The Filter: March 27, 2008

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

DOUBLE NEGATIVE
(David Greenberg, New Republic)
The issue of negative campaigning and its proper bounds is now dominating the Democratic campaign. In recent weeks, the neck-and-neck race has degenerated into a miasma of trivial flaps... Each side, angling for any edge, gins up pseudo-controversies. In response, each feigns indignation, claiming the other is hitting below the belt. These skirmishes have yielded no discernible advantage. But the bickering has, troublingly, validated a piece of conventional wisdom among a liberal commentariat that was already tilting heavily toward Obama: that Clinton is "ruthless," "vicious," even "Nixonian"--an unscrupulous appendage of her husband's "machine" (a word seldom used about the far better oiled Obama apparatus). As Obama's guru David Axelrod would have it, "They are literally trying to do anything to win this nomination." You hear it said everywhere, from blogs to high-toned op-ed pages. But this virulent meme is untrue, and--quite apart from the current contest--anyone who cares about liberalism and its future should be worried by its spread.

GOP LOOKS TO 'MCCAIN DEMOCRATS'
(David Paul Kuhn, Politico)
According to data provided by the Gallup Organization at Politico’s request, in a hypothetical contest between McCain and Obama, McCain wins 17 percent of Democrats and those leaning Democratic, while Obama wins 10 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaners.  In a potential contest with Clinton, McCain wins 14 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaners while Clinton wins 8 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaners.  By way of comparison, exit polls in 2004 reported that George W. Bush won 11 percent of Democrats and John F. Kerry won 6 percent of Republicans... McCain’s potential to win more crossover votes than either of the Democrats, a finding that also surfaces in surveys conducted by Fox News/Opinion Dynamics and in private GOP polls, could upend the political calculus for the November general election.  Equally important, Gallup finds that McCain wins independents against either Democrat—48 to 23 percent against Clinton, and 40 to 31 percent against Obama.

HILLARY'S LAST HOPE
(Lawrence Lindsey, Wall Street Journal)
Let the early primary votes stand, and select delegates according to the outcome. On a statistical basis, this is clearly the right result for Florida. The easiest solution for Michigan is to simply award the 45% of the vote uncommitted or for another candidate to Mr. Obama. This appears to be the intent of those voters, as well as the likely result of a rematch. It would reduce Mr. Obama's current edge in pledged delegates to 115 from 167. It would also reduce the adjusted popular-vote margin, that converts caucus votes to primary votes, to an edge for Mr. Obama of 466,000. If Mrs. Clinton wins Pennsylvania by the margin polls now suggest, the two candidates would be essentially tied in popular votes, with an Obama edge in delegates of about 80. That would leave the remaining primaries and the superdelegates to decide the outcome of an essentially tied race. 

HILLARY'S FLIGHT OF FANCY
(Ron Fournier, Associated Press)
To be sure, Clinton is not the first American to pad a resume. She's not even the only candidate for president to do so. Obama has exaggerated his role in reaching a compromise in the Senate on immigration as well as his authorship of a bill to address the housing crisis. Voters need to weigh such distortions when they consider whether the freshman senator from Illinois truly is a new breed of politician. What makes Clinton's situation unique — and the Bosnia embellishments so damaging — is the fact that the New York senator has built her candidacy on the illusion of experience. Any attack on her credentials is a potential Achilles heel. As first lady, she did not attend National Security Council meetings, did not receive the presidential daily briefing on terrorism and other threats and did not have a top level security clearance. Her foreign trips were glorified goodwill tours, a collection of photo opportunities and sightseeing trips. Still, Clinton was an exceptionally active first lady who knows more than most about what it takes to be president. So it must drive her nuts when Obama and his allies dismiss her role. Their condescension must make it harder for Clinton to accept the fact that hers was a largely ceremonial job, especially after her ill-fated attempt to overhaul the nation's health care system. And so the best explanation for her Bosnia embellishment may be this simple, and this human: She's overcompensating.

OBAMA FACES QUESTIONS ABOUT HIS RELIGION
(John McCormick and Manya A. Brachear, Chicago Tribune)
Before Sen. Barack Obama took the stage here Wednesday, the crowd was led in prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance. And as the Illinois Democrat ended his speech, he offered a "God bless America." As Obama returned to the campaign trail after a brief respite, news and questions about his controversial former Chicago pastor continued to circulate, while the activities before his appearance seemed to try to reinforce that he is a Christian and a patriot. An audience in Indiana had also been led in prayer on the Saturday after the flap over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. first spread on the Internet. But such overt religious showings have been relatively rare during the 13 months Obama has campaigned for the presidency.

PREDICT THE RACE FOR YOURSELF
(Jay Cost, RealClear Politics)
We have a large number of unknown factors. For many of them, we have very little idea what values they will ultimately take. What we do know is that small changes in several of them could induce large changes in the vote count. This makes it extremely difficult to be as precise as many commentators have been. We need to be wary of all the uncertainty we face here. It is for this reason that I offer for public consumption the following Excel spreadsheet. It is set up to enable you to plug turnout and vote margins in, and see what effect the changes will have on the different vote counts. It seems to me that, rather than have Politico, the Times, or the Post outline which outcomes are possible, all of us should just take a look for ourselves. So, predict the Democratic race for yourself.

CLINTON USES HISTORY AS PENNSYLVANIA GUIDE
(Nick Timiraos, Wall Street Journal)
In Pennsylvania, it's still the economy, stupid, or so Hillary Clinton hopes. Sen. Clinton, looking for a big win in the April 22 primary, is adopting a battle plan reminiscent of the one James Carville and Paul Begala used to boost underdog Democrat Harris Wofford into the Senate in 1991 and adapted a year later to help propel Bill Clinton to the presidency. Their strategy: Focus on health care and the economy.

PENNSYLVANIA IS FOR GLOBALIZATION OPTIMISTS
(David Ignatius, Washington Post)
The next round in the Democratic Party's presidential slugfest will be fought April 22 in Pennsylvania's "rust belt," in places like this old manufacturing city on the Lehigh River. And given the mounting economic worries here and across the country, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will be talking about the future more as a threat than as an opportunity. But such radical pessimism about the U.S. economy is a mistake, at least over the long run -- and there's no state in the country that proves the optimists' case about America better than Pennsylvania. Obama and Clinton have been taking turns trashing the North American Free Trade Agreement, a symbol of the forces of globalization that have transformed Pennsylvania's economy. They would be wiser if they embraced the economic policies of another politician named Clinton, who spoke in his 1996 re-election campaign about "building a bridge to the 21st century."

PHILA. DEMOCRATS MIGHT NOT ENDORSE CLINTON OR OBAMA
(Marcia Gelbert, Philadelphia Inquirer)
Reflecting the divisiveness nationwide in the Democratic race for president, many Philadelphia ward leaders are disinterested in formally backing either Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama for fear of further splintering the city's Democratic Party. "What would an endorsement do but set people against each other?" asked City Controller Alan Butkovitz, whose 54th Ward includes Oxford Circle.

FINDING POLITICAL NEWS ONLINE, THE YOUNG PASS IT ON
(Brian Stelter, New York Times)
It is not news that young politically minded viewers are turning to alternative sources like YouTube, Facebook and late-night comedy shows like “The Daily Show.” But that is only the beginning of how they process information. According to interviews and recent surveys, younger voters tend to be not just consumers of news and current events but conduits as well — sending out e-mailed links and videos to friends and their social networks. And in turn, they rely on friends and online connections for news to come to them. In essence, they are replacing the professional filter — reading The Washington Post, clicking on CNN.com — with a social one.