Primaries

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Actually, it's more of an LKD-ism -- sorry it slipped onto these boards. Is there any chance of starting a pool on when the Dems will pick their candidate? I say at the rate they're going it'll be somewhere around Nov. 01, 2008, which won't really give them time to mount a campaign against Mccain!

Ha ha, seriously, put me down for $20 on Obama selected / acclaimed on August 13, 2008.

PS -- Virtual money only, folks, I don't gamble with real, hard earned cash!

PPS when is the Democratic convention again?

 

Last week of August. I can't imagine this going past June, but then I figured it'd be wrapped up by now, so there ya go.

 

Well, the last week of August is the convention, so obviously it has to be decided by then (possibly at the convention itself). I think we need two different timelines though - one that assumes Michigan and Florida revote, and the other one in which they don't. If they do not revote (and if they don't we'll know that long before June), then there is no reason for this to be dragged out beyond the first week of June, as by then all states and territories will have done their primaries. Once everyone is done, nothing is going to change, so there's little point in the remaining super delegates holding back their decision.

However, the counterpoint is what happens if Michigan and/or Florida do a revote? If this happens, I can see the revote being scheduled for later than the first week of June. Not only has nothing been decided at this point (and keep in mind that they are going to need the buy-in of Hillary, Barack and the DNC), but they are going to have to find a way to raise the money to fund the revote, and I don't see that happening quickly.

So I think it's realistic to say we'll know at the end of the primary season, which hopefully will be the first week of June, but could potentially be later depending on what happens with Florida and Michigan.

 

The various dates I've seen floated for Michigan and Florida would be in the first week of June, and absolutely no later. I think MI is considering June 3rd; the only date I've seen for Florida is June 7th.

The recent comments from Nancy Pelosi are the first I've seen from someone high up in the DNC hierarchy trying to rally the superdelegates and cut the remainder of the race short. The continued absence of the DNC leadership in the primary is puzzling.

 

They've already picked their candidate. It's McCain.

The Democratic Party: Snatching Defeat From the Jaws of Victory Since 1968

 

Nonsense. The more I hear from Bill, the more I am inclinded to support Hill. Bill is just a bit emotional these days about some of the highly overwrought critism leveled at his wife over the last few months. Frankly, I don't blame him. Another reason I would like to support Hill is because of all those conservatives who believe that Son of Bush has a prayer against her in the general election. They make me...

Here's another point to consider: If Hill can defeat Obama, she can certainly handle the self-destructing John McCain. His latest piece of nonsensical rhetoric is that he would rather "give up the election, rather than give up the War in Iraq." Enjoy your retirement, JM. There's a reason we have elections, and it is to give the American People their say over blow-hards like you.

But in reality, it will still be Obama. He will win a hard fought battle with Hillary, and then finish off the Republican light-weight. Especially if JM continues to beleive that he can carry on the "Bush legacy."

 

Seeing as how the democrats have won Presidential elections since 1968 (in 1976, 1992, and 1996 to be precise) I can only assume that you decided to pick 1968 as a lightly veiled RFK reference. Making fun of a popular politician who was assassinated while running for office seems to be a joke in bad taste (but there's no accounting for taste I suppose). Regardless, I don't know why you felt that the Dems snatched defeat from the jaws of victory that year. RFK likely would have won the general election, but it's not like he screwed up his campaign and blew it - he was assassinated! I think Sirhan Sirhan was more responsible than the Democratic Party.

 

"Never attributed to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity"

I, ah, was referring to the infighting among the Dem candidates in '68. The assassination never crossed my mind, though in hindsight it's not surprising you (or anyone else) would make that connection. Sorry about that.

 

I just read a speech that Obama made on race (or maybe he will make it, I'm not sure, according to the article the text was received from his campaign people.) Here's the link:

http://www.630ched.com/StationShared/BlogAdler.aspx

Sorry if I mucked that link up, I'm not very skilled at doing links. I was tempted to post the whole frigging speech here but it was a little long. I liked it -- it was good damage control on the stuff his pastor said and IMHO it avoided the vilification of whites that I feel often goes hand in hand with many discussions of racism. However, I'm sure the speech will generate many responses. I'd like to hear them!

 

He gave it yesterday morning; it's on YouTube if you want to watch as well.

In a political sense, I don't think it will undo the damage from Wright. As an American, though, I thought it was a great speech--he spoke openly and honestly about racial tensions, without pandering, and in an intelligent and thoughtful fashion. While I've seen the claims on blogs that he wrote the speech by himself over the weekend, I've yet to find any (credible) corroboration yet.

 

I'm with CamDawg on this one. While I liked the speech, it is yet to be seen what effect (if any) this will have on how the public views him. The good news for Barack is that the Rev Wright fiasco, the Tony Rezko trial, and all of this other stuff from Geraldine Ferarro to one of Barack's staffers referring to Hillary as a monster hit the fan during a rather slow point in the election cycle. We're still over a month away from the next primary, and given the notoriously short memory of the average citizen, there is more than adequate time between now and the PA primary for this firestorm to blow over.

As for writing the speech - all politicians do some of the work themselves, while relying on speech writers to varying degrees. I also heard that Barack wrote it himself. But the question becomes what do you mean when you say he wrote it? Our last two presidents show the opposite ends of the spectrum. GWB relies heavily on his speech writers, while Bill Clinton did most of the writing himself and used his staff primarily for editing purposes, last minute changes, and fine tuning. Where on the spectrum this particular speech falls for Barack is probably unknowable. At the very least, I'm sure his speech writers helped him with editing, but only Barack and his inner circle know whether he wrote some, most, or nearly all of the speech.

 

LOL, I loved the idiotic way the Obama-Wright connection was reported in one online news outlet here : http://news.ibox.bg/material/id_2087012490/

For those who don't know Bulgarian, the title reads: Hamas in service to Barack Obama

 

Bill Richardson, after months of heavy courting from the Clintons, endorsed Obama today.

To me, this is a good sign that Obama did a good job at weathering the firestorm around Wright. Richardson is a very influential superdelegate, and had he felt that Obama was doomed to a general election loss because of Wright I don't think he would have done this. As a Dem party insider, particularly among the other superdels, I think he'd know if there were about to be a mass exodus away from Obama among them. Since Hillary's only chance of winning at this point is by getting 2/3 of the remaining superdelegates to defy Obama's insurmountable popular vote and state delegate leads, I see this as a sign that the party leadership are going to start publicly saying to Hillary "alright, you gave it a good run, but enough is enough. You're still a titan in the party and likely always will be, but the party has chosen its nominee. End this thing already."

 

I agree. At this point, the only one benefiting from all the Democratic bickering is McCain. Defeating McCain is the objective, since he appears to have embraced the belligerent, arrogant Bush Doctrine.

 

I hope you're right DR. Without re-votes in FL and MI (and there appears to be no chance of that happening), Hillary's goose is cooked. Of course, Hillary will still say that even though the states aren't getting their delegates that the popular vote should still count towards her total, in the likely scenario that adding up those votes would give her a greater popular vote total than Obama. IMO, such reasoning is absurd - if the election results don't count, they don't count.

As a side note to the MI and FL re-votes: I can understand Dems being upset that they were disenfranchised, however, the blame for this should be laid at the feet of their respective state legislatures, not the DNC.

Anyway, two things are becoming increasingly clear 1) Clinton has very little chance of catching Obama in popular votes, and 2) It's nearly mathematically impossible for her to catch - or even come significantly closer - to Obama's pledged delegate lead. If you have fewer delegates, and fewer popular votes, I don't see how you can be the nominee.

EDIT: And what's up with this whole passport fiasco? What's the big deal? Are they concerned that someone is going to try to steal a canidates identity? Obviously, it's not good that this happened, but it seems to me the significance is being overblown. Maybe I'm missing something.

 

Actually, even if you count Florida and Michigan's popular vote totals as they stand right now (and the Clintons do), Obama is still ahead by around 70,000 popular votes. So there really is no measure by which she's ahead right now, even by flubbing.

As for the passport thing: at this point I think some curious - and frankly, stupid - contractors and junior staffers got curious and took a peek. All in all I don't think anything see any malicious intent, but it was still a dumb (and very illegal) thing to do. Kinda like if you were an intern at a Hollywood plastic surgeon's office, you'd take a peek at a celebrity's file if you had a 10-second opportunity to do so. More than anything though, I think whomever was in charge of overseeing the people involved should lose their jobs for allowing the breach on their watch. Because this certainly could have been malicious intent.

 

It's possible to make up 70,000 votes. If you don't count FL and MI, it's 700,000 - which is practically impossible to make up. My larger point was that Hillary is really going to push this issue from now through June. She will say they are nearly tied in total votes. Given that she'll likely win PA, she may even be ahead in total votes after that contest.

The thing is though, it doesn't really matter if Clinton believes the votes should count. The DNC isn't going to endorse any vote apportionment (is that even a word? If not I just made it a word.) to canidates. So really the only thing that matters is if the supers think those votes should count.

I am completely disgusted by this. Whoever walks away as the winner is going to have a tainted nomination at this point. It is absurd that the process you have for determining the nomination for president can end without a clear winner. The entire process is ****ed, and there's no way to un-**** it for this nomination cycle. The supers are going to decide after the final primary in the first week of June, everyone is going to have to live with it, and no matter how it turns out, half of the Democrats are going to be ticked off. Un-****ing-believable. After having a choice of uninspired canidates in 2004 (from both parties), we actually get two canidates that are better than anything the Republicans have, and the result may be the Democratic party fracturing from in-fighting.

Should we just forego the election in November and let McCain take over in January? Because that's where we're headed now. Mark my words. No matter who the nominee is there will be enough disaffected Dems that will now stay home on election day, or worse, join the other side out of spite.

 

I will mark your words, but I don't think it'll come to that if Obama is the nominee.

Mainly because of his leads in every measure, and the fact that he'd still be ahead even if Michigan and Florida counted, there'd be no sense that "Obama stole it!" except from the most die-hard of Clinton supporters. He's done this the right way, all the way. He's campaigned hard in every state, not just the blue ones that we'll win in November or the big states. EVERY state. And he certainly hasn't pissed on the states who didn't vote for him the way Hillary has. He hasn't tried to rewrite the rules or game the system (unfairly, anyway) the same way Clinton has.

The only way Clinton can win at this point - and I'm loathe to say it like this, but it does fit - is by cheating. Cheating by combining the seating of two states she and every other candidate agreed were null and void (a chance that's now passed), with getting the superdelegates to supercede the will of the people in direct contradiction to the philosophy of the Democratic party (her only reasonable shot left). If she wins this way, blacks will stay home. Younger college educated folks - like me - who've had either a Bush or a Clinton in the White House their entire lives and would be robbed of the chance at a fresh start, will stay home. The hundreds of thousands of first-time voters who've been excited about this election and its prospects will stay home.

The opposite would certainly be true if Obama was the one behind by every conceivable measure and was still trying to exploit every possible loophole to overcome the more-popular Hillary Clinton. But then...if Obama had lost 11 straight contests in a row there's not a chance he'd still be in the race. This is still dragging out because no one has the stones to tell the Clintons that it's over. But as it stands, if Obama wins, I do see the vast majority of Dems rallying around him. If Clinton wins, the party will crack and voter turnout will be so low that I think we'll narrowly lose in November. It didn't have to be this way, but the Clintons and thier campaign are largely responsible for the way things have turned out.

EDIT FOR UPDATE:

The fat lady's clearing her throat.

 

No, because he has been out in front since day one, so why should he want to? I'm not sure what he would do if the roles were reversed. But I suspect he would do much the same, yet not quite to the extent as the Hill. At this point, I think it's largely a matter of party politics. This race has been over for a long time. But the media and the Clintons have been going on about the "big states." Yes, they are correct in that Hill does better in those typically Democratic large states, but that's not really enough. Regardless of which states, she still needs a majority to be THE candidate for the party. My fear is that she will win in PA, and then this will drag on for another two months. This is really about the country, not about ego, no matter how large we are talking here.

If Obama and Hill care about the country, they need to come to terms. They need to sit down and work this out before it gets worse than it already is. Whatever Clinton feels she needs to save face in all this, it needs to end, and quickly.

 

Since day one? There was a time, not so long ago, when Clinton was viewed as the inevitable candidate.