Thursday’s campaign round-up

Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:

* Barack Obama conceded to CNN yesterday that the Jeremiah Wright flap has taken a toll. “In some ways this, this controversy has actually shaken me up a little bit and gotten me back into remembering that the odds of me getting elected have always been lower than some of the other conventional candidates,” the Illinois senator told Anderson Cooper

* As the Take Back America conference in Washington wraps up, it appears that progressive activists prefer Obama to Hillary Clinton by a wide margin. A Politico.com straw poll conducted at the event showed Obama ahead by a 3-to-1 margin, 72% to 16%. Moreover, 86% of conference participants said they would be satisfied with Obama as the nominee, while 48% said the same of Clinton.

* Yet another House GOP Republican incumbent is retiring: “GOP sources confirm that Rep. Tom Reynolds, a Western NY Congressman since 1999 and ex-NRCC chairman, will announce around noon tomorrow in Buffalo that he will not seek re-election this fall…. [T]he recent NRCC fraud scandal - some of which took place on his watch - has made his re-election effort that much more difficult in an already tough year.”

* A new CBS/NYT poll shows Obama leading Clinton nationally, but his margin has shrunk considerably in the wake of the Wright flap. Obama is now up by just three, 46% to 43%. Nevertheless, the same poll shows Obama leading McCain nationally by five points, while Clinton leads McCain by two.

* A hint of the right-wing, race-based ugliness to come: “I often find it quaint when Republicans go after anyone for hateful rhetoric or race prejudice when it’s been a major pillar of GOP coalition going back more than 40 years. The co-founder of Laura Ingraham’s radio show who now helps run Hugh Hewitt’s ‘Salem Radio Network’ has mixed an Obama video interweaving Obama with Malcolm X, the Black Power salute at the Mexico City Olympics and Public Enemy’s ‘Fight the Power’.”

* Pennsylvania’s primary is still a month off, but for now, Clinton’s lead in the state seems to be getting bigger, not smaller. According to a new Franklin & Marshall College poll, Clinton now leads by 16, 51% to 35%.

* Speaking of big Clinton leads, it looks like Obama doesn’t stand much of a chance in West Virginia — a new Rasmussen poll shows Clinton way ahead, 55% to 27%.

* Remember the Bredesen “superdelegate primary” we talked about yesterday? The Obama campaign apparently loves it, but the Clinton campaign said the idea was a good one that will “never happen.”

* Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), who is retiring at the end of the year, suggests in his new book that another political party might be necessary. It’s hard to say exactly what the party would look like, but from press accounts, it appears that Hagel wants a conservative party with no neocons.

* After the McCain campaign attacked Obama for making hay of McCain’s Iran/al Qaeda gaffe, the Obama campaign’s Bill Burton released a statement: “We wish the McCain campaign well as they try to figure out the difference between Iran and al Qaeda.”

* And NBC News’ Chuck Todd had an interesting prediction yesterday: “I think Michigan is not going to have a revote. I think the Obama people are going to play a game of chicken on this, and figure they’re going to make Michigan Democrats mad. I think you’re going to see a hopefulness by the Obama people that they put this away by May 6th, which is the day of the North Carolina and Indiana primaries, and then go ahead and seat Florida and Michigan fully as the nominee, with nothing to fear. That’s the Obama hope.”