- #876
drankin
Poop-Loops said:
They didn't have to. They are for McCain.
Poop-Loops said:Funny thing is in one state (West Virginia or something?) the idiots who switched to Democrats in order to mess with the system couldn't switch back when the time came form them to vote in their own primaries for Congress.
Perhaps they felt, like me, that Bush was the worst person in the entire country for the job but one. It is never easy to see someone else's side of things, but it can be done. Half the troubles in this world are started by people who won't even try. And you can't escape them either, you'll find them in every part of the world.Ivan Seeking said:And I can't see how anyone of good conscience could have voted a second time for Bush.
jimmysnyder said:It is never easy to see someone else's side of things, but it can be done. Half the troubles in this world are started by people who won't even try. And you can't escape them either, you'll find them in every part of the world.
It is never easy to see someone else's side of things, but it can be done.Poop-Loops said:I can see your reasoning.
Can I put you down for McCain?Poop-Loops said:"Kerry isn't REALLY a war hero!" vs. "He used his connections to get out of going to war and is now smearing someone who was actually there..."
Will he ever get it?Erbe said:Pennsylvania dramatized Obama's loss of support among better-educated voters, Catholics, and low-income whites. Perhaps this is due to his refusal to disown his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and his scaldingly anti-American remarks. Perhaps it is due to the senator's inept classifications regarding gun-owning and religious voters while speaking to San Franciscans.
Not someone we'd want in the White House.Erbe said:Clinton has thrown inexcusable and completely befuddling obstacles in her own path, such as her fabrication of landing under fire in Bosnia and her indirect put-down of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. by belittling his civil rights accomplishments compared with those of President Lyndon Johnson.
More of the same - "Raise taxes? Nah - we'll charge it."Erbe said:The one thing both Democrats have going for them—which not even the Times can undo—is the weakness of the Republican opposition. Sen. John McCain's huge economic blunder this week may well cost him the support of fiscal conservatives, the same crowd looking to him to represent their interests in the White House. By proposing huge tax cuts without regard to their impact on an already out-of-control deficit, McCain did more to rip apart the fragile Republican coalition than anything either Obama or Clinton could do. McCain is now the Democratic coalition's biggest booster.
This week, the North Carolina Republican Party posted a controversial ad on its website that linked the state's two Democratic gubernatorial candidates with Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama. Both North Carolina Democrats have endorsed Obama, but the ad extended their connections to Obama's controversial former pastor, Jeremiah Wright.
. . . .
The critical question here is whether media complicity is stirring up what's being referred to as the swiftboating of Sen. Obama?
. . . .
That would be nice, but we aren't going to see it. Clinton has lost the nomination by any metric, but is staying into try to damage Obama. You can be sure that her operatives are digging into every little nook and cranny of his public and private life trying to uncover any little thing that they can blow out of proportion to damage him. By the time of the general election, he will have been thoroughly vetted by the most effective dirt-machine in politics.Astronuc said:It would be nice if folks would stick to the issues and whether or not proposed solutions for the nation's problems are credible/viable.
Indiana has the potential to be a clincher. Obama's expected to win NC, but IN is on the demographic fence. It neighbors IL, so northwest IN will likely have an Obama bias (though Clinton also claims IL as a "home state", one of many for her). On the other hand, IN is in general, Hillary's kind of state, with two-thirds as many African Americans (per capita) as the national average, three-fourths as many college graduates, and a median income about 5% lower than the national median.Ivan Seeking said:I wouldn't write off Hillary yet. If Obama blows her out in In and NC, then I would expect Obama to be the nominee. But if Hilllary makes a strong showing, there is a credible argument to be made that given his ability to outspend her by 3:1, there is something fundmentally wrong with Obama as a candidate.
Hillary is pulling the blue-collar crowd, Hispanics, older voters, women, and Catholics, which are all critical to the Dems in a general election. She even bit into the young vote in Penn.
Gokul43201 said:Obama's interview on Fox News: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/27/barack-obama-on-fox-news_n_98840.html
I think it was a prettttty good interview. Judge for yourselves.
Gokul43201 said:Indiana has the potential to be a clincher. Obama's expected to win NC, but IN is on the demographic fence. It neighbors IL, so northwest IN will likely have an Obama bias (though Clinton also claims IL as a "home state", one of many for her). On the other hand, IN is in general, Hillary's kind of state, with two-thirds as many African Americans (per capita) as the national average, three-fourths as many college graduates, and a median income about 5% lower than the national median.
Right now, the most influential person in the country is probably John Mellencamp!
Howard Dean knows (but won't say) the damage that a Clinton candidacy would wreak on their party. Many Republicans and a lot of Independents hate her on a visceral, almost personal level, and if she were the candidate (by virtue of some back-room deal, because she has absolutely no chance of catching Obama) all the Hill-haters would come out in droves to vote for McCain, and incidentally the other Republican Senate and House candidates on the ballot. Additionally, disenfranchised Obama supporters including many college-age voters, blacks, and highly-educated progressive voters would stay home, handing McCain and the Republicans wins in a year in which the Dems have a chance to make impressive gains.BobG said:On top of the 'electability' issue is how each candidate will affect key Senate races. Of 11 Senate races likely to be somewhat competitive, Obama does better than Clinton (and presumably would lure more Democratic candidates to the polls) in all 11 of them (even if only slightly better in a few states). Realistically, that might make a difference in only 4 of the contested contests (Maine, Louisiana, Minnesota, and Oregon).
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24338217/page/6/John Dickerson, you write in Slate.com the following: "Someone should call a priest or the National Enquirer. Hillary Clinton is now come back from the dead four times. Her win in the Pennsylvania primary wasn't just a numerical victory. It also gave her a new justification for her long shot effort to win back a nomination that was once considered a lock for her.
"Despite her victory, Clinton's chances of catching Obama among pledged delegates have disappeared. Unless Obama's caught giving all of his campaign cash to Tony Rezko, she's not going to win future contests by a big enough margin to tie him. She narrowed Obama's lead among the popular vote, but not by much. But she won something more important: a new story to tell the superdelegates who are still trying to decide which candidate to back. ...
"The only way candidate--Clinton can actually reverse the tide is if she can convince those superdelegates that the Pennsylvania victory proved Barack Obama is fundamentally flawed. That is more than an academic exercise. She needs to equip them with a set of arguments so strong that they can weather the violent uproar that will erupt in the base if superdelegates put her over the top." [continued]
A lot of super-delegates pledged to Clinton early when she seemingly was the unbeatable candidate. Since then, Obama has siphoned off some, and she has gained none of his (at least the last time I looked). Obama is ahead in pledged delegates, states won, and popular vote. Clinton likes to say that she is ahead in the popular vote (though the Dems aren't set up to pick candidates on that basis), but the only way she can make that case is she claims all the votes from the Michigan primary (in which Obama's name wasn't even on the ballot) and the votes from Florida, in which Clinton claimed not to have campaigned because when she visited on primary day, she attended only events open to the party faithful, not to the general public. She is a serial liar and we don't need another of those in the WH.W3pcq said:I don't understand why Obama is winning when the decision is supposed to come down to the super delegates, and Hillary has more super delegates. I know there is a lot going over my head, I don't think I really know how this works.
For Hillary to win, the remaining supers need to rally behind her like never before. She will likely need over 75% of the remaining supers to go for her, the losing candidate. Keep in mind that when most of the early supers announced their endorsement for her, she was all but the presumptive nominee, and with all that (and the Clinton political machine pulling all its got), she's only got a 4% lead among he supers.W3pcq said:I don't understand why Obama is winning when the decision is supposed to come down to the super delegates, and Hillary has more super delegates. I know there is a lot going over my head, I don't think I really know how this works.
The way you worded that is kinda strange. There is no "supposed to". The super delegates and normal delegates votes are worth the same amount. Obama has more awarded normal delegates and Clinton has more pledged (but not awarded) super delegates. In a truly democratic process, one would hope that the super delegates would vote for the person who won the most regular delegates, but that is not how it is working this time around. Hillary is the more 'conventional' candidate and because of that, the party is throwing its support toward her while the people are choosing Obama. That sets them up for the potentially very ugly scenario of the 'back room nomination', where the person who got the most votes and regular delegates doesn't win the nomination just simply because the superdelegates have the power to swing it regardless of what their people want.W3pcq said:I don't understand why Obama is winning when the decision is supposed to come down to the super delegates, and Hillary has more super delegates. I know there is a lot going over my head, I don't think I really know how this works.
Here's the current picture: http://demconwatch.blogspot.com/2008/01/superdelegates-who-havent-endorsed.htmlGokul43201 said:For Hillary to win, the remaining supers need to rally behind her like never before. She will likely need over 75% of the remaining supers to go for her, the losing candidate. Keep in mind that when most of the early supers announced their endorsement for her, she was all but the presumptive nominee, and with all that (and the Clinton political machine pulling all its got), she's only got a 4% lead among he supers.
In fact, if anything, it is the supers that will now hand Obama a victory more than anything else. Of the last 26 supers to announce endorsements, 15 went for Obama.
If that was the only purpose of the superdelegates, then they would have no purpose at all. The idea of superdelegates is that in a close election, the decision would be in the hands of experienced politicians, not the unwashed masses. It is anti-democratic.russ_watters said:In a truly democratic process, one would hope that the super delegates would vote for the person who won the most regular delegates, but that is not how it is working this time around.
jimmysnyder said:If that was the only purpose of the superdelegates, then they would have no purpose at all. The idea of superdelegates is that in a close election, the decision would be in the hands of experienced politicians, not the unwashed masses. It is anti-democratic.
This agrees with what I wrote. However, I wrote it better. If any candidate had come to the convention with 2025 regular delegates, then the superdelegates would have no say, significant or otherwise. It is only in close elections that their votes count at all.BobG said:They have several purposes:
1) They do have a significant say in who becomes the nominee. Relying so much on primaries is a fairly recent development. When Humphrey won the nomination in 1968, he didn't even run in the primaries. Party leaders have had less say every election since.
This doesn't seem relevant.BobG said:2) A trip to the convention is a major perk for party leaders. A lot of superdelegates are politicians, but a significant number are just folks who put in the time. Even if they had no say in the election, the party would still want to give them a trip to the convention.
This doesn't seem relevant either. They don't nominate a VP. And once they nominate a P, they can't take it back no matter what dirty secrets come out afterwards.BobG said:3) Superdelegates don't really have the ability to rescue the party from a late campaign disaster anymore unless the nomination is really close, but that safeguard is one of the reasons they aren't eliminated. Imagine what a disaster it would be if a fellow Democrat managed to label the front runner as being for "amnesty, abortion, and acid" and that same Democrat wound up being the Vice Presidential nominee before it was discovered that he was the source for the quote. It would be such a disaster that a discovery that the VP nominee had undergone electroshock therapy earlier in his life would just be throwing dirt on the grave. (In fact, it's surprising that the 1972 fiasco didn't result in Democrats eliminating primaries altogether).
Speaking of FL & MI, here's a quote from Terry McAuliffe's book, What a Party! (pp. 324, 325), talking about penalizing Michigan in 2004 for wanting to advance the date of their primary.russ_watters said:One of the bigger remaining sticking points is what to do about Fla and Mich.
...
I'd really like to know if she has a plan. Is she simply hoping they choose to seat the Mich and Fla delegates? Or is she going to fight for them? Wouldn't it be Hillarious if she sued the party over them?!
(emphasis mine) "Carl", is Michigan Senator Carl Levin.They thought I was bluffing. But it was my responsibility as chairman to take action for the good of the party, and taking away half their delegates was well within my authority. Now all the presidential candidates were upset. They were getting calls from Iowa and New Hampshire asking them to pledge to come to their states no matter what Michigan did, putting the candidates in an impossible position. The whole primary calendar was in danger of spinning out of control. The candidates kept calling me and asking what was happening with the schedule, and I made it clear that I was not going to let Michigan throw the entire process out of whack. Finally I'd had enough and scheduled a meeting in Carl's Senate office for April 2 to settle this once and for all.
As I was escorted into Carl's office with my staff, Debbie Dingell and Carl's chief of staff, David Lyles, were already sitting there waiting with Carl. Sparks flew when I sad down with Phil McNamara and Josh Wachs and immediately complained about all the leaks to the press, which led to finger-jabbing and shouting back and forth between various people in the meeting. Soon, Carl and I were going at it.
"I'm going outside the primary window," he told me definitively.
"If I allow you to do that, the whole system collapses," I said. "We will have chaos. I let you make the case to the DNC, and we voted unanimously and you lost."
He kept insisting that they were going to move Michigan up on their own, even though if they did that, they would lose half their delegates. By that point Carl and I were leaning toward each other over a table in the middle of the room, shouting and dropping the occasional expletive.
"You won't deny us seats at the convention," he said.
"Carl, take it to the bank," I said. "They will not get a credential. The closest they'll get to Boston will be watching it on television. I will not let you break this entire nominating process for one state. The rules are the rules. If you want to call my bluff, Carl, you go ahead and do it."
We glared at each other some more, but there was nothing much left to say. I was holding all the cards and Levin knew it.
"Well, that was a good meeting," I told my shell-shocked staff on the way out of Carl's office.
jimmysnyder said:This agrees with what I wrote. However, I wrote it better. If any candidate had come to the convention with 2025 regular delegates, then the superdelegates would have no say, significant or otherwise. It is only in close elections that their votes count at all.
This doesn't seem relevant.
This doesn't seem relevant either. They don't nominate a VP. And once they nominate a P, they can't take it back no matter what dirty secrets come out afterwards.
Ooh! Clinton will fight that tooth and nail! She "won" those contests fair and square. Just ask her.Ivan Seeking said:Based on what Dean said this weekend, it appears to be most likely that the votes from Fl and Mi will be split, and the superdelegates from those States can vote how they want, as would be true anyway.
turbo-1 said:She "won" those contests fair and square. Just ask her.