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Clinton Takes Ohio, Texas; McCain Seals The Deal
You can read it pretty much anywhere, but Clinton took Ohio and Texas meaning that the democratic primaries are far from over. Unlike the Dems, McCain has locked his nomination for the Republicans by breaking the 1,191 delegates necessary. So there it is. Talk amongst yourselves.
Indeed, not counting the Texas caucus results (which are likely to favor Obama), Clinton's likely to come out of last night's victories net'ing less than 10 delegates, and possibly even losing ground if the caucus goes particularly well (60-40 or better) for Obama.
I'm not a registered Democrat, though I do vote for their candidates more often than not. The inconsistencies of the state party mechanisms, plus the proportional voting, does seem highly illogical. In the general, it's winner-take-all, and there's no superdelegates (unless you count the Supreme Court - 2000 election says hi). I hope the party recognizes this flaw in the system, which only stands to keep them stigmatized as the party of political procedure and not of coherent action.
That all said, if John McCain makes it through to Election Day without a single health scare, I would be very surprised. He's 72, and has a relatively poor health history. I certainly wouldn't wish ill health on him, but I do think there's a strong likelihood of at least one incident on the road.
RW
The super delegates will decide it all - the actual raw numbers don't make much difference. Winning Ohio and Texas wasn't important to Clinton due to the number of delegates she would win, but rather has very strongly reinforced the stall she is going to set out to the supers, namely "I win in the "big" states, Obama wins in the "little" states". A piece in the NYT laid it all out yesterday, pointing out that if she lost both Texas & Ohio it wouldn't make a vast difference to the numbers - due to PR - but it would leave her with virtually no storyline to present to the supers. Since she won them she has now quite a potent storyline to present - and it may end up handing her the title.
Well, Texas has a caucus. She took the primary but Obama took more in the caucus which is a smaller percentage of the delegates. As to her actually *winning* one must wonder if Rush Limbaugh may have contributed to Republicans cross-voting just to up the contention between Clinton and Obmana and further muddy the outcome for the Dems. --cally
--Cally
I agree with your assessment that the Democrats will have a real challenge, regardless of the candidate they choose. McCain does not really suffer from the huge impopularity of president Bush as much as the other republican candidates (bar Ron Paul) would have. He's got some character, everyone from left to right has to respect a guy who survived five years of torture. And the republicans can start organizing while the Democrats are in disarray. I'm really rooting for Obama but it looks like there will be no Democratic candidate until the convention.
Politics continues to sicken me, although not more than before. I'll even go so far as to say that I'm less sickened that I was in the past, because I now place the blame on where it should be placed: on the voters.
I don't vote (actually, I anti-vote, writing my own name in where possible). Voting is an act that provides the PTB a simple request from the voter: "Lead me as you think I should be led." I don't need a leader. My life is in my hands, as are the lives of my family. Instead of spending out of control, we save. Instead of relying on insurance for regular medical visits, we pay cash on the barrel and pay a low insurance premium just for emergencies. We eat healthy, exercise, and try to stay in shape so as not to need expensive medical visits and medication that many of our friends take (and want discounts for). Rather than being angered by people that are different from ourselves, we travel the world every year and meet those that the PTB say are our enemies. Most of the time they are people not so different from ourselves.
The country demands a leader, and they'll get one. Individuals, even the most pious and charitable, generally look out for themselves first. A leader is no different. A leader generally doesn't listen to those that he/she leads. A leader may only have said position for a few years, but will always be thinking about what they will do after their leadership position is over. In some situations, the most egomaniacal leaders may be thinking about how history will support their positions and actions.
The surprise to me is that we United States citizens believe we need a leader, at least in government. The Constitution doesn't give the President power to lead, only to execute the laws which we wanted put in place; equitable laws that infringe on everyone equally, rather than giving preferential treatment to the few at the cost of the many (or vice versa). The President is not the Commander-in-Chief until Congress actively declares war. We declared war in WW2, but since then, we have not had a legal CiC. The President is not there to save the economy, or even care about the economy, because economic issues are the domain of Congress, or even more preferably the States. The President isn't supposed to take positions on what he or she will support or wants to do, because the President merely reviews signed bills and their Constitutionality, and only then making the decision to support future execution of said bills into law if the bills mass Constitutional muster. Most don't.
It is sad when people demand a leader, but are too fearful of being leaders themselves. This is why I am disgusted -- not with politics -- but with you voters who have your head so far up your rears that you think your leader can lead me. I'll be forced to follow.
Frankly, I wish they would just go the way of the Whigs (and take the Republicans with them while they're at it). This country desperately needs a REAL party for liberals, libertarians, and progressives. And God knows neither the undisciplined, spineless Democrat party nor the bible-thumping, war-mongering Republican party are truly serving the people.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
one must wonder if Rush Limbaugh may have contributed
I just have to wonder if Limbaugh's advice is counterproductive.
From what I've seen in this election cycle, more than any other is that people are basically led around by the talking heads on TV. The will vote for whoever is getting the most press. With the Republican nomination cynched by McCain, the only thing that will be in the news will be Obama/Clinton. Come November, people will be saying, "McCain? Who is that?"
It isn't a matter of the media reporting badly about McCain. It is a matter of them simply overtly shutting him out of the news coverage altogether, like they did with Paul, Kucinich and later Huckabee. The talking-head, 24-hour news cycle is an extremely powerful tool that amounts to free political adds for whoever the network controllers consider a "front-runner", whether that be Giovanni or Thompson. Having Obama/Clinton being the "news of the day" for the next few months will not help McCain.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
The Obama campaign appears to be much better organized than the Clinton campaign. Clinton tried to run an "inevitability" campaign like Bush did in the Republican primaries in 2000. When that didn't work as well as expected for Clinton, it really looked like they weren't ready with any kind of backup plan. Also, Hillary Clinton is still following the strategy that allowed Bill Clinton to win the presidency twice: ignore huge parts of the country, take others for granted, and focus on a few "swing" states to get the minimum amount of votes to win. Obama's team appears to have understood the rules of the primaries and caucuses better than Clinton's, which is surprising, given how much Clinton plays up her experience as a Senator, an activist, and yes, as the wife of Bill Clinton. I can't imagine how they could not know how Texas's apportionment of delegates works, and yet they claim they didn't. While Clinton won the popular vote in three of four states (Rhode Island, Texas, and Ohio, but not Vermont), Rhode Island and Vermont basically canceled each other out (each was a blowout and both states have few delegates). Clinton won the popular vote in Texas and Ohio, but the final delegate count will be either a very small (single-digit) number of net delegates going to Clinton or even possibly Obama padding his three-digit lead by a few more delegates.
Obama's campaign ran hard and organized even in the states where he was way ahead. The result was blowout victories, which makes a difference in the primaries, because the apportionment of delegates depends on the margin of victory. Clinton scored one blowout yesterday and was blown out in another state, so the net effect is probably about 1 net delegate for Clinton. In the bigger states, Clinton scored two narrow victories, and in Texas, the combined primary-caucus may end up giving Obama a net win in delegates.
Clinton's campaign has tried to change the rules during the contest more than once, which is really lame. There's talk that the Clinton campaign will now sue over the nature of the Texas caucus-primary, but they had the same access to the rules as the Obama campaign did. They just seem not to have planned as well.
Obama appears to be more of a party-builder, like Howard Dean and his "50 State Strategy." While moron pundits like Paul Begala derided paying party workers to "pick their noses" in places like Montana and Mississippi, Dean set up the structure not only for the Democrats' retaking both houses of Congress in the 2006 elections, but also for extending their majorities and making gains in the state legislatures nationwide. Obama seems to have embraced that strategy, and it would make a difference in places like Texas, where Rick Noriega could have a chance of unseating Senator Cornyn if the presidential candidate doesn't ignore the state, and at the very least the Democrats could force the Republicans to spend money to defend what previously would have been considered a very safe seat. Clinton's campaign, as recently as last week, when it thought she might lose in Texas, was saying that "Texas does not figure into the electoral calculus of a Democratic (Presidential) candidate." That is a ridiculously narrow view, and since so many of Hillary's advisors and consultants also worked for Bill, I wonder if the Clintons' philosophy is responsible for the fact that Bill Clinton managed to win the White House, but then the Democrats almost immediately lost control of both houses of Congress, setting the stage for the Bush presidency, when White House power was basically unchecked by a Congress all too willing to let Bush and Cheney do whatever they wanted. Including taking a surplus and making it into record deficits. Oh, and a multi-trillion dollar war that destabilized the region and created more terrorists by making bin Laden and his ilk look really smart as the US government acted just as al Qaeda and others said it would.
Here's the thing: I'm pushing 40, and Bill Clinton was far and away the best president of
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
I am a Texas resident who voted in both the primary and caucus, and so I naturally had a stake in closely following the primary results. At no time did Obama ever lead when the primary results came in, nor is he the leader in some ubiquitous Texas "popular vote." Hillary won that as well. Texas was a victory for Hillary in every sense of the word.
We are still awaiting the returns on the caucus, but that only accounts for a mere 1/3rd of the delegates awarded to each candidate, and the early returns indicate that whatever meager advantage that Obama may have in caucus votes will be all but swallowed up by Hillary's more impressive win in the primary election. Really we're talking about hundreds of extra Obama caucus votes vs. Hillary's hundreds of thousands of extra primary votes.
Now for some light editorializing: The reason we're still waiting on caucus results in many counties is because Texas had roughly double the expected turnout. The antiquated system we have in place requires that everyone in a precinct vote in the primary election before the caucus can be held. And the inability of many precincts to deal with the added influx of voters made it so that, in many cases, caucus voting could not start until 11 pm that evening.
Obama will likely fare slightly better in the caucus in Texas, only because the core of the Democrat party--the baby boomers who constitute the majority of Hillary supporters--had families to get back to and jobs they had to get up for the next morning. Hillary supporters simply didn't have the ability to "two-step" all the way into the early morning hours, while it apparently is far easier for the young, first time voters who make up Obama's base to spend literally six hours of their time at their local middle school or fire station.
If you think it's silly to have both a primary election followed by a caucus that runs into the late hours, then you've just joined the ranks of many Texans who think it's ridiculous as well. Not only is it hard for people to get a handle on the vote once / vote again thing, but it does tend to disenfranchise hard-working Democrats who can't be out all night caucusing. A 19 year-old UT student and Obama supporter who would just be out all night anyway? Welcome to the party. A 46 year-old mother of two and Hillary supporter who has to prepare for a shift working at the hospital? Congratulations, you effectively have no say in the caucus. So that's why there is a slight disconnect between the primary and caucus results.
Since irrational Obama supporters apparently run the internets, I fully expect this post to be modded "Troll" or something, because it doesn't contain the requisite amount of Obama bias and instead offers a firsthand account of what went down in Texas last night, and posits a reasonable theory for the disparity between primary and caucus votes. How scandalous. Do your candidate of choice proud, and suppress any relatively objective post you see.
So after hearing about Clinton winning Texas and Ohio (and Rhode Island, for that matter), the second thing I read about the crazy pre-election election that seems so popular in the US right now was this article:
http://www.click2houston.com/news/15492166/detail.html
Seems that someone "helped" seniors register to vote, and then filed absentee ballots in their names.
Thing is, every election, every vote, every ballot that happens in the US seems to be tainted by fraud of some sort. Identity theft, ballot stuffing, turning away voters, rigged machines, middle-of-the-night changes to the law, you name it--it's all going on, and seems to be going on all the time. The worst part is that it hardly ever raises an eyebrow from the voting public or the media. In this example, there is solid evidence of election fraud, and it's getting a few column-inches on a local website. Why isn't this on the front page of the Houston Chronicle?
Don't you people even CARE about the failure of your democracy anymore?
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
You know, I spent a lot of time pondering that as well. Why does this candidate rub me the wrong way so badly? I didn't mind her husband as President and so I naturally started wondering if it was because of her gender. Was I being sexist without recognizing it? Ultimately I concluded that my biggest problem with Hillary Clinton was her personality and the almost palpable ambition she seems to give off. It's like the woman is just starving for power and will step over just about anybody or anything to get it. I haven't had this kind of negative feeling about a candidate or President since Nixon. Despite his actions I don't much get it from GWB. I do get a sense of it from Cheney however.
She goes into a series of primaries with agreeing to certain terms (like Florida and Michigan not counting for instance) and then when it seems like she might not get her way she starts making noises about changing those terms. She enters a primary in Texas fully aware of how the primary works in Texas (and any protests otherwise she might make border on being insulting in my opinion) and then again you start to hear rumblings from her campaign about the possibility of filing suit to have this changed because it does not favor her. She goes into debates talking about being "co-President" and trying to leverage her husbands coat tails (which I do not fault her for doing mind you) but then denies any real involvment when failures or negatives from his administration are brought up. I see this and think "You were either the co-President or you weren't so what's it gonna be?"
This is the kind of behavior that makes me just cringe at the thought of her being President of the United States.
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"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks