'Meet the Press' transcript for April 27, 2008

MR. RUSSERT:  Welcome all.  Let's go to the board.  Here's the latest Newsweek national poll.  These are Democrats across the country:  Obama, 48; Clinton, 41.  Indiana, the South Bend Tribune says Obama, 48; Clinton, 47. Indianapolis Star said it's 41-38, a toss-up in the Hoosier state.  The latest poll in North Carolina, two weeks old:  Obama, 47; Clinton, 34.

David Broder, where's the race?

MR. DAVID BRODER:  Up in the air and probably going to stay there for a long time.  I listened to Governor Dean, but--talking about how he wants to wrap this up.  I don't see that happening.  I can't--these are two strong candidates, and I think whatever happens in North Carolina and Indiana it would be very hard to make the case to Mrs. Clinton that she ought to quit the race.

MR. RUSSERT:  How about getting the uncommitted superdelegates to commit by the end of June so that they have an exact delegate count?  Would that avoid a contested convention in Denver?

MR. BRODER:  I don't think so.  I mean, it's a long time till the end of August, and for the Democrats to make a decision, knowing that all that time--almost as much time as this campaign has taken up to this point--would be a remarkable thing to me.

MR. RUSSERT:  John Dickerson, you write in Slate.com the following:  "Someone should call a priest or the National Enquirer.  Hillary Clinton is now come back from the dead four times.  Her win in the Pennsylvania primary wasn't just a numerical victory.  It also gave her a new justification for her long shot effort to win back a nomination that was once considered a lock for her.

"Despite her victory, Clinton's chances of catching Obama among pledged delegates have disappeared.  Unless Obama's caught giving all of his campaign cash to Tony Rezko, she's not going to win future contests by a big enough margin to tie him.  She narrowed Obama's lead among the popular vote, but not by much.  But she won something more important:  a new story to tell the superdelegates who are still trying to decide which candidate to back.  ...

"The only way candidate--Clinton can actually reverse the tide is if she can convince those superdelegates that the Pennsylvania victory proved Barack Obama is fundamentally flawed.  That is more than an academic exercise.  She needs to equip them with a set of arguments so strong that they can weather the violent uproar that will erupt in the base if superdelegates put her over the top."

Has she made more progress in convincing the superdelegates since Pennsylvania?

MR. JOHN DICKERSON:  Well, actually, no.  She's gotten three, I think, superdelegates since Pennsylvania, Obama's gotten four.  And he's got more in his pocket a little bit because, even though she did well in Pennsylvania, she's still got a steep climb of the remaining undecided superdelegates. She's got to win about 60 percent--that's a big number--and she's got to reverse this momentum.  You know, Howard Dean says, "Well, it's nearly a tie." There are a lot of people in the party who don't believe it's a tie.  They believe that Obama has this, that he's gotten this lead among elected delegates, and that if she were to overthrow that, as Jim Clyburn said, it would cause irrevocable damage in the party among these key constituencies--new voters, African-Americans--and that this would be a huge blowup.

MR. RUSSERT:  But, Andrea Mitchell, if Senator Clinton won Indiana and pulled an upset in North Carolina, then what happens?

MS. ANDREA MITCHELL:  Then she plows ahead, and I think that people are taking a harder look--as people within the party--are taking a harder look at Barack Obama.  He seems flat on the stump.  They want more meat in his speech, and they are asking questions.  Is he really seriously damaged by Jeremiah Wright, by Newsweek's poll showing a rise in people who think he's elitist, fair or not.  Probably unfair, but there is a perception of arrogance, of elitism.  That would be the argument.

The one scenario in, in which I think that this could all change is if she loses Indiana.  I think you sense that in what she said in the last couple of days.  She was, "Oh, well, I won't answer hypotheticals." She's not "I'm in it to win it" any longer.  If she loses Indiana, I think in a day or two she would be out of this.

MR. RUSSERT:  Here's the cover of Newsweek.  The "Obama's Bubba gap." And there is arugula vs. a pint of beer?  (Unintelligible)...of beer?  Gwen Ifill?

MS. GWEN IFILL:  What you don't know, Tim.  You have no idea what that is.

MR. RUSSERT:  Toss it back, Gwen.

MS. IFILL:  Well, I think that Andrea's right, but the, but except to this point, this is all about what the voters are going to do.  If they've shown one thing over and over in this campaign, it's that all of our ifs and what ifs and, and ways of slicing up the electorate, it all comes back down to what they're being told.  One of the most amazing things about Pennsylvania is how much--how little they were being told about the things they care about; how much there was not a debate about the war that happened during the Pennsylvania primary; how much Barack Obama, in trying to chase after voters in places like Scranton and Steelton, where I once lived, I'm telling you, he wasn't going to win in Steelton and only made one big appearance in Philadelphia, where his base was.  His theory, up until now, had been, "Run up my numbers in the places where I'm strong." But he only, Friday night before the election, made--had a big--one big rally in Philadelphia, while the Clintons were running rings around him in the suburbs, where he was supposed to be strong, and he didn't do as well as he was supposed to.  So there's something--it, it seems like that campaign gets thrown off balance when Hillary Clinton sets the table for where they ought to be and what they ought to say.  But what gets lost, as we slice up the electorate into the, you know, the white working class and the black middle class, and who--however else we're slicing it today, is what these people want to hear, what these voters want to hear.  And the Democrats seem, for a--the moment, to have lost the issue debate.

MR. RUSSERT:  Richard Wolffe, when Obama's bubble--bubba gap, arugula vs. beer on your cover of your magazine, what's that all about?

MR. RICHARD WOLFFE:  Well, there's no question that Barack Obama has a deficit when it comes to white working-class voters.  It's more than the issue of whether he's elitist, just as ridiculous as that argument is.  He's the son of a single mother, and he was paying off his law school loans until recently. But it can be used against him by Republicans.  We're already seeing that happening.  And, and what lies at the bottom of this working-class issue for him, in the head-to-head polls, he actually fares better than Hillary Clinton on the issue of who looks down on voters like you.  But, nonetheless, that problem is there.  The question is how many Reagan Democrats are there left? What is the blue collar working-class culture like after three decades of those jobs going overseas?  And what we're seeing here is he does badly with those voters, but he made--more than makes it up among upscale voters, the middle class, which has grown considerably, and among independents who didn't have a chance to vote in Pennsylvania.  He lost a big bloc right there.

MR. RUSSERT:  The debate over debates, David Broder.  This was Hillary Clinton in North Carolina.  She now wants Lincoln-Douglas debates without a moderator, just one-on-one with Obama.  This is what she said in Jacksonville, North Carolina.

(Videotape)

SEN. CLINTON:  The only question I can't answer is why Senator Obama won't debate me in North Carolina.  And, and I'd sure like to give an answer with a date and a time, and I said I'll go anywhere, anytime to have a debate.

(End videotape)

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