Steve Kornacki

At the stroke of midnight, The Dark Knight opened across the country this morning, to rave reviews, Oscar buzz and forecasts of a record-shattering box office performance. Most observers have chalked up the unprecedented anticipation for the film to its quality script and to the amazing and final performance of the late Heath Ledger. But we know the real reason: Senator Patrick Leahy.

That's right: The 68-year-old chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, as you might have heard, was given a role in the film, playing a man who is roughed up by Ledger's knife-wielding Joker.  read more »

Two radically different story lines are emerging in the presidential race, depending on what kind of poll you look at.

If you look at the national-level data, Barack Obama seems to be underachieving. In the latest Gallup daily tracking poll, the presumptive Democratic nominee holds a scant two-point edge over John McCain. The margin is also two points in Rasmussen's daily poll—which also shows a dead-even race when "leaners" are factored in. Some other recent polls have been a little more favorable to Obama, but the combined weight of the available national data strongly suggests that Obama, despite his personal popularity and the enormous built-in advantages his party enjoys this year, is locked in a much closer race than he should be.  read more »

Last week, I pretty much wrote off the idea that John McCain will offer his running-mate slot to Mitt Romney. I probably shouldn't have. (Talk about a flip-flop ...)

My reason for dismissing Romney was simple: The political style he exhibited in his own presidential campaign -- abandoning just about all previously held principles in an effort to hew to every conservative interest group's issues checklist -- fundamentally violated McCain's sense of propriety and honor. This went far beyond, in my estimation, the usual hurt feelings and sour grapes that campaigns produce. So why, I asked, with all the options that he has, would McCain actually give Romney his No.  read more »

John McCain addressed the 99th annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People late Wednesday morning, hours after the release of a new poll that gives him a favorable rating of just 5 percent among black voters. After airing some of his remarks, the cable news channels took up the subject of McCain’s apparent play for the black vote and the difficulties he faces in pursuing it.

But these discussions miss the point. McCain has no chance of making inroads with black voters; in fact, he’ll almost certainly fare worse among blacks than any presidential candidate in the modern era.  read more »

Conventional wisdom can be and often is wrong, especially when it comes to running-mate speculation.

Maybe you can remember back to 1992, when just about every wise man and woman opined on the supposed importance of Bill Clinton, then a 45-year-old Southern governor, balancing his ticket with a gray-haired Northerner. Clinton, of course, ignored them and picked an even more youthful Tennessean named Al Gore, forming a visually powerful partnership that netted 370 electoral votes and made an utter mockery of conventional wisdom.

But there are times when, just like the proverbial broken clock, conventional wisdom actually gets it right. Case in point: the widely repeated view that Barack Obama needs to compensate for his perceived national security and foreign policy inexperience by selecting a running mate with reassuringly impeccable credentials in those areas.  read more »

When word leaked late last week that Barack Obama would be joined on his upcoming visit to Iraq by Chuck Hagel, it set off an understandable round of Hagel-for-V.P. speculation. But the actual prospects of the Nebraska Republican joining the Democratic ticket can be summed up simply: a bold and brilliant idea that has just about no chance of becoming reality.

In terms of Mr. Obama's general election imperatives, the impact of Mr. Hagel's addition to the ticket would be seismic - easily dwarfing the boost that any other potential ticket-mate (except Al Gore, if you place him in that category) might offer.  read more »

There have been about a hundred polls conducted since Barack Obama wrapped up the Democratic nomination on June 3 and there'll be about a thousand more between now and Election Day. So the results from two of the most recent should be taken with the customary grain of salt.

That said, the most recent Newsweek and Rasmussen surveys suggest at least the possibility that a phenomenon that shaped previous elections might be at work again this year.

The background: Newsweek's numbers, released late last week, found Barack Obama ahead by just three points over John McCain, a near-evaporation of what had been a 15-point advantage when the magazine last commissioned a poll three weeks ago.  read more »

Chris Dodd says that he's being vetted by the Obama campaign, supposedly a sign that he's progressed to a more serious level of vice presidential consideration. But is that really what's going on?

Dodd endorsed Obama soon after ending his own presidential bid in January and served as a loyal and aggressive surrogate during Obama's protracted nomination fight with Hillary Clinton. When Obama emerged as the winner, Dodd began making it clear that he wanted to be considered for the VP slot.

But he's not exactly ideal running-mate material. A liberal from Connecticut, he'd do little to expand the Democratic ticket's geographic or ideological appeal, and—despite his considerable Washington experience—his credentials wouldn't necessarily provide the instant reassurance on national security issues that Obama would presumably want in a gray-haired running-mate.  read more »

In theory, John McCain’s poll numbers should be improving right along with the news out of Iraq.

Just a year ago, daily news coverage was dominated by pictures and descriptions of carnage and chaos, and McCain seemed doomed: Even if he won the Republican nomination (which itself seemed a remote possibility last summer), his intimate association with the war and the widely criticized troop “surge” would surely render him electoral poison in the 2008 general election.

Today, violence in Iraq has dropped measurably (though it still persists), foreign fighters who previously flocked to the country have turned their sights elsewhere, and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, once dismissed as a timid prime minister whose political impotence was symptomatic of broad governmental dysfunction, has consolidated his power, asserted his authority over some extremist groups, and in the last week has actually begun calling for an informal timetable for a U.  read more »

The case for Mitt Romney as John McCain’s running mate is strong and very easy to make.

He’s well known, popular with the party base, a strong performer on television, and would bring big bucks, vigor and youth (or at least the appearance of it – he is 61, after all) to a Republican ticket that desperately needs all three. Plus, Romney’s corporate background would offer badly needed cover to McCain on the economy, while his family name could boost the ticket in Michigan and his Mormon faith could help in Colorado and Nevada. Factor in the apparent lack of all-star VP options for McCain, and the former Massachusetts governor’s prospects only seem to brighten.  read more »

John Edwards could have taken the Jim Webb route when NPR grilled him yesterday about his interest in reprising his role as the Democratic vice presidential nominee, but instead he said this: "I am prepared to seriously consider anything, anything he asks me to do for our country."

If Barack Obama were to choose Edwards, it would create an unusual situation in American politics. Very rarely does a losing vice presidential nominee land on someone else's ticket in a future election. Edwards would be the fourth person ever to do this, and the first since 1916.

The others:  read more »

On the heels of Lanny Davis’ announcement last month, Howard Wolfson’s move today brings to two the number of top Hillary Clinton allies who have signed on with Fox News since the end of the primary season. And let's not forget that Terry McAuliffe, Clinton’s campaign chairman, also offered praise of Fox that the channel recycled into a promo.

None of this would have been imaginable a year or two ago, back when Fox still treated the Clintons as the face of the enemy. So what happened?  read more »

The Clinton campaign and Clinton supporters obviously believed that traditional “liberal” media outlets like CNN and MSNBC had it in for them and were openly promoting Barack Obama, while Fox – especially as the primary season wore on – was far

Yesterday, Barack Obama lost one of his better V.P. options when Jim Webb backed out of the running, apparently deciding that the rigorous vetting process and the intense scrutiny of a national campaign weren’t for him.  read more »

Around the same time, one of John McCain’s most intriguing options might also have removed herself – but not intentionally. That would be Carly Fiorina, whose nonchalant mentions of Viagra and birth control at a breakfast with reporters yesterday are reverberating in the blogosphere today, seemingly confirming the conventional wisdom that the ousted Hewlett Packard C.E.O. would simply be too risky an addition to the G.O.P.’s national ticket.

Maybe there’s another reason Barack Obama decided to deliver his convention acceptance speech in a football stadium. As Howard Mortman points out this morning, Obama’s August 28 address will coincide with the start of the college football season, with at least four nationally televised games on the docket.

Sure, most of the games scheduled are of regional interest at best, involving middling Division I-A schools and even I-AA teams, and the kickoff times for most of the televised games are early enough to allow viewers to flip over to Obama’ speech (which will probably start around (10 p.m.) without missing any of the gridiron action.  read more »

George W. Bush met with Dmitry Medvedev, the new Russian President, but apparently neglected to look into his soul.

John McCain and Barack Obama promoted their economic plans and both agreed that the other’s program would be disastrous for the country.

This should provide Obama with a talking point to defend his plan for a phased withdrawal from Iraq – although it might also reinforce McCain’s “the surge has worked” mantra.  read more »

This post has it right: No one saw this one coming. Senator Jim Webb, the former Republican and Reagan-era Navy secretary who has been touted as the perfect tough-guy complement to Barack Obama, unexpectedly and very publicly withdrew his name from VP consideration today.

The most immediate beneficiary of this could be Tim Kaine, the first-term governor of Virginia, which has emerged as perhaps the preeminent swing state of this cycle. Republicans have carried it in every election since 1964, but the Old Dominion's demographic evolution strongly favors the Democrats. Polls this year have shown Obama even with -- or even slightly ahead of -- John McCain.  read more »

,The New York Times has posted a fairly comprehensive guide to the Veepstakes. They may have put this on their site a while back, but today is the first time I saw it, and I think part of their assessment of Sam Nunn is worth discussing:

Mr. Nunn was known for the most part as a conservative Democrat, and he led a high-profile fight against Bill Clinton’s effort to allow homosexuals to serve openly in the military. Mr. Obama would certainly encounter some heat from his supporters if he turned to Mr.  read more »

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I’m noticing a pattern here: Some outfit conducts a poll, throws Bob Barr’s name into the mix, and reports back that the former Georgia congressman and current Libertarian presidential nominee is scoring somewhere in the mid-single-digits. Then, a bunch of news outlets run the same basic story about how Barr is poised to play the spoiler this year. Here are three such stories just from the past few days. Believe me, there are – and will be – plenty of others.

Maybe we need some perspective here.

Yes, it is theoretically possible that this election will come down to a handful of votes in one state, in which case the support that Barr receives – or that any other third-party candidate receives, for that matter – could theoretically swing the election.  read more »

Every four years, involving one party or the other, it seems that we get a batch of stories just like today’s Washington Post write-up on a possible platform fight between John McCain and the G.O.P.’s right wing.

It’s almost always much ado about nothing. Tension between the nominee of either party – who is interested in projecting a moderate, inclusive image to the general-election audience – and that nominee’s red-meat-hungry party base are inevitable. But party platforms themselves do not influence mass opinion – the pictures and sounds that come out of the convention do.  read more »

John Kerry said over the weekend that John McCain lacks the judgment to be President, leading the Associated Press to note, quite appropriately, that “it’s probably a good thing McCain rejected overtures from Kerry…to form a bipartisan ticket” in 2004.

But the context of Kerry’s verbal attack is much broader than that.

The story of the McCain-Kerry used to be almost heartwarming, a tale of post-Vietnam reconciliation between two veterans whose experiences led them to remarkably different conclusions about the war and the government that sent them into it.  read more »

This is not the worst way to change the subject. On Sunday, the New York Times reported that preparations for August’s Democratic convention have been “marred by costly setbacks and embarrassing delays” and that organizers might be forced to scale back their plans. But this morning, all anyone is talking about is Barack Obama’s decision to deliver an open-air acceptance speech in front of more than 75,000 partisans.

The timing is probably (mostly) a coincidence.  read more »

Barack Obama will ditch the Pepsi Center for a 75,000 seat football stadium to deliver his convention acceptance speech – which will come on the 45th anniversary of this.

New Zogby poll has Obama at 273 electoral votes – but does anyone think Bob Barr will really get 6 percent?

Some conservatives are making noise about a platform fight before the Republican convention.  read more »

We're going to get a head start on celebrating the 4th, so there'll be no Politicker updates -- barring some major, unforeseen news development -- for the next few days. The rest of the crew will be back next Wednesday, but I'll be here bright and early Monday morning (and I have a feeling Azi will make a guest appearance or two on Monday as well). Enjoy the 4th, and be careful with the fireworks and sparklers.

Marc Ambinder fully explains the nuances of John McCains’ sort-of-but-not-really shake-up today.

Meanwhile, whoever’s calling the shots in McCain’s campaign clearly believes they can get more mileage out of the Wesley Clark flap.

Polls, polls, polls: Gallup national: Obama +2; Florida: McCain +8; Georgia: McCain +8

Father Andrew Greeley has something to say – and you will read it (if you click this link).

There could be a very innocent explanation to the Washington Post’s story about Obama’s discounted mortgage.

Turns out that six-year-old kid wasn’t trying to get Obama to do the Terrorist Fist Bump after all.

A poll finds that there has been extensive damage to Michelle Obama’s image, particularly among white voters.  read more »

Rep. Nydia Velazquez was hardly the only Hillary Clinton supporter to do something like this, but she was certainly the most vocal among New York’s congressional delegation: As the primary season was winding down, Velazquez – in an effort to prop up Clinton’s vice-presidential prospects – went before the press and declared that Barack Obama and his campaign had "a problem of connecting with Latino voters."

Clinton would solve this problem for Obama, Velazquez said, because “the Latino community sees her as a Hispanic leader.  read more »

The decision of Congressional Quarterly, one of several insider publications that tracks the competitiveness of House and Senate races, to change its designation of the contest for Vito Fossella’s 13th District seat from toss-up to "Democrat favored" is causing some discussion today.

The move is understandable given the awful predicament in which the district’s Republicans find themselves. But it’s a potentially significant milestone in light of the district’s long loyalty to the G.O.P. and its status as the last New York City-based district in which Republicans can even compete at the congressional level.

It raises the question: What other districts in this area might change partisan hands this fall?

CQ lists nine other House races in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut as either toss-ups or leaning toward one party or the other.  read more »

This morning, The Politico ran an innocuous-seeming story in which a series of unnamed Republican consultants and strategists – with the exception of Ed Rollins, who went on the record – took turn taking shots at various aspects of the McCain campaign’s strategy.

The story didn’t seem particularly surprising, given (a) McCain’s underdog status in the presidential race, which automatically makes many Republicans uneasy; and (b) the general willingness of unnamed consultants and “strategists” to use the cloak of anonymity to tell the world how much better Campaign X would be if they were running the show.  read more »

It’s Wednesday, which means a brand new Observer has hit the streets. Here’s some of what you’ll find inside:

Jason Horowitz has all of the juicy details on the “wholesale absorption” of Hillary Clinton’s braintrust into Barack Obama’s campaign.

Azi Paybarah spends some time with Congressional candidate and friend-of-Chuck-D Kevin Powell.

Joe Conason sticks up for Wesley Clark – and reminds us about the example of James Stockdale.

The editorial page has a fondness for Joe Bruno…

…while Eliot Brown explores whether Bruno’s departure might mean that the state Senate will no longer be the graveyard for tenant-friendly legislation.

And I write about how Barack Obama’s hands will be tied as President when it comes to Middle East issues.

As Azi mentioned yesterday, the folks who usually run this here Politicker are off for the next few days (although the inexhaustible Azi has already sent me an item that I will be posting momentarily), and I'll be sitting in until they return. By all means, please email me with any tips, news links, or general announcements that you think are Politicker-worthy, or even just to say hi. You can get me at skornacki [at] observer.com.

“Stunning G.O.P. setbacks” have prompted Congressional Quarterly to move the race for Vito Fossella’s seat, long held by Republicans, two whole categories – from toss-up to “Democrat favored”

John McCain will have about $85 million to spend against Barack Obama this fall. The NRA will pony up about that much to do the same thing.

It sort of looks like Obama has been taking home mortgage advice from Chris Dodd.

Also, Obama is promising to spend $500 million on faith-based charities because there are some problems that “are simply too big for government to solve alone" -- not because he's trying to win Evangelical voters.  read more »

The economy

It may ultimately be a good thing for Barack Obama that Wesley Clark stepped into such a mess when he discussed John McCain’s military service this week.

The background of the Clark flap is by now familiar: On CBS’ Face the Nation on Sunday, the retired general said that “I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president,” a comment that has been portrayed by the right – and by much of the media – as an effort to disparage McCain’s service.

While Obama quickly rebuked Clark, much of the left has rushed to the Clark’s defense, noting that he was merely responding to a question that was almost identically phrased and that he was only drawing a reasonable distinction between McCain’s military service and the experience needed to set U.  read more »

Barack Obama is like any candidate for president in that he’s opted for the politically expedient at the expense of a higher principle – most notably when he thumbed his nose at the same public financing system that he’d long championed. Not surprisingly, his supporters shrugged that one off and echoed their candidate’s rationalizations. Better to implement real reform as president than to stand on principle and lose an election, he and they both reasoned.

That logic also explains why so many of his supporters on the left have remained silent, save for some grumbling among themselves that occasionally spills into the blogosphere, while Mr.  read more »

Glance at practically any public analysis of John McCain’s vice presidential options and you’ll find the name of Tim Pawlenty mentioned prominently. The 47-year-old second-term Minnesota governor is, supposedly, at or near the top of McCain’s shortlist.

There is certainly some logic to this. First, Pawlenty is loyal – he sided with McCain early and unflinchingly stuck with him last summer, when everyone else in the world seemed to give up on him – and McCain likes loyalty. Second, Pawlenty would balance McCain’s advanced age and maverick streak with (relative) youthfulness and more appeal to the Republican base.

Plus, he’d offer the chance to pick up Minnesota, a state that the G.  read more »

The latest wave of polling has been an almost uninterrupted parade of good news for Barack Obama – widening leads in national surveys, solid advantages in most swing states, and startling strength in numerous Republican bastions.

It could all mean nothing, of course. Michael Dukakis led George H. W. Bush by 13 points at this moment in 1988, a margin that would swell to 17 points after the July Democratic convention only to evaporate by Labor Day, never to reappear.

But Obama seems a far more durable candidate than Dukakis, while John McCain leads a Republican Party that is in a state of disrepair unimaginable 20 years ago.  read more »

Howard Dean was supposed to be finished back in January 2004, when his once-overpowering presidential campaign collapsed in the cornfields of Iowa – and when he let out a scream that made him as much laughingstock as loser.

Sure, the conventional wisdom went, he’d still have a loud voice in the national political dialogue. Even in defeat, Dean retained the passionate loyalty of much of the Democratic grass roots, the activists who’d grown irate with the timidity the acquiescence of their party’s Washington establishment to so much of the Bush agenda. But, as the ’04 primary results showed, the grass roots alone wasn’t enough to beat the establishment.  read more »

Barack Obama will not be able to win in the fall because he hasn't been able to win the most important states in the spring.

We heard this argument over and over again, for months on end, from Hillary Clinton and her supporters during the Democratic primary season. And many prominent members of the media bought into it, too, devoting endless space and countless hours to discussions of the supposedly dire general-election problems that Obama faced.

"I've won the states that we have to win—Ohio and now Pennsylvania," Clinton declared after her April 22 victory in the Keystone State. "If you can't win the states we have to win in the fall, maybe that says something about your general-election appeal.  read more »

If Barack Obama does defeat John McCain this fall, Democrats – who are all but certain to bolster their narrow House and Senate majorities no matter who wins the presidential race – will experience a type of euphoria they haven’t felt in 16 years, when Bill Clinton’s election last gave their party simultaneous control of the White House and Congress.

And surely you remember how that worked out for them. Yes, Mr. Clinton won broad popularity and a second term in 1996, but his presidency brought his party to its weakest point in decades. Democrats were swept out of power in the Senate and House in 1994 and by the time Mr.  read more »

Barack Obama the naïve sapling is out, replaced – for the time being at least – by a different caricature: the cunning opportunist, wrapping himself in the mantle of reform in ruthless and amoral pursuit of the White House.

The image began taking hold in the media last week, when Obama rationalized his way out of a previous commitment to make a good-faith effort at participating in the public financing system for the general election.

Given his earlier cutesiness on Nafta, his now infamous 130 “present” votes in the Illinois legislature and his penchant for blaming his staff for his own mistakes, the campaign funding flap could serve as a tipping point in the media’s portrayal of Obama.  read more »

Consider, if only for fun, the theoretical possibility that Al Gore and Joe Lieberman – allies and running mates eight short years ago – end up running against each other this fall.

Gore, of course, is back in the news again this week after delivering a high-profile endorsement of Barack Obama in Michigan. The sight of the two of them together was enough to stir wishful thoughts of an Obama-Gore ticket among the Democratic grass roots. Some pundits had fun with the idea, too.

Lieberman, for his part, has taken an increasingly active and visible role in John McCain’s campaign. He clearly has McCain’s trust and friendship – the two have traveled together extensively this campaign season – and is a highly valued surrogate because of the authority with swing voters that his perceived independence supposedly gives him.  read more »

Barack Obama has drawn some criticism from left-of-center blogs today for cutting a radio ad in support of Representative John Barrow of Georgia, a conservative Democrat who is facing a primary challenge from a more liberal candidate next month.

"One of the most enthusiastic enablers of the radical and lawless policies of the Bush administration," writes Glenn Greenwald, citing Barrow's positions on Iraq and the FISA debate.

There are two things worth noting about this.

One is that Obama's endorsement of Barrow probably shouldn't be seen as an endorsement of Barrow's politics.  read more »

Now that Barack Obama has officially opted out of the public financing system for the fall campaign, the Obama-McCain race is almost certain to feature a gaping bankroll disparity between the candidates.

If McCain opts into the public system anyway, his post-convention campaign spending will be capped at about $85 million, which would be supplemented by money raised by the Republican National Committee. If he were to opt out, he'd be faced with the prospect of an endless parade of fund-raising events, since he lacks Obama's ability to raise $10 million online at the snap of a finger. And given McCain's fund-raising performance to date, $85 million might be a stretch for him anyway.  read more »

Suddenly, after running well ahead of him for months, John McCain has fallen four points behind Barack Obama in Florida, at least according to a Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday. This should be cause for alarm among Republicans, even if it is sharply at odds with other recent surveys in the state that have given McCain double-digit leads over Obama.  read more »

But one big-name McCain supporter was probably (secretly) thrilled with the poll, because as far as Charlie Crist's vice presidential prospects are concerned, bad news for McCain in Florida only makes the state's popular Republican governor more attractive as a potential ticket-mate.

Yet another world championship was in the bag and the Boston Celtics were running out the final few minutes of garbage time in Game 6 of the 1986 NBA Finals when Tommy Heinsohn, then CBS' top NBA analyst despite the Celtic green tint of his bloodstream, turned his thoughts to the next major event on the league's calendar.

"This draft," he announced, "is a very important draft for the Celtics."

He had no idea how right he was.

That overheated June afternoon marked the 16th time in 29 years that an NBA season had climaxed with a Boston championship. Since Red Auerbach's arrival in 1950, the team's longest drought between titles had been just five years, a near-seamless parade of glory that owed itself to the franchise patriarch's knack for crafty trades and inventive draft maneuvers, not to mention a few timely doses of the luck of the Irish.  read more »

Many of the candidates most frequently linked to Barack Obama’s running-mate search are presumably interested in the vice presidency for the leg up it provides for a future White House campaign. But some of the other names making the rounds suggest something quite different: the Dick Cheney model.

Mr. Cheney is only the second elected vice president since the end of World War II to pass on waging a campaign of his own for the top spot. And he’s the first to do so voluntarily: Spiro T. Agnew fully intended to run in 1976, but a no-contest plea in late 1973 to tax evasion and money laundering charges – related to bribes he took while serving as Maryland’s governor in the late '60s – took him out of the picture.  read more »