May 19, 2008 • Vol. 13, No. 34
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Main
SurveyUSA has released its final batch of North Carolina numbers. In the primary eve SUSA poll, Obama leads by five. Here are some analytical goodies for your Endless Campaign of '08 Scrapbook:
According to SurveyUSA's 8th and final tracking poll, conducted exclusively for ABC11 Eyewitness News, on the final day of the fiercely fought campaign, Senator Barack Obama holds on with 50% of the vote to Senator Hillary Clinton's 45% of those polled…
The popular vote is remarkably stable: In 6 SurveyUSA polls released since Super Tuesday, Obama has polled at 50%, 49%, 49%, 50%, 49%, 50%. The contest is stable among men, where Obama leads by 11. The contest is stable among women, where the two remain tied.
In Charlotte and Western NC, there is the slightest momentum for Clinton. In the Research Triangle, in Southern NC and in Coastal NC, there is slight offsetting momentum to Obama. The net is a wash. If Obama wins, it will be entirely from the 19% of voters who describe themselves as liberal.
Clinton leads by 9 among conservatives and leads by 8 among moderates.
If Obama wins the popular vote, it will be because of his 16-point advantage among liberals. Clinton has increasing momentum among voters age 50 to 64, where she has gone from 30% in January to 51% today, her highest showing.
Among those age 65+, Clinton leads by 20 points; the more seniors who vote, the better Clinton does. But there is offsetting momentum among younger voters, some of whom may be first-time voters, and not all of whom may show-up at the precinct. 1 in 4 of SurveyUSA's likely voters say they have already voted. Among those who say they have already voted, Obama leads by 16 points. Among those who say they will vote on Primary Day, Obama and Clinton are effectively tied.
If one were of a mind too, one could interpret many of these data-points to the Lioness of Tuzla's advantage. Because I'm not a member of the Strange New Respect for Hillary Club, the exercise has little appeal to me, but since I'm blogging this poll first, I should do so anyway. So...
Hillary has reliably outperformed even the most reliable polls. Obama's dependence on young voters who are more likely to eschew the tedium of voting compared to their elderly fellow voters probably explains this phenomenon. Also noteworthy is that Clinton is once again showing impressive momentum among the late deciders. We also have yet more evidence with this poll that Obama's popularity peaked a while ago, and Hillary is now the better liked candidate. The fact that Obama pulls his support from liberals who will support the Democratic ticket anyway is the kind of thing that theoretically might matter to your typical, everyday Super Delegate.
Still, Clinton's only hope is that she outperforms even the good polls once again. She needs the win. But making up five points is a heavy lift. That said, a double digit win in Indiana and a shocking, razor-thin victory in North Carolina could actually change the race. And that scenario, while unlikely, is not out of the question.
Survey USA, the most accurate outfit in the game this cycle, is trotting out its most recent poll results. The North Carolina numbers aren't in yet, but the Indiana numbers look very promising for the Lioness of Tuzla. SUSA shows Hillary Clinton with an impressive 54-42 lead in Mellencamp Country.
A couple of related predictions:
1) If Hillary wins by double digits in Indiana and squeaks out a victory in North Carolina, she will give the Democratic super-delegates much to ponder. Pat Caddell observed after the Lioness’ most recent victories, “The nomination process is not a suicide pact.” Caddell can't be the only Democratic poobah harboring such sentiments.
2) If the super-delegates do take a fresh look at Hillary while simultaneously deciding that Obama is too weak a candidate to take a flyer on in a year that should be a slam dunk for the Democratic party, Hillary's strange new respect from the right will have a life expectancy best measured in hours as opposed to weeks or months.
In the virtual pages of Commentary's Contentions blog, Max Boot makes a fairly astonishing confession:
“I can’t speak for anyone else, but I personally have never read a single book by either Trotsky or Strauss.”
With his brave show of honesty, Boot is attempting to show that not all neocons are cut from the philosophical cloth that our critics say we are, and that some of us rely on political philosophers like Alexander Hamilton and Ronald Reagan to inform our worldviews. This is a good point, and helps illustrate how words like “neocon” and “Straussian” are often used as pejoratives by people who don't have more than a vague idea of what the terms mean.
Still, Max's confession fills me with heart-ache that only a neocon could recognize. He can skip Trotsky if he's short of time, although he can borrow my dog-eared copy of The Revolution Betrayed any time. But he really must read his Strauss!
PS - Max's little essay on this matter is outstanding, as is Robert Kagan's piece from World Affairs which the essay addresses.
Tomorrow's New York Times will offer a piece that details the dizzying heights of hypocrisy that Eliot Spitzer habitually occupied:
As New York's attorney general, Eliot Spitzer had broken up prostitution rings before, but this 2004 case took on a special urgency for him. Prosecuting an international sex tourism business based in Queens, he listened to the entreaties of women’s advocates long frustrated by state laws that fell short of dealing with a sex trade expanding rapidly across borders.
And with his typical zeal, he embraced their push for new legislation, including a novel idea at its heart: Go after the men who seek out prostitutes.
It was a question of supply and demand, they all agreed. And one effective way to suppress the demand was to raise the penalties for patronizing a prostitute. In his first months as governor last year, Mr. Spitzer signed the bill into law.
1) Let's start at the ending: Is there any way Spitzer can survive this scandal and remain in office?
Right now, it looks like he'll be gone within hours. Then again, it looked that way yesterday at this time. One of the few lasting legacies of the Clinton administration is that Bill Clinton successfully defined this particular kind of deviancy down. Politicians can now outlast sex scandals. If there's a major legal problem at the heart of the Spitzer scandal such as Spitzer laundering money to pay for his dalliances, then he's a dead demagogue walking. But if it's just (or pretty much just) about the sex, he could brass it out.
2) What about the New York Republican party's plan to begin impeachment procedures within 48 hours unless Spitzer falls on his sword?
Perfectly stupid. Leave it to the Republicans to toss their drowning antagonist a life preserver. Spitzer's only hope of surviving this thing is to circle the partisan wagons. Already on the leading lefty blogs, some of the kooky kids are framing this as Spitzer vs. Bush (if you can believe it). By making it a partisan thing, the New York Republicans are playing right into Spitzer's only prayer.
3) So what should New York Republicans make of this issue?
The same thing everyone should - it's a moral issue, and reflects on what kind of standards we as a society should insist on from the people who seek to lead us. Even most Democrats, after a mere sixteen years, are beginning to blanche at Clinton-style morals and seeking something more noble. We could have a genuine bipartisan (or post-partisan!) moment here where the country demands that our leaders at least give being decent people the old college try.
4) Oh, big deal! You're the hypocrite. I don’t recall you Republicans insisting that Larry Craig or David Vitter resign.
I did, not that anyone cared. So did others. Mitt Romney called Larry Craig, who was then a ranking Romney campaign muckety-muck, disgusting. That was refreshingly candid. Many other conservatives felt the same way, and said as much publicly.
5) Okay, you're a prurient Republican prude. Got it. But don't you think we should be forgiving of other men's moral frailties.
Of course we should be forgiving of other men's moral frailties. We should also help old ladies cross the street when the chance to do so avails itself. But that's not really the point with Spitzer, Clinton, Craig, or Vitter. If you seek to credibly lead millions of people, you need a modicum of moral stature. These men all sacrificed their moral stature. We can feel badly for them. We can forgive them. But doing so doesn't mean we have to accept a lack of honor from our leadership class.
6) I think all you conservative hypocrites should have your closets snooped into!
We're all hypocrites inasmuch as we all have values that we fail to live up. But that doesn't mean we can't acknowledge a couple of major differences between the Larry Craig and Eliot Spitzer-types and the rest of us. Senator Craig and Governor Spitzer fell a bit shorter than the rest of us tend to. More important, guys like Craig and Spitzer sought leadership roles in our society. When you seek such a prominent public role, your realm of "private matters" necessarily shrinks. That's just the way it is. The rest of us are private citizens leading private lives. Public figures who seek and enjoy public power are governed by different rules.
7) But all of the affairs we're discussing here are essentially private matters, are they not?
I'd agree with that, but you have to allow that cruising for sex in a public bathroom is something less than a totally private affair. After all, as Mark Steyn noted at the time, even if the cruising senator had made a love connection, it's not like the two lovebirds would have checked into the Honeymoon Suite at the Airport Radisson.
And given that prostitution rings had tasted the zeal of Lawman Eliot Spitzer, his scandal is also less than entirely private.
8) So you do agree that these are mostly private matters. Shouldn’t we therefore just be willing to move on?
No, no, a thousand times no. As a society we have the right to insist on honor and propriety from our leadership class. And you'd have to be pretty naïve to not realize that the dishonor that guys like Eliot Spitzer display at the Emperor’s Club shows up in our governmental affairs as things like unprincipled flip-flops, earmarks, and other dreary staples of our political life.
9) So is Spitzer at risk of losing his job because he's been revealed as a hypocrite?
Not exactly. He's at risk of losing his job because he revealed himself as a really big hypocrite. An enormous hypocrite. A Guinness Book of Records hypocrite…
10) We get the point. But isn't this somewhat less than satisfying? After all, like you said, we're all hypocrites.
It is less than satisfying. It's a bit like arresting Al Capone on tax evasion. Sure it got him off the streets, but his real sins went unaddressed.
11) You're comparing Spitzer to Capone?
Not exactly. But Spitzer was a dreadful public figure, a sneering bully who ruined lives to build a political career. And yet we can't deny his strategy worked. He crookedly funded his first race for Attorney General. Once elected Attorney General, he became a successful enough demagogue that he got elected Governor.
No prosecutor had a higher ratio of outraged press conferences to actual trials, let alone convictions. Even high profile Spitzer witch-hunt victims like Dick Grasso never had a day in court. As the Wall Street Journal’s excellent editorial this morning pointed out, Spitzer abused his office flagrantly and repeatedly. And the voters rewarded him. So seeing him being tripped up on a $4300/hr. call girl is a lot less satisfying than if the voters had rejected his odious form of politics.
Michael Walsh, one of your Cardinal's Irish pals and author of a fun novel about NYC mob legend Owney Madden called And All the Saints, offers up some fun detail on the pseudonym "George Fox." Client number 9 was not alone in using that moniker when slipping into hotels. Madden's partner, George "Big Frenchy" DeMange also lived most of his life in New York hotels, and frequently used the alias "George Fox." Madden, last of the great Irish mobsters, would later retire in Hot Springs, Arkansas, the boyhood stomping ground of former President Bill Clinton.
The next Governor of New York, David Paterson, is embroiled in a discrimination lawsuit brought by a white photographer he fired after becoming Minority Leader of the New York State Senate five years ago. His defense is worthy of note:
Paterson, now the lieutenant governor, asserted he axed the photographer, Joseph Maioriello, because he was a holdover from former Minortiy Leader Marty Connor's regime....
Maioriello [the white photographer] was replaced by an African-American photographer, El-Wise Noisette, who last worked for former state Comptroller H. Carl McCall (the first black gubernatorial candidate who lost his challenge to Republican Gov. George Pataki in 2002).
But Paterson insisted he had no idea about the race of either man due to the fact that he is legally blind.
Call me a skeptic, but the photographer’s name could possibly have tipped Paterson off to his race. Which is not to say he discriminated against the guy--just that Paterson’s defense is bunk.
Remember how Larry Craig was going to resign the same day, and then he was going to resign quite soon, and then he announced a resignation that would take effect somewhat down the road, and when that time came...he didn't resign?
I wonder if that could work for Eliot Spitzer. And more to the point: I wonder if Spitzer thinks it can work for him. After all, Larry Craig strung people along for a while, and while he's not seeking re-election, he wasn't forced to resign. Mightn't Spitzer figure that he can do the same?
Spitzer's not just the president--he's a client.
In these, the first hours after Eliot Spitzer's epic fall from grace, it will be difficult for Spitzer's numerous detractors to avoid reveling in an unhealthy amount of Schadenfreude. Nevertheless, it would be salubrious to remember at this time that there are many things worse than a hypocrite. Like a vengeful, headline-hunting prosecutor who tries to build a career by persecuting others and abusing the power of the state.
On Wall Street, they're popping the champagne corks this afternoon. One friend emails:
The entire office stopped and gawked at the TVs hanging from the ceiling when the first news alerts were announced. Then a bit of a chuckle as people realized the poetic justice that this could represent. As someone who has watched Ken Langone for nearly 20 years, I can't help but feel a bit of Schadenfreude at Spitzer’s potential embarrassment, if not political ruin. There's a certain satisfaction that one can enjoy right now when you ponder how Spitzer tried to pursue a line of attack regarding Grasso having a love child.
The one downside I see to all of this is that Charlie Gasparino of CNBC will get even more face time given he is their resident "expert" on all things Spitzer/Grasso related.
Being a Boston/Beltway type, I'm not particularly familiar with Charlie Gasparino's oeuvre, but I’ll be sure to take notice of him in the coming days.
Let's now take a brief trip down Spitzer Memory Lane. Here's a little op-ed that appeared in the Wall Street Journal a couple of years ago. The writer was the much-esteemed John Whitehead, former Chairman of Goldman Sachs:
Last April, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed piece by me titled "Mr. Spitzer Has Gone Too Far." In it I expressed my belief that in America, everyone--including Hank Greenberg--is innocent until proven guilty. "Something has gone seriously awry," I wrote, "when a state attorney general can go on television and charge one of America's best CEOs and most generous philanthropists with fraud before any charges have been brought, before the possible defendant has even had a chance to know what he personally is alleged to have done, and while the investigation is still under way."
Since there have been rumors in the media as to what happened next, I feel I must now set the record straight. After reading my op-ed piece, Mr. Spitzer tried to phone me. I was traveling in Texas but he reached me early in the afternoon. After asking me one or two questions about where I got my facts, he came right to the point. I was so shocked that I wrote it all down right away so I would be sure to remember it exactly as he said it. This is what he said:
"Mr. Whitehead, it's now a war between us and you've fired the first shot. I will be coming after you. You will pay the price. This is only the beginning and you will pay dearly for what you have done. You will wish you had never written that letter."
I tried to interrupt to say he was doing to me exactly what he'd been doing to others, but he wouldn't be interrupted. He went on in the same vein for several more sentences and then abruptly hung up. I was astounded. No one had ever talked to me like that before. It was a little scary.
It's up to others to make their own conclusions. I have only set out here what happened.
At the corner of Wall and Broad, the trading floor erupted in cheers when Eliot Spitzer's embarrassment was announced. The shame of the day is that something as quotidian as hypocrisy has triggered Spitzer’s downfall. Today would be a happier day if Spitzer were driven from public life because the public recoiled at his holier-than-thou prosecutions that were driven much more by a sense of ambition than a desire for justice.
But the fact that Spitzer will likely be gone from public life by nightfall makes it a happy day nonetheless.
The New York Times reports:
ALBANY - Gov. Eliot Spitzer has informed his most senior administration officials that he had been involved in a prostitution ring, an administration official said this morning.
I know it's annoying when writers can get all high and haughty over other writers producing copy that's fatally imprecise, but you'll have to indulge me just this once. What, pray tell, does "involved" mean? Was he a customer? An investor? Could he have been (say it isn’t so) a worker? Or perhaps he was in management.
I guess the smart money is on Spitzer's "involvement" having been limited to being a customer. Nevertheless, a press conference is forthcoming that will presumably clear up my confusion. In the meantime, let's take a stroll down Spitzer’s hypocrisy of yesteryear. The Times also reports:
In one such case in 2004, Mr. Spitzer spoke with revulsion and anger after announcing the arrest of 16 people for operating a high-end prostitution ring out of Staten Island.
”This was a sophisticated and lucrative operation with a multitiered management structure,” Mr. Spitzer said at the time. ”It was, however, nothing more than a prostitution ring.”
UPDATE: In the Daily Kos comment thread on this scandal, one Kossack offers a theory as to who's really to blame for this sorry situation--George W. Bush!
"My theory is that the Bush administration caught this through their wiretaps of Democratic politicians."
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