On the Republican side, Huckabee is losing a bit of steam. Take Missouri, Alabama and Georgia firmly out of his column and put them into McCain's. That leaves Huckabee only his home state of Arkansas, which isn't enough to continue. I'm not crunching numbers on the Republican side because this trend only emphasizes McCain's dominance come Tuesday, where he'll likely come within a hundred delegates of winning the nomination.
Now for the Democratic side, where the Obama wave has crested and a Clinton backwash is beginning. (Dammit.)
Rasmussen's new poll for New York doesn't show much significant change there- Clinton still leads far, far ahead of Obama:
* NEW YORK (primary, 232 delegates): (Rass 2-1) C (54%) 140, O (38%) 92 (Swing: 4 to Clinton.)
Survey USA shows Missouri tightened up to within their margin of error- Clinton 48%, Obama 44%. That's +5
for Clinton, +18 for Obama over the Rasmussen poll of the 26th. Rasmussen, however, shows Clinton 47%,
Obama 38%- a substantial Clinton lead. Survey USA has the larger sample size, so...
* MISSOURI (primary, 72 delegates): (USA 1-30-1) C (48%) 38, O (44%) 34 (Swing: 8 to Obama.)
Rasmussen is consistently showing Clinton stronger than Survey USA in other polls; where the most recent
Survey USA poll shows Alabama in a dead heat, the new Rasmussen poll shows her up 46-41:
* ALABAMA (primary, 52 delegates): (Ras 2-1) C (46%) 27, O (41%) 25, E (9%) 0 (Swing: 1 to
Clinton.)
And Rasmussen's Tennessee poll is out, with a sampling size a little bit larger than Crawford Johnson &
Northcott's poll of yesterday:
* TENNESSEE (primary, 68 delegates): (Rass 2-1) C (49%) 40, O (35%) 28 (Swing: 3 to Clinton.)
Finally- and I type this with deep dread and misgivings- both the Gallup and Rasmussen daily tracking polls now show a sudden jump in Clinton's support. This may be a one-day glitch (the tracking polls are averages of the past three days of polling), but it hit them both, and it's enormous: Clinton went from 44-41 over Obama in Gallup to 47-41. This could be the debate hitting, but I think it more likely- and sad- that this is the Edwards ain't-gonna-vote-fer-no-black vote settling on Clinton. Edwards has said he won't endorse before Super Tuesday... which makes his endorsement worthless afterwards, and which helps Clinton and very badly hurts Obama.
UNPOLLED
* ALASKA (caucus, 13 delegates): (not polled, WAG) C 7, O 8, E 0
* AMERICAN SAMOA (primary, 3 delegates): (not polled, WAG) C 2, O 1, E 0
* Dems ABROAD (primary, 7 delegates): (nat'l polls used) (Gallup 1-29-31) C (44%) 4, O (41%) 3
* KANSAS (caucus, 32 delegates): (not polled, WAG) C 13, O 19, E 0
* NORTH DAKOTA (caucus, 13 delegates): (not polled, WAG) C 6, O 7, E 0
OLD POLLS
* DELAWARE (primary, 15 delegates): (PublicMind 10-6-07) C (41%) 11, O (17%) 4, E (7%) 0
* IDAHO (caucus, 18 delegates): (Greg Smith 7-12-2007) C (31%) 25, 9 (33%) 9, E (15%) 0
* NEW MEXICO (caucus, 26 delegates): (??? 9/5/2007) C (17%) 17, O (8%) 9, E (8%) 0
* UTAH (primary, 23 delegates): (??? 2-11-2007) C (31%) 15, O (18%) 8, E (9%) 0
JANUARY POLLS
* ARIZONA (primary, 56 delegates): (BRC 1-20-4) C (37%) 32, O (27%) 24, E (15%) 0
* ARKANSAS (primary, 35 delegates): (??? 12-14-2007) C (57%) 27, O (17%) 8, E (14%) 0
* CALIFORNIA (primary, 370 delegates): (Rass 1-29) C (43%) 192, O (40%) 176, E (9%) 0
* COLORADO (caucus, 55 delegates): (MD 1-21-3) C (32%) 27, O (34%) 28, E (17%) 0
* CONNECTICUT (primary, 48 delegates): (USA 1-30) C (44%) 22, O (48%) 26
* GEORGIA (primary, 87 delegates): (PPP 1-30) C (41%) 39, O (51%) 48
* ILLINOIS (primary, 153 delegates): (Rass 1-30) C (24%) 44, O (60%) 109, E (10%) 0
* MASSACHUSETTS (primary, 93 delegates): (Rass 1-28) C (43%) 50, O (37%) 43, E (11%) 0
* MINNESOTA (caucus, 72 delegates): (Humphrey 1-30) C (40%) 39, O (33%) 33, E (12%) 0
* NEW JERSEY (primary, 107 delegates): (Rasmussen 1-31) C (49%) 60, O (37%) 37 (Swing: 4 to
Obama.)
* NEW YORK (primary, 232 delegates): (USA 1-31) C (54%) 136, O (38%) 96
* OKLAHOMA (primary, 38 delegates): (Survey USA 1-27) C (44%) 27, O (19%) 11, E (27%) 0
(Rass- Rasmussen, USA- Survey USA, MD- Mason-Dixon, PPP- Public Policy Polling, WAG- Wild Ass Guess)
New count:
Clinton 888, Obama 790 on February 5. (Swing unchanged.)
It appears, at least for today, that the Obama surge has stalled. Supporters such as myself can only hope for a major Clinton malfunction or some other good news before Tuesday...
(One other bit of news, which makes me sad, not Super Tuesday related: a new IVR poll in Texas shows
Clinton way up over Obama here, 46% to 28%.)
Showing posts with label John Edwards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Edwards. Show all posts
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Friday, February 1, 2008
Cull Day, After a Long Time
My web browser's running slow, possibly due to all the news articles I've been holding onto the past few days. Let's get rid of some of those, shall we?
First, Hillary Clinton. The last couple days Hillary has been singing John Edwards' praises, but it's worth remembering that the Clinton campaign ran negative robo-calls the day of the South Carolina primaries. Granted, I agree with the content of the calls: I'm glad as hell John "Got Rich on Malpractice Suits Using Junk Science" Edwards is out of the race. But the transcript of these calls shows more and more what kind of people the Clintons are: burn your bridges now, mend them later after the battle's won. I'm hoping that Obama represents a bridge too far...
The rump FEC commission rules that two people pooling their money to attend a political convention or do anything else constitute a PAC... and thus must file with the FEC and abide by spending and donation limits and reporting. Thank God the Democrats are blocking four replacement members of the FEC against Bush's board-packing scheme, otherwise this piece of garbage would actually act as law. As it is, this ruling would quite effectively prevent any new or small groups from getting anywhere in the political arena, while old established PACs and the two big political parties can keep trundling on. Anyone who thinks the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act was a good idea and that "public funding" of elections is a better one, beware... this is what your policies result in- the silencing of individual free speech.
You've probably heard this one again and again... Bush Administration Lied Nearly 1,000 Times About Iraq. My response: no shit, Sherlock.
Ezra Klien debunks Republican claims that the Bush years have been good for the economy. In truth, Dubya, who claims an economic record "other Presidents would envy", only beats out his father. All other Presidents back to JFK had greater economic growth in their Presidencies... even Jimmy Carter. (Shocker: Carter had the same rate of economic growth in his Presidency- four years- that Reagan had in his Presidency- eight years.)
The day after the State of the Union, the Bush administration kills the largest clean-coal experimental project. Apparent reason: the FutureGen project had chosen a site in Illinois for construction... rather than any of several proposed sites in Texas. Irony: this was done the day after Bush said, on worldwide television, that America needed to invest in new, experimental clean-coal technology. Apparently not unless those investments benefit Bush's buddies, huh?
Well, that seems to have sped up my browser. Let's look through a few of the O-L-D news bookmarks from last year and see if there's anything I can dispose of, hm?
From May of last year: Jim MacDonald writes about how the FBI and CIA actually creates domestic terror cells. Specifically, he talks about how agents act as provaceteurs and encourage nitwits to become terrorists for the promise of money. As soon as the nitwits begin botching together a plan- usually with the help of those undercover FBI agents- the Feds bust them, then brag about how they're protecting us from those evil horrible Islamo-fascists. And this helps us remain secure... how?
As was mentioned by Hillary Clinton last night- so this is still current eight months after this was written- the Pentagon has drawn up no contingency plans for leaving Iraq. They have contingency plans to invade Canada, in the event that a communist beaver regime takes over in Ottawa, but they're not even considering getting out of a nation which, more and more, is expressing its wish to be shed of us.
Jack Markowitz writes that we already have socialized medicine on the state level: the wasteful bureaucratic morass that is Medicaid. Although a ton of people are technically eligible, the paperwork requirement to prove you qualify is enormous... and yet the states, in particular Texas, have funded and expanded the program until it constitutes between a quarter and a third of all state budgets. All, according to Markowitz, in order to get votes and Federal matching funds. There may be an argument in favor of national health care, but Medicaid certainly isn't it.
One of the bad laws that passed the Texas legislature last year: now, if fifteen or more students request a bible study class, your local school district must provide it. Don't know if Perry signed it, but I don't see him not signing it, to be honest. There's no guarantee that the "religious studies" classes won't be used for Christian prosletyzing... and considering my home state, every reason to expect they WILL be used that way.
And finally... some of the richest people in the new Internet economy got that way by cyber-squatting. Have you ever typed in a URL and got, instead of what you expected, a page full of spam ads? These are the guys responsible. The leader, Kevin Ham, makes no bones about his plans: he wants to be one of a handful of people to control the Internet. It's time to drop a heavy boot on cybersquatting and misleading URLs and reopen domain name registry to the common man.
That's plenty of trouble for now...
First, Hillary Clinton. The last couple days Hillary has been singing John Edwards' praises, but it's worth remembering that the Clinton campaign ran negative robo-calls the day of the South Carolina primaries. Granted, I agree with the content of the calls: I'm glad as hell John "Got Rich on Malpractice Suits Using Junk Science" Edwards is out of the race. But the transcript of these calls shows more and more what kind of people the Clintons are: burn your bridges now, mend them later after the battle's won. I'm hoping that Obama represents a bridge too far...
The rump FEC commission rules that two people pooling their money to attend a political convention or do anything else constitute a PAC... and thus must file with the FEC and abide by spending and donation limits and reporting. Thank God the Democrats are blocking four replacement members of the FEC against Bush's board-packing scheme, otherwise this piece of garbage would actually act as law. As it is, this ruling would quite effectively prevent any new or small groups from getting anywhere in the political arena, while old established PACs and the two big political parties can keep trundling on. Anyone who thinks the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act was a good idea and that "public funding" of elections is a better one, beware... this is what your policies result in- the silencing of individual free speech.
You've probably heard this one again and again... Bush Administration Lied Nearly 1,000 Times About Iraq. My response: no shit, Sherlock.
Ezra Klien debunks Republican claims that the Bush years have been good for the economy. In truth, Dubya, who claims an economic record "other Presidents would envy", only beats out his father. All other Presidents back to JFK had greater economic growth in their Presidencies... even Jimmy Carter. (Shocker: Carter had the same rate of economic growth in his Presidency- four years- that Reagan had in his Presidency- eight years.)
The day after the State of the Union, the Bush administration kills the largest clean-coal experimental project. Apparent reason: the FutureGen project had chosen a site in Illinois for construction... rather than any of several proposed sites in Texas. Irony: this was done the day after Bush said, on worldwide television, that America needed to invest in new, experimental clean-coal technology. Apparently not unless those investments benefit Bush's buddies, huh?
Well, that seems to have sped up my browser. Let's look through a few of the O-L-D news bookmarks from last year and see if there's anything I can dispose of, hm?
From May of last year: Jim MacDonald writes about how the FBI and CIA actually creates domestic terror cells. Specifically, he talks about how agents act as provaceteurs and encourage nitwits to become terrorists for the promise of money. As soon as the nitwits begin botching together a plan- usually with the help of those undercover FBI agents- the Feds bust them, then brag about how they're protecting us from those evil horrible Islamo-fascists. And this helps us remain secure... how?
As was mentioned by Hillary Clinton last night- so this is still current eight months after this was written- the Pentagon has drawn up no contingency plans for leaving Iraq. They have contingency plans to invade Canada, in the event that a communist beaver regime takes over in Ottawa, but they're not even considering getting out of a nation which, more and more, is expressing its wish to be shed of us.
Jack Markowitz writes that we already have socialized medicine on the state level: the wasteful bureaucratic morass that is Medicaid. Although a ton of people are technically eligible, the paperwork requirement to prove you qualify is enormous... and yet the states, in particular Texas, have funded and expanded the program until it constitutes between a quarter and a third of all state budgets. All, according to Markowitz, in order to get votes and Federal matching funds. There may be an argument in favor of national health care, but Medicaid certainly isn't it.
One of the bad laws that passed the Texas legislature last year: now, if fifteen or more students request a bible study class, your local school district must provide it. Don't know if Perry signed it, but I don't see him not signing it, to be honest. There's no guarantee that the "religious studies" classes won't be used for Christian prosletyzing... and considering my home state, every reason to expect they WILL be used that way.
And finally... some of the richest people in the new Internet economy got that way by cyber-squatting. Have you ever typed in a URL and got, instead of what you expected, a page full of spam ads? These are the guys responsible. The leader, Kevin Ham, makes no bones about his plans: he wants to be one of a handful of people to control the Internet. It's time to drop a heavy boot on cybersquatting and misleading URLs and reopen domain name registry to the common man.
That's plenty of trouble for now...
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Tsunami Tuesday Delegate Estimate Update: 1-30-08
Rassmussen's California poll, taken the same day as the Florida primaries, shows Clinton and Obama within the margin of error:
* NEWER! CALIFORNIA (primary, 370 delegates): (Rass 1-29) C (43%) 192, O (40%) 176, E (9%) 0 (Swing: 16 delegates to Obama.)
In Massachusetts, things have closed MASSIVELY, according to a Rassumussen poll:
* NEW! MASSACHUSETTS (primary, 93 delegates): (Rass 1-28) C (43%) 50, O (37%) 43, E (11%) 0 (Swing: 20 to Obama.)
Not one but two polls came out in Georgia in the wake of John Edwards leaving the campaign. The InsiderAdvantage poll shows Obama up there 52% to 36. However, the Public Policy Polling poll has a smaller margin of error, and it shows a 51%/41% split. That's the one I'm going to use...
* GEORGIA (primary, 87 delegates): (PPP 1-30) C (41%) 39, O (51%) 48 (Swing: 1 to Obama.)
PPP also has a new poll out for New York, showing Obama closing the gap on Clinton there:
* NEW YORK (primary, 232 delegates): (PPP 1-30-6) C (45%) 134, O (33%) 98, E (10%) 0 (Swing: 21 to Obama.)
On the other hand, InsiderAdvantage has a new Tennessee poll out showing Hillary extending her lead there:
* TENNESSEE (primary, 68 delegates): (WSMV 1-19-21) C (59%) 47, O (26%) 21 (Swing: 6 to Clinton.)
Finally, Gallup's running average national poll after the Edwards "suspension of campaigning" shows Edwards down four points to 7%, with Clinton gaining one point and Obama three. It's tempting to predict that Edwards voters will break for Obama 3-1, but there are all sorts of other factors there... most notably the fact that Edwards voters in the South are not the same group as, for instance, Edwards voters in the Midwest or New England. Instead, I'll just note the basic fact that Gallup shows Obama only four points behind Clinton nationally. (In Rasmussen's tracking poll, though, Clinton still shows a nine-point lead; the day of three-point lead was, sadly, a fluke.)
UNPOLLED
* ALASKA (caucus, 13 delegates): (not polled, WAG) C 7, O 8, E 0
* AMERICAN SAMOA (primary, 3 delegates): (not polled, WAG) C 2, O 1, E 0
* Dems ABROAD (primary, 7 delegates): (nat'l polls used) (Gallup 1-28-30) C (43%) 4, O (39%) 3
* KANSAS (caucus, 32 delegates): (not polled, WAG) C 13, O 19, E 0
* NORTH DAKOTA (caucus, 13 delegates): (not polled, WAG) C 6, O 7, E 0
OLD POLLS
* DELAWARE (primary, 15 delegates): (PublicMind 10-6-07) C (41%) 11, O (17%) 4, E (7%) 0
* IDAHO (caucus, 18 delegates): (Greg Smith 7-12-2007) C (31%) 25, 9 (33%) 9, E (15%) 0
* MINNESOTA (caucus, 72 delegates): (Princeton 9-21-2007) C (47%) 49, O (22%) 23, E (16%) 0
* NEW MEXICO (caucus, 26 delegates): (??? 9/5/2007) C (17%) 17, O (8%) 9, E (8%) 0
* UTAH (primary, 23 delegates): (??? 2-11-2007) C (31%) 15, O (18%) 8, E (9%) 0
JANUARY POLLS
* ALABAMA (primary, 52 delegates): (Rass 1-23) C (43%) 31, O (28%) 21, E (16%) 0
* ARIZONA (primary, 56 delegates): (BRC 1-20-4) C (37%) 32, O (27%) 24, E (15%) 0
* ARKANSAS (primary, 35 delegates): (??? 12-14-2007) C (57%) 27, O (17%) 8, E (14%) 0
* COLORADO (caucus, 55 delegates): (MD 1-21-3) C (32%) 27, O (34%) 28, E (17%) 0
* CONNECTICUT (primary, 48 delegates): (Rass 1-27) C (40%) 24, O (40%) 24, E (11%) 0
* ILLINOIS (primary, 153 delegates): (Research 2000 1-23-6) C (22%) 46, O (51%) 107, E (15%) 0
* MISSOURI (primary, 72 delegates): (Rass 1-26) C (43%) 46, O (24%) 26, E (18%) 0
* OKLAHOMA (primary, 38 delegates): (Survey USA 1-27) C (44%) 27, O (19%) 11, E (27%) 0
* NEW JERSEY (primary, 107 delegates): (??? 1-15-22) C (49%) 64, O (32%) 33, E (10%) 0
(Rass- Rasmussen, USA- Survey USA, MD- Mason-Dixon, PPP- Public Policy Polling, WAG- Wild Ass Guess)
New count:
Clinton 919, Obama 759 on February 5. (Net swing to Obama: 52.) That brings the difference to under 200 delegates...
Obama has been showing strength after strength going into tonight's debate (which I'm going to give a miss- I know the positions of both sides on issues I care about, and if anything important is said it'll be repeated ad nauseam for three days afterwards). According to the New York Times, Obama's raised $32 million in January alone:
The two states Obama isn't advertising in are Illinois (his home state) and Oklahoma (where he was eight points behind Edwards in polls prior to Edwards' withdrawal).
Also, the Wall Street Journal and Ron Gunzberger at Politics1.com are speculating that the bulk of Edwards supporters will go over to Obama. I still doubt this, but if Edwards doesn't endorse by Saturday it won't matter.
Now to get to work on the Republican side...
* NEWER! CALIFORNIA (primary, 370 delegates): (Rass 1-29) C (43%) 192, O (40%) 176, E (9%) 0 (Swing: 16 delegates to Obama.)
In Massachusetts, things have closed MASSIVELY, according to a Rassumussen poll:
* NEW! MASSACHUSETTS (primary, 93 delegates): (Rass 1-28) C (43%) 50, O (37%) 43, E (11%) 0 (Swing: 20 to Obama.)
Not one but two polls came out in Georgia in the wake of John Edwards leaving the campaign. The InsiderAdvantage poll shows Obama up there 52% to 36. However, the Public Policy Polling poll has a smaller margin of error, and it shows a 51%/41% split. That's the one I'm going to use...
* GEORGIA (primary, 87 delegates): (PPP 1-30) C (41%) 39, O (51%) 48 (Swing: 1 to Obama.)
PPP also has a new poll out for New York, showing Obama closing the gap on Clinton there:
* NEW YORK (primary, 232 delegates): (PPP 1-30-6) C (45%) 134, O (33%) 98, E (10%) 0 (Swing: 21 to Obama.)
On the other hand, InsiderAdvantage has a new Tennessee poll out showing Hillary extending her lead there:
* TENNESSEE (primary, 68 delegates): (WSMV 1-19-21) C (59%) 47, O (26%) 21 (Swing: 6 to Clinton.)
Finally, Gallup's running average national poll after the Edwards "suspension of campaigning" shows Edwards down four points to 7%, with Clinton gaining one point and Obama three. It's tempting to predict that Edwards voters will break for Obama 3-1, but there are all sorts of other factors there... most notably the fact that Edwards voters in the South are not the same group as, for instance, Edwards voters in the Midwest or New England. Instead, I'll just note the basic fact that Gallup shows Obama only four points behind Clinton nationally. (In Rasmussen's tracking poll, though, Clinton still shows a nine-point lead; the day of three-point lead was, sadly, a fluke.)
UNPOLLED
* ALASKA (caucus, 13 delegates): (not polled, WAG) C 7, O 8, E 0
* AMERICAN SAMOA (primary, 3 delegates): (not polled, WAG) C 2, O 1, E 0
* Dems ABROAD (primary, 7 delegates): (nat'l polls used) (Gallup 1-28-30) C (43%) 4, O (39%) 3
* KANSAS (caucus, 32 delegates): (not polled, WAG) C 13, O 19, E 0
* NORTH DAKOTA (caucus, 13 delegates): (not polled, WAG) C 6, O 7, E 0
OLD POLLS
* DELAWARE (primary, 15 delegates): (PublicMind 10-6-07) C (41%) 11, O (17%) 4, E (7%) 0
* IDAHO (caucus, 18 delegates): (Greg Smith 7-12-2007) C (31%) 25, 9 (33%) 9, E (15%) 0
* MINNESOTA (caucus, 72 delegates): (Princeton 9-21-2007) C (47%) 49, O (22%) 23, E (16%) 0
* NEW MEXICO (caucus, 26 delegates): (??? 9/5/2007) C (17%) 17, O (8%) 9, E (8%) 0
* UTAH (primary, 23 delegates): (??? 2-11-2007) C (31%) 15, O (18%) 8, E (9%) 0
JANUARY POLLS
* ALABAMA (primary, 52 delegates): (Rass 1-23) C (43%) 31, O (28%) 21, E (16%) 0
* ARIZONA (primary, 56 delegates): (BRC 1-20-4) C (37%) 32, O (27%) 24, E (15%) 0
* ARKANSAS (primary, 35 delegates): (??? 12-14-2007) C (57%) 27, O (17%) 8, E (14%) 0
* COLORADO (caucus, 55 delegates): (MD 1-21-3) C (32%) 27, O (34%) 28, E (17%) 0
* CONNECTICUT (primary, 48 delegates): (Rass 1-27) C (40%) 24, O (40%) 24, E (11%) 0
* ILLINOIS (primary, 153 delegates): (Research 2000 1-23-6) C (22%) 46, O (51%) 107, E (15%) 0
* MISSOURI (primary, 72 delegates): (Rass 1-26) C (43%) 46, O (24%) 26, E (18%) 0
* OKLAHOMA (primary, 38 delegates): (Survey USA 1-27) C (44%) 27, O (19%) 11, E (27%) 0
* NEW JERSEY (primary, 107 delegates): (??? 1-15-22) C (49%) 64, O (32%) 33, E (10%) 0
(Rass- Rasmussen, USA- Survey USA, MD- Mason-Dixon, PPP- Public Policy Polling, WAG- Wild Ass Guess)
New count:
Clinton 919, Obama 759 on February 5. (Net swing to Obama: 52.) That brings the difference to under 200 delegates...
Obama has been showing strength after strength going into tonight's debate (which I'm going to give a miss- I know the positions of both sides on issues I care about, and if anything important is said it'll be repeated ad nauseam for three days afterwards). According to the New York Times, Obama's raised $32 million in January alone:
Obama is now advertising in 20 of the 22 states in play for next week's Super Tuesday and plans to begin advertising in seven more states that hold primaries or caucuses later in February. Rival Hillary Rodham Clinton is advertising in 12 Super Tuesday states, including her own home state of New York. . . . The $32 million raised in one month matches the campaign's best three-month fundraising period in 2007, when the campaign raised $30 million in primary money and $2 million for the general. The money raised in January was all for the primaries.
The two states Obama isn't advertising in are Illinois (his home state) and Oklahoma (where he was eight points behind Edwards in polls prior to Edwards' withdrawal).
Also, the Wall Street Journal and Ron Gunzberger at Politics1.com are speculating that the bulk of Edwards supporters will go over to Obama. I still doubt this, but if Edwards doesn't endorse by Saturday it won't matter.
Now to get to work on the Republican side...
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Democratic Tsunami Tuesday Delegate Update- Edwards Out
John Edwards just made a rather empty, feel-good speech announcing his "withdrawal" from the Presidential race. He hasn't endorsed anyone as yet.
As you might guess, this shakes up all the math I did yesterday, which means my Republican estimates get pushed back to tomorrow.
There's also new polls in California and Oklahoma, so I'd need to update those anyway. Here we go...
A new poll from Survey USA shows a marginal shift with Obama and Clinton picking up more support, with Obama getting the edge:
* NEW! CALIFORNIA (primary, 370 delegates): (USA 1-27) C (49%) 208, O (38%) 162, E (9%) 0
A new Oklahoma poll shows Obama static, Clinton losing support marginally to Edwards- ironic, with Edwards dropping out. Adjusting the outcome to reflect Edwards dropping out:
* OKLAHOMA (primary, 38 delegates): (Survey USA 1-27) C (44%) 27, O (19%) 11, E (27%) 0
And here's the rest of the pre-existing estimates, revised to redistribute Edwards' delegates...
UNPOLLED
* ALASKA (caucus, 13 delegates): (not polled, WAG) C 7, O 8, E 0
* AMERICAN SAMOA (primary, 3 delegates): (not polled, WAG) C 2, O 1, E 0
* Dems ABROAD (primary, 7 delegates): (nat'l polls used) (Gallup 1-26-8) C (43%) 4, O (34%) 3, E (14%) 0
* KANSAS (caucus, 32 delegates): (not polled, WAG) C 13, O 19, E 0
* NORTH DAKOTA (caucus, 13 delegates): (not polled, WAG) C 6, O 7, E 0
OLD POLLS
* DELAWARE (primary, 15 delegates): (PublicMind 10-6-07) C (41%) 11, O (17%) 4, E (7%) 0
* IDAHO (caucus, 18 delegates): (Greg Smith 7-12-2007) C (31%) 25, 9 (33%) 9, E (15%) 0
* MINNESOTA (caucus, 72 delegates): (Princeton 9-21-2007) C (47%) 49, O (22%) 23, E (16%) 0
* NEW MEXICO (caucus, 26 delegates): (??? 9/5/2007) C (17%) 17, O (8%) 9, E (8%) 0
* UTAH (primary, 23 delegates): (??? 2-11-2007) C (31%) 15, O (18%) 8, E (9%) 0
JANUARY POLLS
* ALABAMA (primary, 52 delegates): (Rass 1-23) C (43%) 31, O (28%) 21, E (16%) 0
* ARIZONA (primary, 56 delegates): (BRC 1-20-4) C (37%) 32, O (27%) 24, E (15%) 0
* ARKANSAS (primary, 35 delegates): (??? 12-14-2007) C (57%) 27, O (17%) 8, E (14%) 0
* COLORADO (caucus, 55 delegates): (MD 1-21-3) C (32%) 27, O (34%) 28, E (17%) 0
* CONNECTICUT (primary, 48 delegates): (Rass 1-27) C (40%) 24, O (40%) 24, E (11%) 0
* GEORGIA (primary, 87 delegates): (Rass 1-22) C (35%) 40, O (41%) 47, E (13%) 0
* ILLINOIS (primary, 153 delegates): (Research 2000 1-23-6) C (22%) 46, O (51%) 107, E (15%) 0
* MASSACHUSETTS (primary, 93 delegates): (USA 1-23) C (59%) 70, O (22%) 23, E (11%) 0
* MISSOURI (primary, 72 delegates): (Rass 1-26) C (43%) 46, O (24%) 26, E (18%) 0
* NEW JERSEY (primary, 107 delegates): (??? 1-15-22) C (49%) 64, O (32%) 33, E (10%) 0
* NEW YORK (primary, 232 delegates): (Gallup 1-23-6) C (56%) 155, O (28%) 77, E (10%) 0
* TENNESSEE (primary, 68 delegates): (WSMV 1-19-21) C (43%) 25, O (28%) 17, E (16%) 10
(Rass- Rassmussen, USA- Survey USA, MD- Mason-Dixon, WAG- Wild Ass Guess)
On the whole, Edwards dropping out is bad for Obama, unless Edwards endorses... or unless Edwards voters go heavily for Obama. Polls taken by various sources differ on whether or not this would happen, but the most recent Associated Press poll gives Clinton the advantage among Edwards supporters, 40% to 25%.
There are two encouraging points to Obama supporters like myself. The first point is that, according to Edwards campaign manager (and former Howard Dean manager) Joe Trippi, both Obama and Clinton's campaign are desperately negotiating for Edwards' endorsement. Edwards' silence helps Hillary, and the longer he stays silent the less influence he'll have on the outcome. For the Clintons to be bidding for Edwards' support means that the Clintons are scared. They're worried that Obama might pull an upset on Tuesday, or that he might pull it out in the long run. They want this race over as soon as possible. The fact that they're worried, or at least acting worried, implies that they know something we don't... that Hillary is vulnerable.
The other encouraging point is that, so far as I can tell from televised reporting, Edwards contacted Clinton first to inform her that he was dropping out. Political etiquette is that, if you're going to endorse somebody, you contact them last. Ted Kennedy, for instance, contacted the Clintons before contacting the Obama camp, which is why the Clinton campaign announced the endorsement for Obama first. Edwards may be leaning towards Obama...
... and, as I finish my math, I find that Edwards dropping out helps Obama out a ton in his home state of Illinois. That gives Obama nearly thirty additional delegates there to Clinton's six additional. Although Edwards being out appears to hurt Obama in the long run, it might just give him a short-term boost in February 5th delegates. Clinton's still nearly three hundred ahead by my count, though:
Clinton 971 (+48), Obama 709 (+71) on February 5.
Obama has a LOT of work to do...
As you might guess, this shakes up all the math I did yesterday, which means my Republican estimates get pushed back to tomorrow.
There's also new polls in California and Oklahoma, so I'd need to update those anyway. Here we go...
A new poll from Survey USA shows a marginal shift with Obama and Clinton picking up more support, with Obama getting the edge:
* NEW! CALIFORNIA (primary, 370 delegates): (USA 1-27) C (49%) 208, O (38%) 162, E (9%) 0
A new Oklahoma poll shows Obama static, Clinton losing support marginally to Edwards- ironic, with Edwards dropping out. Adjusting the outcome to reflect Edwards dropping out:
* OKLAHOMA (primary, 38 delegates): (Survey USA 1-27) C (44%) 27, O (19%) 11, E (27%) 0
And here's the rest of the pre-existing estimates, revised to redistribute Edwards' delegates...
UNPOLLED
* ALASKA (caucus, 13 delegates): (not polled, WAG) C 7, O 8, E 0
* AMERICAN SAMOA (primary, 3 delegates): (not polled, WAG) C 2, O 1, E 0
* Dems ABROAD (primary, 7 delegates): (nat'l polls used) (Gallup 1-26-8) C (43%) 4, O (34%) 3, E (14%) 0
* KANSAS (caucus, 32 delegates): (not polled, WAG) C 13, O 19, E 0
* NORTH DAKOTA (caucus, 13 delegates): (not polled, WAG) C 6, O 7, E 0
OLD POLLS
* DELAWARE (primary, 15 delegates): (PublicMind 10-6-07) C (41%) 11, O (17%) 4, E (7%) 0
* IDAHO (caucus, 18 delegates): (Greg Smith 7-12-2007) C (31%) 25, 9 (33%) 9, E (15%) 0
* MINNESOTA (caucus, 72 delegates): (Princeton 9-21-2007) C (47%) 49, O (22%) 23, E (16%) 0
* NEW MEXICO (caucus, 26 delegates): (??? 9/5/2007) C (17%) 17, O (8%) 9, E (8%) 0
* UTAH (primary, 23 delegates): (??? 2-11-2007) C (31%) 15, O (18%) 8, E (9%) 0
JANUARY POLLS
* ALABAMA (primary, 52 delegates): (Rass 1-23) C (43%) 31, O (28%) 21, E (16%) 0
* ARIZONA (primary, 56 delegates): (BRC 1-20-4) C (37%) 32, O (27%) 24, E (15%) 0
* ARKANSAS (primary, 35 delegates): (??? 12-14-2007) C (57%) 27, O (17%) 8, E (14%) 0
* COLORADO (caucus, 55 delegates): (MD 1-21-3) C (32%) 27, O (34%) 28, E (17%) 0
* CONNECTICUT (primary, 48 delegates): (Rass 1-27) C (40%) 24, O (40%) 24, E (11%) 0
* GEORGIA (primary, 87 delegates): (Rass 1-22) C (35%) 40, O (41%) 47, E (13%) 0
* ILLINOIS (primary, 153 delegates): (Research 2000 1-23-6) C (22%) 46, O (51%) 107, E (15%) 0
* MASSACHUSETTS (primary, 93 delegates): (USA 1-23) C (59%) 70, O (22%) 23, E (11%) 0
* MISSOURI (primary, 72 delegates): (Rass 1-26) C (43%) 46, O (24%) 26, E (18%) 0
* NEW JERSEY (primary, 107 delegates): (??? 1-15-22) C (49%) 64, O (32%) 33, E (10%) 0
* NEW YORK (primary, 232 delegates): (Gallup 1-23-6) C (56%) 155, O (28%) 77, E (10%) 0
* TENNESSEE (primary, 68 delegates): (WSMV 1-19-21) C (43%) 25, O (28%) 17, E (16%) 10
(Rass- Rassmussen, USA- Survey USA, MD- Mason-Dixon, WAG- Wild Ass Guess)
On the whole, Edwards dropping out is bad for Obama, unless Edwards endorses... or unless Edwards voters go heavily for Obama. Polls taken by various sources differ on whether or not this would happen, but the most recent Associated Press poll gives Clinton the advantage among Edwards supporters, 40% to 25%.
There are two encouraging points to Obama supporters like myself. The first point is that, according to Edwards campaign manager (and former Howard Dean manager) Joe Trippi, both Obama and Clinton's campaign are desperately negotiating for Edwards' endorsement. Edwards' silence helps Hillary, and the longer he stays silent the less influence he'll have on the outcome. For the Clintons to be bidding for Edwards' support means that the Clintons are scared. They're worried that Obama might pull an upset on Tuesday, or that he might pull it out in the long run. They want this race over as soon as possible. The fact that they're worried, or at least acting worried, implies that they know something we don't... that Hillary is vulnerable.
The other encouraging point is that, so far as I can tell from televised reporting, Edwards contacted Clinton first to inform her that he was dropping out. Political etiquette is that, if you're going to endorse somebody, you contact them last. Ted Kennedy, for instance, contacted the Clintons before contacting the Obama camp, which is why the Clinton campaign announced the endorsement for Obama first. Edwards may be leaning towards Obama...
... and, as I finish my math, I find that Edwards dropping out helps Obama out a ton in his home state of Illinois. That gives Obama nearly thirty additional delegates there to Clinton's six additional. Although Edwards being out appears to hurt Obama in the long run, it might just give him a short-term boost in February 5th delegates. Clinton's still nearly three hundred ahead by my count, though:
Clinton 971 (+48), Obama 709 (+71) on February 5.
Obama has a LOT of work to do...
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Tsunami Tuesday Poll Standings, 1-29-2008
Experiment: see how things currently stand on Tsunami Tuesday not in terms of individual state polls, not in terms of national polling, but in terms of actual delegates should current standings continue.
This is going to be based on polls- which have, by and large, been WILDLY inaccurate thus far on the Democratic side. They've been pretty close on the Republican side, but the Democratic polls blew the call entirely in New Hampshire and utterly missed the degree of Obama's win in South Carolina. There are also some truly massive "Undecided" numbers to deal with.
But, alas, they're all we have until the actual votes come in.
So, here we go, with the most recent polls available for each state and my estimate of how that plays out in delegates. (NOTE: In this round, pretty much all these polls are pre-South Carolina; whatever bounce Obama's win there hasn't shown in polls yet, never mind whatever he gets from Ted Kennedy endorsing him.)
WARNING: These delegates are based on simple statewide proportional representation. Most Democratic states actually mix statewide representation with by-Congressional-district proportional representation. This is why, for instance, Barack Obama got 13 delegates in Nevada to Clinton's 12; he won everything except Las Vegas, and thus took an advantage in the rural Congressional districts. I don't have by-district breakdowns of polling, so I can't track those delegates accurately. This is a very rough guess. I adjust caucus states to take away delegates from borderline-viable candidates. (Viable = 15% or greater.)
Polls in BOLD are from polls taken after South Carolina.
First, let's get some states out of the way- those I can't find a poll for at all, where I'm just going to make a guess based on other factors:
* ALASKA (caucus, 13 delegates): (not polled, WAG) C 7, O 8, E 0
* AMERICAN SAMOA (primary, 3 delegates): (not polled, WAG) C 2, O 1, E 0
* Dems ABROAD (primary, 7 delegates): (nat'l polls used) (Gallup 1-26-8) C (43%) 4, O (34%) 3, E (14%) 0
* KANSAS (caucus, 32 delegates): (not polled, WAG) C 13, O 19, E 0
* NORTH DAKOTA (caucus, 13 delegates): (not polled, WAG) C 6, O 7, E 0
Alaska, Kansas and North Dakota are western states; since Obama is marginally leading in Colorado and won rather handily in Iowa, I'm extrapolating narrow leads in those states for him. The expatriate vote I'm going to guess according to national polls.
Next, those states I couldn't find any polls for from January:
* DELAWARE (primary, 15 delegates): (??? 10-6-07) C (41%) 11, O (17%) 4, E (7%) 0
* IDAHO (caucus, 18 delegates): (Greg Smith 7-12-2007) C (31%) 25, 8 (33%) 9, E (15%) 1
* MINNESOTA (caucus, 72 delegates): (Princeton 9-21-2007) C (47%) 41, O (22%) 19, E (16%) 14
* NEW MEXICO (caucus, 26 delegates): (??? 9/5/2007) C (17%) 13, O (8%) 7, E (8%) 6
* UTAH (primary, 23 delegates): (??? 2-11-2007) C (31%) 12, O (18%) 7, E (9%) 4
These are all questionable- especially New Mexico, which had Bill Richardson at over 40%.
Finally, those states with polls in the last thirty days- including a poll from Connecticut which was taken the day after the South Carolina primary:
* ALABAMA (primary, 52 delegates): (Rass 1-23) C (43%) 25, O (28%) 17, E (16%) 10
* ARIZONA (primary, 56 delegates): (BRC 1-20-4) C (37%) 30, O (27%) 20, E (15%) 6
* ARKANSAS (primary, 35 delegates): (??? 12-14-2007) C (57%) 25, O (17%) 7, E (14%) 3
* CALIFORNIA (primary, 370 delegates): (Gallup 1-23-6) C (47%) 212, O (35%) 158, E (10%) 0
* COLORADO (caucus, 55 delegates): (MD 1-21-3) C (32%) 24, O (34%) 25, E (17%) 6
* CONNECTICUT (primary, 48 delegates): (Rass 1-27) C (40%) 24, O (40%) 24, E (11%) 0
* GEORGIA (primary, 87 delegates): (Rass 1-22) C (35%) 40, O (41%) 47, E (13%) 0
* ILLINOIS (primary, 153 delegates): (Research 2000 1-23-6) C (22%) 38, O (51%) 78, E (15%) 26
* MASSACHUSETTS (primary, 93 delegates): (USA 1-23) C (59%) 70, O (22%) 23, E (11%) 0
* MISSOURI (primary, 72 delegates): (Rass 1-26) C (43%) 37, O (24%) 20, E (18%) 15
* NEW JERSEY (primary, 107 delegates): (??? 1-15-22) C (49%) 64, O (32%) 33, E (10%) 0
* NEW YORK (primary, 232 delegates): (Gallup 1-23-6) C (56%) 155, O (28%) 77, E (10%) 0
* OKLAHOMA (primary, 38 delegates): (??? 1-11-3) C (45%) 19, O (19%) 8, E (25%) 11
* TENNESSEE (primary, 68 delegates): (WSMV 1-19-21) C (43%) 25, O (28%) 17, E (16%) 10
(Rass- Rassmussen, USA- Survey USA, MD- Mason-Dixon, WAG- Wild Ass Guess)
Based on these numbers, I'm currently guessing- not predicting, guessing- that Clinton takes more than half the delegates available on Tsunami Tuesday... not factoring in any effects from South Carolina, Florida, or the Kennedy endorsement. My math shows Feb. 5th results of Clinton 923, Obama 638, Edwards 112. Obama's closing up the gap in California, but a fifth of expected voters (according to Gallup) have already voted absentee, which gives Clinton an irrevocable advantage there. I'm currently predicting Obama to win Illinois, Georgia, Alaska, Colorado, Georgia, Kansas, and North Dakota... but except for Illinois, his home state, all his wins look very, very narrow. Most of Hillary's wins are by very broad margins... as things stood before Saturday night.
This, of course, is not including superdelegates.
Hillary wouldn't get enough delegates to win the nomination outright, but she'd open up a gap that would be very hard for Obama to overcome- a gap larger than John Edwards' trickle of delegates could fill in. I say it again: Edwards' kingmaker strategy is a bust. He needs to make a deal, endorse one or the other frontrunner, and get out while he has something to negotiate with.
I'm expecting the polls to close up a bit as Tsunami Tuesday comes, and for some of these poorly polled or unpolled states to do some polling. I'll update daily if there are new polls out on that day.
As I recover from a computer glitch and finish this entry, McCain is being called the winner in Florida. Giuliani has not bowed out yet, but rumor is he'll endorse McCain tomorrow. Huckabee placed fourth, but won some counties; Giuliani didn't win a single county, or so it currently appears. The Republican race is a two-man run now, McCain and Romney, with McCain holding the momentum and the big-state advantage. I'll go down the Republican numbers tomorrow- with the remote possibility of predicting that the two-man race will be all but over on February 6.
This is going to be based on polls- which have, by and large, been WILDLY inaccurate thus far on the Democratic side. They've been pretty close on the Republican side, but the Democratic polls blew the call entirely in New Hampshire and utterly missed the degree of Obama's win in South Carolina. There are also some truly massive "Undecided" numbers to deal with.
But, alas, they're all we have until the actual votes come in.
So, here we go, with the most recent polls available for each state and my estimate of how that plays out in delegates. (NOTE: In this round, pretty much all these polls are pre-South Carolina; whatever bounce Obama's win there hasn't shown in polls yet, never mind whatever he gets from Ted Kennedy endorsing him.)
WARNING: These delegates are based on simple statewide proportional representation. Most Democratic states actually mix statewide representation with by-Congressional-district proportional representation. This is why, for instance, Barack Obama got 13 delegates in Nevada to Clinton's 12; he won everything except Las Vegas, and thus took an advantage in the rural Congressional districts. I don't have by-district breakdowns of polling, so I can't track those delegates accurately. This is a very rough guess. I adjust caucus states to take away delegates from borderline-viable candidates. (Viable = 15% or greater.)
Polls in BOLD are from polls taken after South Carolina.
First, let's get some states out of the way- those I can't find a poll for at all, where I'm just going to make a guess based on other factors:
* ALASKA (caucus, 13 delegates): (not polled, WAG) C 7, O 8, E 0
* AMERICAN SAMOA (primary, 3 delegates): (not polled, WAG) C 2, O 1, E 0
* Dems ABROAD (primary, 7 delegates): (nat'l polls used) (Gallup 1-26-8) C (43%) 4, O (34%) 3, E (14%) 0
* KANSAS (caucus, 32 delegates): (not polled, WAG) C 13, O 19, E 0
* NORTH DAKOTA (caucus, 13 delegates): (not polled, WAG) C 6, O 7, E 0
Alaska, Kansas and North Dakota are western states; since Obama is marginally leading in Colorado and won rather handily in Iowa, I'm extrapolating narrow leads in those states for him. The expatriate vote I'm going to guess according to national polls.
Next, those states I couldn't find any polls for from January:
* DELAWARE (primary, 15 delegates): (??? 10-6-07) C (41%) 11, O (17%) 4, E (7%) 0
* IDAHO (caucus, 18 delegates): (Greg Smith 7-12-2007) C (31%) 25, 8 (33%) 9, E (15%) 1
* MINNESOTA (caucus, 72 delegates): (Princeton 9-21-2007) C (47%) 41, O (22%) 19, E (16%) 14
* NEW MEXICO (caucus, 26 delegates): (??? 9/5/2007) C (17%) 13, O (8%) 7, E (8%) 6
* UTAH (primary, 23 delegates): (??? 2-11-2007) C (31%) 12, O (18%) 7, E (9%) 4
These are all questionable- especially New Mexico, which had Bill Richardson at over 40%.
Finally, those states with polls in the last thirty days- including a poll from Connecticut which was taken the day after the South Carolina primary:
* ALABAMA (primary, 52 delegates): (Rass 1-23) C (43%) 25, O (28%) 17, E (16%) 10
* ARIZONA (primary, 56 delegates): (BRC 1-20-4) C (37%) 30, O (27%) 20, E (15%) 6
* ARKANSAS (primary, 35 delegates): (??? 12-14-2007) C (57%) 25, O (17%) 7, E (14%) 3
* CALIFORNIA (primary, 370 delegates): (Gallup 1-23-6) C (47%) 212, O (35%) 158, E (10%) 0
* COLORADO (caucus, 55 delegates): (MD 1-21-3) C (32%) 24, O (34%) 25, E (17%) 6
* CONNECTICUT (primary, 48 delegates): (Rass 1-27) C (40%) 24, O (40%) 24, E (11%) 0
* GEORGIA (primary, 87 delegates): (Rass 1-22) C (35%) 40, O (41%) 47, E (13%) 0
* ILLINOIS (primary, 153 delegates): (Research 2000 1-23-6) C (22%) 38, O (51%) 78, E (15%) 26
* MASSACHUSETTS (primary, 93 delegates): (USA 1-23) C (59%) 70, O (22%) 23, E (11%) 0
* MISSOURI (primary, 72 delegates): (Rass 1-26) C (43%) 37, O (24%) 20, E (18%) 15
* NEW JERSEY (primary, 107 delegates): (??? 1-15-22) C (49%) 64, O (32%) 33, E (10%) 0
* NEW YORK (primary, 232 delegates): (Gallup 1-23-6) C (56%) 155, O (28%) 77, E (10%) 0
* OKLAHOMA (primary, 38 delegates): (??? 1-11-3) C (45%) 19, O (19%) 8, E (25%) 11
* TENNESSEE (primary, 68 delegates): (WSMV 1-19-21) C (43%) 25, O (28%) 17, E (16%) 10
(Rass- Rassmussen, USA- Survey USA, MD- Mason-Dixon, WAG- Wild Ass Guess)
Based on these numbers, I'm currently guessing- not predicting, guessing- that Clinton takes more than half the delegates available on Tsunami Tuesday... not factoring in any effects from South Carolina, Florida, or the Kennedy endorsement. My math shows Feb. 5th results of Clinton 923, Obama 638, Edwards 112. Obama's closing up the gap in California, but a fifth of expected voters (according to Gallup) have already voted absentee, which gives Clinton an irrevocable advantage there. I'm currently predicting Obama to win Illinois, Georgia, Alaska, Colorado, Georgia, Kansas, and North Dakota... but except for Illinois, his home state, all his wins look very, very narrow. Most of Hillary's wins are by very broad margins... as things stood before Saturday night.
This, of course, is not including superdelegates.
Hillary wouldn't get enough delegates to win the nomination outright, but she'd open up a gap that would be very hard for Obama to overcome- a gap larger than John Edwards' trickle of delegates could fill in. I say it again: Edwards' kingmaker strategy is a bust. He needs to make a deal, endorse one or the other frontrunner, and get out while he has something to negotiate with.
I'm expecting the polls to close up a bit as Tsunami Tuesday comes, and for some of these poorly polled or unpolled states to do some polling. I'll update daily if there are new polls out on that day.
As I recover from a computer glitch and finish this entry, McCain is being called the winner in Florida. Giuliani has not bowed out yet, but rumor is he'll endorse McCain tomorrow. Huckabee placed fourth, but won some counties; Giuliani didn't win a single county, or so it currently appears. The Republican race is a two-man run now, McCain and Romney, with McCain holding the momentum and the big-state advantage. I'll go down the Republican numbers tomorrow- with the remote possibility of predicting that the two-man race will be all but over on February 6.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Wanna Look at Edwards' "Strength" Again?
I hadn't intended to post anything today about South Carolina. By now you've all seen the news: 55% Obama (25 delegates), 27% Clinton (12 delegates), 18% Edwards (8 delegates). It's nothing but good for Obama, nothing but bad for Clinton, and a good hope for a tightly competitive Tsunami Tuesday.
But while I was researching the last post, I saw a link to this article about how the John Edwards campaign intends to fight on.
The money line for me: "They also point to the fact that he did much better in SC than in NV where he got just 4%."
Oh, yes? Remember, please, that Nevada was a caucus, not a primary. Edwards didn't get 4% of the total vote, he got 4% of the delegates named by caucus-goers to the state convention in April. In Democratic caucus rules you have to get 15% or more of the vote in each precinct's caucus to get any delegates at all from that precinct. In Democratic primaries, the threshhold is 15% statewide... which Edwards, despite heavy campaigning in his birth state for months, just barely exceeded in South Carolina.
So, as a thought experiment, what if we gave South Carolina a caucus again under the rules used in Nevada? Nearly 20,000 delegates were named to Nevada's state convention under fairly arcane rules; for simplicity's sake, let's keep this hypothetical down to only 1,000 delegates divided on a strictly proportional basis by county, with candidates polling under 15% in a county not getting any of that county's delegates.
CNN has a by-county breakdown of the South Carolina results we can use for this. As I observed on my LiveJournal in passing, the total Democratic vote was 529,789. For this experiment, that means about one delegate per every 530 votes.
In Nevada, candidates who didn't meet 15% were disqualified, and their supporters had to declare support for someone else. Here we just can't do that, because we don't know where Edwards voters would have gone. Instead we'll presume that they split in proportion to how Obama and Clinton did.
This calculation gives Obama 598 delegates in our hypothetical caucus, Hillary 280, and Edwards only 124. (Out of 1,002. Yes, rounding errors produced two surplus delegates. I'm not going back to correct my math over it.) Put another way, Edwards would have had 18% popular support... but only 12.4% of the delegates at the state convention as opposed to 60% for Obama and 28% for Clinton.
Now take the above, reverse it, and apply it to Nevada. In a lot of precinct caucuses Edwards might have had 12%, 13%, or 14% of the vote... but those voters would not be allowed to vote for Edwards, because the rules say candidates with less than 15% support aren't viable. The 4% of delegates he actually drew wasn't an accurate measure of his support; it was a measure solely of how many precincts had 15% or more of their caucus members vote for him.
So don't believe it when Edwards claims to be riding big momentum, coming from 4% to 18% in the course of a week. Read it the way it should be read: support of between 12% and 14% in Nevada, mostly not counted due to caucus rules, raised to 18% in Edwards' birth state with the other two candidates attacking one another all the previous week.
That's not momentum. That's a favorite-son vote, nothing more.
Today's news: John Edwards' campaign is STILL dead.
But while I was researching the last post, I saw a link to this article about how the John Edwards campaign intends to fight on.
The money line for me: "They also point to the fact that he did much better in SC than in NV where he got just 4%."
Oh, yes? Remember, please, that Nevada was a caucus, not a primary. Edwards didn't get 4% of the total vote, he got 4% of the delegates named by caucus-goers to the state convention in April. In Democratic caucus rules you have to get 15% or more of the vote in each precinct's caucus to get any delegates at all from that precinct. In Democratic primaries, the threshhold is 15% statewide... which Edwards, despite heavy campaigning in his birth state for months, just barely exceeded in South Carolina.
So, as a thought experiment, what if we gave South Carolina a caucus again under the rules used in Nevada? Nearly 20,000 delegates were named to Nevada's state convention under fairly arcane rules; for simplicity's sake, let's keep this hypothetical down to only 1,000 delegates divided on a strictly proportional basis by county, with candidates polling under 15% in a county not getting any of that county's delegates.
CNN has a by-county breakdown of the South Carolina results we can use for this. As I observed on my LiveJournal in passing, the total Democratic vote was 529,789. For this experiment, that means about one delegate per every 530 votes.
In Nevada, candidates who didn't meet 15% were disqualified, and their supporters had to declare support for someone else. Here we just can't do that, because we don't know where Edwards voters would have gone. Instead we'll presume that they split in proportion to how Obama and Clinton did.
| County | Obama Popular Vote | Obama Hypothetical Caucus Delegates | Clinton Popular Vote | Clinton Hypothetical Caucus Delegates | Edwards Popular Vote | Edwards Hypothetical Caucus Delegates |
| Abbeville (3,517 = 7 del.) | O 1,989 (56%) | O 4 | C 733 (21%) | C 1 | E 793 (23%) | E 2 |
| Aiken (14,476 = 27 del.) | O 7,722 (53%) | O 17 | C 4,881 (34%) | C 10 | E 1,858 (13%) | E 0 |
| Allendale (1416 = 3 del.) | O 933 (66%) | O 2 | C 388 (27%) | C 1 | E 91 (7%) | E 0 |
| Anderson (17,304 = 33 del.) | O 6,253 (36%) | O 12 | C 5,459 (32%) | C 10 | E 5,582 (32%) | E 11 |
| Bamberg (2701 = 5 del.) | O 1,720 (63%) | O 3 | C 751 (28%) | C 2 | E 221 (8%) | E 0 |
| Barnwell (2728 = 5 del.) | O 1,632 (60%) | O 3 | C 820 (30%) | C 2 | E 273 (10%) | E 0 |
| Beaufort (16,876 = 32 del.) | O 9,531 (56%) | O 21 | C 5,108 (30%) | C 11 | E 2,237 (13%) | E 0 |
| Berkeley (16,406 = 31 del.) | O 9,843 (60%) | O 19 | C 3,870 (24%) | C 7 | E 2,675 (16%) | E 5 |
| Calhoun (2722 = 5 del.) | O 1,605 (59%) | O 3 | C 699 (26%) | C 1 | E 413(15%) | E 1 |
| Charleston (47,676 = 90 del.) | O 29,951 (63%) | O 65 | C 11,256 (24%) | C 25 | E 6,413 (13%) | E 0 |
| Cherokee (4719 = 9 del.) | O 1,994 (42%) | O 4 | C 1,231 (26%) | C 2 | E 1,491 (32%) | E 3 |
| Chester (4292 = 8 del.) | O 2,550 (59%) | O 5 | C 1,087 (25%) | C 2 | E 649 (15%) | E 1 |
| Chesterfield (5493 = 10 del.) | O 2,732 (50%) | O 5 | C 1,466 (27%) | C 3 | E 1,290 (23%) | E 2 |
| Clarendon (6003 = 11 del.) | O 4,043 (67%) | O 9 | C 1,149 (19%) | C 2 | E 802 (13%) | E 0 |
| Colleton (4928 = 9 del.) | O 2,954 (60%) | O 6 | C 1,112 (23%) | C 2 | E 853 (17%) | E 1 |
| Darlington (8872 = 17 del.) | O 5,663 (64%) | O 13 | C 1,911 (22%) | C 4 | E 1,282 (14%) | E 0 |
| Dillon (4258 = 8 del.) | O 2,749 (65%) | O 5 | C 814 (19%) | C 2 | E 692 (16%) | E 1 |
| Dorchester (12,824 = 24 del.) | O 7,146 (56%) | O 13 | C 3,223 (25%) | C 6 | E 2,443 (19%) | E 5 |
| Edgefield (2907 = 5 del.) | O 1,906 (65%) | O 4 | C 754 (26%) | C 1 | E 243 (9%) | E 0 |
| Fairfield (4950 = 9 del.) | O 3,410 (69%) | O 7 | C 996 (20%) | C 2 | E 537 (11%) | E 0 |
| Florence (16,694 = 31 del.) | O 10,759 (65%) | O 23 | C 3,699 (22%) | C 8 | E 2,220 (13%) | E 0 |
| Georgetown (8856 = 17 del.) | O 5,323 (60%) | O 10 | C 1,950 (22%) | C 4 | E 1,569 (18%) | E 3 |
| Greenville (42,274 = 80 del.) | O 21,371 (51%) | O 40 | C 11,857 (28%) | C 22 | E 8,998 (21%) | E 18 |
| Greenwood (7242 = 14 del.) | O 4,308 (59%) | O 8 | C 1,507 (21%) | C 3 | E 1,419 (20%) | E 3 |
| Hampton (3321 = 6 del.) | O 2,231 (67%) | O 5 | C 726 (22%) | C 1 | E 362 (11%) | E 0 |
| Horry (25,691 = 48 del.) | O 8,503 (33%) | O 16 | C 9,937 (39%) | C 19 | E 7,222 (28%) | E 13 |
| Jasper (3053 = 6 del.) | O 2,285 (74%) | O 5 | C 577 (19%) | C 1 | E 190 (6%) | E 0 |
| Kershaw (7954 = 15 del.) | O 4,249 (53%) | O 8 | C 2,221 (28%) | C 4 | E 1,480 (19%) | E 3 |
| Lancaster (7492 = 14 del.) | O 3,495 (47%) | O 7 | C 2,312 (31%) | C 4 | E 1,677 (22%) | E 3 |
| Laurens (6813 = 13 del.) | O 3,561 (52%) | O 7 | C 1,541 (23%) | C 3 | E 1,705 (25%) | E 3 |
| Lee (3747 = 7 del.) | O 2,667 (71%) | O 6 | C 649 (17%) | C 1 | E 426 (11%) | E 0 |
| Lexington (22,754 = 43 del.) | O 9,274 (41%) | O 17 | C 7,871 (35%) | C 15 | E 5,587 (24%) | E 11 |
| Marion (6373 = 12 del.) | O 4,627 (72%) | O 10 | C 955 (15%) | C 2 | E 783 (12%) | E 0 |
| Marlboro (4201 = 8 del.) | O 2,454 (58%) | O 5 | C 989 (24%) | C 2 | E 755 (18%) | E 1 |
| McCormick (1758 = 3 del.) | O 1,189 (67%) | O 2 | C 382 (22%) | C 1 | E 186 (11%) | E 0 |
| Newberry (4535 = 9 del.) | O 2,209 (49%) | O 4 | C 1,200 (26%) | C 3 | E 2,120 (25%) | E 2 |
| Oconee (7214 = 14 del.) | O 1,872 (26%) | O 4 | C 2,098 (29%) | C 4 | E 3,240 (45%) | E 6 |
| Orangeburg (21,187 = 40 del.) | O 14,168 (67%) | O 29 | C 5,316 (25%) | C 11 | E 1,682 (8%) | E 0 |
| Pickens (8241 = 16 del.) | O 2,901 (35%) | O 6 | C 2,516 (31%) | C 5 | E 2,811 (34%) | E 5 |
| Pickens (8241 = 16 del.) | O 2,901 (35%) | O 6 | C 2,516 (31%) | C 5 | E 2,811 (34%) | E 5 |
| Richland (62,960 = 119 del.) | O 41,898 (66%) | O 88 | C 14,828 (24%) | C 31 | E 6,176 (10%) | E 0 |
| Saluda (2396 = 5 del.) | O 1,271 (53%) | O 3 | C 659 (28%) | C 1 | E 465 (19%) | E 1 |
| Spartanburg (25,306 = 48 del.) | O 11,245 (44%) | O 21 | C 7,717 (31%) | C 15 | E 6,325 (25%) | E 12 |
| Sumter (14,796 = 28 del.) | O 10,651 (72%) | O 22 | C 2,852 (19%) | C 6 | E 1,286 (9%) | E 0 |
| Union (4164 = 8 del.) | O 2,038 (49%) | O 4 | C 904 (22%) | C 2 | E 1,221 (29%) | E 2 |
| Williamsburg (7225 = 14 del.) | O 5,369 (74%) | O 11 | C 1,266 (18%) | C 3 | E 578 (8%) | E 0 |
| York (18,992 = 36 del.) | O 8,847 (47%) | O 17 | C 6,891 (36%) | C 13 | E 3,231 (17%) | E 6 |
This calculation gives Obama 598 delegates in our hypothetical caucus, Hillary 280, and Edwards only 124. (Out of 1,002. Yes, rounding errors produced two surplus delegates. I'm not going back to correct my math over it.) Put another way, Edwards would have had 18% popular support... but only 12.4% of the delegates at the state convention as opposed to 60% for Obama and 28% for Clinton.
Now take the above, reverse it, and apply it to Nevada. In a lot of precinct caucuses Edwards might have had 12%, 13%, or 14% of the vote... but those voters would not be allowed to vote for Edwards, because the rules say candidates with less than 15% support aren't viable. The 4% of delegates he actually drew wasn't an accurate measure of his support; it was a measure solely of how many precincts had 15% or more of their caucus members vote for him.
So don't believe it when Edwards claims to be riding big momentum, coming from 4% to 18% in the course of a week. Read it the way it should be read: support of between 12% and 14% in Nevada, mostly not counted due to caucus rules, raised to 18% in Edwards' birth state with the other two candidates attacking one another all the previous week.
That's not momentum. That's a favorite-son vote, nothing more.
Today's news: John Edwards' campaign is STILL dead.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
SC: Is the Clinton Plan Backfiring?
Two days ago I checked the Rasmussen Poll daily tracking poll for the Presidential campaign. What I saw depressed me so much I decided not to say anything about it: the appearance that Bill Clinton calling Barack Obama "the black candidate" (i. e. the candidate of the blacks and nothing else- that's what it means, at least in the South) and Hillary Clinton claiming (falsely) that Barack Obama liked Republican ideas, that these dirty tactics were working. Obama's national numbers went down, Clinton's went up.
(Note: Bill and Hillary lied. L-I-E-D. Am I the only one who is annoyed almost to incandescence that nobody on TV, in the press, not even Obama himself can use the "L" word to describe what's being done? They didn't "mislead," they didn't "shade the truth," they didn't "spin", and they didn't "distort the truth." They out-and-out LIED. As they've done repeatedly before.)
But in today's polls, there is a massive swing in the other direction. Look for yourself: the numbers jump from 41% for Clinton, 30% for Obama (pretty much where it's been since Monday) to 36% for Clinton, 33% for Obama.
At the same time more and more liberals, including some liberal bloggers are expressing their disgust with the Clintons. Anecdotal evidence seems to show that Obama is strengthening his core support, while Clinton's support is beginning to flake away.
Will the numbers support this tomorrow, or next week? I don't know. This may be a one-day glitch, or misleading polls as they were in New Hampshire. We'll find out in the next hour or two, at least so far as South Carolina is concerned.
But what does tonight mean? If Obama gets over 50% of the total vote (or twenty percentage points ahead of Clinton), or if he shows parity in the far-too-much-discussed white vote with Clinton and John Edwards, then he's scored a major win. A win of less than ten percentage points over Clinton is crippling, probably meaning a Clinton, er, tsunami on Tsunami Tuesday. An outright loss- not likely but possible, with the polls all over the place in the past week- puts an end to his viability.
Clinton, on the other hand, needs to do only two things: prevent Obama from getting a large share of the white vote (as part of the race-baiting strategy she and Bill have taken), and avoid finishing third. There's a chance, although a small one, that Edwards will tie or even surpass her tonight. If Clinton finishes third, she looks weak- and, at the same time, the dirty tactics which have always been the Clintons' strongest suit will be shown as a loser. With inevitability gone, and with dirty pool either gone or much reduced, the Clintons will be highly vulnerable going into February 5, probably leading to some major Obama upsets.
Edwards gets little or nothing out of tonight, whatever happens. He's done. At this point his apparent strategy is to snipe at whichever candidate looks like they might go ahead in order to split the delegates and create a brokered convention. No dark-horse nominee has won the Presidency in the last hundred years; in fact, no dark horses have been nominated since George McGovern in 1972, and remember who was trying to pull the strings at that time. I still say that Edwards needs to make a deal, the sooner the better, especially since tonight is really his last chance at any significant number of delegates.
Well, less than half an hour to go. I'm rooting for Obama. In fact, next week I'm going to buy some stencils and some spray paint, recycle some old signs from my legislature campaign, and make a Burma Shave type campaign sign series:
WE GOT OFF TRACK
INVADING IRAQ
LET'S GO GET OSAMA
BY VOTING OBAMA
(Note: Bill and Hillary lied. L-I-E-D. Am I the only one who is annoyed almost to incandescence that nobody on TV, in the press, not even Obama himself can use the "L" word to describe what's being done? They didn't "mislead," they didn't "shade the truth," they didn't "spin", and they didn't "distort the truth." They out-and-out LIED. As they've done repeatedly before.)
But in today's polls, there is a massive swing in the other direction. Look for yourself: the numbers jump from 41% for Clinton, 30% for Obama (pretty much where it's been since Monday) to 36% for Clinton, 33% for Obama.
At the same time more and more liberals, including some liberal bloggers are expressing their disgust with the Clintons. Anecdotal evidence seems to show that Obama is strengthening his core support, while Clinton's support is beginning to flake away.
Will the numbers support this tomorrow, or next week? I don't know. This may be a one-day glitch, or misleading polls as they were in New Hampshire. We'll find out in the next hour or two, at least so far as South Carolina is concerned.
But what does tonight mean? If Obama gets over 50% of the total vote (or twenty percentage points ahead of Clinton), or if he shows parity in the far-too-much-discussed white vote with Clinton and John Edwards, then he's scored a major win. A win of less than ten percentage points over Clinton is crippling, probably meaning a Clinton, er, tsunami on Tsunami Tuesday. An outright loss- not likely but possible, with the polls all over the place in the past week- puts an end to his viability.
Clinton, on the other hand, needs to do only two things: prevent Obama from getting a large share of the white vote (as part of the race-baiting strategy she and Bill have taken), and avoid finishing third. There's a chance, although a small one, that Edwards will tie or even surpass her tonight. If Clinton finishes third, she looks weak- and, at the same time, the dirty tactics which have always been the Clintons' strongest suit will be shown as a loser. With inevitability gone, and with dirty pool either gone or much reduced, the Clintons will be highly vulnerable going into February 5, probably leading to some major Obama upsets.
Edwards gets little or nothing out of tonight, whatever happens. He's done. At this point his apparent strategy is to snipe at whichever candidate looks like they might go ahead in order to split the delegates and create a brokered convention. No dark-horse nominee has won the Presidency in the last hundred years; in fact, no dark horses have been nominated since George McGovern in 1972, and remember who was trying to pull the strings at that time. I still say that Edwards needs to make a deal, the sooner the better, especially since tonight is really his last chance at any significant number of delegates.
Well, less than half an hour to go. I'm rooting for Obama. In fact, next week I'm going to buy some stencils and some spray paint, recycle some old signs from my legislature campaign, and make a Burma Shave type campaign sign series:
WE GOT OFF TRACK
INVADING IRAQ
LET'S GO GET OSAMA
BY VOTING OBAMA
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Democratic Debate Aftermath...
No, I didn't watch the debate myself. I almost never do. I take it for granted at this point that nobody is going to say anything of substance that contradicts their campaign talking points. Debates are only useful these days for voters who haven't heard a particular candidate's message yet, and at this point we've all heard Clinton, Obama and Edwards until we're sick.
I learned pretty much all I needed to know from the clips that are unavoidable on the news programs today: John Edwards got shunted off to the side, trying to snipe at Obama to make himself look like the only viable not-Hillary candidate. The rest of it was nothing more than a mudslinging duel between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Today Hillary Clinton accused Obama of going into the debate looking for a fight and using prepared talking points. Well, first, heaven forbid a candidate actually be PREPARED for a public appearance. Second, Hillary and Bill have been mudslinging at Obama pretty much non-stop since the day after New Hampshire. It's damn fatuous of Hillary to point at Obama now and say, "He started it! He started it! Not MY fault!"
But because she's Hillary, she's going to get away with it.
And Obama needed to set the record straight on the Clinton attacks, but the mudballs he hurled at her- most notably the fact that she was a corporate board member for the Wal-Mart corporation while she was First Lady of Arkansas- were a very poor idea indeed.
The fact is plain: if Obama engages in negative politics with the Clintons, no matter the fact that most of his attacks are truth and most of theirs are lies, in that kind of fight Obama loses. The Clintons are past masters of gutter politics. In fact, you could very well say gutter politics are all they know. Gutter politics are how Bill Clinton got a second term as Arkansas governor after the voters tossed him out on his ear in his first re-election campaign. Gutter politics got him the nomination in 1992 and brought him victory against Bush in 1992 and Dole in 1996.
And no matter what people say about hating attack ads, the fact is that negative politics works. You can't win over your opponent unless you convince the voters that your opponent does not deserve to win. In most cases negative politics are valid, so long as they are truthful. Of course the Clintons have never let the truth get in the way of their mudslinging (examples here and here from this week alone)- they've figured out that most voters never bother to check on the validity of any accusation one campaign makes against another.
Besides which, there is even more reason for the Clintons to pull every trick in the book to win this election. As many pundits have speculated, including the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson, for the Clintons this isn't just about getting back into the White House: this election is a referendum on their performance when they were there before. If Hillary loses the nomination, it means that the Democratic Party has rejected Clinton politics, policies and record. If she loses the general election, it means that the electorate as a whole has picked a continuance of the incredibly corrupt, warlike, and imperial Republican Party rule over a return to the corrupt, untrustworthy and imperial Clintons' rule. Bill and Hillary both want this election with every fiber of their being- because victory would validate their notions that Billary Clinton is/was one of the greatest Presidents in history.
The general consensus from the online pundits I read is that last night's debate had no winner. Edwards looked like Kucinich did last month- someone who didn't belong with the big kids anymore. Clinton succeeded in dragging Obama down to her level: even if Andrew Sullivan is right to say that Clinton started the attack and pressed it, the fact that Obama responded in kind hurts his message of "new politics." If there is a winner, though, it's Hillary- because dirty politics from the Clintons is already expected of them, whereas mudslinging from either Obama or Edwards is NOT expected of THEM.
I'd like to hope that this Obama-leaning correspondent to Andrew Sullivan is representative, and that a lot of undecided Democratic voters will reject her at all costs after her run of attacks...
... but my experience tells me otherwise, and gives me serious cause to believe now that Hillary might just score a come-from-behind win in South Carolina.
And if she does that, that's all she wrote for Obama, who isn't looking all that good going into Tsunami Tuesday as it is...
MSNBC article on the debate itself here.
I learned pretty much all I needed to know from the clips that are unavoidable on the news programs today: John Edwards got shunted off to the side, trying to snipe at Obama to make himself look like the only viable not-Hillary candidate. The rest of it was nothing more than a mudslinging duel between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Today Hillary Clinton accused Obama of going into the debate looking for a fight and using prepared talking points. Well, first, heaven forbid a candidate actually be PREPARED for a public appearance. Second, Hillary and Bill have been mudslinging at Obama pretty much non-stop since the day after New Hampshire. It's damn fatuous of Hillary to point at Obama now and say, "He started it! He started it! Not MY fault!"
But because she's Hillary, she's going to get away with it.
And Obama needed to set the record straight on the Clinton attacks, but the mudballs he hurled at her- most notably the fact that she was a corporate board member for the Wal-Mart corporation while she was First Lady of Arkansas- were a very poor idea indeed.
The fact is plain: if Obama engages in negative politics with the Clintons, no matter the fact that most of his attacks are truth and most of theirs are lies, in that kind of fight Obama loses. The Clintons are past masters of gutter politics. In fact, you could very well say gutter politics are all they know. Gutter politics are how Bill Clinton got a second term as Arkansas governor after the voters tossed him out on his ear in his first re-election campaign. Gutter politics got him the nomination in 1992 and brought him victory against Bush in 1992 and Dole in 1996.
And no matter what people say about hating attack ads, the fact is that negative politics works. You can't win over your opponent unless you convince the voters that your opponent does not deserve to win. In most cases negative politics are valid, so long as they are truthful. Of course the Clintons have never let the truth get in the way of their mudslinging (examples here and here from this week alone)- they've figured out that most voters never bother to check on the validity of any accusation one campaign makes against another.
Besides which, there is even more reason for the Clintons to pull every trick in the book to win this election. As many pundits have speculated, including the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson, for the Clintons this isn't just about getting back into the White House: this election is a referendum on their performance when they were there before. If Hillary loses the nomination, it means that the Democratic Party has rejected Clinton politics, policies and record. If she loses the general election, it means that the electorate as a whole has picked a continuance of the incredibly corrupt, warlike, and imperial Republican Party rule over a return to the corrupt, untrustworthy and imperial Clintons' rule. Bill and Hillary both want this election with every fiber of their being- because victory would validate their notions that Billary Clinton is/was one of the greatest Presidents in history.
The general consensus from the online pundits I read is that last night's debate had no winner. Edwards looked like Kucinich did last month- someone who didn't belong with the big kids anymore. Clinton succeeded in dragging Obama down to her level: even if Andrew Sullivan is right to say that Clinton started the attack and pressed it, the fact that Obama responded in kind hurts his message of "new politics." If there is a winner, though, it's Hillary- because dirty politics from the Clintons is already expected of them, whereas mudslinging from either Obama or Edwards is NOT expected of THEM.
I'd like to hope that this Obama-leaning correspondent to Andrew Sullivan is representative, and that a lot of undecided Democratic voters will reject her at all costs after her run of attacks...
... but my experience tells me otherwise, and gives me serious cause to believe now that Hillary might just score a come-from-behind win in South Carolina.
And if she does that, that's all she wrote for Obama, who isn't looking all that good going into Tsunami Tuesday as it is...
MSNBC article on the debate itself here.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Nevada and SC-GOP Aftermath
The headline today is, "Hillary Wins Nevada."
It should be, as it should have been in Iowa and New Hampshire, "Another Democratic Tie." Hillary won a 51%-46% majority of the delegates to the state convention, but barring unfaithful delegates the actual national delegates picked in April will split 13-12 in favor of Barack Obama.
More notable is that, in this contest, Hillary barely broke the 50% mark. I hadn't expected her to do that well. Reports of a 2-1 or better Hispanic vote in her favor over Obama indicate at the very least a strong backlash against the unions' political action. If it's more than that- if it's an actual racial support for Mrs. Clinton over all other candidates- then Obama is cooked in California and probably overall. He needs to do some fence-mending with the Latinos fast... or else Tsunami Tuesday is going to go very, very badly for him indeed.
As for Obama's chances overall, the facts on the ground show him running even with Clinton, but facts almost never determine political outcomes. The popular view is now that Hillary is on a roll, and that Obama is just a little bit short. He absolutely, positively has got to win South Carolina now, and that state is no longer a "gimme" with his losing both the Hispanic and white vote in Nevada. Part of his problem- and this is becoming more apparent over the past week- is that Obama is the more conservative of the two as a matter of philosophy. Unlike Hillary, who advocates rapid, untested intervention into the economy and micromanagement of the lives of all individuals, Obama is willing to watch, wait, and let people run their own lives... or, at least, he's willing to do so more often than Hillary. With the Iraq war fading fast as a political issue in the light of economic troubles, he's losing his advantage there- an advantage which, quite frankly, was his strongest suit in Iowa after being "the change candidate."
Obama has to do two things. First, he has to start a talking campaign- not from his own mouth, nor directly from his campaign staff, but among his grass-roots supporters- reminding people of the old Clinton "trustworthiness." People need to be reminded of the Rose Law Firm records, of the Clinton White House records secrecy, of every single vote Clinton has made to give more power to the Bush White House. He absolutely MUST do this... because both Bill and Hillary have, in the past week, attacked Obama on his war record, on his effort to rig Nevada, on his race-baiting, and even on his religion- without any grounds, but people are buying it all anyway. If Obama doesn't attack the Clintons, and attack them with solid facts rather than allegations, he loses.
Second, Obama needs to jump into the economic issue with both feet. He needs a solid, simple-to-understand proposal for helping people swamped in debt, losing their homes, losing their jobs, etc. Clinton has done this with a band-aid moratorium on foreclosures that can only function if lenders are coerced by government fiat into complying- which would lead to their collapse just as inaction will. Her proposal is factually bankrupt but SOUNDS good- just as all her proposals. Right now Obama's acting as if he's content to see what comes through the Senate... and he absolutely cannot afford to do that.
If Obama spends this week starting whispers about Clinton and countering her economic proposals with his own, he'll take South Carolina and make a good showing on Tsunami Tuesday. If Obama reaches out to Hispanics, his odds will be further improved. If he fails to do any of this, Clinton will take a strong and definite delegate lead out of Tsunami Tuesday... one which Obama probably won't be able to overcome.
As for John Edwards... he's done. He has nowhere else to go. South Carolina won't turn for him, no matter what happens. He leads nowhere- he's not even in second place in his home state of North Carolina at the moment. His campaign is running on empty. The longer he stays in the race, and the more his support bleeds away to nothing, the less power he'll have to negotiate with either Clinton or Obama. Right now Edwards should be shopping his endorsement to Obama for whatever he can get. Clinton might like Edwards' support, but she doesn't need it, not with the backing of the Democratic machines and establishment. If Edwards stays in, based on Nevada's results, his followers split evenly between Hillary and Obama... which is good for Hillary, possibly disaster for Obama.
Now over to the Republican side. Romney has proved, for the third time, that he can buy elections provided he has a long period without substantial opposition. His money, and his current lead with delegates, makes him one of the two frontrunners. The other frontrunner is John McCain, whose marginal win in South Carolina proves that he can succeed in a badly divided race. Ron Paul's second place effective tie with McCain in Nevada sounds good until you recall that Romney got a clear majority there, and Paul and McCain split half of what was left over. The fact that Paul only got 4% in South Carolina only emphasizes the lack of importance to his Nevada finish.
Huckabee is done. Finis. So is Fred Thompson. Both are Southerners, both are hard-line religious conservatives, and both lost to McCain. If they didn't win in South Carolina (and they didn't), then they can at best hope to win their home state. Giuliani, despite finishing behind Ron Paul again in both Nevada and South Carolina, is still a question mark awaiting the votes in Florida, California and New York- the places he's focused his campaigning. At this point McCain, Romney and maybe Giuliani can be considered viable nominees. Unfortunately for Republicans, of the four other candidates only Duncan Hunter has read the writing on the wall and formally bowed out.
What do the three GOP frontrunners need to do? McCain needs to get Thompson firm on his promise to back McCain if and when he bows out; without Thompson's active support, virtually none of his people will come to McCain based on their own thoughts. Romney needs to win in a tightly contested state that doesn't have some of its delegates docked- that means neither Florida nor Maine qualify. Giuliani absolutely, positively cannot afford to lose Florida, after all the effort and time he's invested there. McCain and Romney can go on without any more wins before Tsunami Tuesday: Giuliani cannot.
It should be, as it should have been in Iowa and New Hampshire, "Another Democratic Tie." Hillary won a 51%-46% majority of the delegates to the state convention, but barring unfaithful delegates the actual national delegates picked in April will split 13-12 in favor of Barack Obama.
More notable is that, in this contest, Hillary barely broke the 50% mark. I hadn't expected her to do that well. Reports of a 2-1 or better Hispanic vote in her favor over Obama indicate at the very least a strong backlash against the unions' political action. If it's more than that- if it's an actual racial support for Mrs. Clinton over all other candidates- then Obama is cooked in California and probably overall. He needs to do some fence-mending with the Latinos fast... or else Tsunami Tuesday is going to go very, very badly for him indeed.
As for Obama's chances overall, the facts on the ground show him running even with Clinton, but facts almost never determine political outcomes. The popular view is now that Hillary is on a roll, and that Obama is just a little bit short. He absolutely, positively has got to win South Carolina now, and that state is no longer a "gimme" with his losing both the Hispanic and white vote in Nevada. Part of his problem- and this is becoming more apparent over the past week- is that Obama is the more conservative of the two as a matter of philosophy. Unlike Hillary, who advocates rapid, untested intervention into the economy and micromanagement of the lives of all individuals, Obama is willing to watch, wait, and let people run their own lives... or, at least, he's willing to do so more often than Hillary. With the Iraq war fading fast as a political issue in the light of economic troubles, he's losing his advantage there- an advantage which, quite frankly, was his strongest suit in Iowa after being "the change candidate."
Obama has to do two things. First, he has to start a talking campaign- not from his own mouth, nor directly from his campaign staff, but among his grass-roots supporters- reminding people of the old Clinton "trustworthiness." People need to be reminded of the Rose Law Firm records, of the Clinton White House records secrecy, of every single vote Clinton has made to give more power to the Bush White House. He absolutely MUST do this... because both Bill and Hillary have, in the past week, attacked Obama on his war record, on his effort to rig Nevada, on his race-baiting, and even on his religion- without any grounds, but people are buying it all anyway. If Obama doesn't attack the Clintons, and attack them with solid facts rather than allegations, he loses.
Second, Obama needs to jump into the economic issue with both feet. He needs a solid, simple-to-understand proposal for helping people swamped in debt, losing their homes, losing their jobs, etc. Clinton has done this with a band-aid moratorium on foreclosures that can only function if lenders are coerced by government fiat into complying- which would lead to their collapse just as inaction will. Her proposal is factually bankrupt but SOUNDS good- just as all her proposals. Right now Obama's acting as if he's content to see what comes through the Senate... and he absolutely cannot afford to do that.
If Obama spends this week starting whispers about Clinton and countering her economic proposals with his own, he'll take South Carolina and make a good showing on Tsunami Tuesday. If Obama reaches out to Hispanics, his odds will be further improved. If he fails to do any of this, Clinton will take a strong and definite delegate lead out of Tsunami Tuesday... one which Obama probably won't be able to overcome.
As for John Edwards... he's done. He has nowhere else to go. South Carolina won't turn for him, no matter what happens. He leads nowhere- he's not even in second place in his home state of North Carolina at the moment. His campaign is running on empty. The longer he stays in the race, and the more his support bleeds away to nothing, the less power he'll have to negotiate with either Clinton or Obama. Right now Edwards should be shopping his endorsement to Obama for whatever he can get. Clinton might like Edwards' support, but she doesn't need it, not with the backing of the Democratic machines and establishment. If Edwards stays in, based on Nevada's results, his followers split evenly between Hillary and Obama... which is good for Hillary, possibly disaster for Obama.
Now over to the Republican side. Romney has proved, for the third time, that he can buy elections provided he has a long period without substantial opposition. His money, and his current lead with delegates, makes him one of the two frontrunners. The other frontrunner is John McCain, whose marginal win in South Carolina proves that he can succeed in a badly divided race. Ron Paul's second place effective tie with McCain in Nevada sounds good until you recall that Romney got a clear majority there, and Paul and McCain split half of what was left over. The fact that Paul only got 4% in South Carolina only emphasizes the lack of importance to his Nevada finish.
Huckabee is done. Finis. So is Fred Thompson. Both are Southerners, both are hard-line religious conservatives, and both lost to McCain. If they didn't win in South Carolina (and they didn't), then they can at best hope to win their home state. Giuliani, despite finishing behind Ron Paul again in both Nevada and South Carolina, is still a question mark awaiting the votes in Florida, California and New York- the places he's focused his campaigning. At this point McCain, Romney and maybe Giuliani can be considered viable nominees. Unfortunately for Republicans, of the four other candidates only Duncan Hunter has read the writing on the wall and formally bowed out.
What do the three GOP frontrunners need to do? McCain needs to get Thompson firm on his promise to back McCain if and when he bows out; without Thompson's active support, virtually none of his people will come to McCain based on their own thoughts. Romney needs to win in a tightly contested state that doesn't have some of its delegates docked- that means neither Florida nor Maine qualify. Giuliani absolutely, positively cannot afford to lose Florida, after all the effort and time he's invested there. McCain and Romney can go on without any more wins before Tsunami Tuesday: Giuliani cannot.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Romneycare/Hillarycare Advocates Suppress Dissent in California Capitol
Just before he left office, Mitt Romney drove through a universal healthcare plan for the state of Massachussetts. The foundation of the system was the individual mandate: in short, solve the problem of the uninsured by making it illegal to be uninsured. If you don't buy health insurance, you pay a fine to the government with your income tax... and the government isn't obliged to pay you a penny for your healthcare. Also, there are no caps on how high insurance premiums can go and little or no guarantee that the insurance corporations will actually pay claims on policies.
The results, according to the consumer advocate group(1) Foundation for Taxpayer & Consumer Rights:
Source for above: FTCR Letter to California State Senate. The letter also includes testimonials from two Massachusetts residents who are unable to buy insurance or get on the subsidy list (only about 3% of Massachusetts residents are eligible for hardship subsidies). One of those was Ron Norton, more about whom in a bit.
Why to California? Because Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Republican governor, and Fabian Nunez, Democratic Speaker of the California House of Representatives, support a law to give California a nearly identical system to Massachusetts.
Before we go into that, back to Massachusetts for a bit. The bureaucracy that runs the program is well aware that the system is failing. Their solution? Increase the fines on those who refuse to participate, according to the Boston Globe.
Hint: if you're trying to do something to help people, punishing people who can't or won't accept the help is counterproductive. Unfortunately this is the standard bureaucratic (and, often, the standard liberal) response: if a system doesn't work, the fault isn't in the system or in the idea behind it, but in the people it's meant to help. Don't change the system, don't rethink the idea, change the people.
Hint #2: I've just spent eight years in an organization (the Libertarian Party) whose primary strategy for elective success was to change the people into Libertarians. It's not a good strategy for any group, be it a third party or a government.
Now remember: this is the core of both Hillary Clinton's and John Edwards' proposals for universal health care. Note, on the stump, that they avoid like the plague answering anyone who asks what the punishment will be for those who won't participate. Note that they also avoid explaining how costs will be kept from soaring through the roof- as they did when automobile insurance became mandatory across the nation.
And it really doesn't say much good about the advocates for this insurance-corporation welfare scheme when they use their power to prevent opponents from having their say.
Don Norton was flown out to Sacramento to testify before the state legislature against their individual-mandate healthcare plan. In response, Speaker Nunez not only cancelled the hearing, but used California police to have Norton and the FTCR spokesperson removed from the Capitol. Furthermore, when Norton and the FTCR spoke to press on the Capitol grounds- outside, in the rain- Nunez announced his intent to prosecute them for the misdemeanor of speaking to the media in the Capitol rotunda. Never mind that they weren't in the rotunda when they spoke: never mind that insurance corporation lobbyists have been speaking in the rotunda all this time without any prosecution.
So, we have a proposed system which won't cover most of those who are currently uninsured, which won't guarantee that what coverage it does provide will actually pay off, that won't prevent insurance companies from price gouging, that won't do a thing to reduce the costs of healthcare, and that requires strong-arm tactics to suppress dissent...
... anyone want to explain to me why this is a good thing?
And remember: a vote for either Hillary or Edwards is a vote for this to go nationwide...
(1) I did a bit of checking on the organization. They appear to be on the up-and-up: the only negative reference I could find was an attack blog that accuses them of being a front for trial lawyers. Granted, trial lawyers make a bundle of money off of consumer advocacy suits (which, often, provide no actual relief to the consumers, fifty-cent coupons notwithstanding). The accusations were empty and scattershot enough for me to ignore the blog, and absent stronger information I'm going to treat the organization's statements as being made in good faith, but still from a position of advocacy, i. e. don't take it as the very last word.
(2) That means the original budget for Massachusetts alone, for the indigent alone, was originally projected at nearly $450 million, and it blew past that in the first year alone... that's to provide emergency-only "Mack truck" insurance for, as the article says, 178,000 people in a state of 6.4 million people. Scale that up to a nationwide system, as Clinton, Edwards, and Romney would have it, and that's over $25 BILLION going into the back pockets of insurance corporations to only cover two percent of Americans with the most bare-bones, last-resort, cover-nothing-but-the-worst coverage... with no actual requirement that the corporations pay off when the time comes. And all of that money comes out of YOUR taxes, folks...
The results, according to the consumer advocate group(1) Foundation for Taxpayer & Consumer Rights:
Proponents of the Massachusetts mandatory purchase of private insurance sold it on a promise of comprehensive health insurance for about $200 a month.
- In fact, premiums for health plans for a 55-year-old through the Massachusetts state pool reach up to $531 per month for the most basic required coverage. . . . The same 55-year-old wishing to purchase more comprehensive coverage will pay up to $906 monthly.
- Massachusetts at least offers automatic exemptions based on income and premium costs. A Wall Street Journal editorial on January 7 noted that Massachusetts has already exempted almost 20% of uninsured adults who don't qualify for subsidies because the mandated insurance is too expensive. Many others who fail to qualify for exemptions are simply refusing to buy.
. . .- Massachusetts estimates that the cost of subsidized plans {paid for by the state government for those living on or below the poverty line} by the end of the first year, July 2008, will be $147 million, or 30%, over budget. (2) . . .
- There are a higher-than-expected number of enrollees in subsidized care. Massachusetts' budget projected 136,000 participants; 178,000 new enrollees are expected by July 2008. . . .
- Massachusetts' costs are projected to increase up to an additional 14% next year.
- Massachusetts' budget for that state's health care program was based on a low-ball number of the insured. The Massachusetts Department of Finance and Policy reported the number of uninsured Massachusetts residents to be 355,000 while the Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation found that number to be 571,000. Other estimates put the number of uninsured between 500,000 and 650,000. . . .
Source for above: FTCR Letter to California State Senate. The letter also includes testimonials from two Massachusetts residents who are unable to buy insurance or get on the subsidy list (only about 3% of Massachusetts residents are eligible for hardship subsidies). One of those was Ron Norton, more about whom in a bit.
Why to California? Because Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Republican governor, and Fabian Nunez, Democratic Speaker of the California House of Representatives, support a law to give California a nearly identical system to Massachusetts.
Before we go into that, back to Massachusetts for a bit. The bureaucracy that runs the program is well aware that the system is failing. Their solution? Increase the fines on those who refuse to participate, according to the Boston Globe.
Hint: if you're trying to do something to help people, punishing people who can't or won't accept the help is counterproductive. Unfortunately this is the standard bureaucratic (and, often, the standard liberal) response: if a system doesn't work, the fault isn't in the system or in the idea behind it, but in the people it's meant to help. Don't change the system, don't rethink the idea, change the people.
Hint #2: I've just spent eight years in an organization (the Libertarian Party) whose primary strategy for elective success was to change the people into Libertarians. It's not a good strategy for any group, be it a third party or a government.
Now remember: this is the core of both Hillary Clinton's and John Edwards' proposals for universal health care. Note, on the stump, that they avoid like the plague answering anyone who asks what the punishment will be for those who won't participate. Note that they also avoid explaining how costs will be kept from soaring through the roof- as they did when automobile insurance became mandatory across the nation.
And it really doesn't say much good about the advocates for this insurance-corporation welfare scheme when they use their power to prevent opponents from having their say.
Don Norton was flown out to Sacramento to testify before the state legislature against their individual-mandate healthcare plan. In response, Speaker Nunez not only cancelled the hearing, but used California police to have Norton and the FTCR spokesperson removed from the Capitol. Furthermore, when Norton and the FTCR spoke to press on the Capitol grounds- outside, in the rain- Nunez announced his intent to prosecute them for the misdemeanor of speaking to the media in the Capitol rotunda. Never mind that they weren't in the rotunda when they spoke: never mind that insurance corporation lobbyists have been speaking in the rotunda all this time without any prosecution.
So, we have a proposed system which won't cover most of those who are currently uninsured, which won't guarantee that what coverage it does provide will actually pay off, that won't prevent insurance companies from price gouging, that won't do a thing to reduce the costs of healthcare, and that requires strong-arm tactics to suppress dissent...
... anyone want to explain to me why this is a good thing?
And remember: a vote for either Hillary or Edwards is a vote for this to go nationwide...
(1) I did a bit of checking on the organization. They appear to be on the up-and-up: the only negative reference I could find was an attack blog that accuses them of being a front for trial lawyers. Granted, trial lawyers make a bundle of money off of consumer advocacy suits (which, often, provide no actual relief to the consumers, fifty-cent coupons notwithstanding). The accusations were empty and scattershot enough for me to ignore the blog, and absent stronger information I'm going to treat the organization's statements as being made in good faith, but still from a position of advocacy, i. e. don't take it as the very last word.
(2) That means the original budget for Massachusetts alone, for the indigent alone, was originally projected at nearly $450 million, and it blew past that in the first year alone... that's to provide emergency-only "Mack truck" insurance for, as the article says, 178,000 people in a state of 6.4 million people. Scale that up to a nationwide system, as Clinton, Edwards, and Romney would have it, and that's over $25 BILLION going into the back pockets of insurance corporations to only cover two percent of Americans with the most bare-bones, last-resort, cover-nothing-but-the-worst coverage... with no actual requirement that the corporations pay off when the time comes. And all of that money comes out of YOUR taxes, folks...
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Looking for My Candidate Updates, and John Edwards
First off, I'm editing my Mike Huckabee review to add a second vote-killer: theocracy.
"[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it's a lot easier to change the constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that's what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards."
Um, that oughta do it, fuck you very much Mike.
Second, a Federal district court has ruled that the Texas Democratic Party has a right to control the membership of their party and to conduct its internal affairs as it sees fit. It's very debatable whether or not a primary election that the state forces them to hold, under laws that effectively make political parties departments of the government itself, is an internal affair. The upshot, though, is that Dennis Kucinich is not going to be on the Texas ballot. Furthermore, Mike Gravel won't be on the Texas ballot either, so unless someone requests him I'm not going to run the numbers on him. (Nor will I crunch numbers for Alan Keyes, unless requested.)
(And as I type this, Kucinich loses another court case: the Nevada Supreme Court rules that NBC News has a right to exclude him from tonight's Nevada debate. Considering he was in all debates up to now, and considering he has virtually no support despite this, I have to call this fair; he's out of the race, except for chasing stray delegates to get him a speaking slot at the convention.)
Finally, I've done a bit of self-education on the primary delegate issue. The Democrats don't have any winner-take-all states: national party rules require proportional representation with a 15% floor (that is, candidates polling below that don't get any delegates). The Republicans do have winner-take-all states, but some of them are less winner-take-all than others, and many of them aren't at all.
At this point I don't see the Republican race turning on WTA strategies: there's just too much difference from state to state, and too many candidates who only appeal to a limited constituency in each state. Huckabee is going to focus his efforts on the deep South, Romney on the urban states, and McCain on states where large numbers of independents will turn out; the other candidates will struggle, likely in vain, to find a win in any state that looks likely.
On the Democrat side, with WTA not an option, the key division point is whether or not the states allow independents and crossover voting. Hillary, who wins the party machine vote (for the moment) will focus her efforts on big states and closed primary states. Obama, on the other hand, will focus on states where crossover voting is permitted. Both candidates will fight tooth and nail for California, the big prize of Tsunami Tuesday, which allows crossover voting for all parties.
As for John Edwards, who gets his turn on the scorecard today? Edwards is within the statistical margin of error in Nevada, but he's still third. He's losing support nationally. Barring a very large gaffe on both Clinton's and Obama's parts, he is out of the running. That obviously hasn't stopped me from voting for candidates in the past, though- I voted Perot in 1992, Browne in 1996 and 2000, and Badnarik in 2004. I might as well give him a good look-over, according to the issues you probably know I support by now.
WAR: Gradual withdrawal from Iraq. Opposes war in Iran. Famously called the War on Terror "a campaign slogan". Supports UN/NATO/US invasion of Sudan to end Darfur genocide. Proposes "restructuring" of military, limiting size and cutting wasteful projects. 20%.
SEPARATION OF POWERS: Dismantling of the imperial Presidency. No domestic spying. Transparency in government. Right of Congress to oversee the executive branch upheld. 100%.
HEALTHCARE: Universal health care plan based on employer mandates, forcing employers to provide it to all employees, offering tax credits to offset (but not eliminate) cost, followed by eventual individual mandates. 0%.
TAXATION AND BUDGET: His idea of "simplified income tax" is Form 1, i. e. trust the IRS to tell the poor taxpayer how much he or she owes. Multitude of new tax credits, deductions, etc. proposed. Higher capital gains, corporate taxes. Silent on government borrowing, balanced budget. Opposes corporate lobbying, but silent on corporate welfare. 0%.
CIVIL LIBERTIES: Voted for McCain-Feingold, "fairness doctrine", other acts to censor political speech. Supports net neutrality. Supports censorship of electronic media. Would restore habeas corpus. Supports end to torture, closure of Guantanamo and black sites. 75%.
IMPEACHMENT: Opposes. 0%.
IMMIGRATION: Path to citizenship after paying fines. Vague statements about "stronger border enforcement."Favors immigration reform to reunite families, cut red tape and background checks for persons already in USA. 66%.
TRADE: Decries, but does not call for repeal of, NAFTA, GATT, WTO. Calls for "smart trade"; prosecuting violations of trade agreements, seeking protection for workers of other nations, balancing tariffs against foreign subsidy, etc. No special emphasis on China except for currency manipulation. 50%.
ENERGY: Supports mandating renewable-resource energy (25% of all electricity produced by 2016), 40 MPG fuel efficiency mandate. Corporate welfare handouts to car companies to encourage them to build alt-fuel vehicles. Supports expanding subsidized ethanol and bio-diesel production. Supports funding public transportation expansion. Opposes expanding actual energy production. Supports clean coal. 20%.
ENVIRONMENT: Supports "cap and trade" system, government-enforced conservation, individual mandates to buy more efficient and cleaner products... or else. Supports expanded government spending to refit poor family homes for energy efficiency. Supports carbon sequestration, methane sequestration. 40%.
TORT REFORM: Former trial lawyer. 0%.
AVERAGE SCORE: 33.7%
VOTE KILLERS:
GUNS: Voted in the Senate to force background checks and licensing of gun-show and private gun sales, mandate locks on guns. Claims to support Second Amendment:
"I think, first and foremost, that we need a president who actually believes in the Second Amendment and in the individual right to own firearms. And, the importance in that, both for hunting and for protection, and I do. I think part of it is the way of life that I grew up with, and the culture of which I grew up in. It’s been with me my entire life."
... yet, on another occasion, said, "Owning a handgun is a privilege, not a right.". (Source for quotes: Blue Steel Democrats.
DRAFT: “One of the things we ought to be thinking about is some level of mandatory service to our country,” said Edwards in a recent interview, “so that everybody in America not just the poor kids who get sent to war are serving this country.” (Source: George Phillies for President campaign.)
RANKINGS TO DATE
Candidates in italics are not in consideration due to vote-killer positions.
Dennis Kucinich - 40.9%
John Edwards - 33.7%
John McCain - 33.6%
Ron Paul - 28.2%
Rudy Giuliani - 22.3%
Mike Huckabee - 16.9%
Mitt Romney - 14.8%
Duncan Hunter - 11.8%
Fred Thompson - 11.1%
Hillary Clinton - 8.5%
Next time: the last candidate, barring third-party or independent developments, the one I've leaned towards pretty much since the beginning of this process, Barack Obama...
(... and if what I've heard is true, Obama was a gun-grabber in the Illinois State Senate, which would mean a clean sweep on the big-party candidates being unsuitable. That said, gun control is the vote-killer item I'd be quickest to drop, since it's extremely unlikely that any president could ram tighter gun control through Congress, even the heavily Democrat Congress that seems inevitable at this point. What's more, eliminating gun control as an issue would bring only Kucinich back into consideration among the already examined candidates... and he's not going to be on the Texas ballot.)
"[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it's a lot easier to change the constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that's what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards."
Um, that oughta do it, fuck you very much Mike.
Second, a Federal district court has ruled that the Texas Democratic Party has a right to control the membership of their party and to conduct its internal affairs as it sees fit. It's very debatable whether or not a primary election that the state forces them to hold, under laws that effectively make political parties departments of the government itself, is an internal affair. The upshot, though, is that Dennis Kucinich is not going to be on the Texas ballot. Furthermore, Mike Gravel won't be on the Texas ballot either, so unless someone requests him I'm not going to run the numbers on him. (Nor will I crunch numbers for Alan Keyes, unless requested.)
(And as I type this, Kucinich loses another court case: the Nevada Supreme Court rules that NBC News has a right to exclude him from tonight's Nevada debate. Considering he was in all debates up to now, and considering he has virtually no support despite this, I have to call this fair; he's out of the race, except for chasing stray delegates to get him a speaking slot at the convention.)
Finally, I've done a bit of self-education on the primary delegate issue. The Democrats don't have any winner-take-all states: national party rules require proportional representation with a 15% floor (that is, candidates polling below that don't get any delegates). The Republicans do have winner-take-all states, but some of them are less winner-take-all than others, and many of them aren't at all.
At this point I don't see the Republican race turning on WTA strategies: there's just too much difference from state to state, and too many candidates who only appeal to a limited constituency in each state. Huckabee is going to focus his efforts on the deep South, Romney on the urban states, and McCain on states where large numbers of independents will turn out; the other candidates will struggle, likely in vain, to find a win in any state that looks likely.
On the Democrat side, with WTA not an option, the key division point is whether or not the states allow independents and crossover voting. Hillary, who wins the party machine vote (for the moment) will focus her efforts on big states and closed primary states. Obama, on the other hand, will focus on states where crossover voting is permitted. Both candidates will fight tooth and nail for California, the big prize of Tsunami Tuesday, which allows crossover voting for all parties.
As for John Edwards, who gets his turn on the scorecard today? Edwards is within the statistical margin of error in Nevada, but he's still third. He's losing support nationally. Barring a very large gaffe on both Clinton's and Obama's parts, he is out of the running. That obviously hasn't stopped me from voting for candidates in the past, though- I voted Perot in 1992, Browne in 1996 and 2000, and Badnarik in 2004. I might as well give him a good look-over, according to the issues you probably know I support by now.
WAR: Gradual withdrawal from Iraq. Opposes war in Iran. Famously called the War on Terror "a campaign slogan". Supports UN/NATO/US invasion of Sudan to end Darfur genocide. Proposes "restructuring" of military, limiting size and cutting wasteful projects. 20%.
SEPARATION OF POWERS: Dismantling of the imperial Presidency. No domestic spying. Transparency in government. Right of Congress to oversee the executive branch upheld. 100%.
HEALTHCARE: Universal health care plan based on employer mandates, forcing employers to provide it to all employees, offering tax credits to offset (but not eliminate) cost, followed by eventual individual mandates. 0%.
TAXATION AND BUDGET: His idea of "simplified income tax" is Form 1, i. e. trust the IRS to tell the poor taxpayer how much he or she owes. Multitude of new tax credits, deductions, etc. proposed. Higher capital gains, corporate taxes. Silent on government borrowing, balanced budget. Opposes corporate lobbying, but silent on corporate welfare. 0%.
CIVIL LIBERTIES: Voted for McCain-Feingold, "fairness doctrine", other acts to censor political speech. Supports net neutrality. Supports censorship of electronic media. Would restore habeas corpus. Supports end to torture, closure of Guantanamo and black sites. 75%.
IMPEACHMENT: Opposes. 0%.
IMMIGRATION: Path to citizenship after paying fines. Vague statements about "stronger border enforcement."Favors immigration reform to reunite families, cut red tape and background checks for persons already in USA. 66%.
TRADE: Decries, but does not call for repeal of, NAFTA, GATT, WTO. Calls for "smart trade"; prosecuting violations of trade agreements, seeking protection for workers of other nations, balancing tariffs against foreign subsidy, etc. No special emphasis on China except for currency manipulation. 50%.
ENERGY: Supports mandating renewable-resource energy (25% of all electricity produced by 2016), 40 MPG fuel efficiency mandate. Corporate welfare handouts to car companies to encourage them to build alt-fuel vehicles. Supports expanding subsidized ethanol and bio-diesel production. Supports funding public transportation expansion. Opposes expanding actual energy production. Supports clean coal. 20%.
ENVIRONMENT: Supports "cap and trade" system, government-enforced conservation, individual mandates to buy more efficient and cleaner products... or else. Supports expanded government spending to refit poor family homes for energy efficiency. Supports carbon sequestration, methane sequestration. 40%.
TORT REFORM: Former trial lawyer. 0%.
AVERAGE SCORE: 33.7%
VOTE KILLERS:
GUNS: Voted in the Senate to force background checks and licensing of gun-show and private gun sales, mandate locks on guns. Claims to support Second Amendment:
"I think, first and foremost, that we need a president who actually believes in the Second Amendment and in the individual right to own firearms. And, the importance in that, both for hunting and for protection, and I do. I think part of it is the way of life that I grew up with, and the culture of which I grew up in. It’s been with me my entire life."
... yet, on another occasion, said, "Owning a handgun is a privilege, not a right.". (Source for quotes: Blue Steel Democrats.
DRAFT: “One of the things we ought to be thinking about is some level of mandatory service to our country,” said Edwards in a recent interview, “so that everybody in America not just the poor kids who get sent to war are serving this country.” (Source: George Phillies for President campaign.)
RANKINGS TO DATE
Candidates in italics are not in consideration due to vote-killer positions.
Dennis Kucinich - 40.9%
John Edwards - 33.7%
John McCain - 33.6%
Ron Paul - 28.2%
Rudy Giuliani - 22.3%
Mike Huckabee - 16.9%
Mitt Romney - 14.8%
Duncan Hunter - 11.8%
Fred Thompson - 11.1%
Hillary Clinton - 8.5%
Next time: the last candidate, barring third-party or independent developments, the one I've leaned towards pretty much since the beginning of this process, Barack Obama...
(... and if what I've heard is true, Obama was a gun-grabber in the Illinois State Senate, which would mean a clean sweep on the big-party candidates being unsuitable. That said, gun control is the vote-killer item I'd be quickest to drop, since it's extremely unlikely that any president could ram tighter gun control through Congress, even the heavily Democrat Congress that seems inevitable at this point. What's more, eliminating gun control as an issue would bring only Kucinich back into consideration among the already examined candidates... and he's not going to be on the Texas ballot.)
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Looking for My Candidate: John McCain
As I write this, voting is going on in New Hampshire, where McCain is predicted to win narrowly over Romney, with Huckabee, Giuliani and Paul back in the pack and Thompson nowhere to be seen. Dixville Notch, NH has come in with landslide votes for McCain on the Republican side, Obama on the Democrat side... and the two parties perfectly evenly split.
If McCain does -not- win, though, it's all over for him. If Romney finishes worse than second (highly unlikely, but in Dixville Notch he finished behind both Huckabee and Paul, so it's possible), his campaign is essentially over.
On the Democrat side, there are essentially only two tickets out of New Hampshire. If Clinton finishes third (highly unlikely), she's effectively done; if she finishes more than ten points behind, she's fatally wounded. Polls from South Carolina and Nevada show leads for Obama by as much as twenty percentage points- which means even with a second place finish, Clinton will have all she can handle to hold together a self-destructing campaign to Tsunami Tuesday and the New York primaries.
(One final note, re: recent issues about Ron Paul: I'm waiting to see what the New Republic actually posts before I make any firm statements, but I remind my former Libertarian colleagues: this is the man you want to hitch your star to.)
Anyway, with all this happening, now seems as good a time as any to look at John McCain, who might be the only Republican candidate capable of blocking Huckabee tomorrow morning... after coming back from as low as 5% support in national polls after his positions on immigration came to light.
Again, going by these standards:
WAR: Supports permanent and expanded occupation of Iraq. Favors war with Iran. Supports War on Terror. Would expand military. 20%.
SEPARATION OF POWERS: Approves of expanded Presidential power. Supports USA-PATRIOT, FISA. 0%.
HEALTHCARE: No individual mandates. Tort reform. Economize healthcare by new information technology, targeted tax exemptions and credits, etc. Supports de-regulating insurance corporations, buying insurance across state lines. Medicare and Medicaid cuts in favor of private insurance. 30%.
TAXATION AND BUDGET: More tax cuts. Silent on borrowing. Opposes new taxes on Internet, cel phones. Opposes flat tax. Calls for simpler income tax, but also proposes various income tax credits, deductions, etc. Proposes sunset requirements for all Federal programs. Calls for cuts only in "pork barrel projects," expand pretty much everything else. 20%.
CIVIL LIBERTIES: His campaign finance reform act outlawed political speech that mentioned any incumbent's name within sixty days of an election, among many other flaws. Favors censorship of the Internet. Opposes torture, would close Guantanamo, end rendition and black sites. Supports military tribunals over civilian criminal courts. 25%.
IMPEACHMENT: Opposes. 0%.
IMMIGRATION: Supports English as sole official language in USA. Favors amnesty after fines, expanded legal immigration. Supports border fences. Opposes mass round-ups of illegal immigrants. 75%.
TRADE: Supports GATT, WTO, NAFTA. 0%.
ENERGY: Supports nuclear. Supports alt-fuel vehicles. Opposes subsidies for corn-based ethanol and biodiesel. Supports general shift away from oil. 70%.
ENVIRONMENT: Supports active filtering of athmosphere to clean away greenhouse gases. Supports economically affordable solutions to conservation and efficiency. Calls for full compensation for any taking of property for environmental purposes. 100%.
TORT REFORM: Calls for caps on punitive damages. Would increase punishment for frivolous lawsuits. Would provide immunity to doctors who follow all rules and act correctly according to regulations. 30%.
AVERAGE SCORE: 33.6%
VOTE KILLERS:
GUNS: Supports requirement that privately owned guns be locked up when not in use. Supports background-check requirement for private gun sales, effectively outlawing the transfer of guns from one private individual to another.
IRAQ: Supports indefinite, permanent and expanded occupation of Iraq.
TORTURE: Although decries torture, voted for Military Commissions Act of 2006 giving Bush full power to order torture and to prevent torturers from being prosecuted.
IRAN: Voted to declare Iranian Republican Guard a terrorist group, thereby giving Bush an excuse to attack Iran whenever he wants.
RANKINGS TO DATE
Candidates in italics are not in consideration due to vote-killer positions.
Dennis Kucinich - 40.9%
John McCain - 33.6%
Ron Paul - 28.2%
Rudy Giuliani - 22.3%
Mike Huckabee - 16.9%
Duncan Hunter - 11.8%
Fred Thompson - 11.1%
Next time: Mitt Romney, the last of the Republican field, provided he's still in the race when I sit down to do this next...
If McCain does -not- win, though, it's all over for him. If Romney finishes worse than second (highly unlikely, but in Dixville Notch he finished behind both Huckabee and Paul, so it's possible), his campaign is essentially over.
On the Democrat side, there are essentially only two tickets out of New Hampshire. If Clinton finishes third (highly unlikely), she's effectively done; if she finishes more than ten points behind, she's fatally wounded. Polls from South Carolina and Nevada show leads for Obama by as much as twenty percentage points- which means even with a second place finish, Clinton will have all she can handle to hold together a self-destructing campaign to Tsunami Tuesday and the New York primaries.
(One final note, re: recent issues about Ron Paul: I'm waiting to see what the New Republic actually posts before I make any firm statements, but I remind my former Libertarian colleagues: this is the man you want to hitch your star to.)
Anyway, with all this happening, now seems as good a time as any to look at John McCain, who might be the only Republican candidate capable of blocking Huckabee tomorrow morning... after coming back from as low as 5% support in national polls after his positions on immigration came to light.
Again, going by these standards:
WAR: Supports permanent and expanded occupation of Iraq. Favors war with Iran. Supports War on Terror. Would expand military. 20%.
SEPARATION OF POWERS: Approves of expanded Presidential power. Supports USA-PATRIOT, FISA. 0%.
HEALTHCARE: No individual mandates. Tort reform. Economize healthcare by new information technology, targeted tax exemptions and credits, etc. Supports de-regulating insurance corporations, buying insurance across state lines. Medicare and Medicaid cuts in favor of private insurance. 30%.
TAXATION AND BUDGET: More tax cuts. Silent on borrowing. Opposes new taxes on Internet, cel phones. Opposes flat tax. Calls for simpler income tax, but also proposes various income tax credits, deductions, etc. Proposes sunset requirements for all Federal programs. Calls for cuts only in "pork barrel projects," expand pretty much everything else. 20%.
CIVIL LIBERTIES: His campaign finance reform act outlawed political speech that mentioned any incumbent's name within sixty days of an election, among many other flaws. Favors censorship of the Internet. Opposes torture, would close Guantanamo, end rendition and black sites. Supports military tribunals over civilian criminal courts. 25%.
IMPEACHMENT: Opposes. 0%.
IMMIGRATION: Supports English as sole official language in USA. Favors amnesty after fines, expanded legal immigration. Supports border fences. Opposes mass round-ups of illegal immigrants. 75%.
TRADE: Supports GATT, WTO, NAFTA. 0%.
ENERGY: Supports nuclear. Supports alt-fuel vehicles. Opposes subsidies for corn-based ethanol and biodiesel. Supports general shift away from oil. 70%.
ENVIRONMENT: Supports active filtering of athmosphere to clean away greenhouse gases. Supports economically affordable solutions to conservation and efficiency. Calls for full compensation for any taking of property for environmental purposes. 100%.
TORT REFORM: Calls for caps on punitive damages. Would increase punishment for frivolous lawsuits. Would provide immunity to doctors who follow all rules and act correctly according to regulations. 30%.
AVERAGE SCORE: 33.6%
VOTE KILLERS:
GUNS: Supports requirement that privately owned guns be locked up when not in use. Supports background-check requirement for private gun sales, effectively outlawing the transfer of guns from one private individual to another.
IRAQ: Supports indefinite, permanent and expanded occupation of Iraq.
TORTURE: Although decries torture, voted for Military Commissions Act of 2006 giving Bush full power to order torture and to prevent torturers from being prosecuted.
IRAN: Voted to declare Iranian Republican Guard a terrorist group, thereby giving Bush an excuse to attack Iran whenever he wants.
RANKINGS TO DATE
Candidates in italics are not in consideration due to vote-killer positions.
Dennis Kucinich - 40.9%
John McCain - 33.6%
Ron Paul - 28.2%
Rudy Giuliani - 22.3%
Mike Huckabee - 16.9%
Duncan Hunter - 11.8%
Fred Thompson - 11.1%
Next time: Mitt Romney, the last of the Republican field, provided he's still in the race when I sit down to do this next...
Monday, January 7, 2008
Saturday Debate Notable Quotes
Reading the transcripts from Saturday's ABC debates (findable here and here until the New York Times makes them subscriber-only), the following quotes stood out to me:
And now over to the Democrats...
We have been responding. The president set a whole different mind- set. It was let's anticipate, let's see if we can prevent another attack. That led to Afghanistan. It led to Iraq. It's led to the Patriot Act. It's led to electronic surveillance. It's led to changing our intelligence services. All that is very, very good.--- Rudy Giuliani, endorsing USA-PATRIOT, domestic spying, and torture
CHARLES GIBSON, MODERATOR: . . . in 2002 the president said we have a right to a preemptive attack, that we can attack if this country feels threatened. And on that basis -- WMD -- we went into Iraq. We have cited the threat of a nuclear Iran to leave the military option on the table. Do you agree with the doctrine, Senator McCain, if you were president, or would you change it?So John McCain endorses aggressive war, and Ron Paul again demonstrates his incoherence. In fact, I'm now officially waiting for Paul to say, "Who am I? Why am I here?" in the next debate he's in.
JOHN MCCAIN: I agree with the doctrine . . .
RON PAUL: Of course, the excuse is that 9/11 changed everything, but the Bush doctrine of preemptive war is not a minor change. This is huge. This is the first time we as a nation accept as our policy that we start the wars. I don't understand this. And that all options are on the table to go after Iran? This -- this is not -- this is not necessary. These are third-world nations. They're not capable.
But we're going to have to move our strategy from simply being a respond to military threat with military action to an effort that says we're going to use our military and non-military resources -- non-military resources, combined with other nations who are our friends, to help move the world of Islam towards modernity and moderation. It's something that former Prime Minister Aznar of Spain spoke about.The new mission for NATO and for other nations is to help provide the rule of law, education that is not through madrassas, agricultural and economic policies that can be instilled in various Islamic countries so the Muslims are able to reject the extreme and the -- and the terrorists.
We can help them. Our military is going to be needed. We do need -- I agree with what the mayor said; we need to add to our military by at least 100,000 troops, but the answer is to move now to a second phase, a phase of helping Muslims become so strong they can reject the extreme.
--- Mitt Romney, advocating the invasion of more Islamic nations to bring them democracy at gunpoint
I served on the Intelligence Committee in the Senate. I was the floor manager for the Republicans on the homeland security bill. So I have a bit of a different vantage point than some of my colleagues on this.--- Fred Thompson, also supporting aggressive war... but "only go in where we should and where we're able to." (In other words, only beat up the LITTLE kids.)The question had to do with preemption. Preemption didn't just appear one day as a good idea. After the Cold War, we had one big enemy and one big weapon against us. When we kind of took a holiday from history in the '90s and let our military slide and our intelligence capabilities slide, the world was changing. We now have multiple enemies. We now have terrorists and various groups, al Qaeda, rogue nations in different stages of developing nuclear weapons. We must be prepared for the different kind of weaponry that we're facing. We could be attacked with a biological weapon and not even know it for a long period of time. This is a different world.
So instead of mutually assured destruction, which we lived under for a long time, it's now a world where preemption has got to be an option under the right circumstances.
You made a statement about European nations; they all get health care. Well, somebody -- some people here in New Hampshire have been to Canada. I don't think they want that system.--- John McCain, demonstrating his ignorance of very basic geography
And then -- we should operate that for two, three, four years, change behavior, and then we should take that system, with a tamper- proof ID card which would be used for people coming into this country. And what we should do with the people that are here -- first of all, right now our priority should be, since you can't throw out all 12 million people, whether Governor Romney would like to do that or not, or anybody else would, you just can't do it. It's not physically possible to do. I would focus on the illegal immigrants that are here who have committed crimes. They should be given priority. That's a number we can deal with. That's a number we can throw out.
Then what I would do with the people that are here, when you had a good system place -- and I believe my plan is the best plan for doing that, and these are the kinds of things I achieved in the other jobs that I've had in my life, as mayor and associate attorney general -- I think what you would do then is you would say to the 12 million people that are here, come forward, get a tamper-proof ID card, get fingerprinted, get photographed. If they don't come forward, then you throw them out of the country.
The ones who do come forward would have to pay taxes. They'd have to pay fines. If you pay fines, it is not amnesty. They would not get ahead of anybody else.
They'd be at the back of the line. But then they could eventually become citizens so long as they could read English, write English and speak English.
--- Giuliani, demonstrating a little bit of common sense on immigration- absent from all other Republican candidates
But there -- so we could talk about issues, but the biggest difference I think -- and it's going to be true for me and others who talk about it -- is that this is a time when America wants change. Washington is broken. That was the message coming out of Iowa. I've heard it across the country. Washington is broken. Not just the White House, not just Congress -- Washington can't get the job done on immigration, on lowering taxes, on fixing schools, on getting health care, on overcoming radical jihad. They want change.
--- Romney, asked why people should not vote for Obama, gives the answer why they SHOULD...
Senator Obama does not have the national security experience and background to lead this nation. We are facing the transcendent challenge of the 21st century, and that is radical Islamic extremism. In his recent statements on various foreign national security issues I've strongly disagreed, but I am -- can make it perfectly clear that it requires a lot of knowledge and a lot of experience and a lot of background to have the judgment to address the challenges that our nation faces in the 21st century.--- ... and John McCain points out again how being a POW for seven years gives him expertise on foreign policy and diplomacy. Tell us, John, when you were in the Hanoi Hilton, did Mao Tse-Tung, Charles de Gaulle, Anwar Sadat or anyone like that drop in to discuss the state of world affairs?
I think we ought to have the strongest possible military that nobody else on Earth wants to ever even think about engaging in battle.--- Mike Huckabee has apparently forgotten we HAD the strongest military on Earth in 2001, and it didn't stop the terrorists then.
And now over to the Democrats...
OBAMA: What I said was that we should do everything in our power to push and cooperate with the Pakistani government in taking on al Qaeda, which is now based in northwest Pakistan. And what we know from our National Intelligence Estimates is that al Qaeda is stronger now than at any time since 2001, and so back in August I said we should work with the Pakistani government. First of all, they encourage democracy in Pakistan, so you've got a legitimate government that we're working with, and secondly, that we have to press them to do more to take on al Qaeda in their territory.Four candidates, essentially the same position.What I said was if they could not or would not do so, and we had actionable intelligence, then I would strike. And I should add that Lee Hamilton and Tom Kean, the heads of the 9/11 commission, a few months later wrote an editorial saying the exact same thing. I think it's indisputable that that should be our course. . . .
EDWARDS: If I know what -- if I as president of the United States, know where Osama bin Laden is, I would go get him. Period. This man is the mastermind of a mass murder in the United States of America. He is public enemy number one, as al Qaeda is. . . .
RICHARDSON: If we have actionable intelligence that is real, and if Musharraf is incapable -- which he is, because here's a man who has not stood up for his democracy, he is virtually in a situation where he's losing control -- then you do take that action. . . .
CLINTON: Secondly, I think it's imperative that any actionable intelligence that would lead to a strike inside Pakistan's territory be given the most careful consideration, and at some point probably when the missiles have been launched -- the Pakistani government has to know they're on the way because one of the problems is the inherent paranoia about India in the region in Pakistan, so that we've got to have a plan to try to make sure we don't ignite some kind of reaction before we even know whether the action we took with the missiles has worked.
CLINTON:You know, Senator Obama has been -- as the Associated Press described it, he could have a pretty good debate with himself, because four years ago he was for single-payer health care. Then he moved toward a rejection of that, a more incremental approach. Then he was for universal health care; then he proposed a health care plan that doesn't cover everybody.--- Clinton takes the low road, oblivious to the irony involved in a Clinton accusing anyone else of flip-flopping... but Obama counters well.I think that's relevant. I mean, I think that what we are looking for is a president we can count on, that you know where that president is yesterday, today, and tomorrow. And I think that, you know, there questions that, you know, should be asked and answered from each of us. And I'd certainly have no problem with whatever scrutiny comes my way.
OBAMA: Well, I think the Associated Press was quoting some of your folks, Hillary, so let's talk specifically about health care, since you mentioned that.
We do have a philosophical difference. John and yourself [Hillary] believe that if we do not mandate care -- if we don't force the government to get -- to -- if the government does not force taxpayers to buy health care, that we will penalize them in some fashion. I disagree with that because as I go around town hall meetings, I don't meet people who are trying to avoid getting health care; the problem is they can't afford it. The costs are too high. And so, as a consequence, we focus on reducing costs.--- Obama hits the nail right on the head.Now, this is a legitimate argument for us to have, but it's not true that I leave them out. Your premise is they won't buy it even if it's affordable. I disagree with that.
But you know, what ever happened to experience? Is experience kind of a leper? (Laughter.) What is wrong with -- you know, what is wrong with having -- (scattered applause) -- what is wrong with having been like myself -- 14 years in the Congress, two Cabinet positions? I mean, I've gone head to head with the North Koreans. We got the remains of soldiers back. We persuaded them to reduce their nuclear weapons. What is wrong with being a governor and going to a state and giving health care to kids under 12 and creating jobs and balancing budgets? What is wrong with being a secretary of Energy who has made America or tried to make America a land of clean energy or as a governor -- my point is this: We want to change this country, but you have to have -- you have to know how to do it, and there's nothing wrong with having experience.--- Bill Richardson, wondering why nobody loves him
So it's time to bring our troops home and to bring them home as quickly and responsibly as possible and unfortunately, I don't see any reason why they should remain beyond, you know, today. I think George Bush doesn't intend to bring them home, but certainly I have said when I'm president I will. Within 60 days, I'll start that withdrawal.
--- Wait, Hillary, what happened to your statement that you wouldn't commit to withdrawing ANY troops during your Presidency?
I bring the troops back within a year. I don't want in five years because I did, in another debate -- some of you said you would keep troops -- you wouldn't say -- you wouldn't get them out by 2013. I don't want in five years to have to look at an eight-year-old today -- an eighth-grader -- an American eighth-grader today who is serving five years from now in Iraq. I don't want to hear about a death of an American.--- Richardson calls the other three candidates on the statement I just mentioned.
You know, what we need is an energy revolution in this country. Not some of the bills that the congress has passed. We need to go to 50 miles per gallon fuel efficiency. We need to have 30 percent of all our electricity renewable. We need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by the year 2040. And we need the American people to sacrifice a little bit.
--- Richardson, proposing the impossible for energy policy
That's why I have proposed specific tax relief now, immediately, so that we would offset some of the payroll tax, that we would immediately put some additional dollars in the pockets of American families, working families typically making $75,000 a year or less, to not only stimulate the economy, but also to balance out a tax code. And I would pay for it very specifically by closing tax loopholes and tax havens. You've got a building in the Cayman Islands that supposedly houses 12,000 corporations. That's either the biggest building or the biggest tax scam on record.
--- Is this Obama advocating tax -cuts-? I'm liking him more and more... especially since the other three all focused on raising taxes...
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Iowa aftermath...
Fred Thompson did better than I expected. I still think his campaign is DOA, though.
Mitt Romney surpised me by failing by as much as he did. His campaign must now be considered as in Real Trouble. If he fails to win in New Hampshire, after dumping so much money both there and in Iowa, color him done.
Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, and Mike Gravel have dropped out of the race.
Clinton, as I predicted, finished third. Now they absolutely have to win New Hampshire, where Clinton has invested a great deal of time and money, if Hillary's going to regain frontrunner status. She's not reacting well, but she is reacting according to type, if this quote from an NBC newswoman is accurate:
"This room was, until about five or six minutes ago, completely empty. This is a manufactured 'celebration.' It really felt more like a funeral as people started strolling in from upstairs where they had obviously been gathered. This is unlike anything that I've ever seen, a completely empty, dirge-like event. ".
Edwards is done; he just doesn't know it yet.
Ron Paul still doesn't have a chance; he only beat a man even more looney than he is and a man who hadn't spent a dime in Iowa for six weeks. He might- MIGHT, but I doubt it- place third in New Hampshire, but that is as good as he'll do until and unless the Republican field thins out a LOT.
But for now, the Democratic field is down to Obama, Edwards, Clinton, Richardson and Kucinich. That makes my decision on which one to support for President quite a bit simpler, I think...
Mitt Romney surpised me by failing by as much as he did. His campaign must now be considered as in Real Trouble. If he fails to win in New Hampshire, after dumping so much money both there and in Iowa, color him done.
Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, and Mike Gravel have dropped out of the race.
Clinton, as I predicted, finished third. Now they absolutely have to win New Hampshire, where Clinton has invested a great deal of time and money, if Hillary's going to regain frontrunner status. She's not reacting well, but she is reacting according to type, if this quote from an NBC newswoman is accurate:
"This room was, until about five or six minutes ago, completely empty. This is a manufactured 'celebration.' It really felt more like a funeral as people started strolling in from upstairs where they had obviously been gathered. This is unlike anything that I've ever seen, a completely empty, dirge-like event. ".
Edwards is done; he just doesn't know it yet.
Ron Paul still doesn't have a chance; he only beat a man even more looney than he is and a man who hadn't spent a dime in Iowa for six weeks. He might- MIGHT, but I doubt it- place third in New Hampshire, but that is as good as he'll do until and unless the Republican field thins out a LOT.
But for now, the Democratic field is down to Obama, Edwards, Clinton, Richardson and Kucinich. That makes my decision on which one to support for President quite a bit simpler, I think...
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