Daily Tidbits: April 25, 2008

• Consumer confidence falls to a 26-year low.  (Flag pins!)
• Time for Dems to Fold Tent. Cheney will campaign for McCain in NC on Monday. Once McCain rolls out someone with the immense good will and popularity of Cheney, there will be no stopping McCain.
• Historic Voter Turnout. Record setting turnout for both parties, but Dems have a 50% advantage.
• Hillary’s chief strategist Geoff Garin whines in WaPo about how “unfair” MSM is to Hillary — yet another effort to work the refs.
• Major Hillary fund raiser (”Hillraiser”) defects from Hillary’s campaign to join Obama’s campaign.
• Obama and DNC set up joint fund raising vehicle, like McCain and RNC.
• Plouffe, Obama’s low-key campaign manager, is not too worried about racial polarization.
• LA Times: GOP is aggressively targeting Obama, seizing advantage of the opportunity to tag team with Hillary, to the dismay of Democratic party strategists.
• Peggy Noonan: Bush has lost America, that’s why conservatives are so nostalgic for Reagan. Hillary is not Obama’s problem. Obama has his own work to to do as he shifts to “Act II” of his story in which he must help regular folks too busy to follow politics understand that he understands why they have deep pride in their country.
• Elizabeth Drew cuts through the Hillary hype and says among the super delegates, it’s all over – Obama has it in the bag.
• Daily Tracking Polls. Rasmussen shows Obama’s uptick yesterday remains unchanged, post-PA primary, with Obama leading 49-42%. But Gallup shows the race tightening, with Obama’s lead shrinking to one point, 48-47%.
• Obama campaign’s leaked election forecast memo dated Feb 6th reveals he always anticipated losing PA, but for the first time, he over-estimated his performance. He thought he would lose by 5 points, but lost by 9. Prior to this, he has consistently overperformed by winning Maine and having much higher victory margins in the Potomac Primary, among other contests. However, losing by a slightly higher margin amounts to a difference of only a few delegates – hardly the significance portrayed in much of the MSM.
• Obama to launch massive 50-state voter registration drive.
• MSM relishes new counter-narrative against Obama. It’s liberating and refreshing!
• WaPo looks at McCain’s flip-flop on Bush’s tax cuts.
• Rep. James Clyburn, House Majority Whip, says he believes Hillary knows she can’t win the nomination, and is trying to destroy Obama’s candidacy in the 2008 general election so that she has a clear field for herself in 2012. This strategy has been acknowledged by several pundits, like Maureen Dowd, Chris Matthews, Jonathan Alter and Howard Fineman, but generally ignored in favor of coverage of the horse race. It’s an unprecedented strategy in modern electoral history and warrants far more analysis, investigation and coverage.
• Clinton under-reported campaign’s debt in FEC filing. She failed to include her $5M loan to the campaign, as required. She had said she had $9M in cash and $10M in debt at the end of March, but in fact had $9M in cash and $15M in debt.
• Indy Star poll has Obama leading Hillary 41-38%, and Obama leading McCain in a very red state.
• Retiring Senator Domenici (R-NM) gets a “letter of qualified admonition,” suitable for framing (aka, a wrist slap), from Senate ethics committee for his role in trying to get US Attorney fired for partisan political reasons.
• McCain goes out on a political limb and actually criticizes Bush’s handling of Katrina. In awe of such courage, MSM bows before McCain’s utter maverickitude.
• Obama is still following his game plan. MSM forgets he forecasted a loss in Pennsylvania on Feb 6th as part of his road to the nomination.
• Pelosi reaffirms that there’s no chance of a “dream ticket” of Obama and Hillary.
• Obama to appear on Fox News Sunday. All things being equal, he’d rather be watching the 5th round of the NFL draft.