Democrats

Barack Obama addressed a rally at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, one week before that state's Democratic primary.

It was a college crowd: young women with Kool Aid-dyed hair, mop-topped men in novelty bow-ties, kids wearing t-shirts that advertised ironic slogans ("Super Jew!") and summer holidays to Angkor Wat -- all grooving to "Big Yellow Taxi." But it was also more. A scan of the seats revealed lots of normal people as well, including a robust and enthusiastic contingent of African-Americans, thrilled to be in an Obama coalition, and by all evidence grooving to the Joni Mitchell just as to the Motown.

The coalition looked broad and deep. It did not, however, look like America, or even North Carolina. MORE

While his Democratic rivals continued their battle, John McCain spent last week on a tour of America's "forgotten places" - most of them Democratic strongholds.

Was McCain's tour, which took him to Selma and Appalachia, the Ninth Ward of New Orleans and Youngstown, Ohio, a serious play for constituencies (the working poor, black and white alike) that go reliably for Democrats? Was it a cynical attempt to woo white suburbanites by burnishing his image as a different kind of conservative? Or was it just another play for free publicity - like his "biography tour" earlier in April - by a campaign that's short on funds and looking for ways to get the media to stop obsessing over Obama-Hillary long enough to give their candidate some airtime?

Hillary Clinton wins the Pennsylvania primary with 55% of the vote.

Does Hillary Clinton represent the future of the Democratic party? At first glance, the idea seems laughable. As Ruy Teixeira has observed, the white working class - the core of Clinton's support in Pennsylvania and in the Democratic electorate writ large - is shrinking as a share of the U.S. population, while the mass upper middle class, a crucially important of Obama's base (and one that enjoys outsized cultural and political influence), is expanding at a rapid clip. And though Clinton has won a large share of the growing Latino vote, it's possible - as a number of Obama partisans have suggested - that this could be a function of some combination of '90s nostalgia and a reluctance on the part of new immigrants and second-generation Americans to embrace a politics of hope and change, both effects that will presumably erode over time.

Barack Obama's remarks concerning the supposed bitterness of working-class Pennsylvanians have caused considerable controversy.

Was Barack Obama wrong to suggest that a sense of bitterness and disappointment has driven working-class voters to "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them"? Note that Obama was making a number of discrete, subtle points. First, he was offering an implicit critique of the Clinton Administration, which made promises that were left unfulfilled. Second, he was trying to offer a rationale for holding views that his audience of affluent liberals might find distasteful. And third, he was making the eminently defensible and almost banal observation that people who are disappointed by high politics will often turn to primary loyalties -- the traditional, familiar truths of faith and family that endure when all else changes.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton woo superdelegates and vie for the Democratic nomination -- but at what cost to the party?

As if further proof were needed, this front-page piece on superdelegates in Sunday's New York Times confirms what everyone already knows: the Democratic primary fight is damaging the party. What's irksome about the piece (and the accompanying video) is not the point it makes, but the superdelegates themselves -- to be specific, the uncommitted superdelegates, who are forever alternating between pious concern about the damage inflicted on their party and boundless self-regard as they patiently explain their decision to "keep their powder dry" and withhold until the Democratic convention in August their Solomonic decision on which candidate to support.

Barack Obama wins handily in Mississippi.

The most important number for Hillary Clinton coming out of last night's defeat in Mississippi isn't twenty-three (Barack Obama's margin of victory, in percentage points) or five (the number of delegates he'll add to his almost certainly insurmountable pledged-delegate lead), but 98,589 -- his margin in the popular vote, which will be tacked on to his pre-existing edge of roughly 646,000. For Clinton to have any chance at persuading the Democratic superdelegates to put her over the top at the convention, this is the lead she needs to reduce or wipe away. MORE

Oregon's junior senator, Republican Gordon Smith, faces an impressive -- and unusual -- Democratic challenger.

Every election cycle seems to bring one or two candidates who don't rise to national prominence, but whose curious biography, bizarre sense of humor, or plucky underdog perseverance in the face of long odds makes you root for them anyway. A few years ago, Blair Hull was my guy: professional Vegas card-counter turned math whiz who made a fortune in the market and decided to run for Illinois's open Senate seat (as it happened, against a guy named Barack Obama). MORE

Hillary Clinton defeated Barack Obama in the Texas and Ohio primaries — reopening the race, and inviting new speculation over the 2008 Democratic ticket.

Consider the unheralded virtues of an Obama-Clinton ticket. First, politics. Both durable, distinct factions of the Democratic party — united, and working at full throttle. McCain's national-security edge — blunted overnight. Obama's domestic-policy edge — sharpened instantly. Ohio, Michigan, Florida, New Mexico — suddenly, much less a worry for Democrats. MORE

Tonight's primaries in Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island, and Vermont will settle nothing. It's already decided.

Barack Obama's still-likely nomination owes a debt to John Rawls: the inequalities built into the Democratic delegate selection system benefit the little states and history's most aggrieved figure -- the liberal activist. Let's say Hillary Clinton romps to victory in Ohio and Texas and Rhode Island. Tens of thousands of extra voters. At most, a few extra delegates. But a win is a win, right? Twenty-four ... okay, forty-eight hours later, when the afterglow has faded and the Hill raisers are on vacation, Clinton delegate guru Harold Ickes will sit down at his desk, scratch his chest through the open folds of his shirt, and have the same problem he has right now: Barack Obama's earned delegate lead is virtually insurmountable.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama square off in what is very likely to be their last debate.

For those of us who've watched about seventeen million Democratic primary debates since the campaign kicked off, last night's debate was profoundly unedifying. Wrangling over the question of an individual mandate to purchase health insurance does not, for example, become more interesting on repeat viewing. Worse, a large number of left-of-center experts believe that this disagreement isn't actually important, and has only come to appear significant because it's been talked about so much. To admirers of Bill Clinton's record on trade policy, it was somewhat painful to watch Barack Obama assail it followed by Hillary trying to insist that she'd never said anything positive about NAFTA rather than defending her husband's eminently defensible record (and her own history of public statements) on the merits.

Perhaps the debate's most noteworthy moment was when Tim Russert managed to remind us all once again why he's one of the most pernicious forces working in journalism today, seeking to link Obama to Louis Farrakhan's record of anti-Semitic statetements. Obama, of course, reiterated the fact that he harbored no such sentiments and had condemned Farrakhan on many occasions. Clinton responded with a bizarre salvo that sums up much of what's gone wrong with her campaign -- haranguing Obama for "denouncing" Farrakhan rather than "rejecting" his support.

As a result, the Democrats appear set to nominate a candidate with both a record and a platform that are a good deal more liberal than what the party's offered in recent years without him ever having faced sustained criticism from the right. For a liberal, freedom from the timidity that's reigned in the Democratic Party ever since 1994 is an exciting prospect, but a moment's thought of how untested the new, more self-confident liberalism actually is is also a bit frightening.

Hillary Clinton campaign struggles to recapture her once-formidable lead over Barack Obama.

Barack Obama may well be ready to destroy the deepest, most fundamental law of the political universe: that somewhere, somehow, the Clintons will find a way to win.

How can Hillary Clinton possibly pull this off? The mathematics are there. If two-thirds of the remaining superdelegates -- what her campaign cleverly and class-consciously insists on calling the “automatic” delegates -- break her way, then she will win.  The history is there, and this race has been full of black-swan moments.

The remaining 16 states and 816-odd pledged delegates will probably cut in her favor. Forget these static factors: for the first time, the elite political class is finally beginning to question -- or at least, to be aware of -- some of the irritating messianism of Barack Obama. 

The Clinton campaign calls for seating Democratic delegates from Florida and Michigan.

Hillary Clinton is going to have a comeback. A respectable showing in Wisconsin will propel Clinton forward in Ohio and Texas, where she enjoys deep reservoirs of support and demographic terrains that play to her strengths. So why, ask her Democratic critics, is her campaign so aggressively pushing the idea of seating delegates from Michigan and Florida? Keep in mind that all candidates agreed not to contest these elections as a nod to the first-in-the-nation caucus and primary states, and that there was an understanding that delegates selected in these uncontested primaries would not be seated. To many, this smacks of changing the rules in the middle of the game. Julian Bond, ostensibly neutral in the Democratic race, has argued that failing to seat the delegates would represent an effort to deny minority voters their basic rights -- an entirely novel charge that wasn't raised earlier on, before Obama established a small but significant lead. Obama supporters are horrified. 

Senator Clinton writes her own campaign a check for $5 million.

Politics has been good to the Clinton family. It has certainly been good for the Clinton family's wallets. Had Hillary and Bill Clinton never entered long, grueling careers in public life, it's easy to imagine that they would have become quite wealthy. But would they have somewhere between $10 and $50 million? And would they have nearly as many generous friends, willing to open their hearts and their homes and their wallets at a moment's notice? So when Senator Clinton loans her own campaign a tidy sum, perhaps it is best understood not as an act of desperation -- there is every reason to believe she will win the Democratic nomination -- but rather as a sound investment. While $5 million is an extraordinary sum for mere mortals, a Clinton restoration all but guarantees that it will be repaid comfortably and quickly, especially since her campaign was never really in dire financial straits. Don't cry for me, Chappaqua.

How John Edwards remade the Democrats

So who will John Edwards endorse? That's the question on the minds of Democrats everywhere now that the former senator and vice presidential candidate has bowed out of the race. MORE