Post Politics Hour

washingtonpost.com's Daily Politics Discussion

Don't want to miss out on the latest in politics? Start each day with The Post Politics Hour. Join in each weekday morning at 11 a.m. as a member of The Washington Post's team of White House and Congressional reporters answers questions about the latest in buzz in Washington and The Post's coverage of political news.

Washington Post chief political reporter Dan Balz was online Tuesday, May 13 at 11 a.m. ET to discuss the latest news in politics.

The transcript follows.

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Archive: Post Politics Hour discussion transcripts

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Dan Balz: Good morning to everyone and happy primary day. West Virginia is voting. Polls close at 7:30 p.m. tonight and Sen. Clinton is poised for a big victory. Lots of questions about the road ahead, so we'll get to work.

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St. Paul, Minn.: Hello Dan -- thanks for taking my question and for chatting with us. Your poll out today shows discontent with the direction of the country and our current leadership at an all-time high -- and yet Sen. McCain -- the candidate who, rightly or wrongly, most represents the status quo -- seems to have a good shot at winning the presidency. For those of us outside the Beltway, can you explain this? Will this change once the Democratic race is settled definitively and McCain gets half the scrutiny, instead of a third?

Dan Balz: That's a good question. Sen. McCain has been running competitively with both Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton for some time -- either slightly ahead or slightly behind depending on the poll and when it was taken. The main reason is that, while he carries the tarnished Republican brand and has been a strong supporter of President Bush's current policy in Iraq, he also has had enough disagreements with the administration and enough scrapes with members of his own party that he has developed an identity as a somewhat atypical Republican.

His maverick identity was forged during his 2000 campaign against Bush. Since then, in his bid to become the leader of a party rather than the leader of a movement -- as his aides have put it -- he has done more to embrace Republican orthodoxy. His strong support for Bush during the 2004 election campaign was one step in that direction. His recent embrace of big tax cuts was another. And certainly his support for the troop surge policy was a major one.

Once the Democratic race is over, we could see some change in the polls. Sen. Obama already has made clear that, if he is the nominee, he'll make this campaign as much as possible about his contention that McCain represents a third term for Bush policies. McCain, however, continues to do things to put distance between himself and the president. The latest was his speech on climate change yesterday.

It has been said repeatedly that McCain may be the only Republican who could win the White House, given the public's disaffection with the president and the GOP. Both he and the Democratic nominee will get renewed scrutiny once the general election really begins.

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Roseland, N.J.: From your article on the latest Washington Post-ABC poll data: "In a hypothetical general-election head-to-head, Obama leads McCain by a slim 51-to-44-percent margin..." Respectfully, can you think of another political race in which a seven-point lead was characterized as "slim"? George Bush Sr. beat Dukakis by about seven points ... Bill Clinton beat Bob Dole by about seven points ... I don't recall anyone characterizing those as "slim-margin" victories.

washingtonpost.com: U.S. Outlook Is Worst Since '92, Poll Finds (Post, May 13)

Dan Balz: We characterized it that way because this is a poll, with a margin of error, and not real votes. A seven-point win would not be considered particularly close, but at this point in an election, a seven-point margin in a poll is not at all a comfortable or secure lead. We have seen seven-point leads disappear in a matter of days, depending on events, and we have seen these general election match ups move quite a bit already. So we prefer not to turn an early poll in a race that hasn't quite begun into a definitive statement about where the race stands -- or may be heading.

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Cambridge, Mass.: Hi Dan -- thanks for taking questions. What does a "big win" in West Virginia actually do for Clinton?

Dan Balz: Sen. Clinton anticipates a very, very big win tonight in West Virginia. We ran some numbers this morning on one of our delegate allocation spreadsheets. A 70-30 victory would give her a net of 12 delegates. A 65-35 win would give her a net of 8 delegates. A 60-40 win, which seems too close given the polls and demographics of the state, means she would pick up a net of 6 delegates.

She hopes a couple things might happen: One, that her popular-vote margin makes it possible for her to overtake Sen. Obama in that measurement by the end of the primaries -- including the results of the Florida and Michigan primaries, which of course sets off an argument with Obama supporters. Second, she hopes that this will give superdelegates another reason to think twice about the choice of nominees. They are moving steadily toward Obama at this point, and she needs something dramatic to change their thinking. West Virginia was once a solid Democratic state, but it has been trending Republican in recent elections. She wants to make the argument that in a general election she could once again make it competitive, but Obama could not.

All that said, she and her team know that the value of a victory, even a big victory, is less important now than it would have been a month or two ago.

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Arlington, Va.: Does Nationwide polling really mean very much? It's state-by-state that is going to matter come November. How does that breakdown? Until we get rid of the electoral system, I don't see that Obama vs. McCain nationwide numbers amount to much of substance.

Dan Balz: National numbers have obvious limitations when we're dealing with the electoral college, but they are a pretty good proxy for the popular vote, and -- with the obvious exception of the 2000 race -- the winner of the popular vote generally wins the electoral vote as well. These national numbers offer clues as to which groups in the electorate are most critical, how the two candidates are faring with core supporters and swing voters, and any regional patterns that might be important. Certainly state-by-state numbers are valuable, and we pay attention to them as well, but we've found through the years that national numbers provide very useful information as we chart the direction of the race. What national numbers cannot do at this point, is predict the outcome of a presidential race -- but neither can state polls this far before the election.

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Denver: Great article from Kevin Merida today on an underreported story. Reminds me of the time on "Meet the Press" when Gwen Ifill said we were happy to talk about race, but uncomfortable talking about racism, and everyone else on the panel shifted awkwardly in their chair. I've seen a lot of reports that voters aren't voting for Obama because of class rather than race, but what's the difference? It's prejudice no matter how you slice it. Are too many reporters letting voters off the hook by calling it "class" instead of race/racism? If Obama were the white son of a single mom who pulled himself up by his bootstraps, a lot of those same voters would be proud of him, not voting against him.

Dan Balz: For those who haven't read Kevin Merida's, please do -- it's a very revealing piece. The question you raise is one we constantly are looking at. To what extent is racism a factor in Obama's inability to win more votes of white, working-class voters, and to what extent is it simply that those voters cannot relate to him for reasons that have less to do with race than with class? We have run a variety of pieces on this in the past two months, from analysis of polling data to conversations with voters.

There's no question that the press can and should do more to explore the issue of race in this election. I don't think, however, this is a matter of letting voters off the hook, as you suggest. What truly motivates voters is sometimes hard to discern, but worth continued efforts on our part.

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New Map: Is part of the problem Obama has in casting himself as electable that he's working on a fundamentally different map than Democrats have the last two presidential elections? Clinton clearly is adopting the Gore/Kerry map where you carry New England, the Rust Belt, and the West Coast plus either Ohio or Florida. Obama, though, seems like he could play in Virginia, North Carolina, and maybe even South Carolina -- given the significant black population and wealthy liberals -- and out West could take Colorado and Nevada (although he lost the caucus, he showed strength outside of Vegas).

Dan Balz: We'll see if that's the case. Certainly Sen. Obama's team is looking at a new map -- although Democrats would be targeting Virginia, Colorado and Nevada no matter the nominee. Obama might have a better chance to win those states than Sen. Clinton, but the flip side is whether she would have a better chance in Ohio and Florida. The Mountain West appears to be in transition from solidly red to partially purple. Perhaps Obama can put some Southern states in play, but if he make South Carolina competitive, he's likely to win a pretty handsome landslide in November.

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Asheville, N.C.: Both Obama and Clinton have been remarkably reluctant to state how they will leave Iraq -- if they do -- or to take any discussion of it beyond whether talking to an enemy can be wise or foolish. This despite an election where opposition to the war was central to their party's return to prominence, and repeated polls that show how strongly the American people have turned against the war. To what do you attribute that?

Dan Balz: I think both have been pretty explicit about their intention to start withdrawing troops early in their first term. Obama has suggested removing about brigade a month and Clinton has said she would do it expeditiously, but didn't provide specifics. Neither will commit to an end date for getting out all the troops.

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Panama City, Fla.: Sen. Clinton keeps repeating the factoid that no Democratic presidential candidate has won the White House without having won the West Virginia primary (or at least not since 1916), but has West Virginia typically been competitive, or has its primary typically occurred late -- as it does this year -- after the nomination already was decided?

Dan Balz: I think she has suggested that winning the White House generally has required Democrats to win West Virginia in the fall, and that winning the primary is the first step toward that. The West Virginia primary generally comes late and often isn't that important. The most significant West Virginia primary was in 1960, when John F. Kennedy defeated Hubert Humphrey, essentially destroying Humphrey's chances of winning the nomination.

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Houston: Dan, I really think the Democratic Party is going to have a wake-up call when November comes and they see that the Hillary Democrats went for McCain. The white-haired Chris Dodds and Ted Kennedys have done great harm to the sexism issue in this election, and I really think it is going to backfire on them big time. Don't you agree that the polls are not truly reflective of this at this particular time in the primary election?

Dan Balz: I would agree that polls are not predictive of what will happen in November, but I don't know whether your prediction will turn out to be correct. At this point there are Clinton supporters who say they won't support Obama in the fall, but we are in the heat of battle right now, and passions are high. That's particularly the case with supporters of Sen. Clinton because her route to the nomination is so difficult. What you don't raise in your message is the extent to which Obama may be able to attract voters who have backed Republicans in the past. Will he be able to do that in November, if he is the Democratic nominee?

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Dan Balz: We are out of time today. Thanks to everyone who sent in questions, including those I did not have time to answer. We appreciate your interest.

Have a great week.

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