Super Tuesday, McCain Leads Reps, Dems Undecided 188
Following the so called Super Tuesday primary mega bash yesterday, McCain has solidified a strong lead in the primary race over his rival Republicans. Things aren't so clear for the Democrats: while Clinton leads, the race is still too close to call.
Obama truely the big winner. (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, in money, Clinton is getting tapped out, while Obama is gaining speed. 35 Million last month? In SMALL party donation? Thats amazing.
So while they will go on for a few more months.
Re:Obama truely the big winner. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Obama truely the big winner. (Score:4, Interesting)
I also heard my first political radio ad in the Washington DC area for Obama. The primaries for DC, VA and MD are next Tuesday. There has been no advertising and very few roadside signs so far.
I'm voting for Obama, not that I'd mind Clinton so much. But I REALLY hope they can battle it out without damaging the eventual winner in the general election.
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For those of us who are political junkies, this is exciting. But I can only imagine how stressful this is for people who just want someone sane in the White House.
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Which is why the Cult of Obama frustrates me. As a young, white, left-wing male, my demographics predict I should be an Obama supporter, but I'm not: he's my #3 choice; Hillary is my #1 choice and McCain is #2.
After eight years of the incompetent Bush presidency, I don't care about charisma. I don't care if the candidate is someone who'd I'd like to have a beer with. I don't give a rat's ass if they can m
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Here in California, I heard a lot of Romny ads asking a very pertinent question: just what experience does Hillary really have? Except for Senator, what public office has she held, and what experience does she have running anything? And you know what? I think that's a very good question. I'
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You're not married, are you?
Re:Obama truely the big winner. (Score:5, Interesting)
1) He won the majority of states with 13 to 8 and New Mexico looks like he might win that too.
2) He won the majority of delegates if only by a slim margin.
3) He won 40% of the vote in Clinton's home state. He was polling as low as 15% there just a couple of months ago.
4) He won 8 states with over 60% of the vote (AK, CO, GA, ID, IL, KS, MN, ND). She did that with only one state--Arkansas (not even NY).
5) He won 3 states with over 70% of the vote (AK, ID, KS). She didn't manage that feat.
Given these facts, I just don't see how anyone calls this a win for her. I am not convinced you can call this a tie either.
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From the original posters comment it would look like they would agree with you (as would I) that Barack Obama probably woke up this morning felling a lot more positive about how Tuesday went. But statistically Hillary Clinton had the edge.
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http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/state/#NY [cnn.com]
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Re:Obama truely the big winner. (Score:5, Insightful)
More relevant - and a good sign for the Democratic party as a whole, really - is the strength that Obama (and to a lesser extent Hillary) have shown in some battleground states. Obama got 300,000 votes in Alabama - a VERY red state. Huckabee - the winner on the GOP side, got 225,000. Both of them easily outpolled the nearest Republican in Missouri.
It's these states which have to be the bread and butter of any electability argument. Obama could put Alabama and Georgia in play in a general election - a laughable idea in a 2000 or 2004 frame.
Lastly, you say there's not much that can change in the month prior to Texas and Ohio. That's manifestly incorrect. Just look at the shift in national polls that has occured since Jan 5th: at that time, Clinton had a roughly 15 point lead nationally, and is now in a statistical dead heat with Obama as of the latest CNN poll.
The next month of primaries and caucuses is very favorable to Obama - he is polling at a 13 point lead in Washington, the biggest of the weekend's caucuses (via SurveyUSA, which was by far the most accurate of the Super Tuesday pollsters). What is more, he now has a significant cash advantage. A month of momentum building smaller wins can certainly change the situation on the ground in Texas and Ohio when combined with the media advantage Obama will have due to his cash advantage. It may or may not happen - but Obama's track record when he's had time to actively campaign in a state is quite solid, and he has excellent ground operations.
There's plenty of reason to believe the situation will change. Predicting how it will change is difficult, but expecting things to remain as they are is doomed to failure.
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More relevant - and a good sign for the Democratic party as a whole, really - is the strength that Obama (and to a lesser extent Hillary) have shown in some battleground states. Obama got 300,000 votes in Alabama - a VERY red state. Huckabee - the winner on the GOP side, got 225,000. Both of them easily outpolled the nearest Republican in Missouri.
First, outpolling a Republican is a bad metric: a candidate in a 2 way race will outpoll a candidate in a 3 or 4 way race if the populations are anywhere near even. Second, a lot of Obama's wins in the South are due to the fact that he has attracted a lot of black voters. Black voters in the South already vote for the Democrat in the general election and the Democrat never wins.
The sad fact is, the exit polls pretty well indicate that this year is the heyday for identity politics. Middle-aged/old women v
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Looking at the turnout over the past few elections, I'm starting to believe that the person who has the edge is not necessarily the one who takes the undecided voters in the center, but rather the one who brings out votes on their side who might not vote otherwise. Being strong with a base th
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Thanks for playing, but that is not the definition of "winner". You either win, or you loose. Even if you are "narrowly defeated", you still have not won -- unless you can pay for the lawyers to make it so.
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That's true at the end of the race, when you count up all the delegates and votes. In an ongoing race, perception is everything. If you win by a narrower margin than expected, that can be a "lose" and if you lose by a narrower margin than expected, that would be a "win". For instance, if Obama won by 51-
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SuperDelegates (Score:5, Insightful)
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I really like the facts that the Democratic Party has proportional voting, unlike the Republicans, but why do we have such a patrician system for power brokering? Superdelegates need to go.
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They are the highest level elected officeholders and party officials, just not through the party primaries or caucuses. The idea is to have a say in the selection of candidates in line with the party objectives. Party activists at the lower ranks of the party would tend to select the most extreme candidate, who would ultimately lose to a more mainstream candidate.
http://www.minnesotamonitor.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=3034 [minnesotamonitor.com]
superdelegates.org [superdelegates.org]
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Ah, so if it turned out that one candidate beat John McCain in six out of nine of this year's opinion polls [wikipedia.org], whereas the other candidate lost to John McCain in seven out of ten polls this year, the one who was more likely to win would be chosen by the superdelegates, even if the one who was more likely to lose had better party connections?
That sounds like
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It's actually closer to the way the British House of Commons appoints party leaders. The Labour party's leadership is decided by a bizarre combination of Labour members of parliament (think congressmen), trade unions, and party members, except for this time when Gordon Brown succeded without any contest at all. The Tory party I think only poll their own members of parliament, but sometimes ask the party membership for their opinion in some kind of unofficial non-binding way.
The Lords are directly appoi
Damn you Slashdot! (Score:5, Funny)
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Paul is irrelevant at this point. (Score:3, Insightful)
If the Republican Party had proportional voting, then maybe Ron Paul would have a chance of being relevant with some of his 2nd & 3rd place wins last night, but with 16 delegates and the gap between the 1st & 2nd place candidates at nearly 300 delegates, he doesn't even have a chance of influencing the convention at all.
Paul is irrelevant at this point.
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ARGH! Your tom foolery stops here! (Score:2)
You jerk! I was just campaining the "facts" you posted on all of the 180 message boards I'm subscribed to. Do you realize how much time it will take to log into 180 different sites and hit the delete button!? Oh, what great pains my passions cause me. I'll have to cancel my special youtube video tapings now. At least I didn't quote you in my signature. Then I would really be ticked.
[end joke here]Loyal Gentoo User/Paul supporter
[no here maybe]
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Now, if we could get someone who could speak like Huckabee, wanted to cut the bloat of the federal government, and didn't come across as a manchurian candidate of the evangelical christians...
Retail vs. Machine (Score:2)
To me, it looks like Obama does better when politics are retail and Clinton when politics are machine. No surprise there, really. The question is, I think, can her machine bring in enough delegates to seal the deal. I don't think so.
I would say we are in for a brokered convention, and anything could happen. Heck, they could nominate Al Gore!
Clinton versus Obama (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Clinton versus Obama (Score:5, Insightful)
As for Hillary being the "best" candidate, she wouldn't even be in the running if her last name wasn't Clinton, and I for one am sick to death of nothing but goddamn clintons and bushes. She represents nothing but special interests and a half-assed political status quo.
What Obama has, above and beyond his "magical blackness" (which is some nice racism there, since he's got nothing more or less than Bill Clinton had on the way into office, but that wasn't a big deal apparently) is the ability to actually undo some of the goddamn partisan hackery that has dominated our political process for the last 30 years or more. Another Clinton can only make that worse, if that's even possible.
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On a sidenote, I'm also amused at the whole affair. The democrats, supposedly the party of equal rights, free thinkers, intellectuals, are actually robotically lining up along gende
Heath plans doesn't matter anymore (Score:2)
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Christ Jesus, if I hear one more time how Obama is going to unite the country...
Look, NO ONE is going to unite this country. This country is too divided among large groups of people with very strong, and very different ideas of how to do things. You think just because Obama is a good speaker that all of the sudden, Republicans are going to go "hey, thi
Re:Clinton versus Obama (Score:5, Insightful)
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I like Edwards, and I certainly don't think that everyone who voted for him is racist (I voted for him myself, the last time around, and I'd like to see him as someone's VP) but I thin
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Is it? And I'm being serious here. Is it 'racist' or 'wrong' for, say, a Black candidate to point out that, being Black, they probably have a better handle on 'Black issues' than a non-Black candidate? Or that a female candidate might be a b
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I voted for him because I think his experience is interesting, I think
Re:Clinton versus Obama (Score:4, Informative)
Krugman's response is little more than "but... but... Obama mandates care for children!" Yeah, he does, but there's a difference between children and responsible adults.
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As House likes to say, "everybody lies." Even Obama.
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See Krugman himself: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/02/ [nytimes.com] -- $102 billion from taxpayers from Obama's plan, $124 billion for Hillary's.
Hillary's plan costs taxpayers less PER PERSON, but the dodge is that she forces people to pay in who don't want to. This doesn't help those people, and only serves to make the numbers look better and let her brag about "universal" care.
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Let's back off for a second. First, you accuse people of voting for Obama only because he's black. As proof you offer Krugman's diatribe claiming that Hillary's health care plan is superior. I offer you some counter-arguments and you make a false statement while calling Obama a liar. Then I say that forcing p
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That said, Hillary's health plan is better, for the primary reason that people without health insurance still get treatment. The only way non-universal health care will work is if medical providers can refuse treatment - which is currently against the law, and with good reason.
Say I run a hospital, and one of the treatments I offer, once I figure out costs and profits, should cost $100. I'm going to treat five people a month.
However, of those five, one will not have insurance,
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These days they just write it off and throw a debt collector at you, which makes other people pay for your care as you say. Under Hillary's plan there would presumably be less of this, though it's hard to eliminate entirely (illegal immigrants? foreigners? the homele
Re:Clinton versus Obama (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think race is a big reason why white people are voting for or against Obama. (Race might be important for other groups, but I don't know enough to speak intelligently about that). I think people like Obama because, well, he's likable. He comes across as very personable and very intelligent (and not in that "I know more than you" way that other Democratics can sometimes come across). I think he comes across as too idealistic (and often says little of substance), but I still think he's a good candidate.
With these two candidates, there has been a stong preference depending on age. The young like Obama and the old like Clinton. I fall somewhere in the middle, and I'm somewhat torn. I'd be happy with either, so my biggest concern is who can win against McCain. (Honestly, I wouldn't be too unhappy with McCain as long as he doesn't begin to pander to the religous right - which may happen by taking Huckabee as a VP on his ticket).
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So what you're saying is that white people aren't racist. Only non-whites might be racist but how should you know what all those people with funny colored skins are thinking. I see.
Keep up the good work, we need more colorblind people like you.
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Re:Clinton versus Obama (Score:5, Insightful)
They may have some policy differences, but they really aren't that different, and people actually like Obama and he inspires people. That's a really important point. Positive is better than negative in more ways than just feel good BS. One of Reagan's biggest benefits was his positive, likable personality. Same with the previous Clinton.
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If you want to see how that works, just visit the UK, where they have Hillary-style healthcare and it takes five weeks to get heart surgery.
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I'm finished with the self-defeating "voting against" game.
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They'd have a lot less ammunition if her previous stab at universal health care wasn't horrible. Hillary's current proposed version of universal health care is a lot closer to Romney's current Massachusetts plan than it is to her previous fiasco. People th
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Regardless of who you think should be president, I think this particular argument is terrible, since it essentially equates Bill Clinton's presidency, which -- whether you think Bill deserves much/any of the credit for it or not -- was probably the most prosperous America has been in my lifetime -- with the G. W. Bush presidency, which has been craptacular on many level
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In an ideal world, no, but I also think that there's something to be said for not losing a particularly adept employee. I can understand the impulse for term limits, but I see it as a lazy way of implementing democracy. We should be getting rid of corrupt politicians by voting them out rather than waiting them out. If incumbency provides so much of an electoral
I've never been so embarrased to say I'm from MA (Score:2, Flamebait)
Re:I've never been so embarrased to say I'm from M (Score:2)
Re:I've never been so embarrased to say I'm from M (Score:2)
Seriously, you should win your own state as a given. If Hillary had lost New York, she might as well have conceeded on the spot, and if Al Gore had won Tennessee we'd be arguing about what repub would be running against Lieberman...God, preisdent lieberman...I just threw up a little.
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It's a really liberal state, so the conservative nomination is bound to be something of a toss up, and the state liked him enough at one point to make him governor, so it can't be that surprising.
I lived through him being governor here, and it was pretty bad. As said in the link I gave above, Romney spent most of his time as governor going to conferences or otherwise campaigning for president. It's pretty blatant. When he said he'd announce if he was going to run, everyone pretty much already knew he was going to run - it was like Bush deciding to attack Iraq. As for health care here (his one actual accomplishment), it was merely requiring that everyone in the state get insurance. Now I have e
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It's turning intom "Who can Win" in November (Score:3, Interesting)
McCain>Hillary
McCain=Obama
Romney=Hillary
RomneyObama
In this equation, McCain has the best chance of winning, and conservatives would rather get half a loaf than none at all.
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The "celebrities" of the right harbor a dirty secret - the NEED Hillary to win. Their shows and blogs do best when there is someone to rail against. And what do they lose if Hillary or Obama is elected? Nothing.
They aren't afraid of socialized medicine - they can afford paying cash out of pocket for the best private care.
They aren't afraid of losing 2nd amendment rights - they have bodyguards who carry guns for them, or
Does this mean...? (Score:3, Funny)
It's a somewhat radical concept for outsiders to get our heads around, but I have to say I think it's a good plan.
Re:Does this mean...? (Score:4, Funny)
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Delegate counts still short (Score:5, Insightful)
Generally I've been disappointed with the reporting on the elections so far. Before super tuesday, Obama had gotten the most pledged delegates or tied with clinton in all the contests, but there were a few were they called Clinton the winner. It would be like declaring the the super bowl winner based on the number completed passes and not the score, which according to espn would make the Patriots the winner, which we all understand they are not.
Beyond my general dismay at the misrepresentation of the democratic primary results, I am frustrated with the confusion that this type of reporting causes. The outlets glaze over the actual electoral mechanics and come as close as they can to portraying each contest as a statewide popular vote. Then when the presidential election comes around they will do their best to portray it as a national popular election. First in the US not all votes are equal, electoral votes are based on # of members of both houses of congress from the state so because of each state getting two senators, the ratio of electoral votes to population, means that they people in low populace states have votes that are worth more of an electoral vote each. After that because most states are winner take all when it come to electoral votes if a candidate wins 100% of the vote in states that make up 40% of the electoral college and loses the other 60% of the electoral vote worth of states in a 48%/52% split then he would lose the election but would have won the make believe nationwide popular election by a pretty good margin, and people would be pissed, and feel cheated. And most of the time they would blame it on the disparity of the states in the electoral college.
The worst part about all this electoral confusion is that blaming the electoral college is how you make sure the system never changes. The electoral college is based on squarely in the constitution and would be a major undertaking to change. However the constitution has nothing at all to do with how each state allocates there votes. That can be addressed on a state by state level. Currently most states are winner take all. Which means that a thousand or so voters (or the fraud perpetrated on a thousand or so voters) can decide millions of peoples worth of vote. If all the states switched to proportional voting then the margins for how much the popular vote can differ from the results would decrease. It would also severely reduce the rewards for disenfranchising voters, and candidates would have to do a better job of appealing to the majority. If you don't like the elections don't bitch about the electoral college, work for change at the state level. Once we have the state elections behaving more inline with our expectations and at this point our desired system, we can see if we really need to tinker with the much harder to tinker with constitution.
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Oth
Against the interests of many (Score:3, Informative)
Meh. (Score:2, Funny)
Yay democracy.
Re:Meh. (Score:5, Informative)
McCain is the only Republican candidate that's actually tried hard to *do* something to oppose torture. He's was the author of several bills and amendments to ban torture, which faced strident opposition from the Bush administration. McCain was tortured himself, after all.
If you're going to slam the guy, don't lie about one of his well-known positions that define the differences between him and the alternatives.
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So anyway, given that he is still far more hawkish and pro-Iranian-invasion, what this means is that your choices are like this:
McCain: Less torture, more war!
Clinton: Less war, more torture!
Man it's going to be a tough choice if it comes dow
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comments (Score:2)
On the Republican side, McCain worries me. He seems to be breaking with some of the recent Repub
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Still, they'd do a hell of a job splitting up the votes...Obama with the southern, male, black, and youth vote, Clinton with the northern, female, latino, and old people vote...Their support is clear cut and wildly divergent...If all those groups were pulling together?
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I think the only way they'll be a team is if its really too close to call, and it gets brokered.
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Suppose Obama wins the nomination. His whole message is about change, a break from the usual partisan bickering. Clinton epitomizes the partisan combativeness and "politics of personal destruction" he's arguing against. If she was on his ticket, she would undermine the primary source of his appeal to independents and Republicans. He'd end up spending time either defending her (looking hypocritical), or trying to avoid th
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Re:So..... (Score:5, Funny)
Before Cheney, I would never have considered that statement to be literal.
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It would certainly produce a powerful ticket (or vice versa).
I don't doubt that from the voter point of view it would be indeed a powerful and federating combination, but from Obama's point of view well I'm pretty sure he'd like Edwards or actually anyone but Clinton as his VP.
Oh wait, you said Obama being Hillary's VP? My pro-Obama bias again, sorry. Yeah I totally see that happening.
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Obama - Richardson (Score:2)
Ideally it'd be the other way around with Obama given a chance to get some experience as VP, but "ideal" and "U.S. election system" aren't even in ICBM range of each other. While Richardson's complete lac
agree 100% (Score:2)
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Ok, now that's out of the way... You clearly have no idea how the primary/caucus system, and nominating conventions work if you're declaring Hill-dog the winner now. Why are you so misinformed?