Gary Hart

Hillary Clinton is on the air in Texas (and quite possibly Ohio) with a television ad that takes her argument about experience to a new emotional level. Per NBC's First Read, the Clinton spot says:

"It's 3 A.M. and your children are safe and asleep. But there's a phone in the White House and it's ringing. Something's happening in the world. Your vote will decide who answers that call.  read more »

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The vicious reaction of Barack Obama's lawyer to the emergence of an anti-Obama 527 group calls to mind yet another parallel between this year's Clinton-Obama race and the 1984 contest between Gary Hart and Walter Mondale.

Mondale, the Hillary-like machine/establishment candidate of 1984, was—like every other candidate back in those days—accepting federal matching funds for his campaign, meaning that his primary season spending was capped at $20 million.

Like Hillary's brain trust, the Mondale campaign never anticipated a prolonged primary season, believing that a frontloaded calendar (which was rammed through the DNC by Mondale allies) would hand the nomination to their man by early March. They spent their money accordingly.  read more »

The Super Tuesday stalemate has only reinforced comparisons between the Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama contest and the fight for the Democratic nomination 1984, another one-on-one race that pitted an insurgent against the party establishment -- and one that wasn’t settled until the party’s July convention in San Francisco.

In that ‘84 campaign, the Obama role was played by Gary Hart, whose “new ideas” fueled a stunning 13-point victory in New Hampshire that rocketed him to the top of the race and, within weeks, brought Walter Mondale -- who had entered the campaign as the most prohibitive favorite in primary history -- to the brink of capitulation. A Hart sweep of Super Tuesday in early March 1984 would have flushed the former vice president from contention, but when Mondale narrowly won two states that day (to Hart’s seven), the press declared him reborn. When the primaries and caucuses finally finished in June, it was a draw: Both men had won about the same number of pledged delegates and Hart had even edged Mondale in the combined popular vote.

But the nomination was Mondale’s because most of the superdelegates -- party leaders and elected officials who account for 20 percent of all convention votes -- had been with him from the start, long before Hart had emerged as a viable option.

“My wife and I called every one of them personally between the California primary (on June 2) and the convention, and overwhelmingly they said, ‘I wish I hadn’t committed to Mondale, but I’m committed,’” Hart said.

More after the jump.  read more »

When Bill Clinton pointed out yesterday, while talking about Barack Obama's South Carolina victory, that Jesse Jackson won the state in 1984 and 1988, the former President got plenty of attention.

Clinton seemed to be encouraging the perception that Obama won because of support from black voters, and that his victory was more about racial allegiances than substance.

He was also misrepresenting history.

It's true that Jackson won South Carolina in '84 and '88. But Clinton failed to mention several key points. For one, the state held caucuses back in those days, not primaries, and they attracted only a fraction of the participation that yesterday's primary did. Also, Jackson is a native of Greenville, South Carolina, which gave him an extra advantage. Finally, and most importantly, no one campaigned against Jackson either time, and the contests had nowhere near the same significance to the race.  read more »

Barack Obama is on the cusp of pulling off what no one in his party has achieved for years.

If recent polls, together with the crowds at his events, are anything to go by, he is simultaneously appealing to strident Democratic activists and seducing floating voters and independents. The combination, if it proves durable, is electoral gold dust.

The recent history of the Democratic Party is littered with compelling insurgent candidates—Howard Dean, Gary Hart and Ted Kennedy, for example—who rode a wave of grass-roots fervor before crashing to earth.

Mr. Obama seems to offer a way out of the trap.  read more »

In a recent speech at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Senator Hillary Clinton said that th  read more »