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American Primaries: How dumb are the Democrats?
Elki
get busyModerator, ClubPA Mod Emeritus
get busyModerator, ClubPA Mod Emeritus
In other developments, Edwards drops out of the race. Who does that help, and does he endorse Clinton or Obama? I'm between him endorsing Obama, or not endorsing anyone. It would be weird to see him endorse Clinton after all his attacks on her. And Shinto seems to think that this will help Hillary, but I'm not sure. MSNBC says that most Edwards voters in South Carolina said Obama was their second choice.HE IS performing amazing feats. Experts across America deemed John McCain's campaign dead late last year, as he lacked money, languished in the polls and shook up staff. The Republican maverick was disliked and distrusted by too many in the party. But starting with a victory in New Hampshire’s primary, and followed by a win in South Carolina, Mr McCain’s campaign came back to life in January. Now, with a victory in Florida—by far the biggest state to vote so far—he is the clear front-runner.
Mr McCain took 36% of the vote to 31% for Mitt Romney, his biggest rival for the nomination. The many military voters in Florida were expected to help the old navy pilot and Iraq hawk to victory. But he also did surprisingly well among groups not normally considered friendly to him. Voters calling themselves “very conservative†did not prefer him, but moderate conservatives did. He also ran even with Mr Romney and Mike Huckabee among evangelical voters. This was a surprise; his rivals play social-conservative cards far more frequently than Mr McCain.
The last days of the campaign in Florida were particularly sour. Mr Romney called Mr McCain a “liberal Democratâ€, and harped on about immigration. (Mr McCain supports a path to citizenship for many illegal immigrants, perhaps his biggest weakness with staunch Republicans.) But Mr McCain, beloved of journalists and independents for his candour and honour, threw ugly punches too. He suggested that Mr Romney favoured a timetable for ending the war in Iraq. Voters received automated telephone calls reminding them that Mr Romney once said he would be friendlier to gay voters than Ted Kennedy, the famously liberal senator from Massachusetts. Mr McCain may have shored up his Republican bona fides, but he may also suffer a backlash for these kinds of attacks.
Florida was also noteworthy for the painful end it put to the candidacy of Rudy Giuliani. The mayor of New York during the September 11th 2001 attacks, he led in national polls for most of 2007. But he bizarrely chose to sit out the early primary states where his rivals were insurmountably strong. He thought a win in Florida would propel him onto Super Tuesday on February 5th when over 20 states vote. But this led to a month of campaigning in which his name was hardly heard, as press attention and money flowed elsewhere. His third-place finish in Florida destroyed the strategy. Early reports suggest that he will drop out of the race and endorse Mr McCain on Wednesday.
Mr Romney, however, is still in it to win. He is willing to spend more of his personal fortune to keep the campaign going. Mr McCain, by contrast, is running on financial fumes. And Mr Romney has a few primary victories under his belt, although none as striking as Mr McCain’s. Finally, with Mr Giuliani out and Mr Huckabee fading (he came fourth in Florida) this is now a straight two-man fight. Many conservatives still loathe Mr McCain, and Mr Romney at least currently pretends to believe most of the cornerstone conservative dogmas. Republicans may see their choice as between ideological purity and electability, and the purists now have one anti-McCain to settle on.
Electability also depends on whom the Democrats choose. That took a twist on Tuesday. The Democratic Party organisation had earlier decided to punish Florida for holding its primary too early, by giving warning that its nominating delegates would not be allowed to sit at the national convention. All candidates promised not to run or campaign there. But late in the day Mrs Clinton declared that she did want Florida’s vote to count and visited the state, where polls showed her ahead. Perhaps she wanted to divert attention away from Mr Obama’s vivid victory in South Carolina on Saturday. In any case, she handily “won†Florida with 50% of the vote to Mr Obama’s 33%, and in post-vote interviews claimed it as a satisfying victory. Just another twist in the most entertaining election season in recent memory.
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There's also the chance that an Edwards endorsement will help wrangle in all the Northeasterners who can't stand her, either.
To be an Edwards supporter, with his minimal media coverage, would assume a certain amount of intellectual discovery. I'd like to think anyone vaguely intellectual isn't checking a mark next to Hillary's name.
But I hope I'm wrong.
There are a lot of variables that go into how far a volleyball goes when it's served, including force, windspeed, the exact wear and tear on the ball itself, and so on. However, there's a pretty predictable difference between serving overhand and underhand, and so if I want the ball to go far I'm going to serve it overhand. Similarly, if I want the liberal justices who retire in the next eight years to be replaced by justices at least as liberal as themselves, damn am I going to hope a Democratic president is in office. With a Republican president, it's seriously doubtful that the Democrats would be able to get away with rejecting each and every nominee for years on end--it would play extremely poorly in the press. The best we could possibly hope for is a right-leaning moderate.
This shit is just retarded. God sometimes I hate that woman.
I think Shinto's right and Edwards voters will naturally drift 2:1 for Hillary over Obama. I also suspect that Edwards will not endorse anyone, but will pepper his concession with some Obama buzz-words. THing is that he really wants a job in the next Dem administration, and he doesn't seem the type to fail to play all the angles here.
(Also, if anyone remembers my 'everyone since Lincoln is a crook' dad? He's hopped on the USS Obama, concluding that Obama is, in fact, NOT a crook. From him, this is the highest praise a politician can possibly recieve.)
It could be. One of the local indie rags has it's local issue talking about Obama's growing strength in Massachusetts. Apparently in spite of the fact that the Martha's Vinyard crowd are "FOBs," Obama has outraised Hillary in Mass and has the endorsement of our Governor (though I don't know how much that matters). Massachusetts recently elected the second black governor in US history and maybe they're still in the mood to show how progressive they are.
- "Proving once again the deadliest animal of all ... is the Zoo Keeper" - Philip J Fry
They have to cast their "first vote" at the convention for Edwards. After that they're free to do whatever they want. Edwards can ask them to vote one way or the other, but they're not bound.
Schwarzenegger is one of those candidates that the rank-and-file love, but probably don't agree with many of his policies. His bloc is made up of people in favor of libertarian views, anti-immigrationists, and those who really thought it was cool when he blew up the Predator.
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/politics/national_elections&id=5923544
I'm not banking on anyone dying, but it could happen, and we're getting damn near the breaking point on a lot of critical issues. I'd rather guarantee that someone sane is brought into the Supreme Court (and all the multitude of federal justices that WILL be up for replacement, guaranteed) if needed than bank on your far-off and completely unforseeable Democratic leftswing.
News for you, Kagera, people are dying now. People are homeless now. People can't afford healthcare or to pay the bank for their homes now. Americans are dying and killing in Iraq now.
You call her "Killary," but you're the one that seems to be advocating further death and the ruination of lives. You think McCain is going to help all those people? I've listened to his talking points, and he really couldn't be arsed to give a fuck about the people that Bush has at worst actively harmed and at best completely ignored the last 8 years.
If you want to wait for some pie-in-the-sky backlash, you haven't understood a damn thing that Obama has been trying to say.
If one voice can change a room four years from now,
then one voice can change a block... four years from now;
and if one voice can change a block four years from now,
then one voice can change a city four years from now;
and if one voice can change a city four years from now,
then one voice can change a state four years from now.
If one voice can change a state four years from now,
then one voice can change a country four years from now.
If one voice can change a country four years from now...
well, one voice can change the world... four years from now.
Your "long game" is just that: a game. It doesn't acknowledge that change takes a long time, and the sooner you start, the faster it comes.
We want Obama, but don't be a personality cultist. Your predictions of the future mean fuck-all when change needs to happen now.
Even if neither rumor is true, if he stays quiet, he runs the risk of marginalizing himself. After all, Hillary can find many among the Democrats that would make decent VP's and Obama has a plethora of able candidates for his cabinet. (I just really like the word, plethora)
For SCOTUS justices? Yeah, she'd be better. And Stevens, at least, is guaranteed to be gone in four years. He's going to retire.
You seem to think Hillary will change anything.
I do not agree with that assumption.
Hillary will hurt any chances for progressive change. She will hurt them NOW, and four years from NOW, if she is elected.
Huh. This is kind of a surprise. I thought that pretty much every coder dork kind of reflexively voted for Ron Paul out of some autistic need for a well-ordered political philosophy.
Beat'd by like 30 pages yesterday.
And for the love of God, Edwards needs to endorse Obama. I really, really don't want to be campaigning for Hillary over the summer here in Florida (but I will because we need to fucking redeem ourselves after the last couple of elections).
Oddly, since I've moved here I don't think I've heard any kind words about Ted Kennedy. I mean - he keeps winning elections, but I'm not really sure how he does it. Weak Republican candidates and a gigantic proportion of democrats, maybe.
However, my cleaning lady told me this morning that Obama is extremely popular among Brazilians, and Mass has a lot of Brazilians. So maybe that's good.
So Florida falling on its sword and getting it's primary delegates kicked out doesn't count for this?
Edwards is far more qualified to be the AG than the Veep, seeing as how he doesn't bring anything to the ticket that Hillary doesn't already have, other than a toothy grin. But the VP may be more prestigious than the AG job to him, so who knows? I think at this point, Hillary has to be working to offer him something if she hasn't already, but I think the electorate will view a Clinton/Edwards ticket just as exciting as the Kerry/Edwards ticket, and we all know how well that went over.
Thing is, being the VP nom adds nothing to Obama or Hillary's campaign that it wouldn't add by simple endorsement alone. It'll come down to which position that Edwards probably wants more. Here's to hoping he puts qualification and reason above his ambition.
The AG in this presidency might be the single most important position there is. A great deal of whats wrong in foreign policy, in domestic civil rights, in just plain awfulness, is with the Justice Department. If we get an AG who can clean up the mess, this country can make huge strides in improving our international standing - and it would probably be a bigger blow to Al Qaida than any surge.
goddamit.
Hillary insists on lying all over the goddamn place.
McCaskill vouched for Obama. THE PICTURES vouch for Obama. i cannot see how people continue to ignore all of these warning signs: a Clinton candidacy will be toxic for the Democratic party.
and for fucks sake, it's not because she's a woman! it's because she's an asshole!
steam | Dokkan: 868846562
There you go with your Magic 8-Ball. I really want to know how you know these things. Is time travel actually possible within my lifetime, Sam Beckett?
Clinton won't install conservative federal or supreme court justices (to think that SCotUS is the only Judicial issue is deluding yourself; precident is set lower in the chain as well).
Clinton won't veto the Congress's reforms coming form Feingold, Obama, Webb, and others.
Clinton will try to get us out of Iraq.
You're deluding yourself if you think these don't matter. If elected, she's not going to be up there by herself. She'll just be the quarterback; the rest of the team is still there and making plays.
"we hate people" is just a subset of code monkeys. I'd like to think most of us are well adjusted, but I do hear "ron paul is the agent of Change!" in the hallways randomly.
That said, I'm going to be very very sad if Hillary takes super tuesday, or if this winds up being a super delegate fight (no matter who wins there, it's going to be Drama)
Michael Vick was a quarterback too you know, and look how that turned out.
She is corrupt, she is backstabbing, and she is self-serving, she'll do what brings her the most power, not what's good for America.
And the only reason she has any chance of being President is because she married Bill.
...well, THAT goes a long way towards me voting for Hillary should the unthinkable happen in the primary.
He does that, he'd most assuredly lose my vote. Giuliani is a vicious, petty man, and he was the same when he was a prosecutor.
Again, thats if the Dems maintain their majority. If theres a backlash against Clinton we may see another Carter administration, where we have all these things going wrong, but no one is able to fix anything because Congress and the Executive Branch are engaged in trench warfare.
Like they are now.
A lot of people hate Hillary Clinton, competent or not. Obama just isnt that hated. Is he hated by anyone? I mean, apart from the fringe? The Republicans probably dont like him because of his team affiliation, but he's a guy they can work with. How many Republicans are thinking that about Clinton?
They're selected from basically party loyalists - senators, representatives, administrators, etc. They can vote however they like. It's 20% of the total delegate coun.
And have you checked your cleaning lady's papers?
You choose poorly
Of the people running for office I do like McCain far more than some of the others but if that was true then I would vote yet again for some werid third party or no one at all
I wasn't really making fun - I did physics and math in college, and you ended up with some of the same type of people there. I think that there's just something about analytical types that makes it hard for them to allow for what might be seen as needless complexity.