actually believed it. But it didn't work. It looked opportunistic as well as being a piece of lawyerly (Howard was a lawyer) evasiveness. In the election, he ended up being forced to argue that he would have attacked Saddam if he had known that the Iraqis did not have WMD. A position held by hardly any voter.

The lesson from this episode is that any attempt to escape responsibility for a pro-war vote will fail. Even using arguments, which you believe and can justify. The Senator needs to understand that she is stuck with supporting the war and arguments about detailed bits of resolutions are pointless.

The British experience endorses Kathleen Parker's view entirely:

Clinton would have done better to stick to her original principle: She did what she thought was right at the time and wishes the war had been better managed. That's an assessment other war supporters can share and that war protesters can respect. Americans tend to be forgiving of errors in judgment made in good faith. They are less forgiving of fudging history in the service of politics. 

Meet Senator Mike Gravel - the next President of the United States...

Last week, I looked at reviews of the debate between Democratic candidates for President and declared Hillary a winner. But the blogosphere had a different verdict. Obama? Edwards? Er, no - Mike Gravel.

Who? Well, he’s the former Senator for Alaska, and following his performance at the debate, largely ignored by the mainstream media (and I have to admit, by us as well), his popularity has shot up dramatically. Articles about Gravel’s debate performance headlined “Meet the next President of the United States” topped the lists of sites like Reddit and Digg, where people vote for their favourite articles.

The blogger Nemone has done some nifty analysis, and writes:

The traffic to the Gravel campaign website has skyrocketed immediately after the debate, and has only continued to grow since…

And the video of Gravel’s performance at the first debate has been viewed over 120,000 times in the past 2 days. And current frontrunner Hillary Clinton’s most viewed Democratic debate video? Less than 2000 views. Now you tell me who has how much support.

So does Gravel have a chance? No, even his campaign staff admits that. He still doesn’t figure above single figures in any opinion polls, and he’s well behind the likes of Al Gore (who isn’t even standing). But online enthusiasm for a longshot like Gravel is a signal that the liberal neetroots in America has yet to line up behind a Democratic candidate. Check out his performance at the debate below.

Murad Ahmed

Democratic debate round-up: the reviews are in

Last night was the first night premiere for the 2008 Presidential election, as the eight Democratic candidates starred in a televised debate. So here are the reviews of last night’s performances.

Hillary Clinton

The general consensus seems to be Hillary was the winner. Our very own Gerard Baker, usually a trenchant critic, thought:

Hillary Clinton, former First Lady and now New York senator, reminded everyone why she has long been the favourite to win the Democratic nomination. In a controlled, highly disciplined performance which emphasised her experience and knowledge of all the big issues, she looked presidential

The Guardian and The Politico also hand her a points victory. But Slate’s John Dickerson didn’t join her on a lap of honour:

She didn't do anything to fix her big problem which is improving her image as too divisive to get elected. The latest Gallup survey found that 52% of respondents have an unfavorable view of her. She never got a chance to connect with voters the way Edwards did and she didn't confect such a moment

Barack Obama

The Obama bandwagon seemed to stall during tepid performance last night. John Dickerson summed up the consensus:

Barack Obama did just fine, but he wasn't the magical character who turns out massive adoring crowds at his rallies

Gerard Baker agreed:

Hesitant and slightly tongue-tied at first, he fumbled through his early answers and took too long to get to the point. More importantly, he didn’t really flesh out his long vaunted claim that he stands for a new kind of politics

But The National Review’s Kate O’Beirne awarded the debate to Obama, but still managed to take a pop at him:

Overall, I thought a comfortable and self-confident Obama held his own on a stage with far more seasoned politicians. But his demeanor was more impressive than his content

John Edwards

He might have had the best hair, but the big loser seems to be the former South Carolina Senator. Gerard Baker thought “the spoiler” candidate had the worst night:

John Edwards, the former senator from North Carolina, and John Kerry’s running mate in the 2004 election, probably had the most disappointing night. Perhaps unsettled by an early question about his infamous $400 haircut recently, oddly he largely failed to get across his populist economic message

And Mickey Kaus was left distinctly unimpressed:

Edwards kind of faded into the background. Crickets didn't chirp - they completed their entire life-cycle during the pause after Edwards was asked to name his "moral leader"

Best Supporting Actor?

Joe Biden’s one word wonder was enough to take home the best-of-the-rest award. John Dickerson explains:

Senator Biden had a great moment when Brian Williams asked with a long wind-up if Biden had the discipline not to be a "gaffe machine" and exhibit "uncontrolled verbosity." His response: yes

Of the other whatjamacallem candidates, Chris Cillizza writing on the Washington Post's The Fix blog said:

Former Sen. Mike Gravel was downright mean, repeatedly attacking his fellow candidates; he even referred to Biden as "arrogant" at one point. He made Kucinich seem like a teddy bear by comparison

And Kate O’Bierne sums it up nicely:

The only obvious mistake of the evening was failing to figure out how to deny podiums for Kucinich and Gravel

And finally, on Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd – well, no-one really had anything interesting to say about them, which tells you all you need to know.

Murad Ahmed

Hillary v Obama - the battle for the centre

"The Magic versus the Machine". That is how the fight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is being characterised. And if this was right, Hillary could neutralise the threat of Obama fairly easily - the Clintons, after all, have magic too.

But the threat from Obama is far more serious than that. The real problem Obama gives Hillary is a threat to her positioning, long the most potent Clinton weapon.

As EJ Dionne writes in the Washington Post, the Clintons rose to power at the head of a movement - a Southern campaign to restore the Democrats to power, by moving the party to the centre. They have only ever been successful while they have maintained this position. Yet Hillary is less associated with it than Bill. She will have to work hard to ensure that she is seen as a new Democrat rather than as a traditional liberal. Unless she does this, she cannot win the general election.

This is why Obama is a threat. He has the black vote for obvious reasons and will court the centre because of his religion and his independent appeal. Hilary may be tempted to court the party faithful by moving to his left.

This would be a disaster for her.

And in case you’re interested, here’s Hillary Clinton launching her presidential bid:

Who should a libertarian vote for?

Like two wary dogs meetings in a park, American liberals and libertarians are sniffing each other to see whether they can become friends. Markos Moulitsas, the man behind the leftie Daily Kos, back in October made the case for the existence of something called "The Libertarian Democrat". Well, Unsurprisingly, Moulitsas's creature was keener on fighting for civil liberties than for extending economic freedom, but he deserves points for trying to bridge the gap.

Now, Brink Lindsey of the Cato Institute returns the favour. He argues that libertarians ought to desert the Republicans for the Democrats because of the egregious and numerous sins of the Bush administration against the faith of small government. Lindsey's New Republic "liberaltarian" article requires a subscription but Sebastian Mallaby gives a fine precis of it in The Washington Post. Well, the case for libertarians not voting Republican is easier to make than the one for supporting the Democrats so I suspect the not-to-be-sneezed-at 13% of US voters (that's what the Cato Institute reckons) who are friends of smaller government and greater personal freedom are homeless.

But what about in Britain? Are libertarians like me homeless?  Well, Labour is stealthily piling on the taxes and the regulation, curtailing civil liberties, extending the bounds of the surveillance state and intruding ever more into family life, so they don't look too attractive. The Lib Dems have done a sterling job in fighting ID cards and the authoritarian impulses of Labour Home Secretaries, but they are nature's regulators, high-taxers and lovers of Euro-lunacy. And the Conservatives, while they have stopped trying to police our bedrooms, they've given up on tax cuts and rolling back the state (read this Anatole Kaletsky article for a really depressing interpretation of what the new Tories stand for).   

I know that any party that adopted a hardcore, State-shrinking manifesto would be as popular as a Panda killer so perhaps I should should I be content that all three main parties are pretty socially liberal and at least pay lipservice to the free market. So what's a libertarian to do?

Robbie Millen