Primaries

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Especially considering that half of Barack's racial background is white. Of course, many of these same people just go by the way he looks, and since he looks black, they ignore that he is biracial. However, I will admit that it certainly appears that Barack identifies with the black community more than with the white community, despite being raised by his white mother and grandparents. He attended a church whose congregation is almost entirely black, refers to black history and culture as "our" history and culture, and married a black woman*.

* Of course, marrying a black woman doesn't make you black, but most people marry someone from the same race they are.

Going back to Cernak's comments, he is right that the swing states will decide the election - which is, of course, what makes them swing states. Of the core Republican and core Democratic states, neither group represents a majority of electoral votes for the election.

I would like to think that Cernak's comments about Barack having a chance in some southeastern states is true. It is certainly true that many states in the southeast have large African American populations, that Barack has great support from this demographic, and that African Americans have historically voted Democrat.

The only problem is that even in the deep south, there are twice as many whites as blacks, and the whites from that area vote overwhelmingly Republican. The black population is only a big factor in states where the white vote is relatively close, and in the deep south, the white vote is rarely close. If all it took for a Democrat to win a southeastern state was to mobilize the black population and win a reasonable minority of the white vote, there should be some examples of a Democrat winning some of those states in the last 30 years, and there isn't.

Bill Clinton won 2/3 of the electoral votes both times he won the presidency, and the only southeastern state he was able to carry was his home state of Arkansas. (As a side note, I don't really consider Arkansas to be a southeastern state. I've been to Arkansas, and I feel it is culturally distinct from most of the southeast, and is more widwestern like Missouri and Nebraska.) Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina all went with the Republican. For Barack to win some of those southeastern states, he's going to need more than just a reasonable minority of the white vote - he'll probably need upwards of 40% of the white vote for the African American vote to put him over the top.

 

Not necessarily in Louisiana. 33% of their residents are black, so he'd only need 17% of the "white" vote which, due to the Iraq war, he'll probably get. It should also be pointed out that democratic turnout has positively dwarfed republican turnout in a lot of the so-called red states during the primary elections. This is a strong indicator for any democratic candidate.

One other element that makes this election very different from our past elections is that, for the first time, the democrats will be running a presidential election using Howard Dean's 50 state strategy. Unlike the "establishment" method of running elections, the goal of the 50-state strategy is for the Democratic Party to be committed to winning elections at every level in every region of the country, with Democrats organized in every single voting precinct in the country. To that end, Dean has traveled extensively throughout the country with the plan, including places like Utah, Mississippi, and Texas. As we have seen, it's worked quite well for the democratic legislature, which took a good many red states away from the republicans in 2006, and it's been working pretty darn well for Obama in the primaries, so it'll be interesting to see what happens in the general election.

On a different note, I'm not worried about Barack being assassinated. First of all, the secret service has gotten a lot better at guarding presidents since the assassination of JFK and the near-assassination of Reagan. There's one other strong indicator that Barck isn't going to be assassinated. W, one of the least popular presidents we've ever had, is still alive, so I think Barack will be just fine.

 

While that is true, part of the reason Republican turnout has been low is that McCain essentially had the nomination locked up after Super Tuesday (officially it's been locked up since March 5th, but the writing was on the wall long before that) while the Democrats have been engaged in this seemingly never-ending primary fight. In other words, there was much greater motivation for Democrats to come out to vote as opposed to Republicans.

I'm not sure if that's a commendation of the protection provided the president, or a condemnation of what everyone thinks of Dick Cheney.

 

Heh. I'd point out that, historically, presidential assassins haven't exactly been the brightest of people. I doubt that any would-be assassin would be so sophisticated as to think about who'd be president after Bush bit the big one.

 

This is probably my own bias speaking but hasnt all "modern" American political assassins come from the fringe really loonie right? Even the dude who took a shot at Reagan? Thats not to say that there are no violent loonies on the left side but I wonder if there are any in the states? The rest of the world have plenty of armed, violent leftists but in the states it seems violence as a means of expressing your opinion seems to be kept among people on the far far right. Bush seems to have been a wonderful president from the point of view of a paranoid xenophobic religiously confused loonie?

 

i don't know what affiliation john hinckley had but he initially planned to assassinate carter but was arrested on a gun charge that delayed him until reagan was in office. all because he was obsessed with jodi foster

 

@Joaquin: Oswald was a communist.

 

hey drew do you know what hinkley was?

 

Insane.

 

Great response, Drew. Classic.

 

that WAS funny. ok have you seen the latest preacher thing they are talking about. a white preacher at rev wrights old church has made the mdeia mad be making fun of hillary for being white. ?? well she is & so is he. so what the he!!!! does this have to do with obama?? you say. well apparently this guy is "supposed" to be another one of his spiritual advisors. their words not mine. kinda stupid i think.

& on the other side of the isle you have mike huckabee adressing some group in a clip on youtube, there is a noise off to the left, he looks & says "it's just barack diving under a chair someone pointed a gun at/near him. WT crap are these people thinking? is it a rule that all politicians have to try to swallow their feet?

 

Well, tomorrow is the merciful end of the primary season. Montana and South Dakota vote, and then that's it. Obama is also extremely close to locking up the nomination. He's only about 60 votes away, and is likely to get a sizeable chunk of that tomorrow. There are many who speculate that he's already got the necessary number of supers he needs, but is telling them to wait for tomorrow to announce their intentions so that he can claim victory the night of the last primary.

Hillary, of course, is not pleased with the way Michigan and Florida was resolved this weekend. In her opinion, the delegations should be fully seated, and Obama should receive no delegates from Michigan. Which, of course, the DNC Rules Committe never had any intention of doing. What the Rules Committee decided was that Florida and Michigan could send their entire delegations to the convention, but that each delegate would only get 1/2 a vote, which effectively halves their representation. The delegation in Florida was awarded based on the popular vote. Hillary and Obama each got their proportion of delegates, with most of Edwards' support going to Obama (remember that Edwards was still on the ballot in Florida). Hillary got her percentage of the popular vote in Michigan, whereas Barack got the "uncommitted" vote.

If Florida and Michigan were given full representation at the convention, then there would be no reason for other states in the future to uphold the DNC rules regarding primaries. In fact, even giving them back 1/2 their representation is caving to them somewhat. I also feel that giving Barack credit for the uncommitted is fair in Michigan (and probably even underestimates his support there) because the vast majority of the "uncommitted" vote was for him or Edwards, and since Edwards has endorsed Obama, most of Edwards' delegates have agreed to support Obama. Hopefully Hillary is preparing an exit speech for tomorrow night, but she could try to continue squalking about this all the way to the convention in August.

 

Joacqin: My own view has always been that the extreme left and the extreme right meet at the point where the crosshairs come into focus. But you are right. Most of the loonies in this country, at least in recent decades, have come from the Right. (It could be a song: "My Loonies Have Always Been Righties..."; Country-Western, of course.) Perhaps it's the extreme right-wing radio talk shows that seem to blanket AM radio; they seem to be very well financed. This is thanks to a Communication Act passed during the Clinton administration that removed the prohibition against a single individual or company from owning more than five radio stations. One company owns over a thousand.

Aldeth: Thanks for your kind comments. And yes, the primary season is finally grinding to a halt, a halt viewed with half-numbed brains and blood-shot eyes, with the last word going, improbably, to Montana and South Dakota. And it does indeed look like Obama for President. Senator Clinton has cancelled all engagements after Wednesday morning, has given her advance staff airline tickets home, or to New York to hear her Tuesday night speech, and has told all staffers to turn in their expenses (with receipts). Does this mean she's going to concede? Or at least suspend her campaign? A good question which will probably be answered in the next twenty-four hours. I had always thought she would only be pulled away by brute force, her nails gouging deep troughs in the stage as she was dragged from the podium. But perhaps that's the influence of my wife, who confuses Hillary with Lady Macbeth. (John McCain, on the other hand, reminds me of Mr. Magoo.) Maybe she'll do the decent thing and move to unite the Democratic Party. If not, there will have to be a new thread.

Finally, my astonishment at how well informed the European posters on this board are about American politics. If only we followed our politics as closely as you do. But please don't ask us to comment on European politics. We would probably embarrass ourselves.

 

Obama's people are saying that Hill is on the short list of potential VPs. And Hillary's people are saying that she would be open to the idea...

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/02/clinton.message/index.html

 

Well, at this point the Clinton legacy may be on the line. I think the only reason that it has lasted as long as it has is because it's the Clintons. The Clintons have done a great deal for the good of the Democratic Party, and that is why the calls for Hillary to step aside have been relatively few up to this point. Most likely, by tomorrow morning at this time, Barack will have the requisite number of delegates to secure the nomination. Heck, he may even have it by tonight when the polls close.

The magic number to secure the nomination seems locked in at 2,118 - and if Hillary still tries to continue on once Barack hits that number, then I think there will be many loud calls for her to step aside from party leaders. But I do not think it will come to that. I can respect her for seeing the process through. While I do not buy the Hillary math that places her with the overall lead in the popular vote (Puerto Rico doesn't count because they don't vote in the general election), this election actually is a lot closer than a lot of people seem to think. If you estimate the number of people who partipated in the caucus states (as no official count exists), it is likely that Obama has only received support from a couple hundred thousand more people than Hillary, out of about 35 million total votes between the two. That's really close.

On the topic of vice president: I suspect the two campaigns will come together sometime in the next couple of days and decide what to do. Hillary will not come out and publicly say she wants the VP position without first knowing for sure she'd be offered it. That's about the only way the party won't come together: If Hillary asks to be VP and Barack snubs her. So I do NOT think that will happen. If Barack doesn't want her to be VP, I suspect Hillary will come out and say she does not want to be VP to at least give the appearance that someone else was selected because Hillary wasn't interested. There would be something fitting about breaking the color and gender barrier in the same election...

 

If you'd said that six months ago, I might have been on board. At this point, however, I'm inclined to agree with Taibbi's view. The system has always been broken, but it was never an issue because nobody forced the issue. Until now. Yeah, sure, the system is at fault, and should be fixed. Senator Clinton is also at fault, and should be hurled bodily from the Party.

 

@AMaster: I doubt it would come to that. Sure, if the Democratic party thinks it's such a great idea to purge itself just before general elections and ditch a major figure right now, it could. However, with the amount of support Hillary Clinton has garnered, I'd say that would be a very bad move at a very,very inopportune time*

*: for the Democratic party, of course. John McCain might actually do a little dance if he hears that.

 

I was exercising poetic license.

 

It's official - Obama did it. Hallef***inglujah.

Update: Hillary Clinton is a despicable, classless, narcissistic piece of sh*t. Nice concession speech there, Hill.

Somebody shoot me.