Obama Campaign Update from David Plouffe

I just got off a conference call with David Plouffe, campaign manager for Obama for America. He responded to comments by Mark Penn, Howard Wolfson, and others in the Clinton campaign that Obama and Clinton will be tied (or Clinton will be ahead) after March 4th. Plouffe says that Obama is now leading by 162 delegates overall, and Clinton would need huge wins to change that, so they expect to have substantially the same lead after Tuesday.

If Ohio is a very close race (5% or less), the winner will net only a handful of delegates, and the Obama campaign hopes to gain as many just in Vermont. He also looks forward to Mississippi and Wyoming and predicts that Obama will gain more delegates there than Clinton will gain overall on Tuesday.

Plouffe said that the Clinton campaign's "one goal" was to "erode our delegate lead," and they are going to fail. If the delegate situation does not change dramatically on Tuesday, Clinton would have to win 74% of the remaining available delegates to catch up, and that is not going to happen. If Obama's delegate lead doesn't drop below 100 on Tuesday, then Clinton has "no avenue to the nomination."

Looking at contests around the county, Plouffe said that they consistently show "huge leads have turned into close contests," and Plouffe thinks "we are in very good shape heading into next Tuesday," although the Clinton campaign is "obviously raising lots of money and putting lots of TV ads out there." He continued that "we started out as serious underdogs and we have been clawing our way up - Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island will all be close" despite earlier Clinton leads in the range of 20 points.

Commenting on new national security ad by Clinton, Plouffe said:

"Clinton already had her red phone moment in 2002, on Bush's decision to invade Iraq, and she made the wrong decision. Clinton did not read the NIE, didn't do her homework. She says it wasn't a vote to invade, when clearly it was. ... People are going to focus on the judgment these two people have.

On fundraising, February was "a very strong month," considerably more than Clinton's "impressive total," but more important is that average contribution is small and hundreds of thousands of donors are new, many of whom will become volunteers. Obama will have "the strongest grassroots field effort in history, and we plan to continue that to the general election."

A questioner commented that McCain and Clinton are now making almost identical claims against Obama on national security. Plouffe responded that McCain and Clinton voted the same on starting the Iraq war and have "similar views on diplomacy, similar views on Iran," so it shows that they both reflect "conventional thinking." He added that the new "re phone" national security ad, which is being compared to the famous "Daisy" ad in the 1960s, will not be effective at all, because it will focus attention on the issue of judgment, and voters are "increasingly coming to feel" that they "trust Obama more on having good judgment on national security."

On the CTV report about a campaign aide saying to the Canadian ambassador that Obama's position on NAFTA was not genuine, Plouffe said that it "simply is not true." Obama's position on NAFTA has been "clear and incontrovertible," and no aide made the alleged statement. "There is nothing to it." He mentioned that the Clinton campaign has scheduled a conference call on it for later today.