Vote '08

Summary: John McCain has a terrible memory, & his mother is quick to remind him that he was awarded 27 bottles of scotch on the day of his birth. The end.

In all seriousness, here’s hoping you treat your mother right this Mothers’ Day.

For the first time in the primary campaign, Barack Obama took the lead in committed superdelegates today.

But many right-wingers (correctly) point out: wasn’t Obama supposed to get a ‘flood’ of supers once it became clear he was the inevitable nominee?

What do you think?

Listen to what she said this week to USA Today:

Yes, she played the race card: Several critics from around the political spectrum - from the New York Times’ editorial page to the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan - say she did unnecessarily inject race into the campaign, as a last-ditch effort to derail Obama’s likelihood of being the nominee.

No, she didn’t play the race card: The counterargument is she’s merely reading from an AP story that (correctly) outlined how Clinton did vastly better than Obama in winning over white Democratic voters.

We tend toward the former. Although it’s entirely likely she wasn’t deliberately intending to make this point, there is a better-than-average chance that this is part of her subconscious belief it’s why she can win. This campaign has already created several scabs on the racial front that aren’t worth picking.

Other thing, too — imagine either Obama or McCain bragging about how they can bring members of their own race to their side. Unthinkable.

What do you think? Please weigh in by posting a comment!

• “Discussions of how and why Mr. Obama’s support narrowed over time have a Rashomon-like quality: different observers see very different truths. But at this point it doesn’t matter whose fault it was. What does matter is that Mr. Obama appears to have won the nomination with a deep but narrow base consisting of African-Americans and highly educated whites. And now he needs to bring Democrats who opposed him back into the fold.” - Paul Krugman, the New York Times
• “McCain advisers have paid close attention to how Hillary Clinton has exploited Mr Obama’s weakness among blue-collar, culturally conservative white voters and intend to use a similar strategy against him in the general election. Aides say that if Mr McCain can win about 20 per cent of moderate Democrats nationally – an achievable target, based on recent polls – he will win the White House.” - the Financial Times (of London)
• “Obama is easily the most religiously fluent and informed Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter. But, over time, Obama has assumed a much more familiar, Democratic electoral profile — the candidate of the young, the educated and the secular (he has consistently won religiously nonaligned voters), who also gets nearly universal support from African-Americans. He increasingly resembles Bill Bradley or Gary Hart — a candidate of new liberalism — with this additional element of black enthusiasm.” - Michael Gerson, the Washington Post
• “Virginia Senator James Webb should be the Democratic candidate for vice-president.” - Gerald Pomper, UVA Center for Politics
• “In his victory speech after the North Carolina primary, Sen. Barack Obama said something that is all the more remarkable for how little it has been remarked upon. In defending his stated intent to meet with America’s enemies without preconditions, Sen. Obama said: “I trust the American people to understand that it is not weakness, but wisdom to talk not just to our friends, but to our enemies, like Roosevelt did, and Kennedy did, and Truman did.” That he made this statement, and that it passed without comment by the journalists covering his speech indicates either breathtaking ignorance of history on the part of both, or deceit.” - Jack Kelly, RealClearPolitics
• “..many of the voters who have been unfairly tarred as racist do have a different flaw that Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain are working especially hard to exploit: ignorance of elementary economics and other things every high school graduate should know, which accounts for the low quality of the debate on issues ranging from the gas tax to trade to the budget.” - Stuart Taylor, Jr., the National Journal
• “Though Obama is ahead nationally in delegates and the popular vote, Clinton has a huge lead in statewide polls [in West Virginia]. Local politicians say it will take more than a well-decorated storefront for Obama, the Illinois senator, to make headway. “He’s going to have to visit,” says Bob Pasley, who adds that Obama should come prepared to answer “tough questions,” including some about his religion. 

  “Is he Islamic or is he not?” Pasley says of Obama, who is Christian. “I know he’s tried to talk about it but he hasn’t looked anybody in Wayne in the eye and told them.” - USA Today
  

What do you think? Weigh in by posting a comment!

First up, John McCain on the “the O’Reilly Factor:”

Part 1 

Part 2

Barack Obama was interviewed by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer last night:

Part 1 

Part 2

Also, John McCain appeared on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Wednesday. Click this link to watch.

• “I, as you know, have great fondness and great respect for Sen. Clinton and I’m very loyal to her. Having said that, I’d like to talk with her and [get] her view on the rest of the race and what the strategy is.” - California Senator & Clinton supporter Diane Feinstein
• “[Clinton adviser Harol] Ickes said that seating Florida and Michigan — and assigning delegates according to the January voting — was part of a broader strategy to bring Clinton within 100 delegates of Obama. Then she would continue to press her case with superdelegates — party insiders whose votes will decide the nomination — that they should give her the nomination because she could pose a stiffer challenge to presumptive GOP nominee John McCain.” - the L.A. Times
• The 5 Mistakes She Made on the Campaign Trail by Karen Tumulty of Time Magazine
  
• “Gen. Douglas MacArthur said that every military defeat can be explained by two words: “too late.” Too late in anticipating danger, too late in preparing for it, too late in taking action. Clinton’s political defeat can be similarly explained — too late in recognizing that the electorate does not acknowledge her entitlement to the presidency, too late in understanding that she had a serious challenger, too late in anticipating that she would not dispatch Barack Obama by Super Tuesday (Feb. 5), too late in planning for the special challenges of caucus states, too late in channeling her inner shot-and-a-beer hard hat.” - George Will
• “Every time Barack Obama’s pastor got him in trouble, Hillary Clinton bailed him out.” - Joan Vennochi, Boston.com
• “Would Sen. Clinton take [the VP slot]? I think if it was offered in the right way, yes.” - ABC’s George Stephanopoulos
• “Mike Huckabee felt similarly justified in staying in the race for the Republican nomination until John McCain reached the majority threshold required for nomination…. He chose to run a positive campaign. He didn’t knock McCain. He just articulated the case for his own candidacy. But Hillary won’t avail herself of that option because it does not serve her long-term fallback position: a shot at the nomination in 2012.” - Former Clinton adviser & current GOP strategist Dick Morris
• “Clinton is not campaigning to be the Energizer Bunny, which, against all odds, keeps mechanically bobbing forward and backward because, darn it, the batteries still work. She has talked in recent days about being a fighter. Fighters may never give in, but sophisticated leaders do.” - Editorial for the Seattle Times
• “As we enter the final four weeks of this contest, let’s keep working our hearts out.” - Hillary Clinton on her campaign website’s blog

What do you think she should do? Post a comment! Which above statement do you agree with or identify with the most? Come on, please post a comment. If you read this blog, you need to weigh in here. Your e-mail or identity will not be revealed to the world. Sound off! Tell us what you think! Come on! Be a part of democratic discourse! It doesn’t have to be long - just one sentence will do! Please?

Finally, from Craigslist-DC, posted yesterday: 

Former Vols quarterback & current western North Carolina Congressman [not to mention superdelegate] Heath Shuler announced today he’s endorsing Hillary Clinton.

This makes sense, because his district swung overwhelmingly to Clinton - by a 3 to 1 margin in most spots.

  SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) - Former Sen. George McGovern, who backed Hillary Rodham Clinton, is urging her to drop out of the Democratic presidential race.
      McGovern said Wednesday he has decided to endorse Barack Obama.
      After watching the returns from the North Carolina and Indiana primaries Tuesday night, McGovern says it’s virtually impossible for Clinton to win the nomination.
      McGovern says he is calling former President Clinton to tell him of the decision and adds that he remains close friends with the Clintons.

& don’t forget - it’s because of the work of George McGovern [both behind the scenes & on the campaign trail in 1972] that the Democratic party finds itself in the current superdelegate mess…

  WASHINGTON (AP) - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has lent her presidential campaign $6.4 million over the past month, a campaign aide says.
The money more than doubles Clinton’s personal investment in her bid for the Democratic nomination. She gave her campaign $5 million earlier this year.
Clinton has been struggling financially behind the record fundraising of her Democratic rival, Barack Obama.
Obama has routinely outspent her in primary after primary. Clinton’s campaign reported raising $10 million online after her victory April 22 in Pennsylvania. But Obama has shown little difficulty tapping his vast network of donors. He spent more than $7 million on advertising head of Tuesday’s primaries in North Carolina and Indiana to her nearly $4 million.

Amid the hoopla of the two primary races yesterday, John McCain outlined his judicial philosophy in an effort to shore up the GOP’s conservative base.

Full text of his speech after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hillary Clinton can’t close the deal, & her prospects for securing the Democratic nomination are slimmer as of this morning.

Exit poll results here. Interesting tidbits:

• The college student vote was decidedly split in both states
• Voters who called the Jeremiah Wright issue “an important factor” in their vote went overwhelmingly for Clinton. The inverse was true for Obama - voters who didn’t care about it went overwhelmingly for him.
• Voters who made their minds up in the last week swung Clinton. Guess that gas tax holiday pander worked for a lot of folks.

Now for some Cherokee County results! This is the only North Carolina county in the NewsChannel 9 viewing area [in red in the above map]. Despite a huge loss across the state [particularly in the central region known as the “research triangle,”], Clinton won huge in Cherokee County, 73%-25%. Interestingly, neighboring Clay County had the exact same percentage with about half the number of voters than Cherokee County. Details here from the hometown paper, the Cherokee Scout.

Another interesting Cherokee County factoid:

• Total Democratic voters: 3224
• Total Republican voters: 1075

A majority-Democrat county in the south? Yes, it’s more common than you think - Grundy County, Tennessee often shakes out the same way, too. The reason? Many southerners are so conservative that they vote against Republicans because of “that rogue Abraham Lincoln.” No, seriously.

What about Rush Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos” effect? It seems to have been a factor in Indiana, as outlined here. [by the way, we’d like to go on the record to say we have absolutely no problem with the strategy behind Operation Chaos. Democracies are messy things, & voters of all stripes have every right to vote how they want. To try to put a stop to it somehow would tarnish the democratic values we all share.]

Obama’s victory speech in North Carolina:

Clinton’s “victory” speech in Indiana [2 parts]:

So what happens next?

..ONLY THE UNCOMMITTED/UNDECLARED SUPERDELEGATES KNOW FOR SURE! STAY TUNED!!

Details on North Carolina polls here.

Details on Indiana polls here.

What the candidates should know about Indiana.
What the candidates should know about North Carolina.
Five things to look for in the Indiana results.
Five things to look for in the North Carolina results.
Eight questions that may be answered after today.
Native North Carolinian John Edwards & his wife Elizabeth (surprisingly) say they’re not going to endorse either candidate. See what their likes & dislikes are for each candidate here.
Will the North Carolina results drive Hillary to drink? Matt Drudge got his hands on an internal ‘expectations’ memo from the Clinton campaign that says yes.

Below: Obama campaigns in Indiana

Below: Clinton campaigns in Indiana

Below: Obama campaigns in North Carolina

Below: Bill Clinton campaigns in North Carolina

Your turn! Who’s gonna win which state?? PLEASE comment!!!!