'Meet the Press' transcript for March 9, 2008

MR. RUSSERT:  Inside the race for the White House with our political roundtable after this station break.

(Announcements)

MR. RUSSERT:  And we're back.

Welcome.  What a race.  Here's the latest poll.  These are Newsweek numbers out now.  Amongst Democrats, Obama, 45; Clinton, 44.  How do they fare against McCain?  Pretty similar.  Obama, 46; McCain, 45.  Clinton, 48; McCain, 46. All within the margin of error.

Dan Balz, looking at those numbers, listening to Governor Rendell, Senator Daschle, first, will we have new primaries in Michigan and Florida?

MR. DAN BALZ:  I think that's almost inevitable at this point, Tim.  I think both sides have resigned themselves to the fact this is going to happen. Certainly Senator Clinton wants it to happen, and I think the Obama campaign has realized that there's no other way to do it.  I think party leaders believe that's the best way to do it.  Obviously, there are a lot of questions about the mechanics.  How do you do it?  When do you do it?  Who pays for it? But I think people have come to the conclusion that these states have got to be heard from.

MR. RUSSERT:  And it sounds like, from Governor, Governor Rendell, rich donors will be funding these primaries.

MR. BALZ:  Well, it's interesting.  Senator Nelson from Florida called Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic Party last week, to talk about what to do, and Governor Dean reminded him that the state parties are still able to raise soft money, these big unregulated contributions, which means wealthy people can give enormous amounts of money to try to fund these.  Obviously the campaigns have a tremendous amount of money.  They could put something up on their Internet sites and probably within a couple days raise a sufficient amount of money.  So I'm not sure that the money's going to be a big obstacle.

MR. JOHN HARWOOD:  And I think, Tim, the leverage that the Obama campaign may be overprocessed.  You know, the Obama campaign much prefers caucuses to primaries.  They dominate that forum.  They're not the ones who need this. Hillary Clinton is the one who needs this.  Barack Obama would love to run out the clock with his lead in pledged delegates, which so far Clinton hasn't been able to dent, and they may be able to hang tough for a more favorable, procedural venue.

MR. RUSSERT:  Corporate sponsors?

MR. RON BROWNSTEIN:  Yeah.  Right.

MR. RUSSERT:  Disneyland presents the Florida primary.

MR. BROWNSTEIN:  Well, look, I think in the, in the--publicly, neither one wants to stand in the way.  I think privately, the Obama campaign is much less enthusiastic, for obvious reasons, about the idea of revoting.  And I, I think kind of a nightmare scenario here for Democrats is, you can imagine this going on for another three months and the fundamental situation not being very different at the end of that than it is today, which is that, when you look at all the polling, when you look at the results, we pretty much have a tie here. I mean, we have as close to a tie as you can get.  And it's not only in the sense of the absolute total numbers, but in the reality that they have divided the party almost exactly in half with durable and distinct constituencies that recreate themselves from state to state.  I said the other day, these last 11 states, you could almost run a computer simulation based on their underlying demographics and you'd probably have a pretty good idea who's going to win unless something breaks.  Now, maybe something will break in May.  But if it doesn't, Democrats could spend, I don't know, $100 million, $120 million, candidates beat each other up for three more months, and you end up in the same position you are today, with them having to make a very difficult choice between two candidates who've split the party almost exactly in half.

MR. RUSSERT:  When...

MR. HARWOOD:  With a computer simulation, you could do Michigan and Florida for free.

MR. BROWNSTEIN:  You could do a computer simulation, wouldn't cost you anything.

MR. RUSSERT:  In fact, the Obama campaign has suggested, "Let's just split the delegates 50/50 and call it a day and save the money." But the Clinton people, they don't think...

MS. GWEN IFILL:  Oh, no.  I don't think so.

MR. RUSSERT:  Not going to be.

Gwen Ifill, this--the whole discussion of, if in fact Ron's right, and when you look at these races, Pennsylvania favors Clinton, but then a few weeks later you have, the same day, North Carolina, Indiana, which together have more delegates than Pennsylvania.

MS. IFILL:  Yeah.

MR. RUSSERT:  They opt for Obama.  And you go back and forth.  Obama finishes with more elected delegates, having won more contests and, say for argument's sake, more popular votes cumulative.  Governor Rendell said you could still deny him the nomination by saying Hillary Clinton is a stronger general election candidate.

MS. IFILL:  We got an e-mail from a viewer at "Washington Week," and all it said was, the subject line was Hillary vs.  Obama, and the, and the body of it was:  rock, paper, scissors.  That's, that's all he said.  I mean, what we, what we have here, when you have these deadlock races, it's something that's being run on, on the margins.  So the margins are important.  It seems sometimes like they get a little caught up in this back and forth that we all have to pay such close attention to during the week.  But if you assume, as Ron says, that people are going to vote the way they're going to vote and that neither can poach on each other's territory very much--they, they know it, they ought to, and there ought to be a way to do it, but they can't do it. That means you have to fight around defining each other.  So, for the Clinton people, it's defining him as someone you can't trust.  He's not who he says he is.  He is not who he says he is in Iraq.  He's not who he says he is on NAFTA, which worked.  He is not who he says he is on any of these things.  And for the Obama people to say she is not who she says she is and to try to somehow broaden his base among lower-income voters, which she has not done so far, by emphasizing his roots as a Chicago organizer, that sort of thing.  The problem with that, is, you know, you own--you, you, you know, you win, what? Eight, seven delegates in Wyoming.  That's not bad.  It raises the delegates she won last week, but it's not enough.  You've got to keep fighting for all of those and, as quietly as it's kept, he needs the superdelegates as badly as she does.

MR. BROWNSTEIN:  And, you know, what makes this even more complicated, if, if you assume the superdelegates, in the end, are going to make a kind of self-interested decision about who would be the best candidate in the fall for the party and for themselves, that is really not clear either.  I mean, when you look at the polling of Clinton vs.  McCain and Obama vs.  McCain, Obama generally runs a little bit better right now, but that's static.  We don't know how it'll hold up in a general election.  And what makes it even more complicated is they have very different coalitions.  I mean, there's evidence in the early polling that their strengths and weaknesses in the primaries project forward.  So Obama gets more defection from Republicans, he does better among independents than Clinton, but he also in the early polling suffers more defection of himself--of his own to McCain among down-scale Democrats.  And so you can't...

MS. IFILL:  But he also...

MR. BROWNSTEIN:  You're casting a forward bet on...

MS. IFILL:  But he also does better among white voters than she does among black voters.  So, turn that on himself.

MR. BROWNSTEIN:  Right.  So--right.  It's all, it's all--you're making a bet of which candidate can better cure the problems they face in the spring by the time they get to the fall.

MR. HARWOOD:  But here's the other thing we can't forget.  If you look at House and Senate races, battleground House and Senate races, by and large, the people involved in those races think Obama at this point would be stronger at the top of the ticket because Hillary Clinton would--hostility to Hillary Clinton would mobilize Republicans.  So that counts.  I also think on Gwen's point about the margins, the size of the margins matters.  And a Clinton campaign advisor told me it's important for us to get the pledge delegate lead by Obama down below 100.  That's--they, they think that's a psychological shift that would be important.

MORE FROM MEET THE PRESS

Meet the Press Section Front

Nov. 8: Casey, Barbour, Rendell, roundtable, Brokaw Nov. 1: Tim Geithner, David Plouffe, roundtable Oct. 25: Cornyn, Schumer, Burnett, Sorkin, roundtable Oct. 18: Jarrett, Dodd, Kyl, Shriver, Podesta Oct. 11: Levin, Graham, McCaffrey, Myers, roundtable Oct. 4: Ambassador Susan Rice, roundtable Sept. 27: Bill Clinton, Paterson, Kyl, Webb Sept. 20: President Obama, Sen. Graham, Rep. Boehner, roundtable Sept. 13: Durbin, Cornyn, Dean, Gingrich, roundtable Sept. 6: Axelrod, roundtable Meet the Press Section Front   Add Meet the Press headlines to your news reader: