Every four years, NEWSWEEK detaches a team of reporters to follow the presidential candidates from announcement speech to Election Day. The deal is simple. The "Project" staffers won't report what they learn until Nov. 5; in exchange, the campaigns give us unprecedented behind-the-scenes access.

The first four chapters of the "The Project" are finally live on NEWSWEEK.com--and, as expected, they're packed with exclusive reporting and fascinating details.  You can read my favorite tidbits from Chapter One here.

Now for the highlights from Chapters Two, Three and Four:

Bill's Bile: In the days after his wife's back- from-the-brink victory in New Hampshire, Bill Clinton was full of righteous indignation. The former president had amassed an 81-page list of all the unfair and nasty things the Obama campaign had said, or was alleged to have said, about Hillary Clinton. The press was still in love with Obama, or so it seemed to Clinton, who complained to pretty much anyone who would listen. If the press wouldn't go after Obama, then Hillary's campaign would have to do the job, the ex-president urged. On Sunday, Jan. 13, Clinton got worked up in a phone conversation with Donna Brazile, a direct, strong-willed African-American woman who had been Al Gore's campaign manager and advised the Clintons from time to time. "If Barack Obama is nominated, it will be the worst denigration of public service," he told her, ranting on for much of an hour. Brazile kept asking him, "Why are you so angry?"

Obama's Appetites--or Lack Thereof: Obama was abstemious. Indeed, to the reporters following him, he appeared very nearly anorexic. Most candidates gain the Campaign 10 (or 15). Hillary was struggling with her waistline, as she gamely knocked back shots and beers in working-class bars and gobbled the obligatory sausage sandwiches thrust at her in greasy spoons along the Trail of the White Working-Class Voter. Obama, by contrast, lost weight. He regularly ate the same dinner of salmon, rice and broccoli. At Schoop's Hamburgers, a diner in Portage, Ind., he munched a single french fry and ordered four hamburgers—to go. At the Copper Dome Restaurant, a pancake house in St. Paul, Minn., he ordered pancakes—to go. (An AP reporter wondered: who gets pancakes for the road?) A waiter reeled off a long list of richly topped flapjacks, but Obama went for the plain buttermilk, saying, "I'm kind of traditionalist." Reporters joked that if he ate a single bite of burger or pancake once the doors of his dark-tinted SUV closed, they'd eat their BlackBerrys.

Every four years, NEWSWEEK detaches a team of reporters to follow the presidential candidates from announcement speech to Election Day. The deal is simple. The "Project" staffers won't report what they learn until Nov. 5; in exchange, the campaigns give us unprecedented behind-the-scenes access. The information is so hush-hush, in fact, that no one who works on the weekly magazine--including yours truly--is permitted to read the finished product until a winner is officially declared. Which meant I was up until 4:00 a.m., reading away.

Today, the first chapter of "The Project" goes live on NEWSWEEK.com--and, as expected, it's packed with exclusive reporting and fascinating details. Since this is a blog--and not the Library of Congress--I won't post the whole (long) thing here. But I will highlight my favorite tidbits below. You ADD-types can thank me later. 

(The NEWSWEEK Election Project was written by Evan Thomas with reporting from Peter Goldman, Eleanor Clift, Daren Briscoe, Nick Summers, Katie Connolly and Michael Hastings; Holly Bailey and Jonathan Darman also contributed intel.)

I. Obama's 'Certain Ambivalence'

Obama was something unusual in a politician: genuinely self-aware. In late May 2007, he had stumbled through a couple of early debates and was feeling uncertain about what he called his "uneven" performance. "Part of it is psychological," he told his aides. "I'm still wrapping my head around doing this in a way that I think the other candidates just aren't. There's a certain ambivalence in my character that I like about myself. It's part of what makes me a good writer, you know? It's not necessarily useful in a presidential campaign."

These candid remarks were taped at a debate-prep session at a law firm in Washington. The tape of Obama's back-and-forth with his advisers, provided to NEWSWEEK by an attendee, is a remarkably frank and revealing record of what the candidate was really thinking when he took the stage with his opponents.

On the tape, after Obama's rueful remark about the mixed blessings of his detached nature, there is cross talk and laughter, and then Axelrod cracks, "You can save that for your next memoir."

Obama continues: "When you have to be cheerful all the time and try to perform and act like [the tape is unclear; Obama appears to be poking fun at his opponents], I'm sure that some of it has to do with nerves or anxiety and not having done this before, I'm sure. And in my own head, you know, there's—I don't consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. When you're going into something thinking, 'This is not my best …' I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, 'You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.' Instead of being appropriately [the tape is garbled]. So when Brian Williams is asking me about what's a personal thing that you've done [that's green], and I say, you know, 'Well, I planted a bunch of trees.' And he says, 'I'm talking about personal.' What I'm thinking in my head is, 'Well, the truth is, Brian, we can't solve global warming because I f–––ing changed light bulbs in my house. It's because of something collective'."

 
Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The Bradley Effect is dead! Long live the Obama Effect!

Or at least that's the cri de coeur coming from conservative circles as the 2008 presidential race enters its final sprint. Writing this morning for Salon and the Weekly Standard, a pair of political consultants--Bill Greener (a Republican) and Arnon A. Mishkin--seize on the same statistical argument to explain how John McCain, who trails Barack Obama by 7.3 percent in the latest RealClear Politics national polling average, could still win the White House eight days from now. Neither operative claims that pre-election polls are overstating the black candidate's support--perhaps because research has shown pretty convincingly that the Bradley Effect no longer exists (if it ever did). Instead, both posit the existence of an Obama Effect. According to this theory, most undecideds are actually decided--for McCain. Which means, in turn, that the Republican nominee will benefit from a big boost on Nov. 4.

Greener and Mishkin advance different explanations for their hypothesis. Mishkin attributes it to "social acceptability." Given Obama's overwhelming momentum, he writes, "it seems likely that if voters are not ready to tell a pollster that they are with Obama, they are unlikely to get there... Where there is a perception that there is a 'socially acceptable' choice, respondents who do not articulate it are likely not to agree with it." Greener, meanwhile, is more blunt. "If you're a black candidate running against a white candidate, what you see is what you get," he writes. "And it doesn't matter whether you're an incumbent or a challenger. If you're not polling above 50 percent, you should be worried."

So should Obama be worried?

I'd say no. As always, the standard caveat applies: anything can happen between now and Nov. 4.  But there are a few problems with the Greener/Mishkin theory--at least as an explanation of why McCain might still win (a claim, it should be noted, that only Greener makes).

First of all, Greener's argument that undecideds break overwhelmingly against black candidates on Election Day doesn't really hold water. As evidence, he points to four races from 2006--the Tennessee and Maryland senate races and the Massachusetts and Ohio governor's races--then compares the pre-election polls to the final results. In each case, he says, the black candidate's support held steady while the white candidate's support shot up. Unfortunately, Greener chooses to cherry-pick surveys that support his thesis instead of using the more comprehensive RCP averages as the basis of his comparison. As a result, his conclusion is misleading.

Tennessee--where black Democrat Harold Ford was up against white Republican Bob Corker for Republican Bill Frist's old U.S. Senate seat--is a good example. "The day before the election, [Ford] was within a point of Corker, 47 to 48 with 5 percent undecided, according to OnPoint Polling," writes Greener. "On Nov. 7, Corker got 50.7 percent of the vote, Ford got 48 and an assortment of independents took 1.3 percent." But OnPoint was the only pollster to show a one-point margin; the RCP average, in fact, put Corker ahead by six, 50.3 percent to 44.3 percent. On Election Day, Ford earned 48 percent of the vote to Corker's 50.7 percent--meaning that it was Ford whose support shot up the most (by 3.7 points, compared to 0.4 points for Corker). In other words, more undecideds broke for the black guy than white guy. Likewise, Ed Rendell (a white Democrat) beat Lynn Swann (a black Republican) by a slightly smaller margin in Pennsylvania (10.8 percent) than the polls predicted (11.8 percent). But Greener simply ignores the Rendell-Swann race.

The rest of Greener's examples aren't quite as misleading. In Massachusetts, Deval Patrick (a black Democrat) gained less than two points on Election Day; his white challenger (Kerry Healy) gained nearly six. In Maryland, Michael Steele (a black Republican) lost nearly a point at the ballot box; opponent Ben Cardin (a white Democrat) gained more than five. And a similar (if slightly smaller) pattern cropped up in the Ohio gubernatorial race between Ted Strickland (white Democrat) and Ken Blackwell (black Republican). That said, these differences aren't statistically significant (as Nate Silver, who beat me to the punch by a few hours, has pointed out). On average, black candidates gained 1.6 percentage points on Election Day; white candidates gained 3.6 percent. With mixed results (see: Tennessee and Pennsylvania) and a dearth of data points, it's pretty hard to conclude that an Obama Effect will inevitably "rear its head" in the general election--let alone influence the outcome. What's more, two of the three white candidates who overperformed on Election Day 2006 were Democrats as well--and in 2006, a disastrous year for the GOP, "Democratic candidates overperformed their polls in a significant majority of competitive races around the country," as Silver notes. That leaves Greener with only one applicable case study--Patrick versus Healy. Not exactly a solid foundation for a grand theory of voter behavior. 

Which brings up to the second problem with the Obama Effect.  Not only does history disprove the notion that with black candidates (or "socially acceptable" candidates), "what you see is [always] what you get"--it proves that, for Obama, the reverse is true. As Silver showed back in August, the Illinois senator actually outperformed the polls by an average of 3.3 percentage points over the course of the entire primary season. In the West, he did 1.1 percent better than pollsters predicted (on average). In the Midwest, he surpassed the surveys by 3.1 percent. And in the South, he exceeded expectations by a whopping 7.2 percent. The only region where Obama underperformed, in fact, was the Northeast (where he can most afford to lose a little support); there, he finished about two points below the pre-primary trendline. As I recently reported, this leap is probably the result of pollsters underestimating the turnout of Obama's young and black supporters, who are voting in higher numbers this year than ever before. Ultimately, McCain may very well clobber Obama among late breakers, as Hillary Clinton did during the primaries. But if past is prelude, the boost that Obama receives from "expanding the electorate" will be at least as large as his opponent's gains among undecideds.

The final issue with the Greener/Mishkin theory is the most devastating. Both consultants argue that "as the election winds down, one should look less at the difference between Obama and McCain, and more at the actual number that Obama is getting in the polls"--largely because of McCain's assumed advantage among undecideds. And that, according to Greener, is why Obama should be worried: "[he] needs to be polling consistently above 50 percent to win. And in crucial battleground states, he isn't." The only problem? Obama may not be polling consistently above 50 percent in some "crucial battleground states"--but he's polling consistently above 50 percent in enough of them to win. Presumably, Greener is cherry-picking his polls again. According to the RCP swing-state averages, Obama leads by more than eight points and pulls down more than 50 percent support in every John Kerry state as well as the Bush states of Iowa and New Mexico, bringing his electoral vote count to 263. In addition, Obama's beating McCain 51.7 to 44.5 in Virginia and 51.3 to 44.8 in Colorado. That puts the Democrat at 286 electoral votes--and again, that's if we're only counting states he's polling above 50 percent. In other words, McCain could sway every single undecided voter--i.e., Greener and Mishkin could be completely, 100-percent correct--and Obama would still win the election by 224 electoral votes, at least according to the latest polls.

The bottom line is that even if the Obama Effect did exist--which is probably doesn't--it wouldn't be enough to propel McCain to the White House. To do that, the Republican needs to start convincing Obama's supporters to jump ship. And he's running out of time.
 

By Sarah Kliff and Andrew Romano

NASHUA, N.H.--Joe Biden has had his hands full with Gov. Sarah Palin the past few days. But at a town hall this afternoon here in Nashua, the Democratic vice presidential nominee set his sights on another high-powered female politician: Hillary Clinton.

During the Q&A session after Biden's stump speech, a local voter brought up the former Democratic presidential candidate for the first time this week. "I am very pleased that Obama chose you over Hillary," he told Biden, as the crowd erupted with applause (a surprise, given that the Granite State was the site of Clinton's first primary win). As Biden struggled to shush the masses, the questioner rattled off a litany of unrelated points, veering from Freddie Mac to the "disgraceful ... Mexican wall." Eventually, Biden cut him off and came to Clinton's rescue.

The only question is whether he did too much rescuing. 

"Make no mistake about this," said Biden. "Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified as I am … She’s qualified to be president of the United States of America and easily qualified to be vice president of the United States of America. And quite frankly, it might have been a better pick than me."

Whoa. Did we just hear Joe Biden express ... humility?

We have no idea if the Delaware senator was sincerely saying that Clinton would've been better equipped to battle the Barracuda, or if he simply went a little overboard in rising to her defense. But if it was the former, Biden's not alone. Over the past few days, a number of prominent scholars, Republicans and even Democrats have taken to wondering what might have been. "If Hillary was on the ticket, he’d be in a much better position to win women voters," Republican Rep. Candice S. Miller told the Politico this morning. Julia Piscitelli of the American University’s Women and Politics Institute agreed. “I don’t think Palin would be seeing these kind of gains if Hillary was on the ticket,” she said. “When Obama picked Biden, it gave Republicans an opening, and they are taking full advantage of it." Meanwhile, a former Clinton adviser, speaking on the condition of anonymity, went so far as to say that the “Obama people have got to be kicking themselves.” 

True? Who knows. Still, it's easy to imagine that if the order of the conventions had been reversed and McCain had shocked the world by picking Palin first, Obama would've at least considered shoring up female swing voters and bringing disaffected Hillaryites back into the fold by selecting Clinton as his running mate. As it happened, it was McCain who had the benefit of reacting to Obama's pick--a seemingly inconsequential quirk of scheduling that appears to have worked in the GOP's favor.

Just ask Joe Biden.

MARCH 2008

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to NEWSWEEK's Karen Breslau: "I do think it's a more concentrated criticism that Hillary gets on so many fronts ... But fair or unfair, I think she does herself a disservice to even mention it, really. You have to plow through that. You have to know what you're getting into ... When I hear a statement ... coming from a woman candidate with any kind of perceived whine about that excess criticism or a sharper microscope being put on her, I think that doesn't do us any good, women in politics, women in general wanting to progress this country ... Work harder, prove yourself to an even greater degree ... It bothers me a little bit hearing her bring that attention to herself."

SEPT. 2, 2008 

RNC Victory Chair and Senior McCain Adviser Carly Fiorina: “I am appalled by the Obama campaign’s attempts to belittle Gov. Sarah Palin’s experience. The facts are that Sarah Palin has made more executive decisions as a mayor and governor than Barack Obama has made in his life. Because of Hillary Clinton’s historic run for the presidency and the treatment she received, American women are more highly tuned than ever to recognize and decry sexism in all its forms. They will not tolerate sexist treatment of Governor Palin.”

The McCain campaign also e-mailed reporters a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled "Ignore the Chauvinists. Palin Has Real Experience" earlier this afternoon. Next time, maybe they should consult with their vice presidential candidate before throwing around big words like "sexist."

UPDATE, Sept. 3: 

McCain National Co-Chair and Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman: "I actually think it's completely fair for the media to vet Sarah Palin, just as they did for John McCain and Barack Obama and everyone else who's running for office. You're running for the second highest office in the land, so it's the right thing to do... I wouldn't say there really has [been any sexism]."

Somebody's off-message!
 

DENVER--The official theme of last night's festivities, according to the Democratic National Committee, was "Securing America's Future." But "Changing the Subject" is a more accurate description of what went down here in Denver.

Unless you've been living in a steel-encased hyperbaric capsule embedded in the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, you're probably aware that for the first three days of the convention the media has focused most of its time, talent and money on the "conflict" between Barack Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton. Nevermind that that actual conflict is rather minimal--a molehill being sold as a mountain, as I wrote on Monday.

Since the opening gavel, we've been treated to stories on the "heated" negotiations over Wednesday's roll-call vote, the speech-related "tensions" between Bill and Obama, the "struggle" of Hillary dead-enders to accept her loss and, of course, the hidden meaning of HRC's "very limited hand gestures." Cable news-chatterers like Keith Olbermann and Wolf Blitzer were happy to spend hours "analyzing" whether the Dems were "being too soft on McCain" and "obscuring Obama's message"--at the same time, incidentally, that a parade of Democratic governors, senators and congressmen were whacking McCain and delivering Chicago's economic talking points up on stage. As NEWSWEEK's Jeremy McCarter wrote in these pages, "the resulting coverage had about as much connection to what happened onstage last night as NBC's Olympics coverage would have had if Bob Costas had spent two full weeks asking other sportscasters how they feel about the shot put." By Wednesday morning, no one would've been surprised to read in the New York Times that Hillary had secretly "delivered [a] non-endorsement [of Obama] by blinking it in morse code."

Thank goodness, then, for last night's marquee speakers: Bill Clinton, Joe Biden and--most surprisingly--John Kerry. In the days leading up to Denver, much of the punditocracy predicted that Bill--physically incapable, according to them, of conveying anything but utter disdain for Obama--would spend his speech indulging in yet another homage to Hillary's historic near-nomination and reminding everyone of what an awesome president he was. They forgot, it seems, that they were talking about the preeminent political tactician of the last 20 years. The only moment of blatant self-regard in Bill's speech--saying "I love this" when the crowd greeted him with three minutes of sustained applause and frantic flag-waving--was unscripted, and in its puppyish earnestness, endearing. Relying on meaty paragraphs rather than easy applause lines, the rest of his remarks were about Obama--or, more accurately, they were about framing the election as a choice between the Democrat who will "lead us away from division and fear of the last eight years, back to unity and hope" and the Republican who "still embraces the extreme philosophy which has defined his party for more than 25 years." Bill went far further than Hillary in describing why Obama himself--and not just any old Dem--would make a better president than John McCain, praising the Illinois senator's "intelligence and curiosity" where Hillary praised his party affiliation. And because there was still a "hint of jealously and rue" in Bill's voice, as NEWSWEEK's Howard Fineman wrote last night, his compliments sounded completely convincing. He hadn't been force-fed or coaxed or cajoled. He wasn't just doing his duty. You got the sense, rather, than Clinton really (if begrudgingly) respects Obama, another Democrat said to be "too young and too inexperienced," for outwitting him--even if he hasn't completely "gotten over" the first loss of his career. Ultimately, the "surprising" warmth of Bill's speech was irresistible storyline for a press corps seduced into expecting too little from him; and oddly enough, their resulting raves have, at long last, shifted the spotlight away from the Clintons. "Now eyes turn, and finally, to Obama," wrote Peggy Noonan in the morning's Wall Street Journal. "This was one of the great tee-ups."

The primary purpose of Biden's speech was to focus those eyes where Chicago wants them to focus: on the economy. Peppered with references to his middle-class roots in Scranton, Penn. and Wilmington, Del. and his elderly mother, Catherine Eugenia Finnegan Biden--who taught him to respond to bullies by "bloody[ing] their nose so you can walk down the street the next day," and exclaimed "That's true!" when her son mentioned the episode on stage--the first section of Biden's acceptance address was the strongest. In it, the Delaware senator continued to cast himself as a blue-collar average Joe, precision-calibrated to "feel the pain" of the struggling American family; channeling their concerns into a fanciful collage of kitchen-table conversations. "Should mom move in with us now that dad is gone?" he asked. "Fifty, sixty, seventy dollars just to fill up the gas tank?" The goal, of course, is to convince wary "white ethnic" voters that Biden is one of them (sources say that Catherine Eugenia Finnegan Biden is an Irish-Catholic name), and then to let Biden convince them that the guy at the top of the ticket isn't a total space alien. As former Clinton speechwriter David Kusnet notes, "he presented resilience as the great story of his own life, the great virtue of working Americans, and the great goal of an Obama-Biden administration." It's too early to say whether the strategy is succeeding. But last night, the power of his personal narrative, and the media's curiosity about what sort of sidekick he'll be. was more than enough to move the ball beyond the Clintons--for good.

Speaking before Bill and Biden, Kerry wasn't broadcast on the cable news channels. But his may have been the most impressive performance of the three. When the Massachusetts senator and failed 2004 nominee started speaking, few people in the hall were paying attention. In fact, Kerry emerged in my conversations this week with Democratic officials as a sort of party pariah; everyone in Denver seemed determined not to repeat the mistake he made at 2004's Boston convention, when he demanded that no one utter an ill word about Bush. Turns out no one was more determined than Kerry himself. Happy to perform the time-honored senatorial two-step of praising a colleague--"I have known and been friends with John McCain for almost 22 years"--before ripping him to shreds, Kerry delivered the single most effective critique of McCain I've heard to date, highlighting in remarkably clear and concise language the gap between McCain circa 2002 and the McCain who's running for president. "Let’s compare Sen. McCain to candidate McCain," he said. "Candidate McCain now supports the wartime tax cuts that Sen. McCain once denounced as immoral. Candidate McCain criticizes Sen. McCain’s own climate change bill. Candidate McCain says he would now vote against the immigration bill that Senator McCain wrote. Are you kidding? Talk about being for it before you’re against it." That last line--a reference to the famous flip-flopping charges leveled against Kerry in 2004--got big laughs in the Pepsi Center's press box. Although Biden also attacked McCain, Kerry was a story. The former admirer--he wanted McCain to be his running mate--turns the tables and delivers "by far the best speech [we]'ve ever seen from him." The result: a swarm of hacks (like me) repeating the only fully crystallized critique of McCain to come out of a convention cluttered by a "mish-mash of objections" to Obama's Republican rival. And that's one thing Obama wants Wolf and Keith to chatter about.
 

DENVER--Remember the Hillary holdouts--the 48 percent of former Clinton supporters who tell pollsters they're either undecided or backing John McCain? (I'm assuming that this evening's "Love Train" roll-call vote didn't erase every trace of Clinton-Obama drama from your memory.) Well, at least one Obama supporter doesn't believe they ever really existed. Her name? Kansas Governor--and vice-presidential shortlister--Kathleen Sebelius.

Asked this afternoon during a lunch with NEWSWEEK's convention team whether the Hillary holdouts spell trouble for Obama in November, Sebelius said the entire conversation was "oddly anti-feminist." "The notion that women who are passionate supporters of Hillary Clinton's would honor her by voting for John McCain seems to me to be totally insane," she said. "It keeps being raised as real, but I haven't ever found anybody that can confirm that. I'm absolutely convinced tht 99.9 percent of the people who supported Hillary Clinton will support Barack Obama. All the things she fought for will only be achieved if Barack is president."

When we pressed her on the issue--noting that numerous surveys show a sizable number of defectors--Sebelius questioned whether people were lying to pollsters.  "How do people even identify who are Hillary Clinton supporters in those polls?" she asked. "And are they Democratic Hillary supporters? I'm not at all convinced that some of this isn't ongoing mischief being played by the other team. There was certainly that crossover vote in some of those later primaries that kept showing up. The Limbaugh Effect, right? Are those the folks now being polled who say, "I was a Hillary Clinton supporter, now I support John McCain?"  At this, NEWSWEEK columnist Jonathan Alter mentioned that he'd spoken to some delegates--Democrats--who said they wouldn't vote for Obama. Sebelius was incredulous. "They're seriously going to support John McCain?" she asked. No, Alter said. They're just not going to vote. At this, the governor snapped. "Well, that's a very effective strategy," she said.

It's clear that Sebelius is a true believer. Despite a pair of personal calls from Clinton--the first in early 2007, the second a year later--Sebelius caused something of a stir in January when she became one a small group of Democratic women governors to endorse the upstart Illinois senator. It was a decision she had made much earlier. "Hillary was not the kind of candidate who was going to galvanize independent and Republican support in Kansas, which is what you have to do to win," she said. "The last time Kansans voted for a Democratic presidential candidate was FDR in 1936. They didn't like him after that, apparently. Even Bill never won Kansas." Of course, Sebelius thinks Obama can break the curse. Helping him, she says, will be an armada of "magnificent" women surrogates headed by his wife Michelle. "It was tricky in the primary to use a lot of women and not appear to be women against Hillary," she said. "But now we'll be out there against John McCain." For Obama, that's a good thing--just in case those Hillary holdouts do, you know, exist.
 

By Eleanor Clift 

Women of all ages had tears in their eyes as Hillary Clinton commanded the stage Tuesday evening at the Pepsi Center. This wasn’t supposed to be her night. She had hoped to speak Thursday night to accept the nomination of her party. But whatever anger and disappointment she may feel was not visible. She did what she had to do, and then some, putting party and country ahead of her personal ambition. Maybe women identified with her deferred dreams, and her game face, perhaps more so than men; an informal poll taken by NEWSWEEK’s reporters of convention-goers suggested that women rated Hillary’s speech a triumph while men were unmoved, picking apart sections of the speech as “too wonky” and totally missing the masterful way Hillary spoke to women with her closing peroration on suffrage.   

The evidence is mixed on whether Hillary succeeded in unifying the party. The Obama camp seemed pleased. Senator Obama called her after the speech and spoke to both Hillary and Bill. Joe Biden headed to Hillary’s holding room to congratulate her. But the glow of the evening only emboldened some Hillary supporters to continue to carry her banner. At a morning meeting of the Tennessee delegation when a Hillary supporter stood up to say she would switch her vote to Obama in tonight’s roll call, a verbal brawl broke out with other Hillary delegates declaring their allegiance to Clinton and assailing the turncoat. “She’s lucky she has her arms attached to her body,” Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen told NEWSWEEK.

Relations are smoother at the top with Clinton operative Craig Smith running Hillary’s floor operation out of the Obama office with a whip team in place to make sure the true believers don’t get out of hand. With President Clinton speaking tonight in prime time, the media spent much of the day parsing his past behavior, wondering how sincere he’ll be in endorsing Obama, and speculating how the Obama team will use him over the next two months. If the Clintons are really committed to party unity, shouldn’t we have seen a picture of the three of them together before now? “Have you seen a picture of the Clintons together?” a Clintonite responded, sarcastically touching on the widespread notion that Bill Clinton was a major factor in his wife losing the nomination.  

Still, key players in both camps think Obama would be wise to tap into the former president’s wisdom. “If I were Obama, I’d talk to him every night,” said one Clintonite, if only to show respect and keep him on the reservation. The two men have talked periodically over the last few weeks and the Obama campaign said they expect to dispatch Bill Clinton to the battleground states to campaign for the ticket, something he did not do in any significant way for either Al Gore or John Kerry. As for the personal relationship, says a former Clintonite with ties to both camps, “There can’t be a matchmaker. Either it will happen or it won’t.” Knowing how Clinton hates to be on the sidelines, the betting is on a shotgun marriage.

For many voters, especially women, the Hillary campaign was a crusade that they have trouble putting behind them. Hillary emerges a stronger figure for having run while her husband has been diminished. How he deals with that, knowing his competitive nature, has implications for Obama, his party and the country. Bill Clinton has always been best when the chips are down, and those who love him or loathe him expect him to meet the test this evening.   

DENVER--The punditizing began--predictably--before Hillary Clinton even stepped down from the stage. As the woman wearing the tangerine pantsuit and the firm Colgate smile waved to a sea of shaking signs--white Hillary signs, blue Unity signs, long polelike signs that said her name on one side and Barack Obama's on the other--the chattering classes rushed to the airwaves and the Internet to deliver their verdicts. There were--also predictably--two main reactions: the sigh of relief and the nitpick. "She gracefully marked her place as one of America's premiere politicians with a firm, commanding, gracious argument on behalf of Barack Obama," wrote Time CW-monger Mark Halperin (the former). "Hillary Clinton obviously doesn't like Barack Obama," countered the New Republic's Jonathan Chait (the latter). "She's clearly hesitant about the prospect of him as president." And never the twain shall meet.

So where does Stumper stand? Somewhere in between.  

All the gushing coverage--the lines about it being "the best speech she could've possibly given"--strikes me as the product of unreasonably low expectations (and the power of the moment). A full week of watching the MSM hyperventilate over the "Clinton-Obama conflict" seemed to have convinced some observers that Clinton would take the stage attired in the revolutionary garb of some maniacal Third World dictator and seize the nomination by bloody force--even though, as I wrote Monday, "the chance that she'll deliver an off-message speech (like Pat Buchanan in 1988) or give Obama the cold shoulder (like Kennedy did to Carter in 1980) is exceedingly slim." But thanks to the manufactured suspense, a speech that did the obvious--honoring her fans, making her support for Obama clear and putting distance between herself and John McCain--played in the hall, on television and, I suspect, in living rooms nationwide as something more like Cicero. I'm not saying Clinton's speech wasn't good. It was. From the start--"I'm here tonight as a proud mother, as a proud Democrat, as a proud senator from New York, a proud American and a proud supporter of Barack Obama"--her passion for party unity and commitment to convincing her supporters to vote for Obama was clear. And the section about Harriet Tubman--"even in the darkest of moments, ordinary Americans have found the faith to keep going"--was graceful and moving. But it's worth noting, as the nitpickers do, that while Clinton personally praised Joe Biden ("A strong leader and a good man ... He is pragmatic, tough, and wise") and even McCain ("John McCain is my colleague and my friend. He has served our country with honor and courage"), she didn't say anything positive about Obama as a person. And she certainly didn't make any "clear, flat assertion that Obama is qualified and prepared to be commander in chief from day one"--her central criticism of the Illinois senator, and now McCain's.

That said, I think Clinton was right not to pretend that she and the nominee have suddenly become BFFs. Simply put, her best bet for achieving party unity was persuasion, not propaganda. Consider her audience: reluctant, mourning supporters who need to be convinced--not commanded--to consider her former opponent. As the polls constantly remind us, many of them still don't like Obama--and they probably suspect that Clinton shares their skepticism. As Hillary supporter Jerry Straughan told The Washington Post this morning, "Who knows what she really thinks?" So instead of gushing, Clinton played the lawyer, presenting a passionate but pragmatic case perfectly calibrated to connect with this particular jury: you are Democrats, you care deeply about Democratic issues, and there's only one Democrat left in the race. "Were you in this campaign just for me?" she asked. "Or were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids? Were you in it for that boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage? Were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?" The implication, of course, was that her supporters didn't need to be "in it" for Obama, either--as long as they accept the fact that helping those "invisible" people will be "impossible if we don't fight to put a Democrat"--any Democrat--"in the White House." Anything more effusive would've required the audience to suspend disbelief. At its heart, the speech was convincing because it was credible.

Going forward, a few Hillary holdouts--the ones who were, in fact, "in it for her"--will continue to hold out. But last night, Clinton delivered the savviest argument in her arsenal. That it played like poetry was just icing on the cake.
 

By Jonathan Darman 

For months, I’ve listened to die-Hard Hillary Clinton supporters talk about their candidate’s special bond with the white working class. Around Denver in the first two days of the Democratic convention I’d heard disaffected Hillary delegates wonder, loudly, if Barack Obama could relate to all the Bubbas out there who felt so fondly for their girl. And so, I set out to find some place in Denver where I could watch Hillary’s big convention speech among her people. With four other journalists—three women and one man, I headed to a Denver Hooters.

The nearest Hooters to the Pepsi Center is at the Intersection of Colorado Boulevard and Arkansas Ave.—Clinton country. The plastic, illuminated palm trees outside were adorned with red, white and blue streamers and the sign on the highway showed Hooters had its eye on the convention: “Welcome Donkeys, Come Inside, We’re Open Late.”

But, for some inexplicable reason, inside of Hooters we discovered the good patrons didn’t seem to have Hillary on their minds. The restaurant was lined with large flat screen TVs but none were tuned to the convention. We scrambled around the restaurant, in search of CNN. “You can have our table,” said two men who saw us hovering. “We’re hoping to watch Hillary Clinton at the convention,” we replied. “In that case, you can’t have our table.”

Finally, after securing a guarantee from the manager that he would tune in enough televisions to the convention for us to be able to hear, we settled down at a table in the corner where we sipped Blue Moons (Hillary’s favorite!) and ate fried pickles. Our waitress, Ashley, was, like every Hooters girl in America, clad in a tight white t-shirt and orange booty shorts. What do you think of Hillary Clinton, we asked her. “I don’t get cable,” she said, “so I don’t really know.”

In a couple minutes’ time, Hillary took to the podium and, thanks to our chat with the manager, her voice flooded half of Hooters. But no one seemed to notice. The only applause all evening came when the cable blipped out for a moment and Hillary temporarily disappeared.

Ashley, though, was getting interested. After bringing us our greasy fare, she waited at a nearby table with a colleague. Looking at the television, they pointed and joked and even mimicked Hillary, turning to each other and pointing: “No way. No how. No McCain.” Mostly though, they just watched. In a couple of minutes time, the woman on television in the orange pant suit disappeared from the convention floor, her speech was a triumph, her work was done. The women in the orange booty shorts, though, were still on the clock. As Ashley cleared our plates we apologized for all the inconvenience our need to see the speech had caused. “Are you kidding, I loved it,” she said. “It gave me chills.”

DENVER--Talk about a time warp.

Judging by the early chatter out here in Denver, you'd think this year's Democratic nominating convention was happening in 1992. Why? Because everyone's obsessing over the Clintons. Reports that Hillary "wasn't vetted" for the veep slot have spread like wildfire, spurring a small but vocal posse of disgruntled Clintonistas to wail that Obama is not doing right by her, and never has--nevermind that she asked to skip the formal process, or that Team Obama had more than enough info after 17 months of oppo research to evaluate her alongside her fellow finalists. This gnashing of teeth and rending of garments has in turn encouraged the McCain campaign to release a pair of troublemaking ads questioning why Obama didn't pick Clinton, including its latest, "Debra," which features a Clinton delegate saying "a lot of Democrats will vote McCain" because he's the only "one with the experience and judgment to be president." Smelling drama--or at least the illusion thereof--the press has pounced, producing a flurry of breathless reports on the tensions that either a) "boil between the Obama [and] Clinton camps" or b) "linger as some Clinton supporters are left frustrated." Others have opined that with Hillary speaking Tuesday, Bill speaking Wednesday and Hillary's name being placed into nomination Thursday, Team Obama has effectively let her steal the show and undermine that whole purpose of the convention (that is, to launch Obama's candidacy in earnest). Either way, the convention, according to the chatterati, is shaping up to be a Clinton-Obama cagematch.

Please. Anyone who thinks that a roll-call vote and some sad silver-medalists constitutes a controversial convention probably didn't pay much attention in U.S. Politics 101. "By historical standards the Clinton nomination is totally mild," says Costas Panagopoulos, professor of political science at Fordham University and author of "Presidential Nominating Conventions in the Media Age". "Looking back historically, conventions have tended to be hotbeds of controversy, and this year simply won't compare." The most extreme example of conflict, of course, was the rioting at 1968's Democratic convention in Chicago-think window smashing and police beatings. But a convention doesn't need armed combat to qualify as controversial. In 1860, the Democrats were so divided over slavery that they held two conventions, eventually convening in Baltimore despite the absence of the entire Southern wing of the party, which was boycotting the nomination of Stephen Douglas. In 1896, 36-year-old Nebraska Congressman William Jennings Bryan wasn't even considered a presidential contender upon his arrival--until his fiery speech calling for the free coinage of silver so electrified delegates that they spontaneously awarded him the nomination. In 1924, it took the Dems 103 convention ballots to settle on hapless nominee John Davis, and 28 years later they drafted Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson after three divided votes--even though he'd said repeatedly that he didn't want the job. Even the supposedly "controversial" decision to place Clinton's name in nomination is hardly unprecedented--runners-up Ted Kennedy (1980), Gary Hart (1984) and Jerry Brown (1992) all received the same treatment, and they won far fewer votes and boasted far fewer delegates than the former first lady. Given that Clinton herself has frequently emphasized unity--even going so far as to deploy a 40-person floor team meant to keep her supporters in line--the chances that she'll deliver an off-message speech (like Pat Buchanan in 1988) or give Obama the cold shoulder (like Kennedy did to Carter in 1980) are exceedingly slim. "At the end of the day, the convention will go smoothly," says Panagopoulos. "The Dems realize there's a high price to pay if it doesn't, and no one--not Clinton, not Obama, not vast majority of the delegates--is willing to take that kind of risk."

Still, don't expect that to stop the press from reporting on this year's festivities as if war had broken out in Denver. Even though nominating conventions have become almost completely newsless affairs in recent years--notice how the whole "choosing a nominee" part of the process has already, you know, happened--the MSM is devoting more money, more bodies and more space (primarily online) to covering them than ever before.  In theory, that's dandy; in practice, it totally skews the signal-to-noise ratio. While the demand (if not the audience) for convention coverage has presumably increased, the supply has drastically declined. To fill the growing void with the stuff of news-that is, conflict--the media is content to make ever-bigger mountains out of ever-smaller molehills. And this year's molehill is the Clinton controversy. "No offense to your profession, but there will be 15,000 journalists in Denver seeking to make any minor differences seem like a major controversy," says Panagopoulos. "They'll be reading between every line to detect notes of disunity." Ultimately, scrutiny will help Obama as much as it helps the networks--as Panagopoulos notes, the "nice thing about the appearance of controversy is that it attracts attention and pulls in viewers who would've otherwise not watched the convention." (And remember: the Clintons will be singing Obama's praises on stage, and her supporters would've been a lot angrier had they been denied a roll call vote. That's more unity, not less.) As for the rest of America, though, hyperbole isn't particularly useful. So while you're watching Wolf Blitzer and Chris Matthews jabber endlessly about this year's soap opera, just remember what real conflict looks like--and adjust the volume accordingly.

(Elise Amendola / AP Photo)

WWHD?

While some Democrats panic (prematurely, experts say) over a series of polls showing the average gap between Barack Obama and John McCain shrinking from eight points on June 23 to 1.4 points today, another slice of the party--namely, the disgruntled-Clintonista contingent--is reacting with four cruel words: "I told you so." And thanks to the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, they have some ammunition. Released yesterday afternoon, the survey gives Obama 45 percent to 42 percent lead over McCain--down from his six-point advantage last month--while putting Clinton ahead of the Republican nominee 49-43. "The Democrats really needed Hillary to win, and not as VP," writes Stumper reader MCGILL. "McCain has it." Fellow commenter "jpokergman" goes one step further, predicting that Denver will "morph into a Hillary-buyer-remorse-lovefest," with "'we could have had Hillary'... rocketing through the Democratic convention" and the press "turn[ing] on Obama like a starving pit-bull."

Sadly--because anything would be better than the newsless infomercials conventions have become--this isn't going to happen. But all the agita does raise an interesting question: If Hillary Clinton had captured the Democratic nomination back in June--perhaps with revotes in Florida and Michigan--would she performing better against McCain than Obama is now? Of course, this sort of counterfactual is impossible to, you know, prove. But given that Clinton was easily the closest runner-up in modern nominating history--and given that doubts about whether or not she would've been a stronger nominee are still dividing Democrats--it's worth taking a brief breather from this week's frenzied veepstakes bonanza to scan the available evidence and ponder the "what ifs."

From a messaging standpoint, there's certainly an argument to be made that Clinton would be outperforming Obama. As the New York Times reported this morning, "voters [are] focused overwhelmingly on economic issues"--40 percent name "the economy" as their most pressing concern--"but [are] convinced that the candidates are not paying enough attention to their priorities." The Washington Times, meanwhile, notes that McCain is now leading "when voters [are] asked which candidate could better manage the economy," "turning a four-point deficit in July['s Reuters/Zobgy poll] into a 49 percent to 40 percent lead." This is clear proof that despite "delivering a more populist message that further highlights his [economic] differences with Senator John McCain" since returning last week from Hawaii, Obama has yet to make an emotional connection with swing voters on what should be the Democratic Party's winning issue.

Judging by the final months of the Democratic nominating contest--when Clinton won the majority of votes and primaries by hammering home precisely the "populist message" Obama is now adopting--the former first lady would not be having that problem right now. It's not that Obama isn't proposing specific economic policies. He is. But the Obama "phenomenon" provides the press with so many distractions--his race, his "celebrity," the latest "Obama-themed merchandise"--that his daily message is often drowned out. With the relatively "familiar" Clinton, on the other hand, reporters probably would've been forced to cover her latest "solution" on, say, "equal pay for women"--because she'd give them little else to chatter about. (Remember who coined the phrase "it's the economy, stupid.") Like her husband Bill--who in 1992 skipped the posh Martha's Vineyard for "rustic" Jackson Hole, Wyo., where he was photographed riding a horse--Clinton would've vacationed in a poll-tested "all-American" spot like Scranton, Penn. instead of Obama's "highfalutin" Hawaii. Coupled with her relative strength in the traditional swing states of Ohio and Florida--as of early May, she was leading McCain there by 6-8 percent, while Obama, who's still behind in both places, trailed by nearly as much--it's easy to see why some supporters think she'd be in a better position to win come November.

That said, there are plenty of reasons to suspect that a Clinton-McCain match-up would've been just as close as the current contest. For starters, Clinton's "lead" over McCain in the latest NBC/WSJ poll is her largest ever. From January through April, she never edged out McCain--who actually beat her 47-43 in January and 46-44 in March--by more than two points. Obama, meanwhile, posted consistent leads over the Republican nominee and therefore appeared to be the stronger national candidate. So what accounts for Clinton's gains? Simply put, disgruntled Clintonistas. As MSNBC's First Read team reported this morning, "the biggest reason why this race remains close in this Dem-leaning political environment is because of Obama’s inability to close the deal with some of Clinton’s supporters." According to the NBC/WSJ poll, 52 percent of them say they'll vote for the presumptive Democratic nominee, while 21 percent are backing McCain and an additional 27 percent are either undecided or want to vote for someone else. These dissenters wouldn't exist, of course, if Clinton had won the nomination. But it's worth remembering that she'd have a whole nother group of dissatisfied Dems to contend with--namely black and young voters, who supported Obama by overwhelming margins in the primaries and would've been at least as angry as Clinton's former backers are now if HRC and Co. had "stolen" the nomination by "bending the rules" at the 11th hour. If the tables were turned and Clinton were now running against McCain, these voters--who represent a full 30 percent of the NBC/WSJ sample group--would undoubtedly depress Clinton's numbers as much as (or more than) disgruntled Clintonites are now depressing Obama's.

And that's not all. While Clinton was outpolling Obama in Ohio and Florida last May, she was also losing to McCain across a broad swath of crucial swing states where Obama was (and is) either winning or tied: Wisconsin (by four percent); Virginia (by nine percent); Colorado (by approximately eight percent); New Hampshire (by one percent); Michigan (by three percent); and Iowa (by three percent). Given that Obama outraised Clinton by $60 million during the primaries and is still only barely keeping pace with McCain and the RNC's combined intake--not to mention the fact that he consistently out-organized her and is now investing "more massively than any campaign in the history of American politics on the ground game"--it's impossible to conclude, all things considered, that Clinton would be outperforming Obama in an Electoral College match-up with McCain. Especially when you factor in her near-50-percent disapproval ratings and account for all the animus she inspires on the right--which the GOP would deftly use to fuel its GOTV and fundraising efforts and rally its otherwise dispirited base. And there's no reason to believe that Clinton's conflicted, rudderless, ineffectual campaign--the real reason she lost--would suddenly, magically whip itself into working order in time for the fall.

Still, it's understandable that some Dems are speculating about what might have been. In fact, the buzz has grown so loud in recent days (hours?) that it seems to have spilled over into--you guessed it--the veepstakes feeding frenzy. According to master CW-monger Mark Halperin, "EVERYONE in the political class is [now] talking about the possibility of Obama shocking the world and picking Hillary Clinton as his running mate." For what it's worth, the "dream team" idea makes more sense today than it ever has. Obama solidifies his support among former Clintonistas, excites the Democratic base and boosts his chances in Ohio and Florida. Clinton doesn't do what the naysayers feared she would do--that is, unite the Republican Party (it's already pretty united, at least against Obama) or fill McCain's coffers (he's on the verge of forsaking private funds)--but she does provoke, in Nate Silver's words, "overzealous attempts to whip the Republican base into a frenzy" that will inevitably be "counteracted with outrage from significant numbers of older and working-class women." It could work. Unfortunately, as Halperin notes, there's only one thing that "speculation of a Clinton veep choice is based on" at this point:

"Nothing."
 

In which we amend, update, augment and/or elaborate on recent Stumper items.

II. Re: The McCain Veepwatch, Vols. 6 and 7: Tom Ridge and Joe Lieberman (Aug. 14, 2008)
Yesterday, we analyzed whether McCain would (or could) pick a pro-choice pol as his running mate--a response to McCain reversing his earlier position (that such a partnership would be "difficult") in an interview Wednesday with the Weekly Standard. "I don't think that that would necessarily rule Tom Ridge out," he said. Like other observers, we concluded that this shift represented a trial balloon of sorts--a way "test the waters" and "see how such a move would be received by the base voters who have long been skeptical about his conservative bona fides." Well, the balloon may have burst. As Politico's Jonathan Martin reports,

Top social conservative leaders in key battleground states are urging John McCain not to pick a running mate who supports abortion rights, warning of dire consequences from a Republican base already unenthused about their nominee... For those who have been anxiously awaiting McCain's pick as a signal of his ideological intentions, there was deep concern that their worst fears about the Arizona senator may be realized. "It absolutely floored me," said Phil Burress, head of the Ohio-based Citizens for Community Values. ‘It would doom him in Ohio." "That choice will end his bid for the presidency and spell defeat for other Republican candidates," Burress wrote in the message... Now, Burress said, ‘he's not even sure [Christian conservatives] would vote for him let alone work for him if he picked a pro-abortion running mate."

[Meanwhile,] James Muffett, head of Michigan's Citizens for Traditional Values, met with McCain along with a handful of other Michigan-based social conservatives Wednesday night. Muffett said McCain didn't offer any promises on the issue, but rather reiterated his anti-abortion record and assured them that he was aware of how critical the base was to the electoral success of Republican presidents dating back to Ronald Reagan. ... "If he does that, it makes our job 100 times harder. It would dampen enthusiasm at a time when evangelicals are looking for ways to gin up enthusiasm." McCain, Muffett said, got that message in their meeting. "Some people in the movement say it would be the kiss of death. He heard that in the room last night."

III. Re: "Running Mate Identities Revealed... in the Convention Schedules?" (Aug. 13, 2008) 
On Wednesday, we indulged in a round of rank speculation about what the Democratic National Convention's schedule of speakers reveals about Obama's choice of running mate. Among the rumors: with the veep set to speak Wednesday, Hillary Clinton's Tuesday time slot indicates that she's not the pick (probably true); that Mark Warner's selection as Tuesday's keynote speakers means that fellow Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine won't get the gig either (maybe not true); and that Wednesday's national-security theme rules out neophytes like Kathleen Sebelius, who plans to speak Tuesday, and Kaine (almost definitely not true). With all the hype swirling around, though, it's worth noting, as the Atlantic's Marc Ambinder did yesterday, that "the convention schedulers and Obama's VP team are entirely separate and segregated"--meaning that it's possible to read too much into this stuff. Still, it's interesting that both Joe Biden and Evan Bayh--two of Obama's rumored "Final Four," along with Sebelius and Kaine--are now speaking on Wednesday (i.e., national security / veep night). Also getting our attention: reports (again, via Ambinder) that Obama is planning an event for next Thursday, on the eve of the convention, in Richmond, Va. Which just so happens to be the hometown of Tim Kaine. Who just so happens to be the only shortlister yet to receive a speaking slot at the convention. Anyone else feeling dizzy?
 

Here's NEWSWEEK's Jonathan Alter on the 'Greek Drama' Hillary Clinton is planning for Denver--and why the Clinton-Obama rivalry will go on.

For 40 years, conventions have just been big TV shows that coronate nominees, and this year's festivities aren't going to be any different. But the extraordinary closeness of the Democratic contest and recent comments by Hillary and Bill Clinton have the media in a tizzy. Could we see a donnybrook in Denver after all?

A week ago, Hillary spoke at a closed-door fund-raiser in California. When video of the event eventually surfaced (natch), it made news. Hillary said there would be no attempt to get the nomination ("That is not going to happen") but she talked vaguely of a "strategy" for Denver and left the door wide open for what would be an extremely close roll-call vote on the third night of the convention. "I'm trying to avoid people walking away unhappy," Clinton said, comparing the process to a "Greek drama" that must be allowed to play out: "Because I know from just what I'm hearing, that there's incredible pent-up desire, and I think that people want to feel like, 'OK, it's a catharsis, we're here, we did it and then everybody get behind Senator Obama.' That is what most people believe is the best way to go."

Most Hillary supporters, perhaps, but not "most people" at the convention. There, Barack Obama has the edge, however narrow, and his supporters are a bit nervous about the "catharsis" getting out of hand. They don't worry that their man could actually lose the nomination but that the carefully scripted ad for their candidate (i.e., the convention) might be marred by, well, genuine human feelings.

Then we have the visibly annoyed former president, touring Africa for his foundation. When Kate Snow of ABC News asked him if Obama was ready to be president, the look on his face spoke volumes about how the once quick-to-forgive Clinton--the man who says Nelson Mandela taught him to resent no man--is now incapable of hiding his bitterness at being remembered by history as the ham in a Bush sandwich. "You could argue that no one's ready to be president," Bill Clinton said.

Who could not hear the groaning at the Michigan Avenue headquarters of the Obama for President campaign, carried by Chicago's wind to all corners of Obama Nation? Within minutes, the questions came in a torrent. Was Bill dissing Barack, or just feeling irritable after all that travel? Does he actually want Obama to lose so that Hillary can win in 2012? Will he make trouble in Denver?

Then Obama went for the ole blame-the-media tack: "There hasn't been controversy other than what you guys are projecting right now."

Okaaaay. And if you think what Clinton said to Kate Snow was a sufficient endorsement of your candidacy, you're Obambi after all, set up to be rolled repeatedly as president. More likely, both camps knew immediately after the Snow interview that they had repair work to do.

READ THE REST HERE.  
 

Brendan Smialowski / Getty Images

Here's Jake Sherman from NEWSWEEK's D.C. bureau on whether Bill's cash flow will affect Hillary's debt relief. My take: while it would be a nice show of solidarity for Obama supporters to send money Clintonward, I don't think it should be seen as some sort of requirement--especially given that a) much of HRC's dough was spent attacking their candidate, b) it's much harder to raise money for a former contender than a current nominee and c) Bill still has the golden touch (as Jake's reporting amply illustrates). Unless I'm missing something, Hillary could just write a check from their $100 million joint bank account and call it a day, a la Mitt Romney. So I can see why some Dems are inclined to dismiss these kinds of complaints.

Bill Clinton collected $10,085,000 in speeches alone in 2007, a figure that underscores his continued rock-star credentials on the international lecture circuit, according Sen. Hillary Clinton's financial disclosure forms for 2007, which were released Wednesday morning by the Secretary of the Senate.

The Clintons also earned between $11 million and $26 million last year by selling stocks from their personal portfolio, according to the newly released figures. The stock sales appear to be the proceeds from a blind trust that Senator Clinton announced she planned to liquidate during her presidential campaign to avoid potential conflicts of interest.

The new disclosures could have political consequences for the Clintons. By calling more attention to the couple's personal wealth, as well as the former president's enormous earning power, the figures could make it more difficult to persuade Democratic Party donors to help pay off Hillary Clinton's $22.5 million in campaign debts—nearly half of which is owed to the Clintons personally. After Clinton dropped out of the presidential race, Barack Obama agreed to ask his top donors to help his defeated rival pay off her campaign debts. But the plea thus far has not yielded nearly the amounts the Clintons and their supporters had hoped for.

A Clinton spokesperson today said that the senator is not seeking relief for the $13 million she poured into her campaign. The spokesperson pointed to a June conference call, in which the New York Democrat said she considered the loan an "investment" and is not expecting anybody to help pay it back.

According to the new financial disclosure, former president Clinton gave 54 speeches worldwide last year. Many of them were given to corporate giants such as Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, General Electric and Lehman Brothers. He averaged more than $186,000 an appearance. Clinton's most lucrative payday was in the United Kingdom on Aug. 14, 2007; a group called AEG London (which operates sports stadiums and franchises) paid him $425,000 for his services.

The disclosure shows that, even while actively campaigning on behalf of his wife's 2008 presidential bid, the former president kept a hectic international schedule. Among his speaking stops: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, London, South Korea and Canada. The international talks have been the most lucrative for the former president, commanding upward of $250,000 an appearance. Over a three-day period in Norway, Denmark and Sweden in May, Clinton earned $1,485,000. The Power Within, a Canada-based motivational speaking agency, shelled out $955,000 in 2007 to have Clinton appear in Minneapolis, Toronto, Montreal and Niagara on the Lake, Canada.

After leaving the White House, Clinton turned to speaking to help settle about $12 million in legal bills accrued during his time as president. In 2006, he gave 352 speeches (nearly one a day) and earned $10.2 million (much of which the former president has donated to charity.) The number of speeches in 2007 was much lower, but appears to have been on average much more lucrative for the former president.

READ THE REST HERE.