January 2008 Archives

The debate was easy to score. The candidates 10 the media minus 2. These debates show the media at our very worst—and I mean this in a truly bi-partisan way. In both the Republican debate and the Democratic debate CNN and Wolf Blitzer did their very best to create good television by utilizing bad news practices.

They wanted action. They wanted sparks to fly. A good fight makes for good TV. Romney and McCain sparing Tuesday night and getting all those clips played on all the other networks encouraged CNN to be provocative and to lob “gotcha” questions calculated to get anger, outrage and a good picture. This was like paparazzi for candidates. The old paparazzi trick is to shout out something insulting and get the picture of the star or starlet with a snarl.

CNN isn’t the only guilty party. Most of the debates have featured bomb lobbing, with the journos going for the questions designed to squeeze the candidate into saying something that will start a fight. Most candidates do not rise to the bait that these master baiters toss them. It is not after all the job of the candidates to make good TV by looking bad, angry or confrontational.

The media do this all the time and thank goodness they usually aim at public figures. But why does this seem okay to do? I thought we were supposed to report the news and not make it or fake it. The political paparazzi seem to me to be like people yelling, “Fire!” in a crowded theatre—they can foresee the trouble they are intentionally creating.

Too many questions were not designed for their probative value but only to incite. Why are journalists involved in this kind of train wreck pandering to the lowest common denominator? The public deserves to be able to distinguish news from entertainment. News divisions should stay in the news business and leave reality TV alone. Obama and Clinton are not Britney and K-fed. Romney and McCain are not Ali and Frazier. Leave the trash and trash talk to sports and entertainment. Ask some real question that illuminate through reasoned argument not incendiary explosions. They/we should portray reality not mold it. Shame on them. Shame on us.

I was at the KPCC, KTLA and Gather.com shin dig in Hollywood last night.

I counted a total of 23 people there not including myself.

There were easily more people there covering the event than actually attending the event. I have seen this before at marches and protests. There are more reporters and camera crews there than anything. There’s nothing better than a reporter looking into the camera and saying, ”Well it’s a media circus around here.” Yeah, right like they aren’t the ones chasing Betty the Elephant around with a shovel.

This is why during the May Day march last year, the police ending up attacking journalists…fish in a barrel.

I was really disappointed by the event last night. I really expect Republicans to have better food. There was cold pizza! Serious? I’ve seen better grub at a Green Party gathering!

www.tinadupuy.com

I like to think that my second drafts are better than my first draft efforts. Second and third drafts let me reconsider my opinions, my arguments and my style. While sometimes, I have to admit, I may get lost in revisions, I like to think that most of the time, further efforts yield better results. This is why I am dumbfounded by most analyses of Rudy’s rock-like fall from grace and approval.

Most of the pundit class (Friendly Fire a happy exception) seems puzzled by what Rudy did wrong. Some blame his fall on his strategy of saving it all for Florida. Others blame his media plan. Still others are just lost as to why and how the front-runner of six months ago finished out of the money—as well as out of money.

What makes this searching for blame strange is that the pundits had it right in the beginning. After Rudy announced, he surged (a popular word these days) into the lead. He was America’s Mayor, brave resolute and bold. He was tough. He was more than tough; he was New York street tough. Just the man you want in an insecure world. The professional pundits argued correctly that his lead would not hold up. As people got to know him and looked at his record and at his life, the values voters would fall away. The movement conservatives could not stomach his pro-choice position, his welcome of illegal immigrants or his tolerant attitude towards gays and lesbians.

A month after he announced the pundits began actively to wonder at how he was staying up in the polls. As he remained soaring above the consequences of his positions, the pundits fell into the trap of trying to explain what kept this bumblebee in the air. They reasoned that in an age of fear, his errors were of a manly nature and the consequences of too much testosterone could be forgiven because he was a manly man who was not afraid to walk through the fields of rubble on 9-11.

They thought that his constant invocation of 9-11 would drown out the howls from the movement conservatives and values voters. They missunderestimated the fidelity of those voters to their values. They also forgot what many New Yorkers told all of us: To know him was not to love him.

As the voters learned about his life and his positions and as McCain rose Lazarus like from the political burial grounds, security voters and people who cared about character had a much better option. They went for it.

Rudy fell, not because of a political mistake or tactical blunder. He, in fact, did make a run at Iowa and saw it going nowhere. He spent over $2.5 million in New Hampshire before retreating to make his last stand—not his first stand—in Florida. It was not bad strategery but choices, life choices and political choices, that alienated what he hoped would be his core constituency. Rudy fell because of Rudy.

The media got it right before they got it wrong. Rudy got it wrong.

So I'm here at the Kodak theater in Hollywood. Its kind of like the Oscars only with less puking in the bathrooms. I got my creds.

Any questions? For me, not the candidates...I don't have that kind of pull.

Ralph Nader has created a 2008 presidential-campaign exploratory committee ...

Although with talk of Michael Bloomberg and/or Ron Paul entering the race, all bets are off.

Poor John McCain, After winning Florida, and picking up Rudy Giuliani's endorsement, everything seemed to be going his way. But now, a serious setback -- Arnold Schwarzenegger is backing him (rimshot).

All kidding aside, I do wonder if the Arnold endorsement isn't what it used to be. With Schwarzenegger ringing up a Gray Davis-sized deficit, his aura has certainly taken a hit. This is gimme material for the attack dogs in the Romney campaign. Heck, I'll do their job for them ...

Chris channels his inner-campaign consultant. Behold the TV spot:

TWINS

Two big spenders.
One agenda.

John McCain says Arnold Schwarzenegger has been "a fantastic governor." But what's so fantastic about a $14 billion deficit? About shutting down state parks? About releasing 20,000 felons from prison early?

And Schwarzenegger says that McCain would be a great choice for president. Of course, Arnold also thinks Fabian Nunez and Don Perata are great choices for California' s legislature -- that's why he just endorsed Prop. 93, which is designed to keep these ethically-challenged lifetime politicians in power even longer.

If California's budget and Prop. 93 tell us anything about Schwarzenegger's judgment, California Republicans might want to be skeptical of his latest endorsement.

Maybe Arnold's just jealous of Romney -- after all Mitt was able to pass health-care reform ...

Oooh, what a rush! Campaign snark is so easy, so fun! For the record, although I'm a Huckabee guy, I'm sympathetic to McCain in what increasingly appears to becoming a two-man Romney-McCain race. So the above press release shouldn't be seen as a reflection of my actual preference in Tuesday's vote. I just wanted to show how easily the Arnold endorsement could be turned against McCain -- and I couldn't resist the chance to play campaign spinmeister for a few minutes.

Now if I only I could get paid like one ...

First, let me note that I was not accosted by any Ronulans on the way into the Reagan Library. There were some Huckabee folks down at the base of the library's drive, and one woman holding a sign that said "We (heart) Mitt" -- though since she seemed to be quite lonely, it could have better said "I" instead of "we." But I just shot video of Rudy bowing out of the race (Chris and his poms-poms weren't allowed) and throwing all of his 9-11, one-issue might behind John McCain. A humorous part at the end was a reporter asking if Rudy had told the other candidates about the endorsement, and he laughed and said he called Huckabee and Romney after he made his decision. A reporter barks, "Did you call Ron Paul?" Appropriately, Rudy shook his head and grunted. Then another reporter said something about "senator," where did your campaign strategy fail? McCain cut the conference short as, hopefully, that reporter meant to say "mayor"...

In my quest to educate myself about slate mailers, I found out that these seemingly campaign-based endorsements are money-making private businesses. This story in the San Diego Union-Tribune from June 2006 explains:

Most such mailers are put together by political consultants and other commercial vendors based on not much more than candidates' willingness to pay to get their names on them.

..
Slate mailers are a particularly controversial, and virtually unique, feature of California campaigns.

“Slate mailers are not the most ennobling feature of California politics,” said Jack Pitney, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College. “The essential premise is voter misunderstanding. I don't think very many voters would find them persuasive if they understood it was simply a business transaction and not an endorsement by a real group.”

The Secretary of State's office has a helpful online fact sheet that explains further what slate mailers are:

A slate mailer organization is any individual or entity
which, directly or indirectly, does both of the
following:
• Is involved in the production of one or more
slate mailers and exercises control over the
selection of the candidates and measures to be
supported or opposed in the slate mailers.
• Receives or is promised payments totaling five
hundred dollars ($500) or more in a calendar
year for the production of one or more slate
mailers.

It's gonna be a good day, because I got the last space in the press parking lot! And the library also set up good wireless access -- yay! John McCain and Schwarzenegger are set to speak soon... endorsement?? Until then, let's break down the contents of the press gift bag:

• A useless collection of editorials from the L.A. Times
• A Politico pen and Politico/CNN reporters' notebook
• A box of Jelly Bellys and pen from the Reagan Library
• A tin of L.A. Times mints that vaguely resembles illegal drugs

Another day, another mailbox full of crafty and devious campaign mailers.

Here's today's catch:

1) Pro-Proposition S mailer (as pictured) that warns "Proposition S is necessary for public safety." Funny how they always threaten to take away vital public safety if they don't get the money rather than, say, cars for city employees or cell phones for garbage truck drivers or fewer bulky item pick-ups.

2) An inscrutable "Voter information guide for democrats" designed to look like something the registrar's office might put out. It endorses Props. 92 and 93, but the rest get a big thumbs down. This mailer was paid for something called "Voter Information Guide" in Sherman Oaks and claims it is "not an official political party organization." It's a slate mailer.

3) Ditto for the mailler "Cops Voter Guide" by the eponymous organization , which wants me to vote for Props. 92 (community college funding) and 94-97 (the Indian gaming measures) but no on Prop. 93 (term-limits). The kind gentleman whose contact information is on the mailer and actually answered when I called said the owner of Cops Voter Guide is Kelly Moran. No actual cops are behind this guide and it's NOT affiliated with the California Organization of Police and Sheriffs, aka COPS.

I'm embarrassed to say I'd never heard of a slate mailer, which I understand is different than a PAC mailer. So I set out to learn more this afternoon.

4) A card in a pack envelope. Inside is a picture of what seems to be Latino legislators (I do see my own assemblyguy, Kevin DeLeon and Sen. Gil Cedillo among the pack) with a bilingual message pushing Prop. 93 by saying "Shouldn't they have the change to keep doing their jobs to make our community better?" Predictably, the (mis)use the slogan "Si se puede." Cesar Chavez must be turning in his grave.

I readily admit that, ever since we started this blog last summer, I have taken what can fairly be described as an unseemly amount of pleasure in the collapse of Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign. (See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) There are many reasons for this, chief among them that I don't think nominating a war-mongering, pro-abortion, pro-torture, cynical candidate would serve the GOP or the nation well. Plus it's nice to make a big deal of the fact that, for once, one of my politicial predictions has panned out. (I never thought Rudy could win, even when the polls said otherwise.) So, both my sense of national well-being and my ego are gratified by Rudy's dropping out of the race today -- not having won a single state along the way.

So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye, Rudy. As a resident of New York in the mid-90s, I can say you were a fine mayor, and the nation thanks you for your leadership on 9/11. But you would have made for a disastrous president, and it's a testament to Republican voters' good sense that they recognized this.

Anyway, don't blame your advisers for this defeat, Rudy. It wasn't your campaign strategy that cost you this election, it was, well ... you.

Plus, it didn't help when God came out against your campaign ...

From the AP:

The New York chapter of The National Organization for Women accused Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of betraying women with his endorsement of Barack Obama, prompting the organization's national office to come to the Massachusetts senator's defense.

"Women have just experienced the ultimate betrayal," NOW's New York State chapter said in a scorching rebuke. "Senator Kennedy's endorsement of Hillary Clinton's opponent in the Democratic presidential primary campaign has really hit women hard." ...

"We are repaid with his abandonment!" the statement said. "He's picked the new guy over us. He's joined the list of progressive white men who can't or won't handle the prospect of a woman president who is Hillary Clinton."

OK, the New York NOW-NOWs put gender over all else in picking a candidate, and their pal Teddy let them down -- I get that. What I don't get is why they consider this endorsement an unpardonable offense against women, when they've never had any problem overlooking, oh, this.

America just lost its best and brightest hope for real change when John Edwards gave up the presidential ghost. Edwards did something that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and certainly none of the Republicans would dream of doing. He made poverty no longer a dirty word in the mouths of many, and that included Clinton and Obama, for a minute anyway. But Edwards didn’t stop there. He relentlessly pushed the envelope on America’s next greatest crime and sin, the absolute refusal of the nation to provide decent health care for more than fifty million persons no matter whether poor, working class, middle class and even some with a few bucks to spare. He didn’t stop even there. He hammered corporate and special interests for their shameless and unabashed pillage, loot, and rape of American consumers.

Edwards was truly a modern day Jeremiah crying in the wilderness against poverty, corporate greed, and the health care abomination, and predictably was bum rushed by the gaggle of ultra-conservative slam artists, the Fox network crowd, talk shock jocks, and the New York Times neo-liberal bunch. They slandered, slurred, and ridiculed him, and ultimately tried to marginalize him as a bare after thought, warm up act to Clinton and Obama.

Edwards became the first Democratic presidential candidate to go where no other Dem or certainly Republican candidate has gone in four decades and talked up poverty disgrace, universal health and economic democracy. He bucked history, negative public and political attitudes, and of course ridicule for championing these populist causes. But here’s the deal. Edwards may be out of the race but his message and the reason for that message won’t disappear like Houdini. Obama and Clinton will continue to pilfer and repackage parts of his message, while of course giving no credit to the messenger.
No matter. Edwards did himself, us and the nation proud when he boldly stepped up and tried to shame the shot callers into facing up to their sorry and disgraceful neglect of millions of poor and uninsured Americans. We owe Edwards a profound debt of gratitude for that. Here’s a guess. Edwards won’t and shouldn’t go quietly into the night. We still desperately need his voice and we should do everything we can to make sure that his voice continues to be heard.

John, you have my eternal thanks for who you are and what you did. You are truly the better angel of America.

OK, I have to admit, this was kinda fun to stumble across: On John McCain's Web site, on the News and Media page, one of the three featured headlines in the "In the News" box, was "LA Daily News' Bridget Johnson: The Case for John McCain." At first I was just like, "Wow!" -- then I realized his campaign was probably eating up any GOP pundit who wasn't beating Mac Daddy over the head. Especially since, in my endorsement, I criticized other pundits for beating Mac over the head.

I'll be up at the Reagan Library for the debate later today, so look forward to some blogging from there (if, er, I can get a good wireless connection).

Man, what a race!!! I predict that in the days before Super Tuesday, Mitt Romney will try to make up lost ground by eating every greasy food with his hands possible, and finishing that off with a mound of funnel cake.

Once I get past his heavy hand on immigration, I really like this short speech by Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif.), who argues that the bipartisan rebate plan sends the wrong message to Americans. As he notes, we got into this mess by spending too much, and now the government (which is the master of overspending) says, "Here's some more money -- please spend it on consumer goods because we'll be in trouble if you stop spending." Meanwhile, that meddling and treacherous Suze Orman has been been begging Joe Sixpack to put his rebate toward his already considerable personal debt, which may get her shipped off to Guantanamo soon.

David Brooks channels Jonathan Dobrer:

"Last week there was the widespread revulsion at the Clintons’ toxic attempts to ghettoize Barack Obama. In private and occasionally in public, leading Democrats lost patience with the hyperpartisan style of politics — the distortion of facts, the demonizing of foes, the secret admiration for brass-knuckle brawling and the ever-present assumption that it’s necessary to pollute the public sphere to win. All the suppressed suspicions of Clintonian narcissism came back to the fore. Are these people really serving the larger cause of the Democratic Party, or are they using the party as a vehicle for themselves?"

Last week, the campaign mailers starting filling up my mailbox. While most of them were pushing the Indian gaming measures -- Proposition 94-97 -- my favorite was the Yes on 93 mailer with the ambiguous message: "Protect our right to be heard on Election Day: Yes on 93." Who is the we of "our"? It's the people under the picture, not you, silly.

This bill changes term limits so that lawmakers can spend only 12 years in Sacramento, as opposed to the current 14, but can spend all of their time in any configuration of senate or assembly. Now they are limited to two terms each. But the real reason everyone's so hot for this bill in Sacramento is the loophole that lets current lawmakers keep their jobs up to six years longer. Not a bad deal, considering their salaries and per diems, it can be worth up to a half a million per legislator.

I am so very sad and discouraged with how this campaign is running downhill—largely thanks to Hillary and Bill. The politics of personal destruction is no less nauseating when practiced in a fratricidal manner than against philosophically opposed foes. Sadly, the rule of conflict is that civil wars are almost always worse than national wars, and we forgive sworn enemies more easily than former friends.

Right now I’m a Former Friend of Bill’s, and while I confess to having been unenthusiastic about Hillary before, I was not a Hillary hater. I never really understood the animus against her and, well, them. The right wing seemed to me to have a deranged obsession over the Clintons, while I and my ilk defended them against all enemies domestic and foreign.

While not yet rabid, I am coming to an understanding of why they were so detested, and this is making me look again at some of their past behavior and misbehavior. I see how Carville and crew slimed any and all of the women who made complaints about Bill, how they engaged in the politics of personal destruction with horrifying rhetoric like, “Well, she’s what you get if you drag a hundred dollar bill through a trailer park.” And the Clinton team went on to question the integrity and stability of any women who complained. I dismissed their tacky tactics—not because I didn’t believe the women but because I didn’t want them to spoil the dream. I think I was wrong, and my priorities were not straight. No, I still don’t believe the worst charges, but the Clintons’ essential lack of character is for me the issue.

They clearly will lie about themselves and others in order to win. They will swear anything, deny everything and destroy anyone for the greater purpose of their ambition.

Following her resounding defeat in South Carolina, she was charmless and graceless. There was no humor, no reflection, no sense that she even took notice of what had happened. This is unacceptable in a candidate. Yes, politics is hard and sometimes bruising, but we expect a certain amount of graciousness. We don’t want to live another four or eight years with someone who doesn’t recognize any mistakes and will take information (like intelligence) out of context and make it fit the argument of the moment. Hillary intentionally misrepresented Obama’s appreciation of the skill and charm, not policies, of Reagan. Her spin was as false and cooked as the pre-war intelligence about Iraq.

This week’s playing of the race card was particularly disturbing and despicable. Bill knew exactly what he was doing in his condescending dismissal of Obama’s winning of South Carolina. By pointing out Jesse Jackson won there also he was trying to get voters to conflate Jesse and Obama. Jackson ran as a black candidate and he won at a caucus, not a primary. Obama is running as a viable candidate with a chance to win who is black but not the black candidate. Even if this is a subtle distinction for some, Bill gets it. There is a real question of Bill either doing Hillary’s bidding, and being the “bad cop,” or being out of her control? Which is it, and which would be worse?

Yet more troubling—and this can’t be blamed on Bill—is Hillary’s breaking the party pledge not to campaign in Florida as well as not having either the Florida or Michigan result count. Now, since she won Michigan (unopposed), she wants it to count. Now that she has reason to believe that the delegate count may be close, she is in Florida and wants those results to count too. This is awfully like Bush seeing no particular reason to play by the rules in our Constitution.

If she cannot keep her pledges now, how should we understand her platform and her promises to us? She is acting shamelessly and ruthlessly, and I’m sick at heart.

Yes, I will still vote for her, if she wins the nomination. But this is a commitment without enthusiasm, with no pledge either to work or contribute to her run. And if, by chance, the convention is close and she wins by dint of the super delegates, the non-elected party bosses, I promise you it will be a poisoned prize that will lead neither her nor the party to victory in November.

On reflection, I don’t hate Hillary and Bill. Much worse, I’m disappointed.

P.S. I agree with Earl Ofari Hutchinson on this: Oprah played the race card first.

Former president Bill Clinton simply said that Jesse Jackson won the South Carolina Democratic presidential primary twice and ran a good campaign in the process. So what’s wrong with that? It’s a factual and accurate statement. Jackson did win the Democratic primary in that state in 1984 and again in 1988 as well as a handful of other states that year. He did it by grabbing most of the black vote. He ran a good campaign to win it, yet he still didn’t get the nomination. There was nothing demeaning, disrespectful, or racially offensive in what Clinton said about Jackson, and absolutely nothing that impugned Obama.

But predictably and on cue the Hillary haters went berserk, practically salivating at the chance to do what they have elevated to a fine but dirty art. They pounced with their by now stock template assortment of digs that twist, mangle, and hack up any and every utterance that drops from the tongue of the Clintons. By the time they filled in the blanks on their loathe Clinton template they had Clinton race baiting, tossing the race card, and converting Obama into the black president. Obama, of course, took the cue and just as predictably fired back and that juiced up the hate Hillary crowd even more.

The idea of course is to continue to tar the Clintons as the Mr. and Mrs. Attila the Hun of American politics, and cast Obama as the eternally suffering victim of their politically bloody machinations. Apart from their obsessive pound of the Clintons what makes this political farce work is the very thing that they bash the Clintons for, namely talking race. The public mantra of the press and the private mumblings of much of the public have been: Is America ready for a black president? That mantra has been chanted, chimed, hollered, and whispered the instant that Obama stood on the steps of the Old Capitol building in Springfield, Illinois and tossed his hat in the presidential ring last February. The variations on that mantra have come fast and furious: Would whites vote for him? Would Latinos vote for him? Would even blacks vote for him? Would the old guard civil rights guys, namely Jackson and Al Sharpton back him? Is he qualified? Does he have the experience? The subtext of race has dripped underneath every one of the variations on the question of Obama the “black president.”

Then there’s Oprah. Her barnstorm through South Carolina with its top heavy black vote numbers as well as a couple of states triggered cracks about Oprah playing the race card in unabashedly tooting the horn of the only mainstream black candidate in the presidential hunt. The Obama camp quickly sniffed a good thing in the race angle and hammered Hillary for allegedly trashing Martin Luther King Jr. by her giving Lyndon Johnson the title of the civil rights guru. They had it both ways when they indignantly and self-righteously screamed foul when Clinton fought back. They claimed that Obama never uttered a word about her, King and race. His Teflon coat remained unmarred.

That brings us straight back to Bill. From the moment he hit the stump and the campaign trail for the Mrs. The attacks have been relentless for his alleged bullying, browbeating, and always dirty tactics. That culminated in the classic retort from candidate Obama that they’re ganging up on me. That was enough for the hate Hillary pack. They were off to the races again with the bad guy Bill knock, accusing him of egging, agitating and dirtying up the campaign. No surprise that he got the race finger jabbed at him. In fact the surprise would have been if it hadn’t been.

The only thing missing from this pathetic little play act is for Jackson to hammer Clinton for daring to state the truth about him. Mercifully, that has not happened—yet. Jackson had the decency to quip that he didn’t think what Bill said about him was racist. But then again, maybe I’m speaking to soon. Someone in the Obama camp is probably putting the squeeze on Jackson to recant and call Bill a racist even as I say that. The message to Bill: Open your mouth and get smacked down.

A confident Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama shrugged off the buzz that he’d crash and burn with Latino voters, “Not in Illinois, they all voted for me.” But not so fast; there was this retort from a reader, yeah, but you ran against Alan Keyes. Keyes, being the luckless and hapless Eleventh hour Republican political sacrificial lamb who Obama annihilated in his smash victory for the U.S. Senate in 2004. But this time around, Obama faces a far bigger opponent than Keyes could ever hope to be, or even for that matter archrival Hillary Clinton. It’s the ‘Nevada Phenomenon’. It poses a far bigger danger to Obama’s White House drive than even the much debated ‘Bradley Effect’.

The Bradley Effect is named after former Los Angeles. mayor Tom Bradley who lost his bid for California governor to a white opponent in 1986, though Bradley had big leads in polls. Many white voters told pollsters and interviewers that they had no problem voting for an African-American, but once in the privacy of the voting booth voted for his white opponent.

The ‘Nevada Phenomenon’ by contrast has nothing to do with the supposed penchant for white voters to deceive pollsters and interviewers on race. In the South Carolina primary white voters went in reverse. The polls had Obama winning only ten percent of the white vote but in his smash win he more than double that percent. The ‘Nevada Phenomenon’ instead is the mix of wariness, fear, indifference and even hostility of the majority of Latino voters toward a black candidate.

It is more troublesome and intractable than potential white voter resistance to Obama. Even though in South Carolina and other Deep South primary states Obama lags behind Clinton among white voters, he’s still likely to get a respectable percent of white votes. That’s not true with Latino voters. Obama’s poll popularity with Latinos hasn’t budged very much despite his heightened name identification, media boost, energizing change pitch and personal charisma.. And if the history of black candidates, even popular well known and victorious candidates that ran for office and bombed with Latino voters is any indication, Obama won’t do much better than they did.

The Super Tuesday primaries on February 5 will be a big test for him with Latino voters. Their numbers have soared in the key primary states of New Jersey, New York, Florida and his home state, Illinois. So much so that the black vote, even assuming that he will grab a far bigger share of that vote than Clinton, and split the white vote, will not insure an Obama victory. The Latino vote looms as the X factor for him. Unlike the subtle, much harder to finger ‘Bradley Effect’, the ‘Nevada Phenomenon’ is an open challenge to any black candidate that needs Latino votes to win. Obama is now the black candidate that faces that challenge, and danger.