Inside Politics

A stunned look

“I didn’t realize how beleaguered Barack Obama looked at his now-infamous Texas press conference until I flipped through some photos I’d taken,” Noam Scheiber writes in the New Republic.

“In the first, Obama wears a pleading expression and extends both arms forward. In the second, Obama’s jaw is clenched, and his eyes have retreated behind prominent bags. By the third, his eyes are closed and his lips are pursed — the face of a man about to explain something for the seventh time,” Mr. Scheiber said.

“If the photos were drawings in a comic book, they might be accompanied by words like ’Wap!’ ’Pow!’ and ’Kaboom!’ Reporters jumped on Obama for his ties to Tony Rezko, the indicted Chicago real estate tycoon. They badgered him about reports that an adviser had disavowed his NAFTA stance to Canadian officials. The battering didn’t even let up once Obama fled the podium. ’That’s the first time I’ve seen a press conference where he walked away from the mic and everyone was still asking questions,’ says one Obama beat reporter.

“For the rest of the day, the cable networks breathlessly played clip after clip from the encounter. Wolf Blitzer suggested Obama was suddenly coming in for ’sharper scrutiny’ after ’what some say was essentially a free ride.’ A Washington Post headline the next morning blared: Ask Tough Questions? Yes, They Can!

“Is the press love affair with Obama really over? It might be — if only the relationship had ever been so simple.”

Nightmare

“Democrats, faced with two candidates nearly three-quarters of the way to the magic number required to secure their party’s presidential nomination, face what can be described as a nightmare scenario,” Reid Wilson writes at www.realclearpolitics.com.

“Better positioned for victory in November than any party since 1984, Democrats are close to throwing that advantage away, and options for salvaging a unified party by the late August convention are dwindling,” Mr. Reid said.

“Florida and Michigan, both states who jumped ahead of the party’s pre-approved window in which they were allowed to hold nominating contests, are now casting about for a way to have their delegates seated in Denver this summer. That’s not the way their gambit was supposed to go.

“When both states’ legislators moved their contests to January 15, in Michigan, and January 29, in Florida, they thought they knew exactly what they were doing: While the DNC might strip them of delegates, the eventual nominee would instruct credentials committee members to allow the two states’ slates to sit on the convention floor. But that plan did not factor in the possibility of a contested convention.

“Now, based on delegate allocation, it looks almost certain that votes to seat the delegations in their current iterations — both overwhelmingly favoring Hillary Clinton — will not exist. Examining the 186 members of the DNC’s Credentials Committee, which would decide any contested delegations, the deck is heavily stacked against both states.”

Name drop

Bloomberg News reports that Sen. Barack Obama’s name came up yesterday at the trial of Antoin “Tony” Rezko, a Democratic fundraiser in Illinois who is charged with fraud.

The Democratic presidential contender came up in the context of a 2003 e-mail shown to jurors by the defense that listed Mr. Obama among several public officials who were consulted by the firm of Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich’s former campaign manager, David Wilhelm, about a bill reauthorizing the state’s health facilities advisory panel. Mr. Obama was then an Illinois state senator.

A Chicago businessman, Stuart Levine, served on the board, and prosecutors say he and Mr. Rezko operated a “pay-to-play” scheme to extort money from firms doing business with the Health Facilities Planning Board.

Outside the courtroom, defense lawyer Joseph Duffy told reporters the e-mail referencing Mr. Obama described only his involvement in passing board-related legislation, not “recommending people to the board.”

Dare them

“We are saps if we go along with the developing plans to hold a do-over of the Jan. 15 Michigan Democratic primary,” Detroit Free Press columnist Stephen Henderson writes.

“Even if party bosses come up with a way to hold a new primary — or worse, caucuses — that doesn’t cost state taxpayers a dime, it would still feel as if Michigan voters were apologizing for having done nothing wrong. We’d be like the crime victim who hands over his wallet, then says: ’Sorry there’s not more in there. I can go get some travelers checks from home if you’d like.’

“Before state Democrats rush to cobble some harebrained redo together, they really need to think about what message they’d be sending here,” Mr. Henderson said.

“Michigan Democrats are in a predicament, after all, because they supposedly violated national party rules. But what rules are we talking about? One that arbitrarily says Iowa and New Hampshire own some magical pre-eminence over other states in the nomination process?”

Guarded state

A senior House Democrat called for a wide-ranging federal investigation into Blackwater Worldwide, claiming that the private security contractor violated tax and labor laws by classifying its guards as independent contractors rather than company employees, the Associated Press reports.

Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell said the charges are “completely without merit.”

“Blackwater’s classification of its personnel is accurate, and Blackwater has always been forthcoming about this aspect of its business with its customer, the U.S. government,” she said in an e-mailed statement yesterday.

But Rep. Henry A. Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said Blackwater’s claims on its business status “appear dubious.”

In letters sent yesterday, Mr. Waxman of California asked the Internal Revenue Service and the Labor Department to investigate whether Blackwater defrauded the government of tax revenue and violated labor laws.

• Greg Pierce can be reached at 202/636-3285 or gpierce@washingtontimes.com.