The Note: Blue Cheese
On Wisconsin, a chance for Obama to roll -- or Clinton to mount a comeback
Feb. 19, 2008 -- Voters in Wisconsin and Hawaii on Tuesday could send Sen. Barack Obama's winning streak to 10 contests, as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton scrambles to slow Obama's momentum in their increasingly bitter contest for the Democratic nomination.
But the storyline of Obama's march to the nomination gets a late revision (authorship unknown). The Clinton campaign didn't write off Wisconsin after all, and no arguments over superdelegates, debates, or even plagiarism have quite the same impact as actually pulling out a win (in this game -- the less expected, the better).
Wisconsin awards 74 delegates, Hawaii 20. In the more closely watched Badger State, polls close at 9 pm ET, and an open primary and same-day registration provide some helpful Obama factors on a bitter, snowy day across much of the state. The weather's nowhere near as bad as it was over the weekend, and turnout shouldn't be too badly impacted.
Polls show Obama with a slight Wisconsin edge coming into the day, yet even the nasty weather has worked in Clinton's favor, forcing her to spend more time campaigning in the state.
Rather than the next sign of a flailing campaign, a Clinton comeback (take three?) could be born in the snows of Wisconsin; staying close could be enough for her to declare victory -- and at least slow the delegate slide that's building Obama an edge (73 and counting, per ABC's delegate scorecard).
"Earlier [Clinton aides] said they would make their stand against Obama in Ohio and Texas, rather than Wisconsin. But in the past few days they have increased their advertising and, in part because of the impact of Sunday's bad weather on the candidates' schedules, will end up spending more time in the state in the final 48 hours than Obama," Dan Balz writes in The Washington Post.
"There is every reason, absent powerful momentum for Obama after last weeks' big victories in Maryland, Virginia and the District, to see Wisconsin as competitive. Both campaigns argue that the state should be favorable to the other side."
"She needs a solid showing in Wisconsin, even if she loses, to stem the impression of a candidacy in decline," John Harwood writes in The New York Times. "A rout in a state with Clinton-friendly demographics -- low black vote, substantial blue-collar vote -- would deflate supporters and donors for her March 4 turnaround bid in nearby Ohio."
"Voters have confounded the pollsters, and in Wisconsin, which has an open primary and same-day registration, the outcome could be even harder to peg," Greg J. Borowski writes in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
"State election officials expect turnout to be about 35% of the voting-age population, which would rank Wisconsin near the top of states that have voted."
In the pre-contest spin, the Obama campaign wants everyone to know that Clinton isn't looking only to Texas and Ohio: Wisconsin will go down as the state that launched the campaign TV ad attacks and counter-attacks. "They're contesting it ferociously," says Obama campaign manager David Plouffe.
Hawaii's caucuses won't start until 11 pm ET, with results likely to flow in into the wee hours of Wednesday. If there was any doubt, the weather strongly suggests that you'd rather be in Honolulu than in Madison.
In the Republican campaign, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., on Tuesday looks to inch closer to a mathematical lock on the nomination with the help of the 37 GOP convention delegates available in Wisconsin and another 19 at stake in Washington state (the half not awarded in the GOP caucuses) on Tuesday. (The Democrats in Washington already awarded all of their delegates by caucus, and Tuesday's primary is a meaningless beauty contest.)
The sooner McCain can quiet former governor Mike Huckabee, R-Ark., the sooner he can move onto the business of party-healing. A Presidents Day endorsement from a former president helps (though conservative icon, H.W. is not).
Rather than go away quietly, Huckabee has grown sharper in his critique of McCain: "I may be killing my political career, but I know this -- if we don't start thinking in terms of solving some of America's problems, we're killing all of your careers," Huckabee said in Wisconsin Monday, per ABC's Kevin Chupka.
Watch for foreign affairs to spill into the race anew: After nearly half a century (kind of puts the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton thing in perspective), the Fidel Castro era ends (sort of) on Tuesday, though a Castro will remain in power.
Said President Bush, upon hearing the news in Afrida: "The United States will help the people of Cuba realize the blessings of liberty."
If you're looking for signs that the Clinton campaign is getting its groove back, look at the mischief stirred up over the weekend. Obama, D-Ill., was left on the defensive over his hedging over public financing, and then (perhaps more seriously) over charges of plagiarism.
"It raises questions about the premise of his candidacy," said Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson, ABC's Teddy Davis and Sunlen Miller report.
Per ABC's Eloise Harper, Clinton said Monday night on the press plane: "If your whole candidacy is about words, they should be your own words."
The rhetorical similarities, as ABC's Jake Tapper reported on Sunday, are striking.
Yet Obama is hardly the first candidate to borrow a thought or phrase, as the Obama campaign happily pointed out Monday.
Trite lines are fair game, but "fired up and ready to go." And the New Republic's Noam Scheiber counts six borrowed "rhetorical turns" at two Clinton events.
The author of the lines Obama quoted without attribution, Gov. Deval Patrick, D-Mass. (who shares not just words but David Axelrod with the candidate he's endorsed), told ABC's Diane Sawyer on Tuesday that the Clinton campaign is trying to "belittle his ability to motivate people with language."
"It's an elaborate charge, and kind of an extravagant one," Patrick said on "Good Morning America." "It's not like he's writing a law review article or a book or something like that. . . . It's a sad comment on the state of the race and the state of our politics that the Clinton campaign is taking this particular tactic."
The New York Daily News' Thomas M. DeFrank and Michael Saul sum it up thusly: "Waaaaaaaah!"
The dust-up grabbed the Clinton campaign network airtime --
