A House Divided

With Barack Obama headed toward the Democratic nomination, the Clintons' long reign over the party looks likely to end, the New York Times reports. That could lead to a bold new era—or a divided party that Obama can’t reconcile. “It’s going to create an upheaval,” said one Democratic organizer. “The Clintons and their allies have been running the show for 16 years.” More »

America’s pundit class has deemed the Democratic race over, shifting the conventional wisdom away from Hillary Clinton’s whisker of a chance, the New York Times reports. From Tim Russert’s assertion that “We now know who the Democratic nominee’s going to be, and no one’s going to dispute it” to the Drudge Report’s anointing Barack Obama “The Nominee,” the worm appears to have turned among analysts. More »

Hillary Clinton will lose one of her key fundraisers to Barack Obama, the Los Angeles Times reports. Gabriel Guerra-Mondragon, a former ambassador under President Clinton who had raised $300,000, “became concerned about the tone of the race,” an Obama aide said. But a Democratic strategist said one defection isn’t enough to sink Clinton: “You need a pattern in politics.” More »

Hillary Clinton can’t win the Democratic nomination, Charlie Cook concedes in the National Journal , but if she keeps winning primaries, she’s stuck in “political purgatory:" She can’t quit, either. The primary system is such that for all Clinton's big-state victories and the media flak buffeting Barack Obama, she can’t possibly turn the ship around—but she can't go home either. More »

Hacking through the forest of reporting on the presidential candidates' health care plans, Glamour blogger Megan Carpentier weighs in. Writing "as someone born with a birth defect who has been known to get sick," she bluntly begins, "I know enough about my own health insurance situation over the last decade to be able to say with absolute certainty that our health insurance system in this country sucks."  More »

Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Howard Dean plan to coordinate demands that uncommitted Democratic superdelegates endorse a candidate—and well before August's convention. Senate Majority Leader Reid said yesterday that “this matter will be over no later than July 1,” Congressional Quarterly reports. House Speaker Pelosi added that the party's nominee needs to start the general-election battle before August. More »

More Republicans are taking advantage of Barack Obama's newfound vulnerability by giving him a starring role in their political ads, the Los Angeles Times reports. One New Mexico spot says Obama disrespects “the American way of life,” and another in Louisiana that mentions his “radical” healthcare plan prompted the Democrat in the race to insist he has not "endorsed any national politician.” More »

Barack Obama is widely expected to walk away with North Carolina's Democratic primary, but Hillary Clinton—buoyed by her Pennsylvania success—isn't giving up on the state, reports the Wall Street Journal. Clinton is spending millions on ads and staging dozens of rallies, hoping that her momentum will translate into a strong performance May 6. More »

South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn slammed Bill Clinton’s “bizarre” campaign-trail conduct in an interview yesterday with the New York Times , saying that “black people are incensed” over Clinton’s remarks about Barack Obama. Clinton earlier compared Obama’s win in South Carolina to Jesse Jackson’s 1988 success there, then Monday claimed the Obama campaign had “played the race card on me” by making an issue of it.  More »

The best explanation for Hillary Clinton's big win in Pennsylvania was not race but age, Jonathan Alter argues in Newsweek . A remarkable 40% of the voters in Tuesday’s primary were over 60, and Barack Obama’s 41-59% defeat in the demographic was the killer. Pennsylvania is second only to Florida in average age, and Obama's showing among seniors there was actually markedly improved from his 28-69% thumping in that demo in Ohio. More »

Barack Obama, once the fresh-faced symbol of a new kind of politics, emerged from the Pennsylvania primary “stale, battered, and embittered,” Joe Klein writes in a stunningly dour piece on the state of the Democratic race in Time . Dragged into a morass of character attacks, some of it  “scurrilous trash,” Obama withered. “There is an immutable pedestrian reality to American politics,” Klein writes. “You have to get the social body language right.” More »

Barack Obama’s top strategist yesterday downplayed the demographic that sank his candidate in Pennsylvania on NPR, noting that the “white working class has gone to the Republican nominee for many elections, going back even to the Clinton years.” Added David Axelrod: "This is not new that Democratic candidates don't rely solely on those votes." More »

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama interrupted their rival campaigns yesterday to vote together on a bill that would make it easier for women to sue employers for pay discrimination. But their moment of unity proved fruitless as Senate Republicans blocked the bill, likely killing it for the rest of the year, reports Reuters. More »

The Pennsylvania primary didn't change the basic parameters of the race for the Democratic nomination in any significant way, Andrew Romano writes in Newsweek. But it had a huge effect on the narrative, handing Hillary Clinton Exhibit A for her claim that  Barack Obama can't win over white men. She will taunt him, as she did last night, for failing to knock her out, despite outspending her 3 to 1. Obama will boast, as he did last night, of cutting her Pennsylvania lead, and will hammer her for divisive tactics that are hurting the party. More »

The bruising Obama-Clinton battle is giving Republicans hope and Dems heartburn, but those feelings are misplaced, bloggers right and left agree: John McCain isn’t gaining on either potential fall opponents—and might indeed have hit his ceiling. At a moment that “ought to be peak time” for McCain, Ross Douthat writes in the Atlantic , he’s stuck at the same 45% nationally he had in December. More »

The New York Times today runs a scathing takedown of the candidate they endorsed for the Democratic nomination, asserting that Hillary Clinton’s attack mentality “undercuts the rationale for her candidacy that led this page ... to support her.” The paper's editorial board said the Pennsylvania primary race was “even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate” than those that came before—and the fault lies in the former first lady’s camp. More »

Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry endorsed Barack Obama yesterday, saying the Illinois senator was the only one who could “transcend partisan games.” Henry is the third Oklahoma superdelegate to back Obama, the Tulsa World reports, bucking the results of the state’s Feb. 5 primary—which Hillary Clinton won 54-31%. Clinton has just one Oklahoma superdelegate, while six remain uncommitted. More »

Hillary Clinton's 10-point win in Pennsylvania leaves the Democratic Party in the same quandary it was in before the primary, writes Carolyn Lochhead in the San Francisco Chronicle, but with the pressure ratcheted up. While the race did not much improve Clinton's chances, it did expose Barack Obama's possible weaknesses as a general election candidate. More »

Hillary Clinton conquered Pennsylvania with the same coalition that drove her to victory in Ohio: white women, blue-collar workers and older voters. And once again, voters who decided in the last days of the primary skewed heavily toward the New York senator, reports Politico. The only surprise in her 55-45% win came among the young—while Barack Obama still won that demographic, the candidates split white voters age 29 and under. More »

Without a knockout blow in Pennsylvania, Barack Obama is going to have to keep jabbing back at Hillary Clinton. But those counterpunches could hurt his campaign, warns Jonathan Weisman in the Washington Post. The Obama camp's swing to the negative in the closing days of the Pennsylvania campaign shows he can take on John McCain—but at the same time undercuts his message of fresh hope and an end to old-style politics, writes Weisman. More »