Bump and Update: Hillary responds to Obama (audio here with audience joining in):

"Sen. Obama said today that John McCain would be better for the country than George Bush. Now, Sen. McCain is a real American patriot who has served our country with distinction, but Sen. McCain would follow the same failed policies that have been so wrong for our country the last seven years.

"Sen. McCain thinks it is okay to keep our troops in Iraq for the next 100 years. Is that better than George Bush?

"Sen. McCain will continue the failed economic policies of George Bush that have brought us deficit and increasing debt. Is that better than George Bush?

"Sen. McCain does not have a health care plan that will cover every American. In fact, we will have more and more uninsured Americans. Is that better than George Bush?

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Obama is airing an ad attacking Hillary's health care plan. Hillary now fires back. Here's the support for the statements in her ad.

I do think the ad takes it one negative too far. Rather than say:

He couldn't answer tough questions in the debate. So Barack Obama is making false charges against Hillary's health care plan.

I think she should have just opened with:

Barack Obama is making false charges against Hillary's health care plan.

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Earlier I wrote why I think Hillary Clinton is more electable. Here's what Hillary said today in Pennsylvania:

Clinton also said there was no "contradiction" from her previous position when she told last week's ABC News debate audience that she thought Obama was electable after weeks in which her main case to the superdelegates who could decide the nomination was that Obama could not win a general election fight against presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

"Yes, yes, yes," Clinton said during the debate last week at the National Constitution Center on Independence Mall.

Today, she said, "He can be elected. I WILL be elected." "There is a difference," the New York senator said. "Look at the electoral map: I've carried states that a Democrat must have to win. Anything is possible, but I am more likely" to gain the White House against McCain.

McCain's strategy now is to go after the toss-up states, particularly in the west and southwest. [More...]

Bump and Update: The AP reports superdelegates are not feeling bound by primary results, but more concerned about electability. And the International Herald Tribune says McCain's new strategy is to go after the toss-up states.

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There's no question that superdelegates will consider electability as a factor in deciding whether to vote for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Based on this analysis by long-time Democratic party activist William Arnone, which I return to again and again for the numbers, here's what I think they need to look at:

• Who can best hold on to the 20 states the Dems won in 2004? Which candidate is more likely to put these states at risk in a battle with John McCain?

• Which candidate has the better chance of winning states that voted Republican in 2004 but are now seen as vulnerable for McCain?

• Which candidate has a better chance of getting the votes of four key constituencies that could carry the election for McCain?

Answers below: [More...]

By Big Tent Democrat

Matt Yglesias writes:

McCain[']s [priorities] are reducing the level of government services in order to pay for an indefinite prolongation of the war in Iraq, the extension of Bush's tax cuts for the highest-income Americans, a large hike in non-war defense spending, and a series of new tax breaks. Clinton and Obama are both, in somewhat different ways, offering more services paid for by returning to something more like the levels of taxation that so devastated the national economy in the 1990s.

(Emphasis supplied.) I think that is right and it is what made Obama's comment on the Clinton economic policies of the 1990s so perplexing:

You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration . . .

As Yglesias rightly points out, both Hillary Clinton and Obama are promising a return to the fiscal policies of Bill Clinton. It makes no sense for Obama to lump the Clinton era with the disastrous Bush Presidency.

Sen. John McCain appeared this morning on ABC's This Week With George Stephanopoulos. You can watch the video here. Some quotes (received by e-mail from ABC News):

On Sen. Obama’s approach to the economy:

“..He obviously doesn't understand the economy, because history shows every time you have cut capital gains taxes, revenues have increased, going back to Jack Kennedy. So out of touch? Yes, they are out of touch when they want to raise taxes at the worst possible time, when we're in a recession.”

On William Ayers:

“…his relationship with Mr. Ayers is open to question. …Because if you're going to associate and have as a friend and serve on a board and have a guy kick off your campaign that says he's unrepentant, that he wished bombed more -- and then, the worst thing of all, that, I think, really indicates Senator Obama's attitude, is he had the incredible statement that he compared Mr.Ayers, an unrepentant terrorist, with Senator Tom Coburn, Senator Coburn, a physician who goes to Oklahoma on the weekends and brings babies into life -- comparing those two -- I mean, that's not -- that's an attitude, frankly, that certainly isn't in keeping with the overall attitude.”

By Big Tent Democrat

You always hear these stories about "organization." I am always skeptical about the claims of how much organization matters in actual election states, as opposed to caucus states. But today E.J. Dionne said:

I want to go back to this polling business in Pennsylvania. You know, it seems to me, when you look at these numbers right now, the most likely outcome is that she’s got a five point lead, he probably picks up three or four points, maybe two or three points on organization. This is from a very smart Democrat I talked to yesterday when I was up there. But she—those undecideds look an awful like her people, and they seem if you push them that they’re going to go to her. So if you sort of just do it on the numbers, she probably should win a healthy victory. . . . [S]he ought to win that by a pretty decent margin.

I actually do not follow Dionne's math there - if Obama picks up 3 points on organization and Clinton is leading by 5 then even if she wins undecideds by 6-3, she only wins by 5. But I am always skeptical of these claims of organizational advantages, particularly where Clinton has the Governor of PA and the Mayor of Philly working hard for her. But if Dionne is right, then it seems to me he should be expecting a close race in PA. I must say I do not follow Dionne's logic there.

By Big Tent Democrat

This is funny:

Among bowlers (24% of the electorate) and gun owners (38% of the electorate), Clinton leads big. She's up 54-33 among bowlers and 53-28 among gun owners; There were 13% undec. among bowlers and 17% undec among gun owners.

Heh.

By Big Tent Democrat

Speaking for me only

Atrios writes:

One place I decided to try to avoid going was to the land of the "electability" argument. . . . First I reject the idea that one should pick a candidate based on some imagined preferences of other voters. And second, there just isn't enough evidence out there to support the idea that either candidate is "stronger." People can have opinions about this, of course, but I don't think there's much of an argument to made either way.

As someone who has a preference solely based on who I think is more electable (due to the fact that there is, save for health care, not a dime's worth of difference between the two candidates on the issues), I have to quibble with Atrios. What would he have me base my preference on? Of course, it is only my opinion that Barack Obama is more electable, but I have no other issue to differentiate them on.

What has amazed me is the vitriol, a nice word would be passion I guess, that has come, from both sides, for two rather cautious, left center candidates who stand exactly the same on the issues (save for health care) and in the mainstream of the Democratic Party. There is nothing that I have seen that makes one preferable to the other, other than the electability calculus. So I disagree with Atrios on this.

By Big Tent Democrat

The McClatchy Newspapers, MSNBC and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette poll conducted by Mason Dixon polls PA at 48-43 Clinton. This is similar to M-D's Ohio poll, which had Clinton up 4. Clinton won Ohio by 10.

Key finding - "Obama pulled just 33 percent of the white vote, but 83 percent of the black vote." Roughly using my SUSA conversion calculation, this gets me to a 56-44 Clinton win.

Chuck Todd's take:

By Big Tent Democrat

As Jeralyn noted yesterday, the Barack Obama campaign turned sharply negative this weekend. There are a number of reasons why a campaign might go negative. But strangely, I think John Zogby, of all people, may have hit on the reason:

If this small group of white/Catholic undecideds do not vote, Obama can win Pennsylvania if he is able to get out his base of young voters, African American voters, and Very Liberal voters. If those white/Catholics do vote, then they will probably vote for Clinton and she can conceivably meet the 10-point victory threshold that meets pundits' expectations. It looked like she was moving some of these voters after the debate, but today is a different story. Too soon to tell."

(Emphasis supplied.) Knowing he can not win their votes, Obama could be attempting to have these voters not vote at all. This is "politics as usual" of course but it is striking when compared to the rhetoric of the Obama campaign.

Bill Clinton on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania today succinctly explains why Obama's ad attacking Hillary's health care plan is not only wrong, but shows that Obama is clueless. Elizabeth Edwards made the same points about the need for everyone to be covered and how it will result in lower costs.

Shorter version: Obama: Not everyone can afford it. The truth: Yes they can.

"Hillary's being subject to a television ad that has been roundly criticized in the form of mass mailings all across this country saying she's trying to make you buy insurance you can't afford and you're gonna be fined and all that. It isn't true. It is not true," he said. "Every expert who has looked at this says if you provide the subsidies and you cap somebody's income, everybody'll be able to afford it, it'll be cheaper than anything you're buying now if you buying it. But I'm just telling you, we won't get control of cost unless we cover everybody. Doing the morally right thing is the economically essential thing. If you agree with that, if you agree with that, you have only one choice left with the three candidates for president. You got to vote for Hillary for president, she'll fix this problem."

Obama is digging himself into a hole here, just like he did with his Bitter-Gate statements. He really doensn't get it. Like he doesn't get social security and has bought into the crisis meme. He should have corrected his health care plan months ago. Better yet, he should work on it for another eight years and then come back and try again.

On the job training is not what most of us have in mind for the Presidency -- at least not while there's a better Democratic choice.