I'd Like To Speak With Your Manager

WASHINGTON -- One day after John McCain successfully swept primaries in MD, VA, and DC, manager Rick Davis directed his attention to potential Dem rival Barack Obama, telling a group of journalists over lunch today that “hope has to be defined by something.”

Perhaps following McCain's lead from the night before -- when the candidate inferred that Obama's rhetoric "is not a promise of hope," it's "a platitude" -- Davis argued that "hope has to come in some form."

Davis took pains to insist that the camp is "still very much in primary mode," but the scribes gathered at the St. Regis Hotel pressed him to explain how McCain would run against Obama.

More Davis, on Obama's call to withdraw troops and more generally on the Dems proclivity for raising taxes: "If these are the things you would define hope as, we're gonna argue hope. ... Hope has to be defined by something. ... If he wants to run on empathy, great."

Davis also commented about Obama being ranked by National Journal (full disclosure, NJ is Hotline's parent co.) as the most liberal senator: "I don't know if all 17,000 people who were in his audience last night know that. ... But they will." He also made it clear that he believes McCain can easily compete with Obama's message of change, saying of McCain: "Nobody has been a bigger catalyst for change."

Davis also said his campaign is happy to have Mike Huckabee in the contest for as long as Huck wants to run. "Governor Huckabee's campaign is perfectly fine with us. ... If we didn't have an opponent, we probably wouldn't be on the front page of the newspapers."

Last night, however, Davis was hardly so welcoming, writing in a memo: "For Governor Huckabee to reach the 1,191 delegate threshold, he needs an additional 950 delegates -- more than remain available in future contests."

Davis said the camp hopes to "lock up the nomination on the fourth," when TX, OH, VT, and RI will hold their primaries. And while Davis described the TX demographic -- heavy on evangelicals -- as a "hurdle," he said it was "no more than a hurdle than California; no more of a hurdle than Virginia." He did, however, cite two factors that "intimidated" him about campaigning in TX: the size of the state, and the cost to campaign there.

"We're still a budget campaign,” he said. “ ... The reason I'm here is I heard there was a free lunch."

And on a more serious note, Davis said: "We've got to get the Republican Party excited about this candidacy." And with the fight for the Dem nod continuing to rage on, and media attention focused elsewhere, his candidate just may have the time to do so [MAURA O'BRIEN].