EARLY EVENING POSTINGS:  APRIL 20,  2008

Posted at 7:31 p.m. ET

BULLETIN

Robert Novak reports that Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska will not endorse a Democrat for president this year.  He may also not endorse the candidacy of his friend, John McCain.

I know you'll want to interrupt everything you're doing to call friends with this news.

April 20, 2008.      Permalink          

THE OBAMA PROBLEM

Jennifer Rubin, at Contentions, which is published by Commentary, nails what may come to be known as the Obama problem, a certain disconnect between hope and reality that is starting to trouble many in the Democratic Party:

One day Obama is the messiah of American politics, the next he’s a deeply flawed candidate. And the public fretting that Hillary Clinton’s criticism prefigures eventual GOP attacks highlights a central problem for Obama: isn’t he going to be vulnerable when the GOP does launch its salvos?

But all this fretting is really to be expected: Obama has staked everything on his verbal acuity. When that fails, he has no safety net. He cannot point to tough campaigns or great legislative achievements to assure his base that he’s been through worse. So it all comes down to sustaining the balloon of excitement and novelty he has created.

Likewise, when Obama’s strange, far-Left associations come to the fore, or when his musings about average Americans make the news, the thin veneer of moderation and post-partisanship is torn.

We've reported here that national tracking polls show Obama losing ground to Hillary Clinton, a candidate who is hardly pristine.  Obama is barely holding his own against McCain in national matchups.  Enough has come out about him to suggest that there must be more, especially regarding his associations and his past views. 

The conventional script, as written, was that this would be an easy Democratic year.  The script is in rewrite, and the producers may have to bring in a new dialogue writer.

April 20, 2008.      Permalink          

THE McCAIN OFFENSIVE

Senator McCain is wasting no time on formalities.  Sensing a chance provided by Obama's debate performance, McCain is now on the attack.  That is good.  I'd been concerned that he'd be too gentlemanly in dealing with Obama, who can be a Chicago street fighter when he wants to be:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) stoked debate over a ’60s radical’s ties to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, saying Obama’s defense “borders on the outrageous.”

William Ayers — a former member of the Weather Underground, which embraced bombing in its effort to end the Vietnam War — became an issue in the Democratic nominating race at last week’s debate. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) said Obama’s past meetings with Ayers are part of a “larger set of concerns about how we are going to run against John McCain.” Republican sources said McCain plans to make a major issue of the connection in the months ahead.

Asked by host George Stephanopoulos whether he has any doubt that Obama shares his sense of patriotism, McCain brought the subject up.

“I'm sure he's very patriotic. But his relationship with Mr. Ayers is open to question,” McCain said.

“He became friends with him and spent time with him while the guy was unrepentant over his activities as a member of a terrorist organization, the Weathermen,” McCain said. “Does he condemn them? Would he condemn someone who says they're unrepentant and wished that they had bombed more?”

Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton responded aggressively, calling McCain's salvo "smear politics."

“Unable to sell his out-of-touch ideas on the economy and Iraq, John McCain has stooped to the same smear politics and low road that he denounced in 2000," Burton said. "The American people can’t afford a third term of President Bush’s failed policies and divisive tactics."

Good approach by McCain, terrible approach by Obama's spokesman.  The Obama people must learn to deal with issues, not dismiss them.  Also, saying that McCain is "unable to sell his out-of-touch ideas" only a week or so after Obama's elitist remarks in San Francisco came to light shows that the Obama playbook is out of date and needs work.

Great politics coming up this week.  Be back tomorrow, or earlier if events warrant.

April 20, 2008.      Permalink          

AFTERNOON POSTING:  APRIL 20,  2008

Posted at 3:02 p.m. ET

THE POLLS

Some late polls have just been released, and the most intriguing deal with the Democratic nomination.  If we believe these polls, Obama's support has eroded considerably during the past week.  Gallup has him up two over Clinton, whereas he was up 11 less than a week ago.  The Rasmussen tracker has him up four.  As Rasmussen says, Obama enjoys a modest but stable lead in his survey. 

Nationally, this is hardly a blowout for Obama, although we should note a Newsweek poll, published a few days ago, that has him with a 19-point lead over Clinton.  That poll, though, dramatically departs from other numbers we see.

Pennsylvania votes Tuesday, and Senator Clinton couldn't be pleased with the last-minute Zogby tracker showing her up only three over Obama.  A Mason-Dixon poll out yesterday show the lead as five points.  Ras, published yesterday, showed three.  These leads are down dramatically from two weeks ago, and may reflect the amount of cash Obama is spending, and Senator Clinton's general ability to make herself unpopular.  However, one analyst noted that the trends are similar to those we saw in Ohio, yet Senator Clinton won Ohio by a comfortable margin.  This now becomes a game of turn-out.

The general-election trackers show little change.  Rasmussen has McCain up six over Obama, and Gallup, which had been showing a small Obama lead, now shows a tie. 

Ras has McCain up four over Clinton, and Gallup has Clinton up one over McCain.  This set of polls shows Clinton doing better in the general than Obama.  Again, we stress these are only snapshots.  They have little significance other than to show general trends.

I still can't believe the Democrats will deny Obama the nomination, not with the importance of the African-American vote and the rigid demands of the leftist base.  But it's clear that Mr. Obama will have a tough campaign in the fall, with the outcome far from certain.  This is not where the Democrats wanted to be.

Be back later.

April 20, 2008.      Permalink          

SUNDAY:  APRIL 20,  2008

Posted at 8:16 a.m. ET

PERSONAL TRAVELS

We were driving into Manhattan last night from White Plains, which is about 25 miles north.  As we approached a major artery I saw a huge traffic jam ahead, and started to utter colorful comments about New York's ability to manage traffic.  We went further, looked ahead, and saw that all vehicles were being sent off a main parkway.

When we see that in New York we think major accident or major safety issue.  But there was neither.  There were, though, police cars all over the place.  So then you think "crime scene."  Maybe a hot gunfight.  Maybe a big capture.  Did they get Osama bin Laden as he tried to take in a Broadway show?

We pulled into a service station where I asked an attendant of dubious immigrant status what was going on.  "Pope" was his only answer. 

It was Pope Benedict.  An entire section of lower Westchester County had been cordoned off because the Pope was visiting nearby.  We were able to get around the area, snake through small streets and finally get back on a major highway.  Then we hit the east side of Manhattan and...an entire section, many blocks long, was sealed off.  No cars permitted.  Reason?  The Pope.  All the people we were with last night were long-time New Yorkers, and we all agreed we'd never seen security like this.  It was simply an enormous, and superbly arranged effort by the New York Police Department.

I don't know if it's super caution, or a response to a specific threat, but Pope Benedict is very well protected during his visit here.  I was informed by someone with personal knowledge that, in his New York residence, he sleeps in the smaller of two bedrooms because he can be more secure in the smaller room. 

Well, I didn't get to meet him, but I did get to meet his security.  Very impressive. 

April 20, 2008.      Permalink          

DOWD

I normally don't quote Maureen Dowd, of The New York Times, as her ratio of silliness to brilliance doesn't usually place her on my A-list.  But today she writes with some perception about Barack Obama, as he enters a critical period in his campaign for president:

But before it’s signed, sealed and delivered, as his campaign song goes, Obama will have to balance his cool with some heat, as J.F.K. did. He seems too imperious about the power of hot-button values issues that have proved so potent for most of his lifetime.

Sometimes when he answered questions at the ABC debate, you could see white letters on a black background scrawling across the screen of a Republican attack ad.

He can create an uplifting new kind of politics if he becomes president, but first he’s going to have to get past the shallow and vicious old politics he says he disdains (even if his campaign knows how to dip into the Clinton toolbox).

The thorny questions Obama got in the debate were absolutely predictable, yet he seemed utterly unprepared and annoyed by them. He did not do well for the same reason he failed to outmaneuver Hillary in a year’s worth of debates: he disdains the convention, the need for sound bites and witty flick-offs and game-changing jabs.

And

Obama has to prove to Americans that, despite his exotic background and multicultural looks, he shares or at least respects their values and understands why they would be upset about his associations with the Rev. Wright and an ex-Weatherman.

Even though his supporters raised Cain about ABC, Obama is smart enough to know he will need a better game against a canny war hero.

Yeah, but maybe the problem is, Maureen, that Obama really does believe things that outrage most Americans, and maybe those beliefs are starting to ooze out.  The grueling campaign ahead will reveal much about the candidates.  It always does.

April 20, 2008.      Permalink          

COMBAT AHEAD

The Pennsylvania primary is 48 hours away.  Based on my decades of experience I will say with complete confidence that it will or will not prove decisive.

One fascinating moment, by the way, is Hillary Clinton's candid remarks about the problems she's been having.  An audio tape surfaced yesterday in which she said this:

"We have been less successful in caucuses because it brings out the activist base of the Democratic Party," Clinton told donors in the audio clip. "MoveOn didn't even want us to go into Afghanistan. I mean, that's what we're dealing with. And you know they turn out in great numbers. And they are very driven by their view of our positions, and it's primarily national security and foreign policy that drives them. I don't agree with them. They know I don't agree with them. So they flood into these caucuses and dominate them and really intimidate people who actually show up to support me."

That quote doesn't exhaust the reasons for Ms. Hillary's problems - her dishonesty enters gently into the picture - but it does reveal the ugly split in the Democratic Party.  Basically, she's saying that the party base is too far to the left, and that she isn't.

But she hasn't hit this theme during her campaign, the better to siphon off as much of that base as she needs.  This has not been successful.  That is an understatement.

Clinton's point of view would serve her well in the general-election battle, where she'd have to win over moderates and some Republicans.  I doubt if she'll get to that battle.  The question is whether the Democratic Party will now slip further and further to port under Barack Obama, and how far Americans are willing to go in that direction. 

April 20, 2008.      Permalink          

MARK STEYN

Occasionally you get real gems in columns, and Mark Steyn has provided more of them than most any writer I know.  We'll close out this morning's report with this:

Sen. Obama's remarks about poor dumb, bitter rural losers "clinging to" guns and God certainly testify to the instinctive snobbery of a big segment of the political class. But we shouldn't let it go by merely deploring coastal condescension toward the knuckledraggers. No, what Michelle Malkin calls Crackerquiddick (quite rightly – it's more than just another dreary "-gate") is not just snobbish nor even merely wrongheaded. It's an attack on two of the critical advantages the United States holds over most of the rest of the Western world. In the other G7 developed nations, nobody clings to God 'n' guns. The guns got taken away, and the Europeans gave up on churchgoing once they embraced Big Government as the new religion.

How's that working out? Compared with America, France and Germany have been more or less economically stagnant for the past quarter-century, living permanently with unemployment rates significantly higher than in the United States.

Has it made them any less "bitter," as Obama characterizes those Pennsylvanian crackers? No. In my book "America Alone," just out in paperback and available in all good bookstores – you'll find it in Borders propping up the wonky rear leg of the display table for the smash new CD "Michelle Obama And The San Francisco Macchiato Chorus Sing "I Pinned My Pink Slip To The Gun Rack Of My Pick-Up,' 'My Dog Done Died, My Wife Jus' Left Me, And Michael Dukakis Is Strangely Reluctant To Run Again,' Plus 'I Swung By The Economic Development Zone Business Park But The Only Two Occupied Rental Units Were Both Evangelical Churches' And Other Embittered Appalachian Favorites."

Where was I? Oh, yes. In my book "America Alone," I note a global survey on optimism: 61 percent of Americans were optimistic about the future, 29 percent of the French, 15 percent of Germans. Take it from a foreigner: In my experience, Americans are the least "bitter" people in the developed world. Secular, gun-free big-government Europe doesn't seem to have done anything for people's happiness.

Nice way to begin a Sunday.

We have an exciting two days of politics ahead, culminating with the vote count in Pennsylvania Tuesday night.  I'll be back later with the last-minute polls and news of the final offensives by the Clinton and Obama brigades, the disarmed brigades of course.

April 20, 2008.      Permalink