'Meet the Press' transcript for March 9, 2008

MR. RUSSERT:  The issue of transparency, Senator Clinton had first said that she would not release her tax returns until she became the nominee.  Now she has pledged to release them on April 15th, one week before the Pennsylvania primary.

MR. BROWNSTEIN:  Yes.

MR. RUSSERT:  Yesterday Bill Bradley, former presidential candidate, supporter of Barack Obama, went on PBS and made some very strong charges about Bill Clinton and his finances.  Let's listen.

(Videotape)

FMR. SEN. BILL BRADLEY:  I think Barack Obama has a much stronger chance of beating John McCain in the general election.  I think Hillary is flawed in many ways, and particularly if you look at her husband's unwillingness to release the names of the people who contributed to his presidential library. And the reason that's important, are there favors attached to $500,000 or a million dollar contributions.  And what do I mean by favors?  I mean pardons that are granted, investigations that are squelched, contracts that are awarded, regulations that are delayed.  These are important questions, and the people deserve to know, and we deserve, as Democrats, to know before a nominee is selected because we don't want things to explode in a general election against John McCain.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  That was on Wednesday.  On Friday, this article in USA Today: "Archivists block release of Clinton papers.  Federal archivists at the Clinton Presidential Library are blocking the release of hundreds of pages of White House papers on pardons that the former president approved, including clemency for fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich.

"The archivists' decision, based on guidance provided by Bill Clinton that restricts the disclosure of advice he received from aides, prevents public scrutiny of documents that would shed light on how he decided which pardons to approve from hundreds of requests."

Dan Balz, you have the tax returns, you have the money given to the Clinton foundation, and you have the presidential papers.  Are those three together going to be an issue the Obama campaign is going to use against Hillary Clinton effectively?

MR. BALZ:  They will certainly use it.  We'll see how effective they're able to, to make it.  They--people have been going after her on that, and we remember from the Philadelphia debate that there were--debate about that night, should she release them, why isn't she releasing them.  They're certainly going to go after all of those.  I don't know in terms of voting issues how much these are important to people.  You know, as Gwen said, you know, when you lose 63,000 jobs in a month, people have other concerns than about the release of papers.

MS. IFILL:  Mm-hmm.

MR. BALZ:  But nonetheless, it is a way for Obama to remind people of the bad aspects of the Clinton administrations, that he can make the argument, "I will change this country.  I will turn the page." It is, it is core to part of his argument.

MR. BROWNSTEIN:  Well...

MR. HARWOOD:  And they're also trying to use it to rebut the idea that she's been vetted and he hasn't.  Their point is that, yes, she may have been--there may have been news coverage of some of these things in the past, but not the way we're going to see it when Republicans put the pressure on in the fall.

MR. BROWNSTEIN:  Is John McCain having a good morning here or what?

MR. HARWOOD:  Yeah.

MR. BROWNSTEIN:  I mean, somewhere sitting back--I mean, look, I mean, I, I agree with Dan.  I mean, you know, if you look especially at who Hillary Clinton's voters are, I mean, that, that to me is the fundamental issue here, whether anything we're talking about is going to significantly dislodge these patterns that we have seen in the Democratic electorate, and whether anything these candidates are capable of doing that they haven't done in the year they've been running against each other, will significantly move blocks that are pretty solidly aligned.  And so that leaves you at the end with, I think that, in the end, we're not going to have a clear electoral resolution of this conflict.  Ultimately, there will have to be a political resolution between two candidates who have essentially divided the party almost exactly in half and either the campaigns or the campaigns and some combination of party elders are going to have to figure out hot to make this, the situation which we have two very compelling, talented candidates--each of them, by the way, have now won more votes in the primary than any Democratic nominee in history, any Democratic nominee in history.  Can they find a way to live together?  Now, whether that's being on the same ticket or not, or it's, or it's influence in the naming of the administration or it's something.  But it's hard for me to see how this ends up with a clear, decisive, unequivocal electoral resolution. Everybody says, "Yeah, that's the winner, and that's the, that's the unequivocal choice."

MS. IFILL:  But, but keep in mind, the reason why these little dustups keep happening is because each candidate's trying to learn from their last mistake. Barack Obama came back on the plane at one point in the last couple weeks, I think it was right--seems like it was last couple of weeks, last couple of days, and said, "I'm surprised you guys bit at that stuff." He was talking to the reporters.  He didn't expect that the things that he was shrugging off were really going to hurt him, and they did.  So what is he doing?  He's decided, "Ah, they can build up some dust about issues which people say they don't care about." Well, he's going to do the same thing.  And at the very least--once again in this margin idea--that's all he can do.  He can't afford to let anything pass.  Now, I don't know if it's going to change the basic structure, as you say, but, but it'll change the politics of it.

MR. BROWNSTEIN:  It's, it's, it's interesting to think of these 11 states, how many of the 11 are really at the margin, where it, where a small change would move them from, you know, you have, you have Indiana, you have Oregon and North Carolina.  Other than that, most of them seem to be pretty tilted toward one or the other based on what we've seen so far.

MR. RUSSERT:  Both campaigns are very open about working the referees, we being the referees, trying to get the advantage.

John, when you look at these 11 states that are remaining, there was a document that Bloomberg News got from the Obama campaign inadvertently after Super Tuesday where they predicted the outcome of all the races.  It's uncanny how accurate it has been.  They only missed Maine.  They thought that was going to go to Clinton, and they won by a few points.  For example, last night they predicted Wyoming 60-40 and that's exactly what it was.  If you look at that document, it shows that each of the candidates wins by 300 delegates each of the remaining delegates.  And so Obama is going to finish with an elected delegate lead of around 140.  The superdelegates, she has a slight advantage at this point, about 40 or so.  If that remains the case, Obama would need 35 percent of the undeclared superdelegates to get the nomination.  Clinton would need 65 percent.  That's what we're headed towards, it appears.  How do you resolve that in an amicable way?  And how do you resolve it without each of these candidates for the next three months presenting their portfolios, Clinton saying Obama's not ready, Obama saying Clinton's not trustworthy, and, by the way, have you seen her tax returns and all these other documents and look at Bill Clinton's income and his overseas dealings, too.  And oh, by, by the way, Obama, he hasn't been fully--how does that...

MS. IFILL:  Yeah, John, how?

MR. RUSSERT:  Well, no, John, who emerges from it in a convention like that in August prepared to take on a Republican?

MR. HARWOOD:  Well, first of all, I think if that situation obtains, if Obama has won more popular votes, more delegates, more contests, he's quite likely to be the nominee, especially when you combine that with the notion I mentioned earlier about so many House and Senate candidates wanting Obama at the top of the ticket.  I talked on Friday to Mark Udall, congressman from Colorado who's running for the Senate.  He said, first of all, he opposes do-overs for Michigan and Florida, he says no mulligans in a presidential primary race.  But he says as soon as Puerto Rico finishes on June the 7th, that the superdelegates ought to very quickly make a decision--he'll make a decision as well--and that that will be, in effect, the last primary or caucus and that you simply cannot afford to take this all the way to the convention because in modern politics, you've got to get your team, your message, you've got to be rolling by the time of the convention, not deciding on a nominee.

MS. IFILL:  I asked both campaigns what would happen if, for some reason, Hillary Clinton were to get the lead in the popular and he were to lead in the delegates.  That way, there would be a--the moral high ground would somehow be cut out from under them, and they don't really have an answer to that one. You heard it today, actually.

MR. HARWOOD:  Yeah.

MS. IFILL:  Ed Rendell says it's the big states that decide it.  Which doesn't seem like that's what the constitution had in mind, but, but then you hear Daschle say it's, it's, it's the delegates who decide it.

MR. BROWNSTEIN:  And, and Rendell this week, in an interview I did with him on our National Journal radio show, he did have an intriguing suggestion.  He said it is so close that whoever wins, whichever side wins, should have to offer the vice presidency to the loser and that the party should pressure the loser to take it.  Now, right now, I don't think we can imagine either of these candidates taking the number two behind the other.

MS. IFILL:  Why should they pressure themselves to do anything now?

MR. BROWNSTEIN:  Right.  But it--you know, things can change between now and then, if you're kind of stuck in this, in this trough that they're in.  I think they're unlikely to get out of.  And John's right.  If Obama has the more popular vote and more pledged delegates, he's likely to be the nominee, but he's also likely to be the nominee in a situation in which essentially just under half the party has voted for the other candidate.

MR. BALZ:  I think there's another element to this.  I mean, I think your, your point about the coalitions being durable and, and difficult for one to the other to break into is accurate.  But I think we're in a period now where particularly superdelegates are going to be watching these candidates very closely.  We're now in such a competitive position that between now and June, the superdelegates are going to say, "Which of these candidates has held up better?  Which of these candidates has performed at a higher level?  Which of these candidates has really spoken to the voters we're going to need?" And if we get to a point in June where it--even if it's, you know, a hundred delegates difference, but it looks as though Senator Clinton has performed better, there might be a case.

MR. HARWOOD:  Yeah.

MR. BALZ:  We talked to--our reporters talked to 80 uncommitted superdelegates over the last few days.  We got a couple of senses from them. One is that they're not anxious to make a decision.  They want this thing resolved by others.  They would prefer not to be the, the ultimate deciders. But any number of them said, "In the end, I will make my own judgment as to which is the stronger candidate."

MR. BROWNSTEIN:  You, you know...

MS. IFILL:  And that's what the polls say the people want.

MR. BALZ:  Right.

MS. IFILL:  That's the other piece of the moral argument, which I think is by a margin of 60 to 30 something, that they say they think that, that the superdelegates should follow the will of--whatever that means--the will of the people.

MR. BROWNSTEIN:  And, Dan, even by the criteria that you laid out, it remains difficult because, even if the superdelegates are looking at who speaks better to the voters we need, they each speak better to different groups of voters. Hillary Clinton projecting forward to the general still looks stronger with downscale white voters, especially women.  And Obama looks much stronger with upscale independents and Republicans than she does.  And, you know, neither one seems--the, the strengths and weaknesses are still there even against McCain.

MR. BALZ:  Yeah.

MR. HARWOOD:  One potential tiebreaker, though, it's a change election, and Barack Obama more embodies change than Hillary Clinton.

MR. BROWNSTEIN:  It's true.

MR. BALZ:  That's true.

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