ORLANDO, Fla — Barack Obama took his fight with John McCain back to elementary school, accusing his rival campaign of acting like a bunch of 5th graders calling names.

Speaking to volunteers at an Orlando phone bank, Obama ribbed McCain for taking the campaign into the gutter. “When we started this campaign, we were hoping for a more elevated debate. I mean, imagine — at a time when we face more challenges than at any time in our lifetime, these guys are running ads with Paris and Britney,” he said. “That’s frivolous. It’s desperate.”

Obama said the campaign tactics are a sign of a lack of imagination over at Team McCain. “It’s a sign that they don’t have anything to offer to the American people so they’re just going to try to call folks names like you did in 5th grade,” he said. “You remember that, back in 5th grade? You know, people’d be calling each other names and getting into these petty fights. We don’t have time for that.”

One might think that the Illinois Senator, who has two grade-school aged children himself, wouldn’t want to bring the freshness of youth to the 72-year old McCain, whose age is seen as a liability — although Obama did tell the crowd that McCain “wants to do the same old thing.” Never a bad idea to get the word “old” in a McCain riff.

Otherwise, it was a lovefest between Obama and his supporters, who he thanked for standing by him in good tiems and bad — and for helping him with those nasty internet rumors.

(more…)

ST PETERSBURG, Fla - A day after being accused by the McCain campaign of playing the race card, Barack Obama faced tough questions in Florida about his true commitment to the plight of African Americans and the implicit accusation that he hasn’t been black enough.

Delivering remarks on a new economic stimulus plan in Florida today, Obama was interrupted by a group of three young black men, who held up a sign reading “What About the Black Community, Obama?” and featuring the URL of Uhuru News - a left-wing pro-African organization. The chants of the three men and the subsequent attempts by the pro-Obama crowd to drown them out completely derailed the Illinois Senator, who was railing against special interests.

“Hold on a second, what’s happening?” he said — trying and failing to launch back into the speech as the audience began chanting “Yes We Can” to overpower the hecklers. “Excuse me young man, this is going to be a question and answer session, so you can ask a question later,” Obama told the most vocal of the protesters. “Just be courteous and you’ll have a chance to make your statement. Just relax.”

Calling the St Petersburg crowd “feisty,” Obama picked up where he left off; he later made good on his promise to give the man - Diop Olugbala, 31 - a chance to be heard.

“In the face of the numerous attacks that are made against the African community or the black community by the same US government that you aspire to lead” - such as subprime mortgages that target African Americans, the killing of Sean Bell in New York and the Jena 6 case, Olugbala said, “why is it that you have not had the ability to not one time speak to the interests and even speak on the behalf of the oppressed and exploited African community or Black community in this country?”

Obama seemed momentarily taken aback — as did the crowd, which began to boo. “Hold on a second, everybody. I want everybody to be respectful. That’s why we are having a town hall meeting. That’s democracy at work,” said Obama. “He asked a legitimate question so I want to give him an answer.”

To the heckler, he said “I think you are misinformed about when you say not one time. Every issue you’ve spoken about, I actually did speak out about.”

(more…)

The Clinton campaign is perfectly happy with the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee’s decision to seat all of Florida’s delegates as allocated by the January 29th primary, but to only give each delegate half a vote. Not so the committee’s ruling on Michigan

Harold Ickes and Tina Flournoy made the following statement this evening:

“Today’s results are a victory for the people of Florida who will have a voice in selecting our Party’s nominee and will see its delegates seated at our party’s convention.  The decision by the Rules and Bylaws Committee honors the votes that were cast by the people of Florida and allocates the delegates accordingly.

We strongly object to the Committee’s decision to undercut its own rules in seating Michigan’s delegates without reflecting the votes of the people of Michigan.

The Committee awarded to Senator Obama not only the delegates won by Uncommitted, but four of the delegates won by Senator Clinton. This decision violates the bedrock principles of our democracy and our Party.

We reserve the right to challenge this decision before the Credentials Committee and appeal for a fair allocation of Michigan’s delegates that actually reflect the votes as they were cast.”

On a conference call yesterday, DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee Committee Member and Clinton supporter Tina Fluornoy told reporters that the Clinton campaign has four goals for today’s committee meeting to decide what to do about seating the delegates from Florida and Michigan.

First, the campaign wants the popular vote from the two states to count in the official tally. Then, they’d like those results to be the basis for any delegate formulation - meaning no splitting the delegates 50-50. They’d also like the full delegations from both states seated at the convention, and for every delegate to be given a full vote.

But privately, several aides concede that the campaign may be willing to compromise on the last of those goals in exchange for fully meeting the first one. They would, for instance, accept giving each pledged delegate a 2/3 or 1/2 vote if it comes down to that — so long as Clinton’s advantage in the popular vote in Michigan and Florida would be officially added to her vote count, giving her an undisputed lead there.

The thinking is that Clinton can’t catch up in pledged delegates no matter how favorably the committee views her arguments today. But she can force Democrats to acknowledge her as the popular vote leader — a status she already claims unofficially on the campaign trail. She’s already begun to call that measure more democratic than the delegate system, and Democrats have a sensitive spot for popular vote leaders after Al Gore won more in 2000 but still lost to George Bush’s superior electoral performance.

The Clinton camp believes a significant popular vote lead is something superdelegates will have to pay attention to; but even if they don’t, it allows Clinton to claim a certain kind of victory and save face at the end of this long primary season.

Clinton delegate master Harold Ickes says now that the Obama campaign has declared its willingness to seat delegations from Michigan and Florida at the Party Convention in August, the number of delegates once thought to be required to win the nomination is no longer operable.

“There’s an unwritten assumption that 2026 is the number to get the nomination. That could not at this point be further from the truth,” Ickes told reporters on a conference call. “Obama seems to have crossed the Rubicon, and is in favor of some resolution of Michigan and Florida. Until they are fully resolved, there is no fixed number for the nomination.”

“2210 is the high mark,” he said — referring to the number of delegates needed if the Michigan and Florida delegations are seated fully — “and it appears 2026 is the low mark. But that low mark is no longer in my view a reasonable number to even talk about.”

The DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee meets on May 31st to decide what to do about the two states. But Communications Director Howard Wolfson acknowledged that even if the Clinton campaign gets everything it wants from the committee, her path to the nomination still relies on convincing uncommitted superdelegates that she’s the stronger general election candidate.

“Senator Clinton is ahead in the popular vote. Senator Clinton has won the key swing states a Democrat has to win, she’s ahead in the key swing states in polling,” he said — pointing to new Quinnipiac polls showing her beating John McCain in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania while Obama wins only Pennsylvania and by a lesser margin. “She runs better against John McCain than Senator Obama in rural areas, and all of this adds up to the stronger candidate. And that’s a case we’re going to have to make.”

Wolfson also called Obama’s initial steps to being the Vice Presidential search “premature in the sense there’s no nominee yet,” and said he was unaware of any similar effort in the Clinton campaign.

Check out my notes on the rest of the conference call below.

(more…)

During his opening remarks at a Kissimmee, Florida, town hall meeting, Barack Obama noted his pledged delegate majority, but admitted the campaign was not quite over. There are, after all, three more contests in Montana, South Dakota and Puerto Rico, and neither Democrat has secured the 2026 delegates to secure the nomination.

Obama announced he would be campaigning Saturday in Puerto Rico, and will continue to hold events in the western states yet to vote. And, in his second Florida event of the day - his first swing through the state since September of last year - Obama said he hoped the Florida delegation would be seated.

Of course Florida and Michigan were stripped of their delegates when the state moved their primary contests before the DNC’s rules permitted. While Clinton contends the validated results could propel her closer to victory, the Obama campaign has stated they were just playing by the rules and so did not campaign in the two states.

“My hope is in a couple weeks time, that we’ve won some more elections, we’ve won some more delegates, we’ve gotten the Florida delegation seated so that they’re gonna be at the convention. And then we’re gonna have a convention in August and I’m gonna accept that nomination and then you and I together  - we’re gonna have to work hard to make sure that we win Florida, we win this general election, and then you and I together we’re gonna change the country and change the world,” he said confidently to applause.

BOCA RATON, Fla – Hillary Clinton returned to Florida for the first time since she declared victory there after the primary in January to argue that the results of that election should count – and the state’s delegates should be seated.

“The Democratic Party must count these votes,” she said to applause at the Century Village retirement community. “They should count them exactly as they were cast. Democracy demands no less.”

Her argument centered on three basic points –Democrats’ commitment to counting every vote, the injustice of punishing voters who did nothing themselves to deserve it, and the political implications of snubbing two key swing states – and she repeatedly raised the specter of the 2000 recount to drive her point home.

Recalling a few of her party’s historic fights to ensure the right to vote for women and minorities, Clinton said “both Senator Obama and myself have an obligation as potential Democratic nominees, in fact we all have an obligation as Democrats, to carry on this legacy and ensure that in our nominating process, that every voice is heard and every vote is counted.”

(more…)

The Obama campaign today announced Barack Obama would head to Michigan tomorrow - a move that only a frontrunner could make on the night of the West Virginia primary. While Hillary Clinton will likely celebrate her victory in the Mountaineer State, Barack Obama is traveling to Missouri and Michigan, states that held their primaries on February 5th and January 15th respectively. Obama will spend Wednesday on the stump in Michigan.

Of course Obama won Missouri and did not contend in Michigan as no delegates were at stake due to a punishment handed down by the DNC. Hillary Clinton carried the illegitimate primary, whose results have not factored into the heated race, and remains one of the reasons why she has yet to concede.

After Tuesday there will be five contests remaining in the Democratic nomination. The Obama campaign vows to campaign in each of the remaining states, but noted in a statement today, “Our schedule reflects the fact that we are still fighting for votes and delegates in the remaining contests but also that we are going to places that are going to be competitive in the fall. John McCain has gone unchallenged for far too long and we’re going to make sure that voters in competitive states know the choice in this election between changing Washington and the third term of George Bush’s failed policies that McCain is offering.”

And while Barack Obama himself has said this nomination is not over, his campaign is beginning to morph into general election mode. “Obviously we also don’t want to wake up on the morning of June 4th or June 10th or whenever this is going to end and not be prepared, so we’re going to do the things we can in our off hours,” Campaign Manager David Plouffe told reporters on a conference call last week. At the time it wasn’t clear “off hours” would mean prior to the campaign sealing the Democratic deal.

One of the “silver linings” to this long, drawn out campaign, Plouffe says, is that they have an organization in most states which will better ready Democrats to take McCain on in the general election. But Obama did not campaign in Florida or Michigan. “I think Florida is one state where we’ve probably suffered the most from lack of campaign activity compared to the rest of the country,” Plouffe observed on last week’s conference call. Which may be why Obama is scheduled to campaign in the Sunshine State on May 21st and 22nd – just one day after the candidate is expected to have accumulated the majority of delegates at stake in the nomination.

On Obama’s travel plans, a spokesman for the RNC responded today by noting, “Barack Obama can travel wherever he wants, but it won’t make his calls for higher taxes, restricted gun rights, and proposed meetings with state sponsors of terrorism any more appealing. Wherever Obama takes his flawed message, voters will learn more about the weak leadership he has demonstrated on important issues confronting the nation.”

The Clinton campaign’s talking points for surrogates and supporters today strain hard to spin last night’s worse-than-expected performance into a victory over what they paint as an enormously advantaged Obama campaign.

“It is laughable that the Obama campaign tonight said that Senator Clinton was supposed to win Indiana, when the campaign itself had an internal memo predicting a seven-point victory in his neighboring state,” reads a document sent out to donors by finance director Jonathan Mantz. “Senator Obama himself called this the tie breaker state and we couldn’t agree more.”

The memo lists Obama’s advantages in the state, which included a spending advantage of 2-1 and the nearby Chicago media market — as well as the fact that Indiana is an open primary, which Clinton officials once spun as an advantage for their candidate. “Let’s be clear about what this loss means for Senator Obama - this is the first state bordering Illinois that Obama has lost. When it came time for him to talk directly to hard working middle class families about their economic concerns, he fell short.”

As a bonus, the talking points include notes on the campaign’s recent re-emphasis on Michigan and Florida — which, when added to the mix, put the magic delegate number for the nomination at 2209.

“Q: Will you take this fight to the credentials committee at the convention?” the campaign asks in a mock FAQ.

“A: We don’t think it will come to that. We believe Democrats think all fifty states should play a role in the process.”

Read the full talking points after the jump

(more…)

Sen. John McCain raised more than $6 million during his 2.5 day/6 fundraiser Florida swing at the beginning of this week, a source tells Fox.

During his time in the Sunshine State, McCain raised more than one-third of his entire March money total ($15 million) in less than three days.The establishment of the joint McCain-RNC victory fund at the beginning of April is allowing big donors to give upwards of $70,000, which is then distributed to a number of accounts.

Campaign officials say they are extremely pleased by the number of Romney, Huckabee and Giuliani donors and finance staffers coming aboard. The campaign expects both Romney and Giuliani to attend fundraisers next week in MI and NY respectively. Next Wednesday night’s Manhattan fundraiser is expected to bring in more than $2.5 million alone.

Campaign advisers acknowledge that McCain will never be able to achieve the online and small donor totals of either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton–meaning McCain will have to stick to event-based fundraising for big money–but is now bringing in at least $500,000 per fundraising event.