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Political News round-up
Senator Obama rallied with 10,000 supporters in northern Virginia yesterday. Campaigning with Obama was freshman Virginia Senator [and current leader in the 3bluedudes VP poll] Jim Webb. Then he moved on to coal country in southwest Virginia, a tough area for national Democrats but one former Governor Mark Warner, current Governor Tim Kaine and Webb all did well in. Obama can’t afford the typical presidential year blowout in southwest Virginia if he hopes to win the state, something that is very possible for the Democrats for the first time since 1964.
Senator Barack Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton met last night in Washington to hash out the details of the future campaign. They’ll need to merge their money machines, arrange the Clinton endorsement, and plan how to move her campaign personnel [the ones Obama wants] over to the Obama campaign.
The GOP fears the Obama money machine. And well they should. Consider:
• If each of Obama’s donors gave him a modest $250, he’d have $375 million to spend during the two-month general election sprint. That’s $186 million a month, $47 million a week.
• During the same September to Nov. 4 period, McCain will have about $85 million to spend since he has decided to take taxpayer money to help finance his campaign activities.
• The Republican National Committee, which is charged with closing the gap between McCain and Obama, has $40 million in cash. Obama raised almost as much — $31 million — from just his small donors in the month of February. His total for the month, $57 million, exceeded the RNC’s cash balance. • Obama has more than 1.5 million donors; McCain has a few hundred thousand. If just a million of Obama’s donors sent him the maximum donation, $2,300, he could raise $2.3 billion.
OK, that’s not going to happen. But campaign finance experts and Democratic fundraisers say a conservative estimate of Obama’s general election fundraising potential hovers around or above $300 million.
It was NY Congressman Charlie Rangel who pushed Hillary Clinton out of the race.
John Edwards will not accept the vice president nomination again.
Time magazine’s Karen Tumulty has a great article on how Obama beat the formidable Clinton machine. The gist is that Obama ran a tight campaign, run with maximum efficiency and almost no drama. Read it.
The podium is not John McCain’s friend. Anyone who has seen him speak in public knows that. For all the dismissive talk about Obama’s speechifying, the fact is that people are impressed by a superb public performance. Obama pulls it off with ease and McCain regularly flubs it. It will make a difference.
Sixty eight percent of Americans think the country is ready to elect a black President. That’s up 6 points from 8 years ago. The young and the West are most likely to cast such a vote. The elderly and the South are the least likely to cast such a vote.
