Roadkill Refugee

Obama answers a question about free trade. He gives a thorough answer with confidence about the importance of fairness in free trade deals.

• Kentucky Lt. Gov. endorses Obama.
• Edwards tells Sunday talk show that Hillary has no chance and in the meantime, shouldn’t say or do anything harmful to the likely Democratic nominee, Obama.
• Second McCain lobbyist with ties to Burma’s (Myanmar’s) evil military junta (which is interfering with international relief to civilians by diverting food to unrelated purposes) resigns from McCain campaign. Yesterday it was Doug Goodyear, today it’s Doug Davenport. I’m just trying to picture their job interview with the McCain campaign: “OK, we need someone who is willing to sell an entrenched 72 year old Washington insider with extensive ties to lobbyists as an honest and bold agent of change. Let’s see, you’ve been spending your time trying to make the most morally repugnant dictators in the world more appealing… Perfect - the job is yours!”
• Obama picks up a new superdelegate on Mother’s Day from California.
• Daily Tracking Polls. Rasmussen reports sharp spike in favor of Obama, giving him a 10-point lead, 52-42%. Gallup also shows a widening margin for Obama, 49-44%.

• Ignatius: Obama’s secret sauce is he’s one cool cat under pressure, like JFK or the Rat Pack of the 60s.
• NY Times explores contrarian notion that perhaps Hillary’s negative attacks have helped Obama. Some points are valid, but one that is wrong is “she led him to the working class.” Obama was serving the working class in Chicago for $12K in salary in the late 80s, when he didn’t even know who Hillary was (and she was a corporate lawyer on Wal-Mart’s board). If they mean she inspired him to go bowling in Altoona, I don’t think that’s anything to brag about.
• Lobbyist for Burma’s evil military junta hired by McCain to run GOP convention quickly resigns.
• Mixed but difficult experience for Hillary supporters in WVA shows how many voters want the contest to end.
• Women’s Voices, Women’s Vote once again intentionally confuses voters with mailing over registration deadline issue, this time in West Virginia. This is after assurances it would clean up its act.
• On Meet the Press, Hillaryland’s Terry McAuliffe concedes Hillary can’t catch Obama in the pledged delegate vote. He also says he’d be willing to split the difference in MI & FL to settle the matter. He insists the party will be united once the voting is done. Argues that Hillary’s comments about “hardworking Americans, White Americans” didn’t mean to imply racist stereotypes about African Americans or discount their importance as voters.
• Frank Rich is spot on: the GOP’s campaign so far wrongly assumes the old political tactics of the past apply to 2008. Hillary made the same misjudgment.
• As an unusually competitive House race in Mississippi looms on Tuesday, the GOP is getting very, very nervous about losing a lot of seats in November.
• GOP pundits acknowledge grim prospects for GOP this year, and difficult consequences for Party’s future.
• Rasmussen poll: Democrats now have largest partisan advantage among voters since Rasmussen began tracking for this six years ago.
• Obama and McCain map fall strategies, particularly on key swing states.
• Saturday’s final superdelegate tally: Obama 5, Hillary 0.
• WaPo/The Trail: Hillary’s fixation on low income, under-educated, older women voters has given short shrift to another large group of voters: middle class independent voters. Oregon is full of them and they are in Obama’s camp (as many have been in other states).
• In a surprising twist, many young evangelicals drawn to Democratic Party over Iraq and social justice issues.
• NY Times lengthy biographical piece on Obama’s rise from Chicago’s South Side.
• Maureen Dowd: Hillary drains Obama of his magical powers; he can’t pick her as his VP.

An avowed Obama supporter challenges Bill Clinton’s account of Hillary’s prior health care task force effort. Clearly the voter gets under Bill’s skin. The best line from Bill is “There’s nobody in America that has more credibility [than Hillary].” Really? Are you sure you want to challenge us to a debate on that question?

Signe Wilkinson. United Press Syndicate.

• Obama and McCain seem to already be in agreement on having unmoderated “town hall” style debates.
• Politico: In case you didn’t notice, GOP is getting crushed by historic proportions in races and polls.
• AP joins other media in giving Obama the lead in superdelegates with his fourth pick-up of the day.
• NY Times Sunday edition has this lengthy biographical piece on Obama.
• Chicago Tribune outlines McCain’s strategy against Obama: pretend it’s 1988, he’s Michael Dukakis, and Americans will fall for stupid political smear stunts. Good luck with that.
• Obama nets three new superdelegates, including another switcher from Hillary.
• Hillary 404 error. Your candidacy cannot be found.
• Daily Tracking Polls. Gallup reports a spike for Obama, 49-44%. Rasmussen has Obama leading Hillary 48-43%. As noted yesterday, Rasmussen announced they will soon stop tracking Hillary v. Obama because they believe the nomination race is over. On the McCain v. Obama front, for the fourth straight day, Obama is viewed more favorably than McCain.
• Bob Herbert tears the Clintons a new one.
• McCain insists we should be guided by the unsolicited opinions of terrorists. Therefore, because a Hamas representative praised John F. Kennedy, JFK must have been a Hamas supporter. Good thing for McCain the Hamas representative didn’t also express his fondness for Vicki Iseman, the Arizona Diamondbacks and private jet travel.
• Howard Wolfson defends Hillary’s racially charged comments and believes Hillary’s base of under-educated, low income White women over 65 makes her the stronger candidate.
• John Edwards unapologetically admits to voter fraud by voting twice in NC primary: once for Hillary and once for Obama. (Or maybe he let slip he voted for Obama and doesn’t want to admit it.)
• NY Times notes McCain’s untenable position on Cindy’s finances remaining hidden, given the campaign’s use of her private plane at subsidized low cost, among other things. But the Times does so in a buried side article so small it doesn’t make the online edition. Here’s a prior NYT article on the campaign’s use of her plane, before she confirmed that she wouldn’t release her financial records.
• Boston Globe African American columnist Derrick Jackson unloads on Hillary for her recent remarks about “hardworking Americans, white Americans.”
• House GOP to moms: drop dead.
• Number of acceptable things candidates can say now down to four.
• New LA Times poll shows McCain losing to either Hillary or Obama, and evidence of significant slippage since February, when McCain led the Democrats. And this is before the Democrats have started their general election campaign.
• NY Times joins ABC in declaring Obama has more superdelegates than Hillary.
• Obama now all about McCain.
• See Hillary’s powerpoint presentation to uncommitted House superdelegates: “Winning in the hardworking American, White American districts.”
• WaPo says Black community is increasingly protective of Obama.
• Obama might cover Hillary’s campaign debts.
• Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), an uncommitted superdelegate, says Obama reached “the tipping point” sometime around Midnight Tuesday night.

Bert always struck me as a Hillary guy.  (Hat tip: Eric).

“Obama Descending the Staircase,” Oil on Canvas, Caravaggio, 1609. (Doug Mills, NY Times).

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• TMI. Sen. Lieberman says he “personally checked” McCain’s bearings this morning and he hasn’t lost any of them. I really didn’t need to know that.
• Lanny Davis, whining about CNN’s heat, gets out of the kitchen.
• Obama takes lead in superdelegates (ABC News). Rep. Don Payne (D-NJ) switches support from Hillary to Obama. Rep. Fazio (D-OR) endorses Obama. Government employees union, the AFGE, endorses Obama and its head, a super delegate, personally endorses Obama. Rep. Carney of PA endorses Hillary. Today’s tally so far: Obama 3, Hillary 0*. (Hillary is zero because the loss of Payne offsets the gain of Carney). UPDATE: He’s now +9 for the day.
• California Voters’ Remorse. If California could revote their primary, they’d vote for Obama by 6. That’s a 16-point swing since the Super Tuesday election. (Maybe Obama should agree to a MI & FL revote after all).
• Peggy Noonan on Hillary’s dysfunctional and destructive grip on the Democratic Party.
• Final official margin of victory for Hillary in Ohio shrunk to 8.8% following count of provisional ballots.
• Daily Tracking Polls. Rasmussen Shocker: Pollster announces that Democratic contest is over - Obama won. It will stop tracking the Democratic nomination contest. Today’s poll shows steady lead by Obama over McCain and Obama’s lead over Hillary spiking up to 50-42%. Interesting move by Rasmussen - I may do the same. Looks like Obama’s victory and victory speech is showing up in the polls now and is resulting in a healthy bounce. Gallup has a more modest uptick for Obama, 48-46%.
• John Edwards, on the Today Show this morning, continues to refuse to endorse, but does admit that Obama has “the best chance of beating John McCain.”
• WaPo Front Pager: McCain pushed a land deal that benefited his former staff and his financial contributors.
• The Economist says Obama deserves to be the Democratic nominee.
• Bush removes Republican FEC Commissioner who had challenged McCain’s compliance with FEC law. Critics charge Bush is trying to help McCain by “switching the judge”. Meanwhile, Senator McConnell assists McCain on the Senate floor in a game of tag-team GOP support.
• Politico: GOP voters still dissing McCain.
• Final Indiana primary election victory margin by Hillary: 14,487 votes - 1%. A margin so small it’s pretty likely Limbaugh’s Operation Chaos made the difference.
• Cindy McCain says she will never release her finances because they’re “not relevant.” John McCain has been using her private jet on the campaign, living in the eight houses her money bought and otherwise benefited from her fortune, but it’s “not relevant.”
• Eugene Robinson of WaPo/MSNBC says Hillary played ugly racial politics yesterday and needs to drop out sooner rather than later.
• NY Times Editorial sharply criticizes Hillary for racial politics, and all but “unendorses” her.
• EJ Dionne: Last weeks Democratic victory in the Louisiana House race was in a district that had been held by GOP since 1974, and which Bush won overwhelmingly, and where GOP tried to “nationalize” the race as a referendum on Obama and Pelosi. Dionne sees it as a sign of doom for old GOP campaign tactics and momentum for the Democrats on the issues.
• WaPo’s Balz: Don’t expect Hillary to drop out before superdelegates decide.
• Even Charles Krauthammer says its game over for Hillary.
• Hillary Not Fully Vetted. RNC admits it has a 1,200 page dossier of negative oppo research on Hillary including much that has never been disclosed before.
• Every Man For Himself. Three dozen GOP Congressmen buck GOP leadership and Bush Administration in supporting Dem home foreclosure relief bill.
• Obama takes “victory lap” in quest for Super Delegates.
• What is the Clintons “end game.“
• Obama reaches out to superdelegates from South Carolina that previously endorsed Edwards.

Obama said he’d be far less restrained against his Republican opponent than he has been in the Democratic nomination process. This excerpt from an interview on CNN today gives a taste, in which Obama responds to a cheap shot from McCain about Hamas.

Later in the same interview, Obama addressed America’s special relationship with Israel.

As the undeclared Superdelegates evaluate whether they should come out now or later, one thing they are weighing is whether the contest needs to finish soon to avoid further damage to the presumptive nominee, Obama. Well, Hillary seems to be doing her best to push them to come out sooner with her divisive racial comments, below. She claims that Obama has a problem attracting white voters (which is factually false). She describes her base as “hardworking Americans, White Americans” which is at best bizarre and at worst an ugly dogwhistle to racist stereotypes of African Americans. The old Al Gore refrain of “It’s time for [her] to go” comes to mind…