Jay Reding.com

David Brooks defends ABC News from the attacks over last night’s Democratic debate:

I understand the complaints, but I thought the questions were excellent. The journalist’s job is to make politicians uncomfortable, to explore evasions, contradictions and vulnerabilities. Almost every question tonight did that. The candidates each looked foolish at times, but that’s their own fault.

We may not like it, but issues like Jeremiah Wright, flag lapels and the Tuzla airport will be important in the fall. Remember how George H.W. Bush toured flag factories to expose Michael Dukakis. It’s legitimate to see how the candidates will respond to these sorts of symbolic issues.

The middle section of the debate, meanwhile, was stupendous. Those could be the most important 30 minutes of this entire campaign, for reasons I will explain in point two:

Second, Obama and Clinton were completely irresponsible. As the first President Bush discovered, it is simply irresponsible statesmanship (and stupid politics) to make blanket pledges to win votes. Both candidates did that on vital issues.

Brooks is right on that. When Clinton and Obama did discuss substance, they didn’t help themselves. For one, Barack Obama admitted A) that capital gains tax cuts raise revenue to the government but B) he’d raise taxes on capital gains anyway. So the point of the tax system is no not to generate revenue, but to punish people for being successful? That’s exactly the sort of message that Democrats don’t want the American public to hear. It undercuts their own major policy arguments that the real purpose why the Democrats have an undying love affair with taxes is because government is chronically underfunded. Obama just admitted in front of everyone that he doesn’t care if a tax increase would reduce revenue, he’d still be for it. That’s a message that we’ll be hearing in GOP attack ads this summer.

Clinton doesn’t exactly have much to crow about either:

Both promised to not raise taxes on those making less than $200,000 or $250,000 a year. They both just emasculated their domestic programs. Returning the rich to their Clinton-era tax rates will yield, at best, $40 billion a year in revenue. It’s impossible to fund a health care plan, let alone anything else, with that kind of money. The consequences are clear: if elected they will have to break their pledge, and thus destroy their credibility, or run a minimalist administration.

The chances of either Democrat running a minimalist administration are roughly the same as Mira Sorvino showing up at my door holding a winning lottery ticket and plane tickets to Tahiti for two. It just isn’t going to happen. So how are the Democrats going to fund universal health care, more funding for virtually everything (except the military) and not raise taxes on more than just the “rich?” The good money is on “they won’t.” The only way to fund all these billions of dollars in goodies is by reaching into all of our pockets to do so.

Brooks sees electability as a problem for the Democrats, but he’s still bullish on Obama. To win the nomination, for sure it’s virtually sure to be Obama. But if Sen. Obama keeps floundering like this when being asked tough questions, all the sycophantic media coverage in the world won’t save him. It’s understandable why the Democrats are flocking to Obama—but at the same time perhaps they should be less quick to shoot the messenger and start taking a hard look at who Barack Obama really is.

By the hostile reactions from the usual suspects. How dare they ask serious questions about Obama’s past associations with Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers or his association with the radicalism of Pastor Wright! They should have been lobbing softballs about how “universal” Obama’s healthcare plan will be!

Over at The Campaign Spot, Jim Geraghty wonders if Hillary Clinton didn’t knock Obama off his pedestal. Fat chance of that. To most of Obama’s supporters, Obama is the nominee, and Hillary has no right to compete even though Hillary has an at least plausible chance at winning the popular vote and neither candidate can win without appealing to the superdelegates. The reaction to last night’s debate is what I though it would be: it isn’t that Hillary Clinton has been telling Democrats that Obama is going to get creamed in the general, it’s that Hillary should stand aside and let Obama get creamed in the general. Sen. Clinton came perilously close to making that case last night, but never quite went there.

To be honest, Republicans should be exceedingly happy if Obama gets the nomination. Hillary Clinton could win the states that the Democrats need to win to take the White House. Obama has a ton of charisma, but is hampered by a total lack of experience, plenty of skeletons in his closet, and a tendency to actually say what he thinks. Geraghty is right, Team McCain should be very glad that the Democrats are embracing Obama, because the more they fixate on him the less willing they are to see his flaws.

UPDATE: Mitch Berg takes a rhetorical brickbat to the debate.

American Research Group’s latest Pennsylvania poll shows a dramatic swing in the Democratic primary race from a 45-45% tie early this month to a 20-point Clinton lead this weekend. Could this be the turnaround for Hillary? If electability was what matters, yes, but electability is not what the Democrats are looking at in this race.

There have been many on the Democratic side calling for Clinton to withdraw from the race. In the end, Hillary Clinton may have made the right tactical call in hanging on as long as she has—the longer Obama goes under the spotlight the greater the chance of him saying something that would land him in trouble. Even though Hillary has made her own mistakes, nothing she’s said has been as destructive as Obama’s comments. Even though the electoral tide is still against her, by Denver it is possible that Hillary could come into the convention with a credible case for the nomination. Obama may lead in elected delegates, but he won’t be able to win without the superdelegates any more than she will. If Hillary leads in the popular vote when all is said and done—and that is quite possible—are Democratic superdelegates really going to vote against the majority of Democratic voters?

On the other hand, it’s not as though Hillary Clinton is a woman of the people either. Both Clinton and Obama grew up arguably middle class, they have a record of associating themselves with the academic elites. Clinton is hardly the poster child for a campaign against liberal condescension. Her outright falsehoods about sniper fire in Bosnia and her record during her husband’s Presidency don’t help her image.

The Politico has an excellent article on what Clinton wishes she could say, but can’t do so without jeopardizing her own candidacy:

There’s nothing to say that the Clintonites are right about Obama’s presumed vulnerabilities. But one argument seems indisputably true: Obama is on the brink of the Democratic nomination without having had to confront head-on the evidence about his general election challenges.

That is why some friends describe Clinton as seeing herself on a mission to save Democrats from themselves. Her candidacy may be a long shot, but no one should expect she will end it unless or until every last door has been shut.

Skepticism about Obama’s general election prospects extends beyond Clinton backers. We spoke to unaffiliated Democratic lawmakers, veteran lobbyists, and campaign operatives who believe the rush of enthusiasm for Obama’s charisma and fresh face has inhibited sober appraisals of his potential weaknesses.

The Politico article is right—Obama has not taken the kind of lashing that he will invariably get in the general election. The Clinton camp can quite credibly claim that if Barack Obama gets the nomination, he will lose in a landslide. The Democrats will do very well with urban professionals and African-Americans, and lose rural voters, women, Jewish voters, and Reagan Democrats. Beyond the Obama hype lies the cold reality of the electoral math: and all Clinton needs to do is carry the states that Kerry won in 2004 and win one swing state like Ohio, Florida, or Nevada. What states has Clinton done well in? Ohio, Florida, and Nevada. The electoral math favors Clinton, and the Clinton camp knows it.

Despite all this, Obama will still get the nomination. The Democrats are increasingly young, liberal, and affluent. Obama appeals to the New Democratic Party, while Hillary Clinton appeals to the old. Hillary Clinton, much to her dismay, is not the face of American liberalism today. It is hardly shocking that outspoken liberals who want to see America remade in the “progressive” image are flocking to Obama. He’s one of them.

The fact that this is a recipe for electoral disaster is not a factor in the Democratic race. Democrats voted with their heads rather than their hearts in selecting John Kerry in 2004 on the basis that Kerry was “electable.” Barack Obama is Howard Dean without the crazy and with the added benefit of being someone who can play to the African-American base of the Democratic Party. Even though Clinton probably has the better argument on electability, she’s winning the wrong contest. The Democrats don’t want electable, they want someone who represents what the Democrats want to be: a party that is unabashedly liberal wrapped in the mantle of “progressivism.” Obama is comfortable with the Daily Kos set, and it is that demographic that now controls the Democratic Party.

Obama has definitely hurt himself and that gaffe undoubtedly will help Hillary Clinton carry Pennsylvania, and perhaps win the popular vote. Yet the heart of the Democratic Party is understandably with Obama, and even though Clinton is the more electable of the two, electability is not the factor that will influence who will win the nomination this year.

John Fund writes on the Democrats’ opposition to free trade with Colombia. In a time when both Democratic candidates are promising to improve our foreign relations, both are flunking this key test of leadership.

Colombia is a democratic ally fighting off a vicious Marxist insurgency being aided by the autocratic regime of Hugo Chávez. President Alvaro Uribe is fighting to keep his country from becoming a tool of Chávez’s hegemonic ambitions and trying to prevent narcotics from funding terrorism. He has done a great deal to stop the violence that has ravaged Colombia—the murder rate has dropped precipitously under his leadership, and the Marxist FARC guerillas have been unable to destabilize the government and turn Colombia into a Communist puppet state.

Yet the Democratic Party has decided to turn against Colombia—for reasons that reek of politics rather than substance:

President Uribe made clear how disappointed he was that the Democratic front-runner had chosen domestic politics over geopolitical stability: “I deplore the fact that Sen. Obama . . . should be unaware of Colombia’s efforts,” he said in a statement. “I think it is for political calculations that he is making a statement that does not correspond to Colombia’s reality.”

The simple truth is that the opposition to the trade agreement–from the Democratic presidential contenders to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi–has nothing to do with reality. Rep. Charles Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, admitted as much recently: “It’s not the substance on the ground–it’s the politics in the air.”

The reality is that Colombia is not a threat to American workers. The free trade agreement submitted for ratification lowers trade barriers on both sides and gives US manufacturers greater access to Colombia’s markets. 90% of good coming from Colombia are already imported duty-free. The argument that this bill would be injurious to the interests of American workers has absolutely no basis—nor do the attacks against President Uribe accusing him of attacking union organizers in Colombia.

The Democratic Party has developed a knee-jerk reaction to anything that resembles free trade—and for a party that claims the “progressive” mantle that sort of isolationism is a throwback to the days of nativist protectionism. What’s worse is that it compromises the Democrats’ promises that they will “restore America’s reputation” abroad—exactly why should anyone trust us if we’re willing to slander one of our strongest regional allies in Latin America?

If the Democrats’ rhetoric on international relations was more than empty words, they would be working to ensure that President Uribe is not threatened by his neighbors and would be pledging to support his democratic government. Instead, both candidates are engaged in a war of words against an American ally. That is hardly the way to go about restoring our image abroad.

One of the joys of the Internet is that there are some really smart people who have access to a lot of data that can be combined in ingenious ways—and this very detailed examination of geography and voting trends in the Democratic race makes a fascinating argument. Overlaying the voting patterns of the Clinton/Obama race with a map of Appalachia, it’s quite clear that there’s a trend: Appalachian voters overwhelmingly support Clinton.

That means something in terms of the upcoming contests. The states that are coming up: Pennsylvania, Indiana, North Carolina, and Kentucky are all states that make up the main part of the Appalachian region. They’re perfect territory for Hillary: largely white, economically distressed, and made up of voters who are more concerned about issues like national security. Could she win 60% in those states? The author of this analysis thinks it’s very possible.

Despite the general loathing of the Clinton machine, the reality of the race is that neither Obama nor Hillary can claim that they have the race in the bag. Obama is ahead, but not enough that he won’t likely have to use the superdelegates to get enough to win. He’s ahead in the popular vote, but if you take out Cook County, Illinois where his home base is, he’s not ahead by all that much: and it’s quite possible that Hillary could pull ahead.

As much as some Democrats would like Hillary to step aside, it doesn’t make sense for her to do now, at least as far as the electoral math is concerned. The Obama campaign does not have this race locked up, and they’re about to fight on some very inhospitable territory. Hillary Clinton will not let this race go until it is clear that she cannot win, and that may not be until she steps out onto the convention floor.

With my usual caveats about the utility of polling this far out from an election, Rasmussen’s daily tracking poll shows John McCain well ahead of either Clinton or Obama. McCain leads Obama 50-41 and Clinton 49-42. This sample showed Clinton narrowly ahead of Obama as well.

What does this mean? This far out, not much. However, it does indicate that McCain was the right choice for the GOP. After eight years of Bush, the GOP needs a figure that can reach out to independents. It was the shift in independent voters to the Democrats that made 2006 such a bloodbath for Republicans. McCain, even though conservatives have their issues with him, is someone who can attract independent-minded voters. In some ways, all the conservative backlash to McCain may help him—conservatives aren’t going to hand the election over to either Hillary or Obama, and the conservative backlash makes it more difficult to paint McCain as an extremist. Independent voters want someone who will exercise independent judgement—and McCain’s maverick rep helps him there. He wasn’t a “maverick” because it made him popular, or he would have pulled a Hagel on Iraq, he was a “maverick” because he was doing what he thought was right. Independent voters want to see that in a candidate, and McCain has that strong appeal.

On the Democratic side, Clinton is down, but not out. She’s going to fight on, and while some argue she has no realistic chance at the nomination, that isn’t going to stop her. In essence, the Democrats are stuck with a Catch-22. If they nominate Clinton, people will walk away from the party, and someone like Nader could break 10%. If they nominate Obama, they’ll marginalize older voters (who vote in droves) in the hopes of attracting younger voters (who eventually grow up and become Republicans). Plus, if Obama gets the nod it means key states like Ohio and Pennsylvania could be in McCain’s column. The electoral math doesn’t favor Obama—no Democrat will win Georgia or Mississippi. Winning Kansas and Nebraska is great if your goal is to beat Clinton in pledged delegates, but those states are so likely to vote Republican in November that they’re virtually irrelevant to the general election.

I would hate to be a Democratic superdelegate right now. There’s no good answer: either vote for Hillary in the hopes that she’ll peel off a state like Ohio from McCain and squeak in, or vote for Obama in the hopes that the Electoral College math will somehow add up. Neither of those options are particularly good ones.

At the beginning of the year, having a Republican nominee running ahead and the Democrats in a brutal internecine war would have been one of the least likely outcomes of this race. Then again, perhaps that’s why politics can be so interesting to follow…

I’ve been holding the somewhat controversial position that Barack Obama’s ascendence within the Democratic Party is a bad thing for the Democrats. To understand why, the first place to start is with Ronald Brownstein’s look at the new face of the Democratic Party. The Democrats are becoming a party that is younger, more affluent and more liberal:

In the Democrats’ longtime upscale-downscale divide, these changes are tilting the party away from blue-collar and often gray-haired “beer track” voters toward younger and more affluent “wine track” voters.

Since 1968, Democratic presidential candidates who relied on beer track voters (such as Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, Bill Clinton, and Al Gore) routinely defeated rivals who depended mostly on wine track supporters (Eugene McCarthy, Gary Hart, Paul Tsongas, and Bill Bradley). But now Obama, an upscale candidate, is on the brink of capturing the nomination from Clinton, who has constructed a classic beer track coalition.

Obama is succeeding where his wine track predecessors failed, largely because he has won overwhelming majorities of African-Americans, who in the past generally sided with beer track candidates. But his success is also tied to the party’s changing composition. Two of Obama’s most supportive groups — the young and the affluent — are expanding their influence in the party. Clinton’s strongest support has come from seniors and noncollege white voters, two groups that are waning in significance.

These shifts could create long-term strains for the Democratic Party. In particular, Democratic candidates may face tensions in reconciling their growing reliance on upper-income voters with the party’s increasing emphasis on an edgy populist message that portrays the economy as unfairly tilted toward the affluent.

If one takes a look at the exit polls from this Tuesday’s primaries the same pattern emerges: Clinton won older voters, voters who were concerned about the economy, and women. Obama won young urban voters and black voters. All the data supports Brownstein’s thesis: that the Democratic Party is becoming younger, richer, and more urban.

The Democrats’ Divide

Obama is appealing to the new face of the Democratic Party, while Clinton is appealing to the old face of the Democratic Party. The argument against Obama being the savior of the Democrats is this: Obama’s appeal is with voters who are likely to vote Democratic anyway. For all the insistence that Obama has massive appeal with independents and even Republicans, there’s little solid evidence which supports that conclusion. Secondly, what happens to that new Democratic Party when Obama passes into history? Is this new Democratic Party a durable political movement?< ?p>

Look at the demographics of the country: the nation is getting older. In the next few years, the number of 20–64 year-old voters will decrease while the retiring Baby Boomers will remain a potent demographic force. Like most industrialized democracies, the United States is seeing a demographic shift from old to young. In the near-term (until the middle of this century) older voters are going to be the key voting bloc that parties will need to target to win. Barack Obama has very little appeal to older voters, while McCain and Clinton can capture that crucial bloc. The demographic tide is against the new face of the Democratic Party.

One of the fastest-growing segments of the population are Hispanics. Hispanics are culturally conservative, which gives some advantage to the GOP. Hispanics do tend to vote Democrat, but not by the incredibly lop-sided margins that we see with African-American voters. Clinton carried the Hispanic vote in Texas by a wide margin. Can Obama reach out to Hispanics? It’s possible, but McCain will be far more competitive with Hispanics against Obama than Clinton. Again, the demographics don’t favor Obama.

Finally, there’s no certainty that the youth vote will remain Democratic forever. One of the biggest shifts in voting activity involves marriage and family: married women tend to vote Republican far more than their single counterparts. Affluent voters tend to vote Republican, especially those voters who start to notice when Democratic tax increases hit their wallets. As voters get older, they tend to become more conservative rather than less.

Why Clinton Is The Stronger Candidate

Forget the conventional wisdom. Hillary Clinton is the stronger of the two candidates. She is a known quantity. Her negatives may be high, but they’re not insurmountably high. The people who hate Hillary Clinton with a passion are not likely Democratic voters, and the people who support Hillary tend to be the same voting blocs that got her husband elected. The Democrats cannot win on the backs of rich white liberals and African Americans. They have to get soccer moms, NASCAR voters, gun owners, Southerners, and a majority of independents. Obama’s appeal is strong with groups that are already reliably Democratic, and if he can’t pull in a clear majority of Democrats in Democratic primaries, can he really pull of a major victory against McCain? Obama won states like Georgia by a wide margin, but there’s absolutely no chance of Georgia flipping to the Democrats any time soon. If one takes a hard look at the electoral landscape, where can Barack Obama make against against McCain? Perhaps Iowa, but the Republicans can win without Iowa. Can he get Ohio back in the Democratic column? It’s unlikely. Florida? Same story there? What swing states will Obama be able to bring into the Democratic fold? I’m hard-pressed at this point to see him bringing any key states over to the Democratic side, and there’s a good chance that states like Pennsylvania, Washington or New Hampshire could flip over to the Republicans.

Hillary Clinton can reach out to Reagan Democrats. Barack Obama will have a much harder time doing so. Hillary Clinton can appeal to voters concerned about national security. Obama so far has not reached beyond his anti-war base. The saliency of the Iraq War as a political issue is decreasing as American casualties drop and signs of success become unmistakable. Does Obama really think tying the war to McCain will hurt him? When McCain can say that it was his policies that helped win the war, and he was the one who pushed Bush into changing course? That doesn’t seem like a very strong argument.

In the end, Hillary has demographics on her side. The Democratic Party is changing its face, just as Brownstein observed. The problem is that in doing that the Democratic Party is painting themselves into a demographic corner. As they become younger and liberal they leave behind the moderates, middle class voters, and older voters behind—and John McCain is the candidate with the most appeal with those voters. Obama’s surface appeal is just that—surface appeal, and for all the hype about his brand of “hope” it will not be enough to build a lasting political legacy and it will lead the Democrats into becoming a minority party at the same time the Republicans have the opportunity to reach out. 2008 could prove to be a realigning election, just as many Democrats hope, but it won’t necessarily be the sort of realignment they would like.