Hillary Clinton’s continued troubles, and what she might do to right the ship, dominated the Sunday morning talk shows. George Will pointed out that Wisconsin could be rough sailing for the New York senator on This Week: “The way you stop losing is you start winning. And she has to start in Wisconsin. The problem is Wisconsin is an open primary, in that independents can vote there. There’s no fight on the Republican side, they’ll all vote on the Democratic side. Furthermore, they have same-day registration; that’s the wonderful system that gave us Jesse Ventura next door in Minnesota. Even before that . . . Democrats abroad will announce their result, they have 11 delegates . . . so that could be two more losses. Then it seems to me she has to spike, to kill this talk of winning with the super delegates. And, even worse, the Florida and Michigan delegates.” But the Clinton campaign is loathe to give up one of its few remaining advantages. Howard Wolfson invoked Howard Dean on Face the Nation in an effort to deflect the anger of the party’s left wing in the event of a nomination decided by superdelegates: “You know, I agree with Chairman Dean, who said that the superdelegates are supposed to vote their conscience, they’re supposed to vote who they think will be the best person for the nation and for the party. That’s why they were created, and that’s what they’re going to do. And I think that the reason so many of them are supporting us . . . Obama’s campaign is vigorously attempting to secure their support–but the reason that so many support us is because they know that Senator Clinton is the candidate with the real solutions that we need to tackle our problems.” The Obama camp is understandably concerned. Obama supporter Dick Durbin was on Meet the Press to decry the possibility of superdelegates picking Clinton over his man. “That’d be a serious problem,” he said, and he warned that it could spark a backlash. “You know, the voters will have the last word in November. The elected delegates should have the last word in Denver. Those are the delegates who have stood before the voters. I’m one of those superdelegates. . . . There are almost 800 of us. We’ve been involved in this party and given a lot of our lives to it. But let’s be very honest about this. The final word has to be decided by elected delegates.” On a slightly different topic, Mike McConnell was on Fox News Sunday to point out just what is different as a result of the stalemate over FISA. “When the program was returned to the FISA court in January of ’07, initially we had coverage that we had asked for. But over time, because technology had changed, and the law of ’78 had not been changed, because technology had gone from a wireless world to a wired world, foreigners communicating in a foreign country, more than likely the communications would pass through the United States. Therefore the court said that if it touches a wire, consistent with the law, you have to have a warrant. Now, a warrant means probable cause, which is a very time consuming process to go through. So we were in that situation last summer, we passed the new act to improve our situation–that act has now expired.”
