We've seen the candidates appeal to old voters, young voters, female voters in general, Hispanic and African American voters, rural voters, and just about every other demographic there is. Have they overlooked anyone? Apparently, yes. Unmarried Women.

A new poll will be released next week. Shorter version: Candidates Need to Reach Across the Marriage Gap. I just received this e-mailed press release:

Unmarried Women Expected to Vote in Record Numbers in ’08; Rank the Economy as #1 Concern But Don’t Hear Their Needs Reflected in Candidates’ Plans

More...

I'm on the Hillary Clinton press call. It's being led by Mark Nevins, communications director for Hillary's PA campaign, Howard Wolfson and TJ Rooney of the PA House of Representatives.

Theme: Obama's words vs. actions, in context of his discredited oil ads in PA. Obama's ad says:

I'm Barack Obama. I don't take money from oil companies or Washington lobbyists, and I won't let them block change anymore. They'll pay a penalty on windfall profits. We'll invest in alternative energy, create jobs and free ourselves from foreign oil.

Rooney: Obama says in his ad that he's never taken any money from oil companies. No one does, because it's illegal. Yet he has taken $213k from employees of oil companies. Two of his bundlers are top execs at oil companies. (See Newsweek on this or my earlier post.)

Obama sided with Dick Cheney in voting for Dick Cheney's energy bill -- the best bill that oil companies could buy. Hillary voted against the bill.

CNN says Obama's ad spending is not just record breaking, but record shattering:

Barack Obama has spent a record breaking $60 million to run more than 100,000 political television ads in pursuit of the Democratic presidential nomination, a new analysis conducted for CNN shows.

In contrast, John Kerry ran a little more than 19,000 TV ads four years ago in his successful bid for the Democratic nomination, according to TNS Media Intelligence/CMAG, CNN’s consultant on political television advertising spending.

Clinton, who trails Obama in fundraising by about $60 million, has run just over 60,000 TV ads in her bid for the White House.

In Pennsylvania, NC and Indiana...[More...]

By Big Tent Democrat

Bump and Update: ABC's Jake Tapper and Politico report Obama may be opting out of public financing.

Tonight at a fundraiser in Washington, D.C., at the National Museum of Women in the Arts -- at a $2,300-per-person event for 200 people held before a $1,000-per-person reception for 350 people -- Obama previewed his argument to justify this possible future discarding of a principle.

We have created a parallel public financing system where the American people decide if they want to support a campaign they can get on the Internet and finance it, and they will have as much access and influence over the course and direction of our campaign that has traditionally been reserved for the wealthy and the powerful," Obama said.

Is he breaking a pledge?

*****

Original Post

By all accounts, Barack Obama raises a lot of money in small donations. But he also raises big bucks from the wealthy. Here's a photojournalist account of his fundraiser at the Getty Mansion in San Francisco this week -- one of four such events that day.

The photos alone are worth the look -- this one is my favorite for how it so captures San Francisco.

I don't really have a political comment here -- all campaigns need the wealthy donor parties -- but the blogger spent all day capturing the scene and did a very good job of it.

By Big Tent Democrat

More polling data to support Hillary Clinton's big contested state electability theory:

If the election for President were held today and the choices were John McCain, the Republican, and Hillary Clinton, the Democrat for whom would you vote?

Hillary Clinton 45%
John McCain 42%
Undecided 13%

If the election for President were held today and the choices were John McCain, the Republican, and Barack Obama, the Democrat for whom would you vote?

John McCain 48%
Barack Obama 41%
Undecided 11%

This is a poll that shows Obama within 5 points of Clinton in the primary. It is thus a relatively favorable poll for Obama. Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. These are states where Clinton has a clear general election advantage. This is getting impossible to deny it seems to me. Of course Obama can win Pennsylvania, Ohio and perhaps Michigan. Florida I believe is not within Obama's reach. Of course, Obama can win Virginia, Colorado, etc. whereas Clinton can not. There are two distinct and valid electability arguments now. That seems impossible to deny. Here is the RCP average if you want more evidence.

Elizabeth Edwards has joined Center for American Progress, (home to the excellent Think Progress blog) as a Senior Fellow on health care issues. She'll also be blogging as part of their rapid response team at the Wonk Room.

While she's not endorsing either candidate, she tells Good Morning America tomorrow she prefers Hillary Clinton's health plan to Obama's:

In an interview with "Good Morning America's" Robin Roberts, airing Wednesday, Edwards — who recently began work as a senior fellow at the liberal think tank, the Center for American Progress — said she believed Clinton's health care plan was more inclusive than that of the Illinois senator.

"You need that universality in order to get the cost savings ... I just have more confidence in Sen. Clinton's policy than Sen. Obama's on this particular issue," she said.

Welcome, Elizabeth.

Big Tent Democrat wrote earlier about today's SUSA PA poll showing Hillary with an 18 point lead over Barack Obama.

Why is it that the 3 MSNBC shows I caught a few minutes of tonight only mentioned the Quinnipiac poll showing her winning with a lesser margin, going with the meme that Obama is closing the gap big-time? None of the shows even mentioned the Survey USA poll.

From Survey USA: [more]

Via The Tartan, the student newspaper for Carnegie Mellon on a Michelle Obama campaign rally in PA:

While the crowd was indeed diverse, some students at the event questioned the practices of Mrs. Obama’s event coordinators, who handpicked the crowd sitting behind Mrs. Obama. The Tartan’s correspondents observed one event coordinator say to another, “Get me more white people, we need more white people.” To an Asian girl sitting in the back row, one coordinator said, “We’re moving you, sorry. It’s going to look so pretty, though.”

“I didn’t know they would say, ‘We need a white person here,’ ” said attendee and senior psychology major Shayna Watson, who sat in the crowd behind Mrs. Obama. “I understood they would want a show of diversity, but to pick up people and to reseat them, I didn’t know it would be so outright.”

The politics of theater. Can you imagine if a similar request for African-Americans was made by the Clinton campaign? It would lead the evening news. [Hat tip Instapundit.]

By Big Tent Democrat

The new world's greatest pollster, SUSA, has a new North Carolina poll:

Four weeks to the 05/06/08 [NC] Primary, Barack Obama is 10 points atop Hillary Clinton, exactly where Obama was two months ago, according to a SurveyUSA tracking poll . . . [r]emarkable stability within the sub-populations. Among men, over the past 2 months, Obama led by 18, by 13, and today by 15 points. Among women, Obama led by 2, by 3, and today by 6 points. Among whites, Clinton led by 19, by 17, and today by 22 points. Among blacks, Obama led by 65, by 61, and today by 75 points. . . .

(Emphasis supplied.) Again, feels right to me. But I know much less about North Carolina than say, PA.

Barack Obama explained to a fundraising crowd in California this week why his VP nominee would not need extensive foreign policy experience. It's because he has it. Was he joking? No.

Not only that, here's how he described and differentiated his experience from Hillary's to conclude he's more experienced than Hillary or McCain:

"It's ironic because this is supposedly the place where experience is most needed to be Commander-in-Chief. Experience in Washington is not knowledge of the world. This I know. When Senator Clinton brags 'I've met leaders from eighty countries'--I know what those trips are like! I've been on them. You go from the airport to the embassy. There's a group of children who do native dance. You meet with the CIA station chief and the embassy and they give you a briefing. You go take a tour of a plant that [with] the assistance of USAID has started something. And then--you go."

"You do that in eighty countries--you don't know those eighty countries. So when I speak about having lived in Indonesia for four years, having family that is impoverished in small villages in Africa--knowing the leaders is not important--what I know is the people. . . ."

"I traveled to Pakistan when I was in college--I knew what Sunni and Shia was [sic] before I joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. . . ."

[More...]

By Big Tent Democrat

Speaking for me only

Anyone wondering if NBC believes in wall to wall coverage of Hillary Clinton, even as they declare the Dem nomination race over, need only read the daily transcript of KO Keith Olbermann's Obama Screedcast Against Clinton. The first 30 minutes of Monday's version were devoted to attacking Hillary Clinton. But this was the highlight moment:

[DANA MILBANK:] . . . But in the interview, as people have found out, well, basically the guts of the story are true and probably, this woman [Trina Bachtel], had she gotten better care, things would have turned out better. The problem is, when you‘re in this sort of exaggeration position as previously Al Gore and John Kerry found themselves in, it‘s very hard to escape this. So, even a fairly innocent one like this, is just one more piece on the pile.

(Emphasis mine.) Keith Olbermann, NBC, the Media and the "progressive blogs" are now doing to Hillary Clinton what the Media did to Al Gore in 2000. This is what the "progressive blogs" and the Obama News Network (NBC) are about. As eriposte shows, the progressive blogosphere and its news reader mascot (Olbermann) died this campaign season. May they be reborn soon. More . . .