Link Banana

Slate’s Troy Patterson has a “snarky” review of Hillary Clinton’s town hall meeting which she held on the Hallmark Channel last evening. I didn’t learn much from it, but I did enjoy reading it.

The event’s home base was a New York City studio decorated in two or three tints—muted blue, waiting-room blue, soporific blue—meant to set off the candidate’s insistent red jacket. With the exception of a video screen showing a map of the lower 48—the Super Tuesday states pulsed greenly, as if the sites of Ebola outbreaks—the set was as soothing as Ovaltine. The chaperone was Carole Simpson, late of ABC News, who adopted a Mr. Rogers tone as she introduced questions from live crowds gathered at rallies across the republic: “OK, are you ready to go to the Volunteer State?” “We’re going pretty far now! We’re going far away … to Boise, Idaho!” “Doncha just love hopscotching across America? Guess where we’re going next?!”

At Slate, Jeff Greenfield takes an interesting look at why politician don’t speak frankly about politics in advertising, and what it would be like if they did. His ad for John Edwards would have been interesting:

I’m John Edwards. Maybe you’ve noticed there’s something different about me. Of course, I’m talking about geography.

Here’s an unavoidable political fact: Since the death of Franklin Roosevelt, the only Democratic presidential candidates who have won a clear plurality of popular votes have come from the South or the border states—the Red States. Our only victors have come from Georgia and Arkansas (and Tennessee, if you count the victory they stole).

All of us—Sen. Obama, Sen. Clinton, and myself—will fight for health care, a fairer tax system, a chance for those who haven’t gotten a chance to live out the American promise. But if we don’t choose a candidate who can compete everywhere, we will never get the chance to do any of these things. Choose me … or lose.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism has news that’s galling and/or obvious. Bill Clinton got more media coverage last week than any Republican candidate or John Edwards.

Obama edged Hillary Clinton by the narrowest of margins. But her surrogate and husband—whose aggressive attacks on Obama and increasingly conspicuous role have been manna for political pundits—was the third-most prominent newsmaker in the race for President last week, January 21 through 27. That period began two days after the Nevada caucuses and ended the day after the Democrats’ South Carolina primary.

(via The Page)

There’s little doubt that the Democratic fight has gotten ugly over the last few weeks. Slate’s John Dickerson has some advice that could probably help Mr. Obama a great deal.

Obama could change the tone by talking about policy ideas, but his biggest, boldest idea is that he’s going to change the tone of the debate. So, whatever alchemy he was going to employ when he became president to solve Washington’s most intractable problems, he should probably employ now to help himself. I’m not setting the bar too high for him. This is the bar he has set for himself.

So, how does Obama do this? As the paradigm-shifter, only he knows. But the answer doesn’t lie in a sharp comment to a reporter or some perfect rejoinder at the next debate, on Jan. 31. He needs a media moment to wrap his response to all of the Clinton claims about him (particularly the fair and reasonable ones) into his bigger campaign themes.

For a similar piece that’s more angry — or honest if you prefer — about the Clintons, try Bob Herbert’s editorial from this morning.

Slate’s John Dickerson always seems to offer the earliest coherent analysis to arrive in my feed reader after a presidential nominating contest. And though this is probably in part because I don’t like political sites that are overtly partisan (read: all of them), I can’t deny that he does a great job. On South Carolina:

Since 1980, every Republican presidential nominee has won South Carolina. This is the kind of rule Republicans would love to embrace in this topsy-turvy season to just to stop the motion sickness. But it’s too soon to call McCain the front-runner. His South Carolina victory makes the picture only a little clearer heading into Florida, where Rudy Giuliani has been camped out so long in advance of the primary on Jan. 29, he’s likely to greet his rivals wearing Sansabelt pants and a Tommy Bahama shirt. So: McCain is now battling Mitt Romney for the nomination, but Huckabee and Giuliani remain available to confuse everything. […]

McCain now looks like the GOP front-runner because his victories have come in the hard-fought contests in New Hampshire and South Carolina, but he can’t claim that title when it comes to delegate counts. Mitt Romney has more delegates. This probably feels like a mere technicality for McCain, and each time Romney asserts his numerical lead—which he’s likely to do every other sentence for the next few weeks—it will no doubt produce a string of expletives from the Straight Talk Express.

He also has posted a quite respectable summary of the Democrats’ Nevada result.

The Economist’s Charlemagne (Europe) column provides an interesting and useful summary of how the America’s election madness is seen on the continent.

VOTERS of America, well done: you are less racist (or sexist) than Europeans had feared. Remember, though, that you are rather naive: please try to pick a competent president this time. This dismissive summary, combining condescension with distrust, captures all too many European reactions to the duel between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination in this year’s presidential election (and, given the gulf between most Europeans and the Republicans, this is the contest to be Europe’s preferred candidate as well—although a few Europeans retain a soft spot for John McCain).

Tonight, Mitt Romney won the Michigan primary. Slate’s John Dickerson does a great job explaining how. He also explains that this makes the Republican race even more wide open than it was:

So we’re back to square one in the Republican Party. Mitt Romney beat John McCain handily in Michigan, which means there have now been three major GOP contests and three different comeback winners. At this rate, Thompson will win South Carolina and Giuliani Florida. The GOP primary is starting to look like a Pee Wee soccer tournament: Everyone gets a trophy!

Also, in the completely irrelevant Democratic race, Hillary Clinton valliently fought off “Uncommitted,” her chief opponent.

By now, most probably know that Hillary Clinton won the New Hampshire Democratic primary even though the polling leading up to the day was heavily in Barack Obama’s favor. In a New York Times Op-Ed, Pew’s Andrew Kohut gives a useful overview of the facts an interesting suggestion as to the cause:

Poorer, less well-educated white people refuse surveys more often than affluent, better-educated whites. Polls generally adjust their samples for this tendency. But here’s the problem: these whites who do not respond to surveys tend to have more unfavorable views of blacks than respondents who do the interviews.

Salon’s political reporters have done a great job giving a feeling for what really went on in Democratic caucuses yesterday in Iowa — Republican caucuses there are much simpler. The chaos, and complicated calculations, make one wonder why the Democrats still do it this way:

By the end of the night, what was a solid Edwards precinct in 2004 had nearly sent half its delegates to Obama. But caucus math made the outcome a de facto tie between the two candidates. Though Obama had support from 72 people, and Edwards only 49, they each wound up with two delegates. Clinton, stuck on 40 people, was left with one delegate. And Richardson slid into viability without any room to spare, winding up with 28 people and one delegate — thanks entirely to support from people who had come in the door supporting Biden. The two had been dueling for a fourth-place finish statewide when the evening’s voting started.

Three big takeaways:

• Among Democrats: Obama took first, followed by Edwards, then Clinton
• Among Republicans: Huckabee, followed by Romney, then Thompson and McCain
• Dem. Senators Biden and Dodd have both dropped out of the race