With seven children across their marriages, Cindy McCain points to a special woman in both she and her husband’s life. That person is “Johnny’s Mom” as an e-mail to supporters called Roberta McCain.
John McCain and his mother appear in a short video in a contest of who can better remember how and when John McCain […]
May 8, 2008
May 7, 2008
Well fuck me, but my hosting company just completely ignored me for a day so I had to go fix the thing myself.
And when i delve into code, the whole place usually goes tits up. Not this time.
Starting yesterday - though I think it was happening about a day before that - when I […]
May 6, 2008
This may be what they call, closing the deal.
With final results still to come in, the margins of victory are closing in both races. But the clear victor of the night, matching and slightly exceeding expectations, is Barack Obama.
Hillary Clinton after a good run of wins, met the voting base of North Carolina and faced a core block of people don’t like her in Indiana. As of writing, Obama is up by 16 and Clinton is up by 4 (with 75% of the vote counted)
Tonight will be painful for Clinton supporters around the Web, though already seen is the pattern that, yes, this is how the race should go - through people voting. There’s nothing unfair about results (Nov. 2000 the largest and most obvious exception).
Obama supporters will start using Clinton campaign arguments without missing a beat - that the small remaining states don’t matter.
Clinton could easily win all the remaining races but tonight the narrative was written for the rest of the campaign. The biggest decision for the Clinton campaign now is how best to withdraw from the race, with grace and dignity. If Obama supporters will let her.
The left side of the blogosphere will be packed with recriminations from here on, and likely through Election Day in November. John McCain has been polling way ahead of Obama but that is, while not meaningless, fairly insignificant because the question when only two candidates are in the race is an entirely different question.
I’ll have more about swallowing pride and being given reasons for doing so in an upcoming post here. This race has fundamentally changed the future of the Democratic Party and who it caters to. It’s not all positive.
With 19% counted in Indiana, Clinton up 14% but it isn’t called. CNN calls North Carolina solely based on exit polls. That seems foolish, as if maybe they couldn’t wait until a percentage of actual votes came in.
It’s highly possible, by the way, that with North Carolina’s higher delegate count, Barack Obama will come out ahead in that count tonight.
UPDATE: I know it doesn’t mean anything but after having called North Carolina for Obama with no results, the first results show CLINTON with 60% of the vote, with about 1,400 votes to Obama’s 40%.
UPDATE 2 Now early results how Obama with 69% in North Carolina. CNN also joked (joked right?) that Roland Martin had not come out in support of either candidate.
Forty percent counted in indiana and it’s not called for Clinton yet with 12% lead. Perhaps understandable, but I remember last election the races were too close to call for a loooong time and the percentages stayed the same. … Each state is different.
UPDATE 3 CBS NEWS is the first to call Indiana for Obama. CNN’s John King says we want to count the votes as reason for not calling it. By the way, 49 % of vote in for Indiana, 11% of vote in for North Carolina. …. Clinton now ahead by a smaller 10% in Indiana.
As Hillary Clinton continues to watch superdelegates make another choice, she faces another election day in Indiana and North CArolina.
I think conventional wisdom, which of course has tracked with the polls, will hold true. Clinton will win Indiana by about the same amount she loses North CArolina. And if she wins North Carolina - very unlikely - then the rules of the “game” have changed big time, and it’ll be Obama on the ropes, still being unable to deliver that knock out punch to his fellow Democrat.
I am certain that the delegates are, of their own volition - in most cases (ahem, Joe Andrew) - slowly opting for Obama because, well, I’m not sure but “inspired” seems to be a key word. That’s fine. It’s part of the process.
Among the most partisan of Democratic voters - the net-punditry - Clinton has become more unpopular for a variety of reasons, many manufactured or left over from the right-wing crazy narrative of the 90s. She’s equally a pariah among the national media punditry, of course, thus demonstrating little difference among pundits no matter the medium.
But she has also become unpopular among Democratic leaders by making these superdelegates make a tough decision. And this is partly, of course, because voters keep on voting for her in heavy amounts thus making her decisions easy - to stay in until the voters clearly reject her candidacy.
I clicked on the following to get a broad feel for what people are thinking about and the title - Time For Obama To Deliver Body Slama - seemed to illustrate my point:
Look, up in the sky. It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s SuperObama. Now has come the time to transform those words of hope into a plan of action. So the saying goes, “you can’t bring a knife to a gun fight anymore than you can invoke the Marquess of Queensberry rules to a street brawl.” When your opponent, be it man, woman or desperate, shrill politician decides to discard the rules of engagement, you have no alternative but to follow suit.
Trouble is, the “Time for Obama…” was March 10.
May 3, 2008
UPDATE 17:19 PST I would just like some congratulation for being able to read this race about a million years before anyone else. The headline says and has said since early today what was the exact result. Obama finished 7 votes ahead of Clinton, 2,264 votes to 2,257.
That means that in the caucus they will split the eight delegates (each with half a vote). Voting took place in 21 locations across the US Territory.
To play the decimal point game, that 50.07 percent, Obama and 49.93 percent, Hillary, a difference of 0.7 percent.
So no net gain for either candidate, though since Obama is ahead it perhaps helps him more. The next elections up are Indiana and North Carolina, where the polls are showing a similarly close competition. Obama is up in North Carolina by about 7 using the current RCP average, while Clinton is up in Indiana by 6 points.
(UPDATE 12:40 PST) - With 12 of 21 local precincts in the Democratic caucus counted Obama has 899 to 769 of 1,668 votes counted so far. However, the island’s most populated city, Dededo, has yet to be counted.
————Original Post ————
The voting’s done in Guam and Barack Obama is ahead in caucus delegates, 395 votes to 320.
All ballot boxes from caucus locations were brought to the Legislature and are being hand-counted. A total of about 3,000 caucus votes were made.
Both candidates set up operations in Guam, with Obama’s campaign having a more official field office.
Eight delegates to the Democratic Party Convention in Denver are on the line, though they all only have half a vote. Five superdelegates will also come from the island. Some of the caucus voting today was to determine who they might be as well.
SEE also Guam Election Commission, though it does not seem to have been awoken since elections in 2006.
Thoughts on thoughts and news from around the Web.
ABC NEWS should have absolutely found someone else other than former Bill Clinton press secretary George Stephanopoulos to moderate and ask questions of Hillary Clinton on Sunday. Barack Obama and John McCain were also invited, and though it’s not directly accurate to say they refused, they’re not […]
May 2, 2008
Tiny island. Tiny influence. But at least it’s there this year.
Voting in an all-day caucus has already started where “The Day In America Begins.”
Limited polling has showed a slight preference for Hillary Clinton. There is a significant Filipino American community on Guam. At stake are eight delegates. Each each only gets half a vote, however, so it is the equivalent of four delegates.
The westernmost outpost of American territories is a 550 square km land that has a strong Chamorro influence in certain parts of the mainland.
The Guam Election Commission notes about 22,000 registered Democrats on the island, with about 4,000 expected to participate. It is a closed caucus open to registered Democrats
It will be the first time Guamanians have even the slightest influence on American politics, though that has not resulted in either candidate or immediate surrogates going to the island.
Guam also has five (full) superdelegates who will attend the Democratic convention in denver in late August. Currently one is for Obama, one is uncommitted and the other three are for Clinton.
Guam residents do not have a vote on Election Day in November.
May 1, 2008
When someone in the middle of a huge political scandal suddenly dies in strange circumstances, the echoes of suspicion travel far and wide.
The “DC Madam”, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, was found dead this morning in a shed at her mother’s house. Apparently she hung herself.
She had a black book or phone list that contained written on […]
A nonprofit group Women’s Voices, Women Vote that has registered 400,000 people in the last nine months is under fire for some poorly planned, poorly worded calls in North Carolina.
The most serious charge from online pundits is that their efforts were deliberately misleading and manipulative. That has resulted in a letter from the North Carolina Attorney General (PDF and reprinted below).
The truth seems to lean on the edge of some very accomplished people doing a few incompetent things. Their robocalls in North Carolina were meant to be reminders to unregistered voters for the general election to register and vote. But since they’re coming out before the primary, with a registration packet scheduled to come in the mail there has been obvious confusion. The calls say people need to sign and register before they can vote. In some cases, the people called were already registered.
Joe Andrew, a former DNC executive director, and five year chairman of the Indiana Democratic Party decided to chose today to announce that his former support for Hillary Clinton, announced as late Nov. 2007, has waned in favor of a need to end the race and in favor of being inspired.
Math is truth and the truth is that the switch helps Obama make a net gain of two over Clinotn in the Superdelegate count. Equal truth is that neither can make it to the 2025 current count needed to become the nominee. The voters will indeed make their statements, and if Obama wins both Indiana and NOrth Carolina, the race will undoubtedly end. But that’s been said a few times before and Clinton hangs on, by the math and continued support, to lay claim to the nomination. (My thoughts in the comments).
“May 1, 2008
Dear Friends:
I have been inspired.
Today I am announcing my support for Senator Barack Obama for President of the United States of America. I am changing my support from Senator Clinton to Senator Obama, and calling for my fellow Democrats across my home State of Indiana, and my fellow super delegates across the nation, to heal the rift in our Party and unite behind Barack Obama.
The hardest decisions in life are not between good and bad or right and wrong, but between two goods or two rights. That is the decision Democrats face today. We have an embarrassment of riches, but as much as we may love our candidates and revel in the political process that has brought Presidential politics to places that have not seen it in a generation, we cannot let our family affair hurt America by helping John McCain.
Here is my message, explained in this lengthy letter that I hope is perceived as a thoughtful analysis of how to save America from four more years of the misguided polices of the past:
For 60 seconds author and wordsmith Maya Angelou waxes poetic about what she sees in Hillary Clinton and her qualities for the country as president.
The ad is released on the same day as Clinton inadvisedly bothered to say anything further about Rev. Jeremiah Wright, after going on Bill O’ Reilly’s show and inadvisedly not embarrassing the hell out of him.
Ms. Angelou, who has aged but done so in the dignified way that happiness overriding sadness brings says this in the ad:
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