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MODERATOR: Good afternoon, and welcome to the Washington Foreign Press Center. We are very pleased today to have Michael Barone with us to help us all better understand the delegate and superdelegate process. So if you would, he's going to start with comments and a quick overview, and then we will have plenty of time to take your questions. Just a reminder when you ask your question, remember to introduce yourself and your organization. Thank you.
MR. BARONE: Well, thank you. I'm Michael Barone. I'm a senior writer at U.S. News & World Report and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and principal co-author of the Almanac of American Politics which has been published every two years since 1971.
I thought I'd start off with just an historical context because I think it's hard to understand our system without understanding where it came from. I think every country, every democratic country, every country with representative government, has a problem in choosing its leader, its chief of government or chief of state. And nobody has devised an entirely satisfactory way to do it. In parliamentary democracies like Britain, they choose the leader of the party, but both the Conservative and the Labour parties have struggled to find satisfactory ways of choosing their party leaders, and for the last 30 years each has changed its way of selecting leaders multiple times and they're not entirely satisfied with it yet.
We had situations where in the Federal Republic of Germany for 25 years the chancellor was effectively chosen by the Free Democratic Party, which never got more than 11 percent of the total vote. That struck me as kind of a whacky system, but that's the way it worked.
In Mexico, from 1929 or 1934 until 1994, the president of Mexico was chosen by his predecessor. It was literally a one man, one vote. He put the finger on him, the dedazo. And that was the way the leader of Mexico was chosen. That's no longer true, but they're now struggling with party primaries and things like that for the PAN-PRI and PRD parties.
In the United States, we have a system that is rooted in what are the oldest and third oldest political parties in the world, at least by my way of counting: the Democratic Party which had its first national convention in 1832; and the Republican Party, which had its first national convention in 1834. And they chose national conventions because there was no one single sort of party governing authority and, in fact, the parties were quite different in the different states. They were really creatures of state politics which just united once every four years to select a president. And Martin Van Buren, Andrew Jackson's chief supporter, came up with the idea of a party convention. He modeled it on what the Anti-Masonic Party had done in the year 1831, the year before. Van Buren was successful and the first Democratic National Convention nominated him for vice president and the second on nominated him for president. So that's the historic basis.
Now, you will hear reference sometimes to people talking about how we are going to have an old-fashioned convention like we once did: the conventions where nobody knew what the result was going to be when the convention convened, where there were often multiple ballots to select a president, particularly since the Democratic Party from 1836 and 1932 required a two-thirds vote to win the presidential nomination; in which you had candidates running as favorite sons, the governor of California would run and all the California delegates would vote for him; where you had strategies of holding back, you know, votes on the first ballot so you could show an increasing number of votes on the second ballot; where you had fights over rules and credentials and platform. We haven't had conventions like that for a long time.
People -- many people in the press say, gee, if this race is really close, we'll have a convention like that, an old-style convention. Again, I don't think so because, you know, I've studied and I've written -- I wrote a book called Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan, which was a political history from 1930 to '88. The old-time convention was a decision-making organization. It was also a medium of communication at a time when politicians from the different states did not communicate on any confidential basis with each other at any time except when they were assembled in the convention city. It was the time before long-distance telephone was commonly used in business and political affairs. It was a time when these people did not, you know, fly from one state to another and see each other all the time. It was a time before the invention of blackberries and cell phones and e-mail.
And in those circumstances, people did not state their -- you know, did not come to their decisions until they reached the convention city. The last (inaudible) convention ballot was 1952. It's no coincidence that a short time later, I think in 1955 though I'm not sure of the exact year, was the first year we had direct distance -- long-distance telephone dialing in the United States. Before that time, in order to place a long-distance call, you had to call the long-distance operator, then wait for her to place the call and see if she got through, and then you'd pick it up and call back and it was $3 a minute when the average wage in the United States was $100 a week. People did not do business by long-distance phone in those cases.
But all that's changed now. We have a different system where the system is formally the same. We still actually have people assemble at the convention. The two parties, or at least the Democratic Party, still actually appoints someone at the convention to -- appoints a committee of people to notify the nominee that he or she has been nominated -- something, of course, the nominee has known for months. And we still have those old forms. But -- and they lead to the kind of complicated process that we have now.
In the old days of conventions, nobody knew how many delegates people had until you actually had the roll call at the convention. The first network -- TV network delegate count, media delegate count, was taken by CBS in 1968. The delegate counts, network delegate counts, were shown to be accurate when they had a real test during the 1976 Republican fight between Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan when only a few delegate votes separated them, and the network delegate count proved to be accurate.
So we don't need a convention roll call to tell us who has how many delegates anymore. We know with a pretty high degree of certainty down to almost pinpoint accuracy. So this practice that we have is theoretically designed to lead to a national convention. That convention is no longer a deliberative body in any reasonable meaning of the word, but the rules are still shaped around amassing a majority of the delegates.
Well, since the days of old-time conventions, we've also changed how we select delegates. After the 1968 Democratic National Convention, which was attended by a good deal of violence and protest, Democrats changed their party rules and we moved from a situation where only a relatively small number of states had primaries and most states had caucuses or, in effect, selection of delegates by the leaders of the political party, to a situation where most states have primaries and some of the states -- where the caucuses operate as sort of an alternative version of a primary process, as they did in Iowa. That was developed in the 1970s.
The Democratic changes in rules were largely effective. In the 1970s, the Democrats controlled the state legislatures in most of the states in the country and the Democrats sort of set the (inaudible) for rules. In the interim since then, we have -- the two parties have had some differences in the rules. The Democrats -- and the difference is based on two different ideas of fairness. The Democratic Party rules tend to favor proportional representation. If you get 60 percent of the vote in the state, you get 60 percent of the delegates. If you get 49 percent and the other candidate gets 44 percent, you get 49 percent of the delegates in that state or 44 percent. And they have this -- it is limited -- they rule out minor candidates by typically having a threshold of 15 percent. If you don't get 15 percent of the votes, you don't get any delegates, which means of course that the current race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, no other candidates are going to win delegates because none of the other candidates is going to get 15 percent.
That process has made it pretty hard to overturn a lead in a situation like this where the two candidates are just about evenly matched in public opinion among Democratic primary voters or caucus voters, because if you win, you do not get a large delegate advantage by winning. I did a calculation this morning and I put it on my blog at usnews.com -- I don't know if it's been posted yet -- of applying the current Quinnipiac poll from Pennsylvania, which showed a 49-43 lead for Hillary Clinton, do the delegate allocation, and they allocate 55 delegates statewide, proportionate to your statewide vote. And I think it's -- I'm trying to remember the number exactly -- about 120 votes -- no, not -- yeah, about 120 votes by congressional district, the different congressional districts getting different numbers of delegate votes depending on their -- you know, what number of votes they have contributed to Democratic candidates in statewide contests in the past.
Those -- looking at the districts and looking at possible things, I came out overall with, if Hillary Clinton wins that by six points, she gets a 90-82 advantage in delegates, an 8-delegate advantage out of 172. That's not a very big difference and that's one of the reasons why this Democratic race has persisted and continued past February 5th when most people in the press, including me, thought it would be basically decided and the Clinton campaign also thought it would be basically decided, somewhat to their detriment.
The Republicans have a different idea of fairness. The Republicans tend to have winner-take-all rules. So John McCain won the state of Missouri by -- I believe it was 39 to 38 percent over Mike Huckabee. The delegate count was 58 for McCain, 0 for Huckabee. This tends to produce a more rapid decision in the Republican race and it has had that effect this year. Even though you had five candidates who at various times were ahead either in the national polls or in primaries or caucuses, the Republican nominee was pretty well determined.
So John McCain won the state of Missouri by, I believe, it was 39 to 38 percent over Mike Huckabee. The delegate count was 58 for McCain, zero for Huckabee. This tends to produce more of a - just a more rapid decision in the Republican race and it has had that effect this year, even though you had five candidates who at various times were ahead either in the national polls or in primaries or caucuses. The Republican nominee was pretty well determined by the superdelegates Tuesday results on February 5th.
Now, each - you know, the national parties each have their rules. We have a strong tradition of - that has been established since the 1970s of Iowa caucuses going first. And since 1952 of the New Hampshire primary going first. I'd like to state that I have looked through my copy of the constitution and have not been able to find the part that says Iowa and New Hampshire vote first. But it's firmly established and I think the reason is that every politician who has ambitions to run for President someday, which is to say almost every politician, thinks that they are - if they're going to do so, they certainly can't do anything that would hurt Iowa or New Hampshire because they'll be punished in the Iowa caucuses and in the New Hampshire primary. So those states continue to be first.
You have various rules like the Democratic Party rule that says that only Iowa, New Hampshire and this year, Nevada, and South Carolina were allowed to vote before February 5th. Florida and Michigan, the fourth and eighth largest states had primaries before that. The Democratic National Committee has rules that they will have no delegates at the National Convention and they even revoked their hotel reservations, although they've reinstated those.
The Republican Party penalized them by taking only half the delegates away from their delegations and since the Republican nomination now is clearly determined, that makes no practical difference whatever. So we keep score by trying to find out how many delegates people have. Each state and territory had different rules. You - one of the ways I keep track of them, there's a website called thegreenpaper.com, which has got basically all the rules. It's a little tricky to find them sometimes, but they do have the rules for all these primaries and caucuses. And we also have territories voting. We have Puerto Rico, which has 63 votes at the Democratic National Convention , by the way, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam vote, the Commonwealth of Northern Marianas has voted - sent a McCain delegation of, I think, three delegates. There's a group called Democrats abroad. That was replaced what was once the Canal Zone delegation, since there is no more Canal Zone. The Canal Zone was the Panama Canal Zone and we, by treaty, gave that territory back to Panama. It's where John McCain was born, by the way. So he was born on what is no longer U.S. territory. So that's an overview of the system. That's how it came to be what it is today and I'd be happy to answer questions and shed what light I can on it. Babs will be calling on questioners.
QUESTION: Patricia Mello, Estada de Sao Paulo.
MR. BARONE: My question is: Is it mathematically possible that Hillary gets even with Obama or surpasses him, if she doesn't win both Ohio and Texas?
MR. BARONE: I think the answer is that the - at that point, the mathematical possibility falls towards zero. She - for practical relevance (ph) and theoretical reasons. In order to prevail in that situation, there has to be, I think, a movement of opinion among democratic primary voters and caucus goers toward Hillary Clinton and away from Barack Obama so that opinion would be more pro-Hillary than it is today.
I can't rule out the possibility that that might happen. But I think it's unlikely, very unlikely to happen. I think what's more likely to happen is that if Clinton loses either Texas or Ohio, her campaign will effectively be over. The reason is - and if you look at current polling where the Texas race is about even, you've had a couple polls recently showing Obama ahead in Texas by about five points. If you average the polls together in realclearpolitics.com, it has a running average of recent polls in these states. You find that Hillary - that's about an even race in Texas, roughly; either candidate could win it. Hillary Clinton has been continuing to lead in Ohio polls by between, I think, five and eleven points. We haven't seen Obama ahead in one yet. There's still six states left obviously and the poll results we've last seen are for the night before last typically.
But we'll - you know, I think what'll happen, as a practical matter, she could only win the nomination if she gets the votes of these superdelegates and that's an additional thing that came into the Democratic Party in the 1980s. They decided that while partial representation is fine, the Democratic Party historically is a party of - an aggregate party of different minorities, many of them very different from each other. So we want to make sure everbody's represented. But we also want to have superdelegates, public officials, members of Congress, state governors, former presidents and presidential nominees, party officials, members of the Democratic state chairman, the members of the Democratic National Committee of which there are about 484. And these people know these candidates personally. They've had a chance to assess them. They know them in a way - you know, a deeper knowledge of them than the general voting public does. So we want to have their advice and give them a vote to be part of the process.
Now, obviously, there's a tension between the idea of having the superdelegates exercise independent judgment than having explicitly, carefully proportional representation of primary voters and caucus-goers. And for Hillary to win the nomination, if she loses both states, she's got to win a big plurality among superdelegates. She may very well have to change the rule excluding Florida and Michigan for her results, even though she agreed to that rule in the first place. Even though, Obama took his name off the Michigan ballot and her - according to the Democratic National Committee instructions and she did not, that I think is going to be very hard to sell to convention delegates.
And I would expect that, you know, news organizations if they haven't already, should be surveying delegates -- superdelegates, delegates selected in primaries and caucuses, particularly those who favor Clinton or who are uncommitted or a favorite third candidate and find out what they think of reseating the Florida and Michigan delegation. My guess is that they would find significant - you know, significant numbers of people in those categories, non-Obama delegates who would be against it. So all the Obama delegates would be against it. So it just wouldn't happen. So that's the reason that I think it's very highly unlikely down toward the point of zero, absent a significant change in public opinion, which we haven't seen yet. The more likely scenario is that Hillary Clinton loses either Ohio or Texas is I think that you're going to - that I think she will probably leave the race. If she does not, I think you will see a cascade of superdelegates endorsing Barack Obama. The Clinton campaign has taken a stand recently. Formerly they were encouraging superdelegates to endorse Hillary Clinton. Now, they're saying to superdelegates delegates, please don't endorse anyone for the time being. They're afraid of a cascade of support to Obama. But if they lose Ohio or Texas, they'll be out and I think Hillary Clinton will be out of the race by the next weekend.
QUESTION: Do you think she's probably going to drop out? She's not going to go all the way to the convention?
MR. BARONE: I think she will drop out if she loses Texas or if she loses Ohio, which is less likely. I think she will - I think she'll have difficulties staying on through Pennsylvania, even if she wins both of those. Apparently because she will still be way behind in delegates because of the proportional representation.
Yes, sir.
QUESTION: Richard Latendresse from TVA, which is a Canadian TV network. I - let's imagine if she wins Texas and Hawaii, but still reaches the convention and both candidates reach the convention without the majority of delegates, and Obama being ahead of her. Is it seriously conceivable that the superdelegates in the end would go against the vote of the delegates over in the primaries?
MR. BARONE: Is it conceivable? Yes. What are the chances of it happening? Very, very slim. Absence of new information about Obama that we don't have yet. The - I think, you know, as I said earlier, we don't have to wait for the convention to assemble to find out where the superdelegates are. We can call them on the phone. We can e-mail them. We can run into them at an airport and ask them. We have all sorts of ways of communicating. And obviously, in the scenario, you've sketched, the Obama campaign will be wanting to assemble as many superdelegates as possible. There will be an incentive among the superdelegates to be on the right side of the next Democratic presidential nominee and quite possibly the next democratic President. And I think you would see a cascade of superdelegates delegate endorsements of Obama in those circumstances. So there would not be - it would not be a situation of Hillary Clinton going to the convention, in my opinion. You know, I just don't see the point to it.
Now, after 1980, Edward Kennedy went to the convention, even though he had only about 40 - he has 40 percent of the delegates. He went there basically to make mischief for President Jimmy Carter. You know, he delivered a stirring speech, you know, summoning up the liberal program of his time and they had all sorts of - I was working actually for the Kennedy campaign. I was working for Peter Hart, the Democratic pollster and I was advising - I was the Kennedy campaign representative on the podium. Speaker Tip O'Neill, who as neutral, was running the podium. And the Kennedy campaign, you know, it hurt Carter. Kennedy wanted to hurt Carter. He didn't care if he did. I don't think Hillary Clinton would have a similar motivation and I think there would be a tremendous resentment against her if she did that. So it's possible she could do that, but your only real intention of doing that is to make mischief and deliver a - during a speech at the convention, I would think Obama, if he's the nominee, he'll let Hillary Clinton speak at the convention, as John McCain spoke at the Republic Convention in 2000.
But I don't think that it will be -- you know, I don't think that they're going to go all the way to the convention with the delegate count showing Obama clearly winning in the delegate count and those circumstances, I think will show that.
QUESTION: Michelle Jamrisko, Kyodo News. Looking back at the turning point at which Clinton became the underdog, first, can you tell us when you think that turning point was and what you think the delegate totals might have had to do with it?
MR. BARONE: Well, I think the South Carolina primary, which she lost by, I think, 55 to 27 and the movement of opinion in South Carolina was very harmful to her. I mean, her original plans, you know, when she was thinking about running for the nomination two or three years ago, I think her assumption was that she would win overwhelming majorities from black voters. You know - and certainly, four years ago the prospect of a Barack Obama candidacy was zero. And, you know, Bill Clinton had very positive ratings from black voters, quite strong enthusiasm. And I think that it was Hillary Clinton's assumption that in southern states where black voters are a majority, or near majority of Democratic primary voters -- South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana -- that those would be easy states for Hillary Clinton.
Instead, and as recently as December, she was splitting the vote among black voters of South Carolina evenly with Barack Obama. That changed and, you know, I think it's worthy of further study why it changed. Did Bill Clinton -- some of Bill Clinton's comment add to that or exacerbate that. There's a lively debate going on now about that. But I think clearly that contest showed her suddenly at a significant disadvantage.
I think her other big mistake was not doing enough organizing work in the caucus states, particularly Colorado and Minnesota, which had caucuses on February 5th, Super Tuesday. Those are states where Democratic Party activists lean pretty far to the left, the kind of people that would show up at the caucuses. But I think, you know, she seems not to have done serious organizing work there.
And Obama got big margins, and even with the Democrats proportional representation rules, he ended up with big margins among those caucus states. In fact, virtually all of his delegate margin comes from caucus states. So I think the Clinton campaign probably made a mistake in not doing -- putting enough time, money and effort into those caucuses. They did into the Nevada caucus, but they, you know, racked up bills of, you know, $74,000 or something -- hotel bills on the Las Vegas strip. The Obama people were advised to seek -- to stay at spare bedrooms in homes of Obama supporters, which cost the Obama campaign a lot less money.
So I think that, you know, the Clinton people did not really do enough work to win those caucuses and you can go down, you know, the list point by - you know, state by state and look at what the delegates haul is in the caucuses. And that meant that Clinton came out behind in pledged delegates, delegates selected in primaries and caucuses after Super Tuesday. She didn't anticipate that and, of course, the third mistake was not doing (inaudible) work and not retaining enough money to contest the post-February 5th contest as vigorously as might have been in her interest.
QUESTION: You said that -- I'm Francois Clemenceau, Europe 1 Radio -- you said that it's easy to know who superdelegates favor. But except those who have already given any kind of support to one of the other candidates, how is it easy to know, for example, what some superdelegates supposed to remain neutral think? I think about Nancy Pelosi or the (inaudible) or these kind of guys.
MR. BARONE: Well, you're a reporter. Go over to Capitol Hill, stand outside the House of Representatives, talk to members, Democratic members, ask them who they're for and ask them who they hear others are for. You know, reporting techniques. We have these people's phone numbers. Every news organization should have their emails and cell phones. You can approach them in all sorts of public places, you know, go to their gatherings, call them on the phone and ask them.
QUESTION: Is there any written rules inside the Democratic Party that prevents these kind of delegates to give support, official support and to give support to one of the other candidates?
MR. BARONE: The superdelegates can vote for whoever they want to and they can switch their vote. I understand that Congress John Lewis today announced he was switching from Clinton to Obama. So they can vote for anybody they want.
But, you know, when you've been dealing with politicians for years you can, you know, you can talk to them and get an idea of where they are even if they're not saying where they are publicly. I mean, you know, you just -- I mean, you kind of nod at them or something. I mean, you know, look like that. They'll -- you know, you've got an idea of where they're leaning and where they're going to go and you talk to your political sources and you get -- you know have lists of names and commitments and you can check on those once they're made, but you can also have a pretty good idea of where people are going to go. I just think that's basic reporting. And, you know, in a situation where Obama remains ahead of Clinton and pledged delegates by 140 delegates or more, I think it's going to be likely, generally, that superdelegates are going to be unlikely to want to overrule that vote; some may, some may do so out of strong convictions, as unlikely as that seems. But they can do that. In fact, delegates who are elected in primaries and caucuses theoretically can switch their votes, too. And what you'll find is that delegates elected for John Edwards or somebody will end up with a convention assembled voting for Barack Obama. They're not bound by that. Some parties rules say they're bound by that, but there's no enforcement mechanism.
The courts -- sometimes people go to courts and try and get a judge to say that the delegate's got to such and such, and just about every case, the delegates -- the judges say, hey, this is the private affairs of a political party. I'm not going to get involved in this. This is not something for this -- that this court can't -- has no jurisdiction in this case.
QUESTION: Hi. I'm Reymer Kluever from the German newspaper Suddetsche Zeitung. Looking past the delegate race, what would be the criteria for a candidate Obama looking for a vice presidential candidate?
MR. BARONE: I don't think he's going to choose a black vice presidential candidate. Well, we have this tradition in this country, which I think is kind of nonsensical but it exists, which says that, you know, we've had 20 -- we'll have probably 30 million people involved in the selection of a Democratic presidential nominee, if you include voters, volunteers, caucus goers and so forth. The vice presidential nominate is chosen by one person. And everyone, left, right and center, accepts that as the only legitimate way. I think it's kind of whacky but we haven't -- you know, nobody suggested a better alternative than anybody is willing to do. You know, Adlai Stevenson, when he was the Democratic Party nominee in 1956 said: I'm leaving the choice of the vice presidential nominee up to the convention. And there was a spirited race in which the final two contenders were Estes Kefauver, a senator from Tennessee, and John Kennedy, a Senator from Massachusetts. Kefauver won, but Kennedy got good publicity out of it and helped his candidacy four years later. Nobody's going to do that again.
And nobody's going to do what they for -- candidates did for many years, which is not choose the vice presidential nominee until four o'clock in the morning, the day before, you know, was going to be formally nominated. The practice has built up among nominees of both parties to, you know, have a committee or -- you know, somebody help them select a vice presidential nominee even if that person ends up choosing himself like Dick Cheney. Or having, you know, having interviews with them, betting their public record, having them submit documents. I think that's a much more responsible way than choosing somebody at four o'clock in the morning. And I think we've had a pretty good run of vice presidents in terms of basic competence and so forth since the candidates starting doing that more carefully.
But, you know, I don't think there's any hard and fast rules. We usually say, well, you've got to balance the ticket. If Obama is young, you should have somebody who's old. If he's from the Midwest, you should have somebody from the South. If he's black, he should have someone who's white. If he's -- you know, if he has no foreign policy experience, he should have somebody with lots of foreign policy experience. Well, you know, Bill Clinton didn't really follow that advice in 1992; he selected Al Gore, who was, I think, a competent - you know, I'm not -- wasn't a Gore voter, but I think he was a competent and responsible vice president and played a significant role in that administration and government in a serious way. And he was kind of an electoral asset to the ticket, I think, in 1992 -- in 1996.
So there's no real telling what they're going to do. I haven't asked Barak Obama whether he's going to pick Hillary Clinton and I doubt that he would -- he doesn't take many questions from reporters at all. And I don't think he would -- I think that would be a waste of a question, if you got a chance to question Obama, right? Because he's going to say he won't answer, you know. Ask him some question that he might actually give you an answer to.
So that's -- you know, on the one hand, when we're trying to look at the -- in Ohio we're trying to look at what -- two million are going to vote. In the case of the VP nominee, you're asking what one man is going to decide to do. It's a different sort of question and one I have a hard time giving an answer that I have any confidence is correct.
www.thegreenpapers.com - the website that I use to - a lot of people used to do the - look at the delegates thing. You've got a point here where it says, "Democratic primary nominating process." You can click on Texas and you get this thing, they elect so many by this way and that way. They've got the rundown here. You've got the list of which state senate districts have how many delegates, the 31st out - which is actually out in the western tier of counties and the panhandle has only two delegates. The 14th, which includes Austin and the University of Texas, has eight delegates. The 13th - you have to look this up on other websites to get the Texas state senate districts. The 13th is the heavily black district in Houston, which has seven delegates, which is encircled by the heavily Latino district in Houston. They sort of look like this.
MODERATOR: (Inaudible.)
QUESTION: Hi, my name is Ilin Stanev from Bulgarian newspaper Capital Weekly. How do you see these accusations that Obama receives better coverage from the media, hence is so -- do you feel that might be -- this might be one of the reasons for his surge?
MR. BARONE: Well, Barack Obama has gotten quite positive coverage from the media. There hasn't been much in the way of a critical look at his background. There's been less, you know - except for the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun Times, there have been very little in the way of stories on this man, Tony Rezko, with whom he bought his house and who he had close connections with who is now on trial for various, you know, fraud charges or criminal charges of some kind.
So I think, you know, the Hillary Clinton campaign is saying this guy's getting a pass from the media. And I think they're right; you know, he's had associations with some very tangential left- wing figures. He's got his - you know, the minister at the church that he chose to attend 20 years ago has given an award to Louis Farrakhan this past year. A little strange, isn't it? He's had an association going back to 1995 with a man named William Ayers who was part of the Weather Group, who was setting bombs - you know, bombing places in the United States in the 1970s and who would - in a New York Times article that appeared on the morning of September 11th, 2001 said making bombs was good. That's a strange sort of person for a presidential candidate to have an association with.
So, you know, we will probably see some more critical examination of him. We've had some liberal writers, commentators say that they think the sort of adoration that Obama is getting from many of the people in his crowd is kind of creepy. Some have even called it something like a religious cult. You know, this may be just a case of - you know, a candidate's strength is also his weakness. His strength is that he is getting fervent support from a lot of people and he's drawing people who didn't vote into the electorate. And they, you know, have a sort of faith that he can make real and beneficial change in our society. The weakness is that this kind of devotion will seem to some voters over the top and unrealistic and so forth.
So I think, you know, that the Democratic Party, in picking Obama as it just about has, is making a gamble. He's got a higher upside potential than Hillary Clinton because people don't know him, because this message of emphasizing what Americans have in common is a very appealing one after a long period of polarized politics, you know, where his personal qualities seem, in many ways, attractive. He's got a higher upside potential than Hillary Clinton. About half the voters really dislike her.
But he's also got a lower downside potential. He's got far less experience. You know, his experience with foreign policy and defense policy is extremely limited. The chances of him saying or advocating something which would turn out to be a political liability, I think, is higher than it would be for somebody with more experience. So I think he's done pretty well in the national spotlight, but once again, he's had less experience in that than John McCain has or Hillary Clinton has. So there's a lower downside potential as well as a higher upside potential. You know, Hillary Clinton was going to get at least 48 percent of the votes and not more than 52 percent of the votes or something like that. Barack Obama could do better than that and he could do worse than that, in my judgment.
But I think it is a wide open race. I think that there are people who voted Republican in 2000 and 2004 who are available to Obama now and I think there are people who voted Democratic in 2000 and 2004 who are available to McCain. I think there are new people in the process, including many who are not - who do not have a cast-in-iron preference. So I think there's a lot of possible outcomes here.
QUESTION: I'd like to go back to the delegate, the --
MR. BARONE: Yes.
QUESTION: If, let's say, Hillary Clinton does well in Texas and Ohio, about 55/45 or 53/48 - 7, same thing in - even in Pennsylvania, how far do you think this will go until she admits or somebody admits that it cannot last? And how damaging to the party, to the Democratic Party would it be if it keeps going on this run?
MR. BARONE: Well, if - your hypothesis is, you know, if she wins by those sort of margins, Obama will still be ahead in pledged delegates even if she does (inaudible) in Pennsylvania for six weeks.
I would say this. Six weeks is a long time between March 4th and April 22nd. In the 2000 contest, Bill Bradley lost by a big margin in the Iowa caucuses; lost very narrowly, I think 3 percent in the New Hampshire primary. And then under the Democratic schedule that year, there were no other contests for five weeks. He couldn't make it through the five weeks. He just couldn't get the money, the attention, anything else even though he had lost by only three points in New Hampshire. And he withdrew from that race after a period of time; he found it just unsustainable. And you know, Al Gore won the nomination unopposed from that time on.
So you know, for Hillary Clinton to stay in six weeks behind in delegates is going to be hard. Is it impossible? No, I don't think it's impossible, but that's partly because I'm very wary of saying things are impossible. When I was in the polling business, my boss, Peter Hart (ph), said to me after I had written something optimistic about our client's chances in a draft of a report, he said, "Remember how it will read the day after the election and your client has lost." So I'm careful about not saying things there - about saying that certain things are impossible.
I think she's going to have to, you know, not just get those two wins and continue to lead in Pennsylvania polls. I think she's got to move opinions some distance her way in terms of public opinion, as is measured in the opinion polls and other things. And I'm not sure exactly how she goes about doing that in a six-week period when there are no major contests that the national press is going to be paying close attention to every day. I think that's not impossible, but it's a significant challenge.
QUESTION: Anna Engelke with German Radio. You said that she would have to do some other things as well or that - some other things should she say or she should change. What other things do you mean?
MR. BARONE: Well, I don't know the answer to that question because it's --
QUESTION: (Inaudible) a lot of money if you knew?
MR. BARONE: Well, you know, I don't know if I'd be giving as much money as Mark Penn is, but the - you know, I used to be in that - I used to be in that business and right now, if I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of Mark Penn or some other advisor of Hillary Clinton, I'd say gee, I'd better set aside - you know, in the next couple hours, just think hard about this because I can't think of anything off the top of my head and I'd want to be paid well for those hours, okay? So this is not a paying gig, so I'm --
QUESTION: (Off-mike.)
MR. BARONE: I can't develop that for you.
QUESTION: (Inaudible) about the superdelegates as well as (inaudible), do you know if the two campaigns still work on the superdelegates, calling them and - you know, saying, "Hey, are you still for me," or have they kind of stopped doing this, waiting for Texas and Ohio?
MR. BARONE: I think they probably do that every day. You know, it's - who was telling me this one story about Bob Byrd, one of - a U.S. Senator, when Byrd was running for majority leader back in whenever it was, 1976 or something, and the senator said - he announced at the beginning that he was a campaign manager for Byrd's opponent majority leader. He said Byrd came to him every day even if he had to come to his office and asked for his vote, and he had to explain every day, no, he was actually for the other guy and was managing his campaign. He came in every day, at least once a day, to ask for his vote. And I should imagine there are people in charge of keeping in close touch with the superdelegates, sending them boxes of candy, flowers and various things, arranging for cars to pick them up at the airport and, you know, all that sort of stuff to keep in touch. So you know, I think the (inaudible) I mean, absolutely, he'd be remiss just to let it go.
MODERATOR: We have time for one or two more questions (inaudible).
QUESTION: Thank you. Natasa Briski, Pro Plus Slovenia. Do the Republicans have anything like unpledged delegates to their convention?
MR. BARONE: Yeah, they have the two Republican National Committeemen and Committeewomen and the state Republican chairman from each state, and from some states at least they also have, you know, public -- you know, the senators or other public officials. The green papers tells you how it's arranged in each state. But there are not nearly as many of them.
QUESTION: How do you see Obama running against McCain? What are his strengths and weaknesses, and what do you think McCain is going to target in Obama?
MR. BARONE: Well, I think we saw, you know, pretty clear indications of that on Wisconsin primary night, if you look at their two speeches. Obama's going to -- you know, we are the change we are seeking, he says. On primary night he got somewhat more specific about specific issues. He obviously had heard a lot of people saying, hey, he never talks about specifics and felt obliged to do so at somewhat more length. He will hail McCain for his experience and heroism and say that his time is past and his policies are the same as the failed Bush policies. You know, that's going to be his basic theme.
McCain is going to say that, you know, that Obama is an intelligent, decent man who is dead wrong on some important issues that are very important to the future of our nation, and he's going to be specific about them, as he was on Wisconsin primary night. You know, Mike Huckabee has done McCain a favor by formally staying in the race when he has no chance to win because that gives McCain an opportunity to get on primary night TV. Before the networks call the race on the Democratic side, they call the McCain -- they obviously call the McCain victory and he can get up and make a victory speech right just after the polls close, what he did in Wisconsin. I would expect to him to do that March 4, speaking for the voters in that direction.
I would add this, that I think there is much more in the way of content, issue content to be talked about, than has been talked about so far. You know, when you're proposing major changes in healthcare and healthcare finance, I think there's a lot of room to talk about specifics much more than anybody has had a chance to do so far. We've had -- what is it? -- 40 -- we've had, I guess, 56 days since the Iowa caucuses. We have 250 days till the general election. I think those numbers are right. You might want to check them before putting them into print, though. And that -- I think we're going to have a lot of room for discussion and dissection of public policy in a lot of areas that hasn't been done yet by either the press or the candidates.
QUESTION: In this prospective of a dual between Obama and McCain, explain to us why the public funding is so much an important question or not.
MR. BARONE: Well, public funding -- McCain and Obama last year said that if they were going to oppose each other, they would undertake to go -- for the fall campaign, for the post-convention period, take the federal financing, which would be equal amounts for the two candidates and would limit their spending. Obama has now set conditions on that, as I understand that, which suggests he doesn't want to do it. What is his reason? Well, I can give you 32 million reasons. That's how much many dollars the Obama campaign raised in January. What did the McCain campaign raise in January? I'm not really sure, but I think it was $2 or $3 million. So the Democrats have raised lots more money than the Republicans. And the Obama campaign has developed the capacity for raising a huge amount of money over the internet. Eight years ago, Republicans and political observers generally were amazed when George W. Bush raised $37 million in six months. Barak Obama raised $32 million in one month, after he had already raised a lot of money from people. That's -- you know, that's a whole order of magnitude higher.
And you know, in addition, there's some stories which you probably saw about whether or not McCain is committed to the public financing model for the primaries. If he is, he may have already spent his limit and won't be able to spend another dollar till the Republican convention in September. You know, Obama in the meantime is raising $32 million a month. So there's a big, big -- there will be a money advantage for the Democrats this year. I mean, in '04 there was actually a money advantage for the Democrats if you count the 527 committees that opposed George Bush. There was a pretty big money advantage for the Democrats that year. There'll be a bigger one this time. That's partly a measure of enthusiasm, a lot more enthusiasm among Democrats than among Republicans. And it's also probably because Obama figured out more than any other candidate of either party this cycle, how to take fundraising up from a new level by approaching voters through new media.
MODERATOR: (Inaudible) one from New York.
MR. BARONE: New York?
QUESTION: Hi. Millie Meyers calling from the U.S. Mission. I have a question about the technology. I mean, you hit on it in this last answer that you had about the kind of fundraising that Obama has done, but you opened up your discussion really talking about how we used to make phone calls and call the operator and all of those things. How is it now -- what else do you see and what role and what kind of a change -- or do you see that there really has been a large change in technology that, you know, (inaudible) advanced this campaign so far?
MR. BARONE: The biggest advances have been made by the Obama campaign. You know, the technology is really a way of communicating, of communications. And the Obama campaign, as far as I can see, has been more creative in adapting in creating a constant flow of communication with and among its supporters, which enlists more people for organizational activity, more people to give money. Naturally, it stays in touch with anybody that's given it a hundred dollars, it would like to stay in touch with very well because they can give $2,200 more. And as anybody involved in direct mail or, now, internet fundraising will tell you, the person who is most likely to contribute money to you is the person who has contributed money to you before. So it's -- you know, I think there's a constantly evolving sort of thing, but this is -- you know, there are stories about the Clinton campaign and the caucuses and their blackberry devices and all the information on it was wrong, it wasn't coded correctly and so forth. There's a premium for competence, a premium for innovation, a premium for figuring out how to communicate and stay actively involved with people. I think the Bush campaign in '04 actually did very well on this. They amassed a core of 1.4 million volunteers. They kept in touch with them. They gave them tasks, set metrics, farmed out whether or not they were doing the tasks. If they were, they'd give them more. And that contributed importantly to a huge boost in turnout. George Bush got 23 percent more votes in 2004 than he got in 2000. That volunteer effort played an important role in that.
I think, you know, all the evidence is that the Obama campaign has -- you know, is doing even better and has innovated and built on the innovations that the Bush campaign, among others, did in '04 and currently has the advantage, while John McCain has sort of a barebones operation in this regard and Hillary Clinton has not come close to matching Obama. Her fundraising relied on the Clinton networks, the big givers, you know, Park Avenue and Beverly Hills. If you run around those circles, you will find these people get constant calls and things from the Clinton campaign. But once they've given their $4,600, they can't give any more, and the Clinton campaign has not been as innovative in finding new people as the Obama campaign.
Thank you very much.
