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Rapid Response

At 12:58 pm today I got an email from the Obama campaign announcing a 2 pm conference call to unveil a "major endorsement" (which turns out to be anti-war New Hampshire freshman Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter.)

At 1:42 pm the Clinton campaign emailed announcing that--gee, what a coincidence!--it would stage its own 2 pm conference call, this one featuring Senator Evan Bayh and Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, "to discuss why Hillary Clinton's [sic] is the most electable Democrat."

Seems the Clinton people put their own call together so fast they couldn't avoid a typo--just a sign of how competitive things have become.

Update: The Obama campaign is also holding its own 3pm electability conference call. At this point I don't know which call is responding to which....

More: Clever spin by Clinton spokesman Phil Singer on his campaign's call. One reporter asked for response to this CNN/Opinion Research poll showing that only John Edwards beats each of the top four Republican contenders. Singer's response was to cite today's CBS-New York Times poll, which shows that Democrats overwhelmingly see Hillary as their most electable candidate. But that's just the opinion of Democrats. It doesn't mean that Hillary actually is the most electable, of course. Verdict: Totally unconvincing!

(In fact, lots of polling makes all the Democratic candidates look like head-to-head winners right now. Yet an important but oft-neglected fact is how every one of those leading Democrats badly underperfom the "generic" Democrat against the GOP. So the notion of "electability" is somewhat relative here.)

--Michael Crowley