In today's Washington Post, Richard Cohen has a great op-ed in which he expresses his dismay over the Obama campaign throwing Jim Johnson, its former VP vetter, overboard:

As I previously argued, Secretary of Health and Human Services seems like a logical consolation prize for Barack Obama to offer Hillary Clinton:

There is, however, one cabinet position for which Clinton seems both well-qualified and well-suited: Secretary of Health and Human Services. As a member of the Senate's Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions since 2001, she is familiar with many of the issues dealt with by the Department of Health and Human Services. Given her intense and long-standing advocacy on behalf of health care reform and children's issues in particular, this seems an ideal appointment for her. Whether she would prefer it to being a senator, however, is anyone's guess.

 It now looks like Obama and his advisers may have come to the same conclusion.

With just three primaries left, it is abundantly clear at this point that Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee for president, yet Hillary has shown no signs that she plans to leave the race any time soon. On the assumptions that she is aware that the race is effectively over, and that she does, in fact, have some reason for remaining in the race other than spite and/or denial, the question becomes, what is she looking to gain? In the extended entry, I discuss what the competing theories are, and how realistic they seem to be.

The New Republic has a new story up on the Clinton campaign: What Went Wrong, as told through the words of fund raisers, organizers, staffers and advisers.

Before I cherry pick the quotes that best summarize my own explanation, I find it somewhat interesting that there is no mention of the May 2007 memo by Deputy Campaign Director Mike Henry, in which he said that the campaign shouldn't compete in Iowa, instead focusing on New Hampshire and the following states. Henry presciently wrote that

In past presidential campaigns smaller states, like Iowa and New Hampshire, played a more prominent role in securing the nomination. That process was based on the momentum that was created from winning Iowa or New Hampshire. Thirteen of the last 14 major-party nominees have won Iowa, New Hampshire, or both. Senator Clinton's husband is the only exception. But I think this old system is about to collapse and it will happen this year because of the impact of primary elections that are being held on February 5th.
...
After assessing this proposal against core elements of our plan, my recommendation is to pull completely out of Iowa and spend the money and Senator Clinton's time on other states. I believe that the changes to and the volatile nature of setting the Democratic nomination calendar has changed the way the nomination will be won in 2008. I believe the "small state first" approach that we are familiar with, that bases winning nomination on momentum is about to be turned on its' head this year. It used to be protected by party rules and the lack of a national primary day. We no longer have either. The party has no leverage to maintain scheduling discipline and we now have a national primary on February 5th with 20 states choosing their nominee on the same day.

Jerome's post this morning, hinted at the biggest danger facing Democrats in the likely McCain-Obama general election match up: both candidates will be using the same overarching themes and narratives throughout the campaign. As he notes,

I haven't seen much of a dent being put into McCain's core brand (war hero, reformer, maverick) to date...If McCain is able to leverage that into becoming a "change Republican" he'll have done what Matzzie says, which is pointed out in the above examples: "Sometimes being the first person to adopt a message isn't the winner--your opponent can hijack the dialog in the media and turn it to his advantage."

This misses, however, the other massive overlap between their messages: both lay claim to the mantle of bi-partisanship, of being able to bring people together despite their differences to work out functioning compromises. For Obama, this is encapsulated by his theme of "Unity," whereas for McCain, its in his branding as a "Maverick," as distinct from the ideological, far-right Republicans. As one Republican consultant told the NY Times, "I think that by rook or by crook or by providence or just dumb luck, we nominated the one guy who continually outpolls the Republican brand."

Before I discuss my critiques of McCain's speech yesterday on judicial activism, as a partisan Democrat, I'd like to request that he continue to give more speeches along these lines.

Given all the internecine fighting among Democrats over the course of the presidential campaign, I can think of few better ways to unite the Democratic party than hearing McCain loudly proclaim his desire to move the Supreme Court rightward. As much as Clinton supporters may loathe Obama and Obama supporters may loathe Clinton (and those numbers will go down drastically over the course of the general election), many will be scared shitless by the prospect of President McCain replacing the aging "liberal" justices (more on that later), Stevens (age 88), Ginsburg (age 75), Breyer (age 69) and Souter (age 68) with "people in the cast of John Roberts, Samuel Alito, and my friend the late William Rehnquist." (As an aside, I'm curious why McCain repeatedly leaves out Scalia in naming his model justices...)

For Democrats wanting to show a stark difference between the candidates and the long-term legacy their administrations would leave, it doesn't get much better than this. More Americans already think the Court is tilting too conservative than too liberal,/ yet McCain has just announced his intention to accelerate this trend.

The fictional brokered convention scenario got me thinking about something that's been bothering me for a while: what, exactly, is the point of the Democratic and Republican National Conventions?

Nominally, the conventions have three goals:

1. To nominate a party's candidate for president;
   
2. To nominate a party's candidate for vice-president; and
   
3. To adopt the party's platform.

In reality, the party's platform is worked out months in advance by members of the respective parties' Platform Committees, and are ratified by the conventions as more or less a formality. For the most part, all people care about when paying attention to the conventions (to the extent that anyone actually does pay attention...) is the nomination of the parties' tickets, which brings me to my second question: What is the problem with having the primary campaign actually last up until the convention?

In discussing Clinton's new ad on the front page, Todd Beaton writes:

"Turning her focus on John McCain is really smart for a couple of reasons. Obviously it's best for all involved for her to turn her fire away from Barack Obama, perhaps most importantly for her so she doesn't scare off wavering superdelegates who fear she'll ruin Obama and the party's chances in November if he's the nominee. But also, it actually behooves both Clinton and Obama to focus on criticizing McCain because if this nomination is going to hinge on electability, as it seems it just might since ultimately the nomination will be left up to the subjective judgment of the superdelegates, letting the supers see just how they intend to go head to head against McCain, seeing sort of a preview of coming attractions -- whether through ads or just rhetorically on the stump -- is actually a really important part of this stage of the campaign, which, as sad as it is, is largely about wooing the superdelegates."

This reminded me of a theory I'd had, so I went digging through old emails and found the one from February 6th, the day after Super Tuesday. The text is below, and clearly it hasn't played out this way so far, but I wonder if it isn't still possible, at least to some degree. The aforementioned post makes me think it is, but we'll see how this all plays out in the coming weeks and months. Anyway, what I originally wrote is below the jump: