Vote '08

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?

• “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.

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!!

January 15th, 2008, Democratic Debate, Las Vegas

TIM RUSSERT: You said each of you have strengths and weaknesses. I want to ask each of you quickly, your greatest strength, your greatest weakness.

JOHN EDWARDS:”I think weakness, I sometimes have a very powerful emotional response to pain that I see around me, when I see a man like Donnie Ingram, who I met a few months ago in South Carolina, who worked for 33 years in the mill, reminded me very much of the kind of people that I grew up with, who’s about to lose his job, has no idea where he’s going to go, what he’s going to do.

I mean, his dignity and self-respect is at issue. And I feel that in a really personal way and in a very emotional way. And I think sometimes that can undermine what you need to do.”

HILLARY CLINTON: “I get impatient. I get, you know, really frustrated when people don’t seem to understand that we can do so much more to help each other. Sometimes I come across that way. I admit that. I get very concerned about, you know, pushing further and faster than perhaps people are ready to go.”

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Barack Obama, at a rally in Las Vegas Nevada four days later (reacting to the ‘weaknesses’ answers):

“Now, I didn’t, nobody had clued me in, that ya know, see, if I had gone last I would have said ‘My biggest weakness? I like to help old ladies across the street. I didn’t understand the question, but this is what I mean. This is political speak. This is what you learn in Washington from all those years of experience — it’s funny, except its sad, because it means that the American people are constantly having to sort out ‘what do people really mean?’”

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Barack Obama, Meet the Press, May 4th, 2008 (asked about why he didn’t break with Reverend Wright sooner):

“And, you know, that is–that may be a fault of mine that I own up to, which is, is that I’m concerned about how other people feel, particularly somebody who I’ve known for quite some time.”

(above: Madam Toussaud’s wax renderings of the Democratic candidates)

An exciting hour for Sunday morning talk show fans.

After the jump, see Obama’s hour-long interview on NBC’s Meet the Press & Clinton’s interview/town hall on ABC’s This Week.

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The horse on the left, Eight Belles, the one Hillary Clinton picked to win, placed in the race.. but suffered two compound fractures & immediately had to be euthanized. So sad.

& the horse on the right, while it wasn’t Barack Obama’s pick, was named “Big Brown.”

So you can bet that you won’t hear either candidate making any type of metaphors on this race & their campaigns.

Happy Kentucky Derby weekend!

We’re a fan.. we’ve been to 9 of them. The above photo is the 1998 race from our perspective in the stands.

After the jump.. find out which horses the candidates are picking to win the Run for the Roses & see how the polls are shaping up for the other “biggest horse race in town.”

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Interesting pair of articles from the Politico’s John F. Harris & Jim Vandehei about the attacks either campaign is keeping itself from pursuing:

What Hillary Clinton Wishes She Could Say

What Barack Obama Wishes He Could Say

What do you think?

Very interesting NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll out today about what the current campaign’s biggest political albatrosses are at the moment (what do I mean by “albatross?” click here). In other words, what could be a “dealbreaker” for voters with any particular candidate.

We’ll dive into the details after the jump… you may be surprised which candidate has the biggest liability.. & what it comes from.

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