MORNING LINE : A CHOICE BETWEEN OBAMA AND TROUBLE

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SAM SMITH, PROGRESSIVE REVIEW - The most important part of what happened
on Super Tuesday is that now the Democrats can't fail to nominate Barack
Obama without seriously hurting themselves. The Obama campaign,
justified or not, has brought out a stunning number of normally
apathetic or discouraged voters. The Clintons are about as exciting as
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz reruns. Those who love them will always love
them, but they tend towards the older crowd and no new constituency has
been built.

If Obama wins, the Clinton crowd will fall in line, but if Clinton wins
an uncertain but impressive number of seldom voters may say to
themselves, "I guess  it doesn't work," and just stay home. Combine that
with Obama's excellent showing in the red states and with white males
and the still to be featured seamy past of the Clintons and there
doesn't seem to be much choice any more.

Think of it like a hardened pro. Which do you want: Mr Hope, Mr Nice, Mr
Clean who is bringing mobs of new voters to the polls or a candidate who
had three close business partners go to prison, almost got indicted
herself and who said "I don't remember" or something similar 250 times
in responding to congressional inquiries about her own behavior? 

All ideology and personality aside, the Democrats have really no choice
but to go with Obama or expect a downturn of their fortunes as the new
constituents Obama brought to the party and out of their living rooms
watch their candidate's defeat and decide that maybe this isn't the year
for hope after all. 

WASH TIMES -  The senator from Arizona beats the senator from New York
in 14 of 17 head-to-head polls taken since Dec. 6, but he wins just five
of 17 against the senator from Illinois over the same period. Analysts
say Mrs. Clinton is so divisive that she would drive moderates and some
independents to Mr. McCain. Mr. Obama, conversely, could draw from the
pool of supporters who have delivered wins to Mr. McCain in a host of
presidential primaries.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Nation-TheWashingtonTimesAmericasNewspaper
/~3/230088392/article


AP - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama drew even with
Hillary Rodham Clinton among white males and led with black, young and
higher-income voters, national exit polls showed Wednesday. White women
rallied behind Clinton, who also got a boost from Hispanics, older
people and those seeking an experienced candidate.

On the Republican side, Sen. John McCain bested Mitt Romney among people
calling themselves regular Republicans and won broad backing, including
from moderates and people valuing experience and leadership, according
to exit polls of voters in 16 states. Romney's strongest advantages were
with the GOP's most conservative voters, people seeking a strong stance
against illegal immigrants, those satisfied with the status of the
economy and strong proponents of the war in Iraq.

Obama and Clinton were each getting support from almost half of white
men, marking a big improvement for the Illinois senator with a group
whose support had mostly eluded him this year. Former Sen. John Edwards'
decision to leave the Democratic race last week may have helped Obama
with white males, who made up more than a quarter of Tuesday's
Democratic voters from coast to coast, exit polls showed.
More than four in 10 women and about the same number of whites also were
supporting Obama. That represented a gain for him from most previous
Democratic nominating contests this year, though he still trailed
Clinton by more than 10 percentage points in both categories, a
significant gap in a two-person race. .

Obama got the backing of eight in 10 blacks, about his usual margin. But
Clinton, a New York senator, countered with strong support from
Hispanics, nearly two-thirds of whom supported her. Much of that
strength came from Hispanic women and from the oldest Latino voters.

Clinton also was favored by older voters overall, with those over 65
giving her most of their votes, and had a clear lead with lower educated
and low-income people. Obama won his party's most liberal voters while
Clinton had a slight advantage with remaining Democrats.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080206/ap_on_el_pr/campaign_exit_poll

THINK PROGRESS - Individuals in the Army, Navy and Air Force made those
branches of the armed services among the top contributors in the 4th
Quarter, ranking No. 13, No. 18 and No. 21, respectively. In 2007,
Republican Ron Paul, who opposes U.S. involvement in Iraq and
Afghanistan, was the top recipient of money from donors in the military,
collecting at least $212,000 from them. Barack Obama, another war
opponent, was second with about $94,000. These donations reflect the
military’s disapproval with the Iraq war and President Bush’s
handling of it. A recent Military Times poll found that just 46 percent
of U.S. troops now believe that the country should have invaded Iraq,
and only 40 percent approve of Bush’s handling of the war.

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/05/military-donations/

ROBERTO LOVATO,  NEW AMERICA MEDIA -  Analysis of Latino voting patterns
indicates that Latinos did not, as predicted, march monolithically into
the voting booths to vote according to the candidate’s skin color.
Instead, the Latino vote segmented along other vectors, the most
interesting of which is the regional vector.

In what appears to be the development of a Latino voter regionalism, the
vote varied depending on what part of the country (and in some cases
what part of a state) the vote was cast. For example, while Clinton
secured 74 percent of the Latino vote in her home state of New York,
available data also indicates that Obama won 59 percent of the 30-44
year-olds, the largest age bloc, in his home state of Illinois' Latino
electorate.

Obama won important Latino votes -- and delegates -- in Colorado,
Arizona and other states where Clinton was expected to overwhelm him.
With the support of New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez and other members of
the Latino political machine nurtured by her husband, the former
president, Clinton won more than 60 percent of the Latino electorate in
states like New Jersey and New York. And regardless of the final tallies
in California, the Latino electorate has already proven to be a
powerful, new and greatly misunderstood segment of a multi-hued
electorate of the United States.

"Candidates are spending tens of millions of dollars trying to capture
the attention of Latino voters, mostly in the Spanish language media,"
said Maria Teresa Petersen, the executive director of Voto Latino, a
nonpartisan voter registration organization that also uses technology
and pop culture to promote the political participation of new Latino
voters. "But what the campaigns haven't figured out is that 79 percent
of the 18 million eligible Latino voters consume media in English," said
Petersen.

http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=
e5c17dfa6cf4f014f1905755aba5719a


ANDREW GUMBEL, INDEPENDENT, UK - Senator Clinton's problem in the money
stakes is that many of her contributors have already given the maximum
and cannot legally open their wallets to her again. Senator Obama, by
contrast, has raised his cash largely from low-dollar contributors, only
3 per cent of whom have hit their maximum to date. In January alone, he
raised $32 million, compared with about $13 million for Senator Clinton.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/
superman-or-superwoman-democrat-rivals-trade-victories-778741.html


THE NATION - Across the country, over three million more voters turned
out in Democratic primaries than Republican contests -- a trend that
persisted even in traditionally conservative states. Turnout in
Missouri's Democratic primary was a whopping 70% higher than the G.O.P.
contest, for example, where Obama won by a point. The last time the
state held two contested primaries, in 2000, Republicans beat Democratic
turnout by 56%.  Those numbers suggests that in both Red and Blue
states, Democrats are bolstering their ranks with an intense contest
between two compelling, celebrity candidates. If Super Tuesday settled
anything, it flatly debunked the baseless (and supposedly altruistic)
insider concern that a long race is automatically "bad" for the
Democratic Party. In reality, a primary's impact depends on the contest,
the candidates and the national mood. This one is working wonders for
Democratic mobilization.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20080206/cm_thenation/45280868

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RECOVERED HISTORY: REMEMBERING THE REAL MCCAIN

ED RANGER IN LA TIMES: John McCain might have saved my friends and me a
lot of time, effort and money. If he had only let me know he was going
to be a centrist Democrat in his third U.S. Senate term, I would never
have become the Democratic nominee against him in 1998. I thought I was
running against a fellow who voted with Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott 95
percent of the time. How was I to know he'd been playing possum all that
time? This was a guy with ratings of zero from the American Federation
of Teachers and the United States Student Association; 11 percent from
moderate environmental groups and the Public Interest Research Group; 5
percent from the National Women's Political Caucus; 14 percent from the
AFL-CIO. I could go on and on, but my point is not to criticize our
newfound friend. I'm just trying to remind myself why the heck I spent
12 months, $150,000 of my own money and more than 150,000 miles on the
road telling Arizonans what a right-winger McCain was. Perhaps it is a
good thing I lost (actually I was trounced). I might have deprived the
country of a valuable Democratic leader. Sure, for a Democrat, McCain
leaves something to be desired, but for a Republican, I say well done
and welcome to the progressive cause. I just wish he had given me a
heads up to keep my head down in 1998.

MARANATHA CHRISTIAN JOURNAL, 2000 - Republican frontrunner George W.
Bush said in August: "I believe children ought to be exposed to
different theories about how the world started." Bush spokeswoman Mindy
Tucker told The Washington Post that while the Texas governor believes
that both evolution and creationism should be taught, "he believes it is
a question for states and local school boards to decide." . . .
Republican presidential candidates Elizabeth Dole and John McCain have
stated the decision to teach evolution should be left to local school
boards, while not mentioning their preference.

MEDIA MATTERS, 2007 - The most frequent guests on the Sunday shows
during the past two years were Sen. Joseph R Biden Jr. (D-DE), with 38
appearances, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, with 30 appearances,
and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), also with 30 appearances. And, unlike most
elected officials, McCain is almost always given a solo interview rather
than being paired with a colleague from the opposing party. The Sunday
shows granted far more solo interviews to Republicans and conservatives
than to Democrats and progressives. The top two Republicans to be
interviewed solo, Rice and McCain, together were interviewed solo twice
as often as the top two Democrats to be interviewed solo, Biden and
Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean.

http://mediamatters.org/sundayshowreport/online_version/

TPM CAFE, 2007 - John McCain's campaign has just put out a press release
announcing that GOP money-man Fred Malek has signed on as national
finance co-chair. That's a very important, high-level gig.

There's only one problem, though: Decades before Malek agreed to count
cash for McCain, he counted Jews for Richard Nixon. Jews that were
subsequently demoted -  allegedly for being Jewish, that is.

Malek's past . . . is discussed in this article in The Washington Post
from about a year ago. It says:

"It was also in 1971, The Post reported, that Malek was given a patently
anti-Semitic order from a paranoid Richard Nixon to count the Jews in
high-ranking posts in the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Instead of
refusing, Malek set about compiling a list of 13 of 35 top BLS employees
who, he believed, were Jewish. Less than two months later, two senior
BLS officials who were Jewish were moved out of their jobs to less
visible posts. Malek acknowledges carrying out the disgusting hunt for
Jews, but he denies having anything to do with the transfers."

Intriguingly, the McCain press release calls Malek as "an inspiring
public servant who has served our nation well," a reference to Malek's
service in the administrations and campaigns of Nixon, Ronald Reagan and
George H.W. Bush.

http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/electioncentral/2007/apr/03/
mccain_camp_recruits_nixons_jew_counter_as_finance_co_chair


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