USA Presidential Politics - 2008

[sctx]

so did hillary find a new campaign manager or is she running it herself???

[Jacko]

Originally Posted by sctx

so did hillary find a new campaign manager or is she running it herself???

Maggie's doing it!

[roni]

Originally Posted by ryberg

That was obviously a comment from a personal perspective. It does not indicate some ongoing sense of being victimized, as you suggested.

Sounded like it to me. Sorry if I misread you.

[roni]

Originally Posted by Jacko

Maggie's doing it!

Ain't gonna work on Maggie's Farm no more

Comes to mind

[sctx]

Originally Posted by Jacko

Maggie's doing it!

you've got to be kidding........ how long till Obama reports mysteriously missing files???......... I think Karl is the only one that can save her at this point

[Mr Cancun]

Originally Posted by sctx

you've got to be kidding........ how long till Obama reports mysteriously missing files???......... I think Karl is the only one that can save her at this point

Or Sandy "docs in the socks" Burglar.

[Sol]

Originally Posted by Just Lucky

I think you should ring her on her cell.

I've got to say the endorsement from the MAPA website is awesome political writing! Do you by chance know who the author is? Very stirring.

Nativo V. Lopez who is the president of MAPA wrote the statement.
I tried to call and left a message. She's supposed to call me later.

[Just Lucky]

Originally Posted by Sol

Nativo V. Lopez who is the president of MAPA wrote the statement.
I tried to call and left a message. She's supposed to call me later.

I've been waiting for Bill and her to ring about my ideas on pushing healthcare reform through Congress for some time now.


Maybe when they have some time on their hands.....

I'm still blown away by Lopez's writing style. It may be the the that pushes me to vote for Obama. I've been thinkin' of voting for Edwards as a sort of protest/ give him the VP slot thing. I find myself leaning more towards Obama although I see some flaws in some of things he's said. Just think all twelve Democrats in Texas could actually have some impact.

[roni]

I am a big admirer of James Carville:

(CNN) — He hinted at a similar sentiment earlier this week on CNN, but James Carville – a supporter of Hillary Clinton’s White House run — was decidedly more blunt Wednesday on the impact a loss in Texas or Ohio would have on her presidential bid.

"Make no mistake," Bill Clinton's former chief strategist told the Orlando Sentinel. "If she loses either Texas or Ohio, this thing is done."

The Clinton campaign has increasingly placed importance on those two March 4 primaries following eight straight losses for the New York Democrat since Super Tuesday. On Tuesday night, she was swept in the so called Potomac primary, losing to Obama in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia.

In a conference call with reporters earlier Wednesday, Clinton campaign aides noted 60 percent of the remaining delegates are in Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania — all states where polls show the New York senator is leading Obama. But delegates in those states will not be awarded on a winner-take-all basis, and Clinton staffers said Wednesday that their expectation was that the two candidates would be within 25 delegates of each other following the March 4 contests.

Obama campaign aides said Wednesday they believe it is nearly impossible for Clinton to catch up to Obama in the delegate count under the current guidelines, even if she wins all three contests.

Speaking on CNN's The Situation Room earlier this week, Carville struck a similar note.

"The truth is that Sen. Clinton has to win Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania," he said. "If she wins those three, she's probably the nominee. If she loses one of those three, then Sen. Obama is probably going to be the nominee. That's a fact."

[ryberg]

Read this view of its origin from someone there in the middle of it at the time and see if you can still put together a lot of arguments for this system of superdelegates!

A couple of the choicer bits:

The prevailing wisdom was that the problem was all the fringe types who came out of the woodwork every four years to dominate the caucuses and primaries, leaving the "regulars," the "elders" and the establishment heading out the door . . . "Fringe types" was code for feminists, gays, minorities and crazed environmentalists. What we needed, in many minds, were more white guys with cigars . . .

It's not democratic. It's closing up the system when we should be opening it up. Exactly, more than one person said to me. About time, others muttered.

That was, dare I say, the idea . . .

Of course, the Democratic National Committee then made things better, or worse, depending upon your perspective: They added themselves to the deal as superdelegates. While the DNC is indeed equally divided, hack is a proud term for many of its long-term members, of whom I was one. When you're talking about the DNC, you're talking about Capital-D Democrat, not small-d democracy. These are people who get picked, not elected.

it's hard to blame my old buddy Donna Brazile for not wanting the power that is being given to her, as one of them. The truth is they shouldn't have it. Wrong then and wrong now. But unintended? Not even close.

Steve

[ryberg]

Yes, that's what everybody seems to be saying about those big states, but some are saying that Obama may win enough votes in them, especially with this momentum, to eat away at her delegate totals such that he still becomes the nominee, even if she wins them all. One said she needs to win them each with 60% of the votes to stay in the race, mathematically.

Steve

[roni]

Originally Posted by ryberg

Yes, that's what everybody seems to be saying about those big states, but some are saying that Obama may win enough votes in them, especially with this momentum, to eat away at her delegate totals such that he still becomes the nominee, even if she wins them all. One said she needs to win them each with 60% of the votes to stay in the race, mathematically.

Steve

I think you are discounting the superdelegates Steve. One line of reasoning is that if Illinois is the only big state that Obama wins, he loses the nomination via the supers.

Veremos amigo, veremos.

[ryberg]

Originally Posted by roni

I think you are discounting the superdelegates Steve. One line of reasoning is that if Illinois is the only big state that Obama wins, he loses the nomination via the supers.

Veremos amigo, veremos.

Well I certainly haven't tried to run the numbers myself, but it does not seem that the article I was thinking of is discounting the superdelegates:

Indeed, for the first time since Iowa, BHO is ahead of HRC in terms of committed delegates. He’s even ahead, by most counts, after superdelegates are factored in. According to Chuck Todd, the political director at NBC, for Clinton to regain her lead will require her to win more than 55 percent of the delegates up for grabs in the nineteen states that still remain to vote, which means carrying the states where she has a shot with roughly 60 percent of the vote . . .

The argument against the Clinton plan is easy enough to grasp: that with two more routs in Hawaii and Wisconsin, Obama’s already thunderous momentum may simply be unstoppable. The counterargument is that Texas and Ohio amount to the whole ball of wax: Unless Clinton wins both by substantial margins [my emphasis], she is toast. As a matter of fact, more than one Clinton campaign official said exactly this to me on the phone yesterday. My first reaction was, holy cow, talk about a bleak outlook — too bleak, I thought. But that was before the results rolled in from Maryland and Virginia. By the end of the night, staring hard at the delegate totals and working my slide rule, I realized the Clinton people weren’t being excessively grim. They were, for the first and maybe the last time, being completely realistic. [source]

But yes, we will see...

I couldn't help but miss this nice disparity of views on this just within my own state of CO, which went clearly for Obama over Clinton but where each has 4 superdelegates to his/her credit and 6 are still uncommitted:

[Mannie] Rodriguez, a party official from Colorado, reserves the right to back Clinton, no matter that Colorado and a majority of other states have so far chosen Obama.

"I do not go with the candidate who is always winning. I go with the candidate I believe in," he wrote recently to a voter who asked how he could side against the Democratic voters in his own state.

[but]

"The super delegates will vote for whoever is in the lead" among pledged delegates, said Colorado restaurateur Debbie Marquez, a super delegate who backs Obama.

So there you have it: clear as mud.

Steve

[Jacko]

"The super delegates will vote for whoever is in the lead" among pledged delegates, said Colorado restaurateur Debbie Marquez, a super delegate who backs Obama"

A restauranteur, a super delegate and right all at the same time...I love this Debbie Marquez!

(oh yeah..and she backs Obama!)

[ryberg]

Originally Posted by Jacko

"The super delegates will vote for whoever is in the lead" among pledged delegates, said Colorado restaurateur Debbie Marquez, a super delegate who backs Obama"

A restauranteur, a super delegate and right all at the same time...I love this Debbie Marquez!

(oh yeah..and she backs Obama!)

Well, yeah, but the punch line of course is that her view and effort in this regard is simply negated by her co-CO superdelegate's approach to it.

Steve