No one should be surprised by the threatening letter to Nancy Pelosi from the Democratic Party fat-cats supporting Hillary Clinton. Despite all the high-minded talk of “sticking to the issues”, the Clintons have since the beginning followed a strategy of offering favors to supporters and attempting to intimidate voters in the Democrats' 2008 Presidential campaign. And the Pelosi letter is only the latest example that these tactics are now being applied to superdelegates. For those who have not followed these matters as closely, let me recap some highlights.
After former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack endorsed Hillary Clinton, her campaign arranged for some of her wealthy supporters to pay off some of the $400,000 debt he incurred before ending his own Presidential candidacy the previous month. That was almost 10 months before the Iowa caucuses. At the end of 2007, as evidence mounted of Clinton's inability to contain the growing grass roots movement for Barack Obama, her campaign set out to intimidate out-of-state students, who under Iowa law were legally allowed to register to vote and caucus in January.This was the first, but not be the last attempt at voter suppression.
In NH, poll watchers were prevented from observing some polling stations. I personally met a poll watcher who was asked to leave in Keene, ostensibly because it was too crowded; but Obama was able to carry all five wards in the city.But there were reports of widespread intimidation in areas where Hillary Clinton registered her best results: Nashua, Concord and Manchester.
I had not one, but two days to figure out the answer to the question with which I ended my last post: "Will tomorrow's outing reinforce our impression that we had actually registered the "momentum" everyone said follows an early state win?" We continued knocking on doors on Sunday and Monday, reaching almost all of the voters on our list for the area we were assigned, which had not been visited by any campaign this season.
Our results provide a consistent answer: Yes! Obama is enjoying a measurable momentum. Our sample is of course too limited to know if it will be enought to score a decisive win in NH. There are still a lot of undecided voters, and there is ample support for other Democratic candidates. But there is a clear willingness of voters to entertain an Obama presidency, and they are far more positive about his candidacy than in any of my previous canvasses since May. We'll know tomorrow. But from what we heard from the Undeclared (independents) and Republicans, he is in great shape here for the general election if he becomes the Democratic nominee.
I have no doubt that a win here will boost Obama further in the South Carolina primary. But what about Nevada? The answer to that question is: it all depends on how successful we are in the ground game there.
