MSNBC calls it at 11:00 PM Eastern on November 4, 2008. OMG! Crying and so happy! (Aside: If I end my blog tonight, wouldnt’ this be the perfect way to close it?)
Wow, it’s finally here. I first blogged about Barack Obama back on February 7th, 2007! I threw my support behind him on March 30, 2007. And now, November 4th, 2008, the time has come to elect the 44th President of the United States of America. And when the polls close, it will be decisive for Barack Obama. I’m overwhelmed that a progressive and charismatic person will be our next President. Here’s a thread for the election today. Note for EV totals, it’s Obama first then McCain, so 7:10pm entry is 3 electoral votes for Obama and 8 for McCain.
Yep, I sat through it like so many others. What a painful experience. Talking points passed off as debate, incoherence when monosyllabic replies wouldn’t suffice, the inability to look at the audience unless she was speaking, the condescending smirk whenever Biden spoke. You betcha, America, that’s the real Sarah Palin. There’s great coverage of her speech today: one in the Politico and another that’s a medley piece with video from the Huffington Post.
Palin’s sister was quoted in the Style section of yesterday’s Washington Post saying that the debate prep was like the ultimate college cram session before the “big test.” Palin’s performance lived up to that quote with its incoherence and the feeling that she just didn’t understand a lot of what she was talking about. That’s what cramming does, it gets facts in but not knowledge or understanding.
The LA Times is reporting that some Obama aides are suggesting a shorter Democratic Convention in August. They say that one shorter day will allow Obama’s bounce to begin earlier and maybe be stronger ahead of the Republican convention the following week. There’s something to be said for that, given that McCain might wait to announce his VP choice over that weekend to ramp up to the RNC convention and kill the Obama excitement.
However, there are two things going against such an argument. The first African American candidate nomination by a major political party in the US is going to be big news. It’s going to be hard to sidetrack that story.
Second, Obama is slated to accept the nomination on August 28th. The acceptance speech always closes out the convention. That will be the exact day of the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have A Dream” speech. Do the Obama staffers, and the LA Times for that matter, have any clue as to the bounce he’ll get off of that? It will be in the stratosphere!
Finally, she’s stepping aside from her main campaign! But, some say she’s ramping up her desire for the VP slot. That’s just not going to happen. The whole thing about change and moving forward means you can’t have anyone on the ticket who represents 1990s thinking. Additionally, as Dick Cheney made the modern vice president position a major force in office, Clinton would make the VP candidate slot more significant than the traditional one debate and sidebar fundraisers. Further, her husband proved uncontrollable during her presidential run; god only knows what he’d do in the general election. Obama has been gracious but he need not offer her a slot that would doom his, and the Democratic party’s, chances to take back the White House and avoid McCain, aka Bush III.
After the polls close in Montana and South Dakota today, the Democratic Party should have its nominee for President. Senator Barack Obama will be the nominee. The only questions remaining, to me, are
In typical fashion, the campaign for Bush 3, aka John McCain, has declared themselves shocked, simply shocked, that the Washington Post did not report the story as it was dictated to its reporter. The reporter, shocking as it may seem, decided to also look at other material surrounding the matter. Lo and behold, it appears the McCain team was trying to pass along its talking points as truth.
The issue concerns McCain’s support or lack of support for blanket immunity for telecommunications firms that spied on Americans under direction from President Bush. McCain and his Republican colleagues wanted to give full past, present and future immunity to the companies for anything they might have done, even though Republicans and telecomm officials said they did nothing wrong that would require them to be immunized in such a manner. Democrats in Congress wanted to find out what the telecomm firms did first, before considering immunity. Sounds like a radical idea, I know, but these are crazy times we live in folks.
The grave sin of the Washington Post reporter, according to Team McBush? Reporting that it seemed that McCain has changed his opinion about whether to support blanket immunity with no preconditions (past) and requiring telecomm firms to explain their actions before immunity is granted (present). The McCain team is apoplectic with rage.
See this Politico piece for some analysis. The original Washington Post article was written by Jonathan Weisman and Ellen Nakashima and published today.
I figured I’d best start a new post, since the issue about the race possibly being over is starting to move through the blogosphere.
Yep, two more primaries, big ones today. Polls have Obama leading in North Carolina and Clinton leading in Indiana. Though, as in previous contests, the delegate split will be so close as to have almost not mattered. Obama will stay in the lead and Clinton will do whatever she can to mock, berate and cudgel her opponent. The primary season is almost over, thankfully. Remaining contests after today are West Virginia on May 13th, Kentucky and Oregon on May 20th, Puerto Rico on June 1st and Montana and South Dakota on June 3rd. The NY Times has a great page about the primary contests this cycle.
But, focusing on today’s events, let’s start the process. I won’t be live blogging or posting as much today as things are pretty busy on my end and I’m getting tired of this Democratic primary. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: please drop out Sen. Clinton and let Sen. Obama take the Democratic Party back to the White House and change our country and world for the better.
With 99 percent of the precincts reporting, Hillary Clinton won 55% of the votes while Obama won 45%. Obama still has a significant, some say insurmountable, pledged delegate lead. The superdelegates lead is for Clinton right now, but according to MSNBC, it’s only a lead of 25 with a large group still uncommitted.
When will this end? That’s more of a lament than a question. Clinton can’t win but she’s going to stay in as long as she can claw her way into the pockets of donors and the media. This winner take all, scorched earth approach isn’t benefiting the Democratic party or Americans.
Now we wait for the next big primaries in North Carolina and Indiana on May 6th. Obama has been ahead by about 9 points in North Carolina for the last 90 days. It’s in the margin of error in Indiana.
A new Washington Post / ABC News poll shows Barack Obama leading Hillary Clinton by 10 points. Interestingly, it notes that voters are content to not prematurely end the primary process. Negative opinions of the New York Senator are growing. She continues to attack Obama from the Right, often seeming more like a conservative Republican rather than a candidate for the top of the Democratic ticket. This poll shows that her negative attacks aren’t having their desired effect in pushing her to the top; but one must know that these attacks will be magnified by the Republican side against Obama if he prevails into the general.
This “win at all costs” approach is definitely Clintonian. Bill Clinton did it to get elected. I was a fan of Clinton’s presidency and was very proud of his work on global health issues after he left the White House. However, he’s fallen far down my list as he’s stumped for his wife’s campaign. He’s dismissed Obama’s meteoric rise and strong polls as luck, only a result of his being African American, or now, because voters are stupid. Yes, I said stupid. The Boston Globe reports today that Bill Clinton told a group of Pennsylvania voters that people who are wise support Hillary Clinton and people that are young are too easily fooled by Barack Obama. Wow, it’s amazing to see him diss an entire voting bloc.
And, I’m sure the Clinton campaign will attack this poll and say that someone (i.e. the Washington Post and ABC News) are out to get her. Everyone’s out to get her except those that aren’t. It’s always someone elses fault that Hillary Clinton hasn’t been crowned. I’m sure the space aliens will be blamed as we get closer to the end of this process.
While it seemed clear that he would have to leave after his meeting with the Colombian ambassador about free trade with that country, Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist Mark Penn’s exit was still surprising. Penn met with the Colombians in order to help support their efforts to get a deal on the trade agreement. After the meeting and the should-have-been-obvious backlash, Penn tried to backpedal and say that he probably shouldn’t have met with the Colombians. This resulted in the Colombian government firing him from their efforts. And, it led to increasing the intensity of the story in the media, which led to his being forced out last night.
He’d weathered previous issues and an intense dislike by many of the inner circle of the campaign staff. He kept his day job as a lobbyist/consultant while working on the campaign, often dealing with clients who seemed to be 180 degrees different than Clinton’s professed position. He garnered huge fees and refused to take big cuts while the campaign hemorrhaged money. He was arrogant and single-minded.
Some are glad to see him gone, primarily those on the campaign. However, are they being disingenuous? To me, Mark Penn was a perfect fit for the Clinton campaign (be it Hillary or Bill). Why? Because he was always about himself, be it money, message, direction or whatnot. He was in the campaign for Mark Penn. Hillary Clinton is in the campaign for herself, damn the party, damn the general election, damn the American citizens. She wants to win at any cost. As the days drag on, that cost goes up. And it’s a cost not worth paying since she can’t win the nomination through the Democratic process. It’s time for her to step aside and heal the rift that Mark Penn and she have created in the Democratic party.
A friend in the know laid it out pretty clearly for me. The Clinton motto is “by any means necessary.” This compatriot was responding to a rant I had about Hillary Clinton doing an extensive interview with reporters and editorial page staff from (drum roll please) The Pittsburgh Tribune Review.
What the @#$$% is she doing talking to the Trib-Review? Scaife anyone? Vast right-wing conspiracy? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
She’s also been talking about how pledged delegates, you know, the ones she and Obama have been winning through voters in primaries and caucuses, don’t really have to vote for whom them pledged. She’s trying to steal delegates who were selected by voters! This from the person who’s spent endless amounts of time talking about how candidates must let the voters speak. So Senator Clinton, they spoke, why don’t you listen?
Talk about ducking sniper fire. While she imagined it in Bosnia (or misspoke, as her campaign is saying today), here it’s self inflicted with an automatic pistol.
And, to top it off, she’s basically undoing any of the honesty, shades of gray and integrity Senator Obama brought to a discussion of race. While Obama talked about the words, the person and the overall situation, Clinton is pandering to the Fox News audience by saying she’d have dumped Wright right away. While that might garner a few votes in the short term, it does great disservice to addressing one of the deepest issues that this great country has yet to resolve since its founding. Obama opened a door, Clinton slammed it shut.
Senator Clinton, please give up a campaign that you have no chance of winning without continually resorting to the Bush/Rove playbook.
I read Barack Obama’s speech that he gave this morning in Philadelphia. A major address on race in America and his ties to a controversial church minister in Chicago went way beyond what I think anyone expected. He didn’t go the typical Beltway route of disrespecting the fallen idol, but actually decided to look at shades of gray. Instead of making sound bites or totally distancing himself from the situation, he makes us look hard at race and class in America.
Political Wire has some great comments from folks on the speech.
Hillary Clinton says she regrets one of her national fundraiser’s racist smack against Barack Obama. Clinton says she disagrees with former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro’s quip that Barack Obama is lucky he’s a black man, otherwise he wouldn’t be in the current presidential race. Ferraro then went on Fox News to say she’s being attacked because she’s a white person.
Why hasn’t she stepped down? Samantha Power, a rising star in foreign policy circles, was forced to resign from the Obama campaign after she quipped that Hillary Clinton was a monster. In my book, calling someone a name like that isn’t the same as the racist trash out of Ferraro’s mouth. Why hasn’t Ferraro resigned, and why hasn’t the Clinton machine asked her to? Is it advantageous to them to keep Ferraro on to maybe let her comment resonate with the folks Clinton’s trying to attract?
There’s a presidential primary in Mississippi and a special election in Indiana’s 7th Congressional District to fill the seat left by the late Julia Carson. As always, newer results are up top:
There’s a presidential caucus in Wyoming today, where Barack Obama is favored to win the major share of the 12 delegates. Additionally, there’s a special election in Illinois’s 14th Congressional district to fill the seat vacated by former Congressman Dennis Hastert (R). It’s a toss up race that features Democratic physicist Bill Foster vs. Republican dairy magnate Jim Oberweis. There’s also special elections in Louisiana’s 1st and 6th Congressional districts.
Hastert, formerly Speaker of the House until the Democratic rout of 2006, resigned his seat rather than finish off his term. I found his resignation pathetic, since while his party lost control, he was duly elected by the people of the 14th district. He had a responsibility to stay in office and support them. In Louisiana’s 6th, the seat is open since Republican Richard Baker resigned to become a lobbyist at the Managed Funds Association. This mimics the resignation of former Senator Trent Lott (R-MS) to take up a lobbying position. This isn’t only a Republican problem, even though they seem to be in the majority for resignations. Former Congressman Marty Meehan (D) resigned from his Massachusetts’s 5th District seat in order to take up the Chancellorship of the University of Massachusetts Lowell, his alma mater. While I admire his commitment to education, I still hold that he should have stayed in office to support those who sent him to Washington in the first place. In LA-01, the seat is open since Bobby Jindal (R) won the governorship of the state. That’s a respectable reason for opening the seat, in my opinion.
President Bush has vetoed legislation that would hold the CIA to the same standard as the Armed Forces of the United States, with respect to banning torture. And, just like those who torture behind closed doors, Bush has vetoed the legislation behind the doors of the White House. It’s shocking to see the descent this country has taken under the 7+ years of the Bush presidency. This government has ceded the moral high ground, trampled on domestic and international prohibitions on torture, and skulked in the shadows where only our worst enemies used to lurk. With hope, January 20, 2009, will bring light to the these dark times. With hope, a Democratic candidate will sit behind the desk in the Oval Office. With hope, this true leader will take America back into the light of human rights, decency and world leadership.
Samantha Power, journalist, academic, writer, has resigned as an unpaid foreign policy advisor to the Barack Obama campaign. In an interview published this week, she called Hillary Clinton “a monster … she is stooping to anything.” The Clinton campaign pushed very hard for this, even after Power apologized. The reason is likely that she carries a lot of weight on foreign policy issues. You might know her from her powerful book “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.”
My off-the-cuff thoughts are that Power spoke truth to power, just as she has done with her writings and lectures. The Clinton campaign has turned to the Karl Rove book of twisted tricks to win the Democratic primary, sullying Obama’s policy credentials, refusing to deny innuendos and rumors about him, and at times making sleazy, almost racist, comments about his successes so far. This is a dirty campaign run by Clinton but I don’t hear calls for her inner circle to be fired. It’s 3 AM and Clinton’s ripping another tactic out of the Rovian catalogue.
Today’s another Super Tuesday, with voters going out in Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont. It could be the death knell for Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations. The question will be if she realizes it’s over if it’s really over. She’s been overtly negative, attacking Barack Obama left and right with fearmongering ads while at the same time claiming she’s a victim of the press. Her logic seems to be that she’s the front runner (as she was in 2007) and if someone says she’s not, they must be wrong, not her. In recent days, her senior campaign staffers have all pointed the finger at someone else, saying that person is in charge. That’s never a good sign. But, only time will tell. For more on the Clinton as victim/victimizer theme, see Roger Simon’s piece in the Politico. The Republicans are also voting today. Some see this is Mike Huckabee’s last stand in Texas, even though John McCain is pretty much the winner of the Republican contest.
But, I’ve heard turnout is high in both Texas and Ohio.
