dajafi wrote:Hillary Clinton: full to bursting with crap

Hillary Clinton on Monday explained away Barack Obama's clean sweep of the weekend's caucuses and primaries as a product of a caucus system that favors "activists" and, in the case of the Louisiana primary, an energized African-American community.
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She also downplayed many of Obama's Super Tuesday victories, describing them as states that Democrats should not expect to win in November.

"It is highly unlikely we will win Alaska or North Dakota or Idaho or Nebraska," she said, naming several of Obama's red state wins. "But we have to win Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Florida, Michigan … And we've got to be competitive in places like Texas, Missouri and Oklahoma."

Right, because Texas and Oklahoma are real swing states there. And who won Missouri last week?

Every time I find myself starting to think she might not be so bad, Clinton or one of her spokesweasels comes out and makes some blatantly insulting ("Obama's whole campaign is predicated on a speech he gave in 2002") or so-stupid-it's-insulting statement like this one, and I remember that these people, for all their smarts and good policy instincts, essentially just suck.

Someone on CNN said yesterday (I'm paraphrasing from memory) that Hillary Clinton isn't doing well in caucuses because her voter base is basically lower/lower middle class folks, and they generally can't afford to take time off from work to attend the caucuses. I'm wondering, could there be any validity to this?

jerseyhoya wrote:I'm voting in eight hours. It's funny/weird that I work in politics but haven't voted in almost three years.

BTW, how do Republicans get 16 delegates from DC? How many people will vote in this? I might get like .01 delegate just for my vote. Heh.

In California the winner of each Congressional district gets three delegates. In one district there were 110,000 votes in the Republican primary. In my district there were 10,000. I joked that if I could get three friends to vote for McCain he'd win the district and I'd be a delegate. He won the district with 4,500 votes, 1,500 per delegate.

Waited in line for 22 minutes, about 1/3 of which was outside in the cold.

I was the 97th person to vote at the precinct at 8:45. I have no idea if that's high turnout or not, but it seems pretty high. I'm guessing twenty or so were Republicans, but that's based on nothing. I know at least one other was, because my roommate voted before me. The stack of Democratic ballots was a lot higher in the to give out pile.

We had the choice of electronic or paper ballots, I chose paper cause the person in front of me did. It was easy enough. The type where you have to connect the two lines with the number two pencil. I think I liked the machines better in NJ. Next time I'll ask for an electronic ballot and see what that is like.

Oh democracy.

Laexile wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:I'm voting in eight hours. It's funny/weird that I work in politics but haven't voted in almost three years.

BTW, how do Republicans get 16 delegates from DC? How many people will vote in this? I might get like .01 delegate just for my vote. Heh.

In California the winner of each Congressional district gets three delegates. In one district there were 110,000 votes in the Republican primary. In my district there were 10,000. I joked that if I could get three friends to vote for McCain he'd win the district and I'd be a delegate. He won the district with 4,500 votes, 1,500 per delegate.

That pretty well demonstrates how insane it is that DC gets 16 Republican delegates.

In 2004, Bush got 21k votes in the District. I can't imagine GOP turnout will be much above the 10,000 you got in your CD. But instead of 3 delegates, we get 16. You were way overrepresented in CA with your 3 delegates. What the heck am I?

I got there at 8:00. There was only one other person in front of me. Walked in and out.

jerseyhoya wrote:

traderdave wrote:

dajafi wrote:This might not be so good...

Dick Morris calls the race for Obama

Not sure where he gets "including likely victories in Pennsylvania"; Clinton had a 20-point lead in the Keystone poll as of 1/14/08. Granted that IS down from 33-points in Nov 07 and 28-points in Dec 07 but to say likely victory is probably a stretch. I think it will be closer than 20-points but I still think Clinton takes PA in the 10-point range.

The real point is that if Obama does what is expected between now and the 19th and stays close in Texas and Ohio, Clinton is in big trouble. If Obama wins one of those two it is over.

Re: Where he gets including likely victories in Pennsylvania...It's Dick Morris. He just makes up whatever he wants to fit in with whatever sells his latest storyline.

Re: If Obama wins one of Ohio or Texas it is over...Why? I mean, I guess if Hillary gets pummeled between now and then she probably needs to win both. But how many delegates are up for grabs between now and then, 300? If she loses those 180-120, she's within a shout of him going into Texas and Ohio. A draw can make her "the comeback kid" and then she has a reason to fight on through PA.

According to RCP, Obama has a 79 pledged delegate lead going into the 12th and 19th contests (all of which, according to polling, favor Obama). Assuming your #s, Clinton would be down by 140 or so pledged delegates going into TX and OH. Let's assume she wins Texas by 10%; she won CA (a state with nearly twice as many delegates than Texas) by the same amount and netted 43 delegates.

Even giving her the full 43 delegates, she would still trail Obama by 100 before OH. If he wins Ohio to maintain a 100-120 delegate lead I think the writing is on the wall and super delegates will start to flock to Obama because there would only be two big states left - PA and NC. It is very unlikely that Clinton nets 110 delegates from those two states. At some point, the party is going to start to consolidate to one candidate for the good of the party.

And I'll tell you something else, if the party pulls some crap like Obama wins the most pledged delegates but the supers put Clinton over the top or if the party chooses to seat Michigan and Florida (essentially changing the rules in the middle of the game) to put Clinton over the top, I'm unaffiliating.

Of course, all that said, I am a relative politics newbie so I'm not in the best position to debate delegates/politics with an insider.

Where the heck did this "pledged delegate" thing come from? When delegates are won in this first place, they're not pledged yet?

Houshphandzadeh wrote:Where the heck did this "pledged delegate" thing come from? When delegates are won in this first place, they're not pledged yet?

I think the delegates are generally viewed as "pledged" and "super" delegates. The pledged delegates are linked to the primaries and caucuses while the super delegates are one-for-one votes from party insiders; essentially they are the parties way of rigging the game. Super delegate votes can change up to the minute they are cast.

traderdave wrote:According to RCP, Obama has a 79 pledged delegate lead going into the 12th and 19th contests (all of which, according to polling, favor Obama). Assuming your #s, Clinton would be down by 140 or so pledged delegates going into TX and OH. Let's assume she wins Texas by 10%; she won CA (a state with nearly twice as many delegates than Texas) by the same amount and netted 43 delegates.

Even giving her the full 43 delegates, she would still trail Obama by 100 before OH. If he wins Ohio to maintain a 100-120 delegate lead I think the writing is on the wall and super delegates will start to flock to Obama because there would only be two big states left - PA and NC. It is very unlikely that Clinton nets 110 delegates from those two states. At some point, the party is going to start to consolidate to one candidate for the good of the party.

And I'll tell you something else, if the party pulls some crap like Obama wins the most pledged delegates but the supers put Clinton over the top or if the party chooses to seat Michigan and Florida (essentially changing the rules in the middle of the game) to put Clinton over the top, I'm unaffiliating.

Of course, all that said, I am a relative politics newbie so I'm not in the best position to debate delegates/politics with an insider.

I'm sure you're following the Democratic race more closely than I am, and you're in plenty good position to debate it with anyone on the board.

I guess I just don't see the super delegates moving to wrap this thing up after March 4th unless Hillary completely flames out.

If there's no major movement in the Super Delegate numbers between now and then, a 140 pledged delegate lead is well under 100 in total delegates. Something definitely in the too close to call range.

There was an article I posted a while back about Puerto Rico maybe giving all 63 of its delegates to one candidate (in June). If that one candidate was Hillary, that would cut the pledged delegate lead in half. I think as long as this thing stays close enough to parity, where seating Florida and Michigan would make a difference, the show will go on. I think that happens if Hillary wins either Ohio or Texas.

jerseyhoya wrote:

Laexile wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:I'm voting in eight hours. It's funny/weird that I work in politics but haven't voted in almost three years.

BTW, how do Republicans get 16 delegates from DC? How many people will vote in this? I might get like .01 delegate just for my vote. Heh.

In California the winner of each Congressional district gets three delegates. In one district there were 110,000 votes in the Republican primary. In my district there were 10,000. I joked that if I could get three friends to vote for McCain he'd win the district and I'd be a delegate. He won the district with 4,500 votes, 1,500 per delegate.

That pretty well demonstrates how insane it is that DC gets 16 Republican delegates.

In 2004, Bush got 21k votes in the District. I can't imagine GOP turnout will be much above the 10,000 you got in your CD. But instead of 3 delegates, we get 16. You were way overrepresented in CA with your 3 delegates. What the heck am I?

I wonder how we'll compare. To have the same ratio the winner will have 24,000 votes or 54,000 votes overall. I don't know how many votes Bush got in 2004 in my district. In 2006 Diane Watson got every vote in the Congressional election. Each campaign needed to come up with six delegates, including alternates, for this district. I imagine it was tough.

RCP has Obama up 1,004 to 925 in pledged delegates. Based on polls that could be 1,104 to 993 after today. The last Wisconsin pollhad Clinton up 50% to 41%. Ohio was before Edwards dropped out. It was 42% to 19% Clinton. Texas was 48% to 38% Clinton. Rhode Island is 36% to 28% Clinton. After losing so many in a row all this may change.

Patrick Ruffini, one of the smartest political observers/bloggers/consultants on the right has an interesting spreadsheet prediction of the way things are going to go delegate wise. I don't know he's figuring in enough momentum for Obama, and he does have Hillary winning Ohio and Texas.

Anything like this on Kos? Probably done through more Obama colored glasses. Be interesting to compare.

I don't read Kos regularly--I check it every two weeks or so to see if there's news nobody else seems to have--but here's my take on the race:

Clinton is counting on Texas and Ohio to save her. But I'm increasingly thinking that unless Obama really screws up in the next two weeks, it's not going to happen. Assuming he wins the three today, that's eight in a row; we'll be seeing clear momentum for the first time in this race. He's got the edge in money, and he's better organized on the ground.

(An interesting meme starting to circulate on the center/left, and at least subtly from Obama himself, is that Hillary's "experience" and managerial argument is undercut by the fact that he's run such a clearly better campaign--more stable, better resourced, tactically stronger. I find it hard to argue with; this is a, maybe the, big difference between Dean '04 and Obama '08. In terms of both charisma and organizational heft, Obama represents a phenomenon the Democrats haven't seen probably since RFK--and even he was disadvantaged by not getting into the race until March '68. Clinton in '92 came fairly close, but he had no strong competition.)

Those money and organizational advantages are multiplied by the fact that the more time Obama has to focus on a state, the better he tends to do there. Unlike the big Super Tuesday states, he'll get to do some serious campaigning in Ohio and Texas.

Clinton certainly might still win both. She's got the support of Gov. Strickland in Ohio, and she's supposedly well organized in the Texas "primacaucus." But her delegate wins there, if at all, probably won't be enough to get her the lead back. And it's now setting up expectations-wise that if she does lose either, she's probably finished.

So this could end in three weeks.

I think Ohio is critical, in part because it's a Bush state the Democrats need to and probably should win in 2008. In that respect, the primary provides some insight into the whole electability issue.

traderdave wrote:Not sure where he gets "including likely victories in Pennsylvania"; Clinton had a 20-point lead in the Keystone poll as of 1/14/08. Granted that IS down from 33-points in Nov 07 and 28-points in Dec 07 but to say likely victory is probably a stretch. I think it will be closer than 20-points but I still think Clinton takes PA in the 10-point range.

Morris may not be that off base. Bill Clinton's goof in South Carolina has energized the African American vote, which spells trouble for Hillary in Philadelphia. In addition, Obama has demonstrated the ability to pull in demographics in the last month that many wouldn't have expected. He's now getting the affluent white male vote in the Democratic party, which could give him a big part of the Philadelphia suburbs.

jerseyhoya wrote:Patrick Ruffini, one of the smartest political observers/bloggers/consultants on the right has an interesting spreadsheet prediction of the way things are going to go delegate wise. I don't know he's figuring in enough momentum for Obama, and he does have Hillary winning Ohio and Texas.

He has 3,203 of the 4,049. The 4,049 includes over 313 Michigan and Florida delegates. Will they get these 3013? Will a candidate still need 2,025 if they don't? Of the remaining delegates, around 450 are super delegates, 56 are in primaries that have happened and are unassigned, and Edwards has 26.

Without those 800 delegates it'll be impossible for one candidate to get 2,025. They'd have to get every other delegate out there.

The wit and wisdom of Huckabee

That's not ironic, by the way. He's really clever. I wouldn't vote for him, but I'd probably watch his talk show...

My boss just walked out muttering, "Guess I have to go vote for McCain. Ran into Ed Rollins at lunch."

CAN YOU FEEL THE LOVE AND EXCITEMENT?!

dajafi wrote:The wit and wisdom of Huckabee

That's not ironic, by the way. He's really clever. I wouldn't vote for him, but I'd probably watch his talk show...

These three quotes are great:

On running for the United States Senate if this presidential thing doesn’t work out: “It’s more likely I’ll dye my hair green, get a bunch of tattoos and go on tour with Amy Winehouse.”

On why Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton seems to be struggling right now: “She does not have the personality of her husband. Very few people do.”

On why Senator Barack Obama appears to be beating her: “The American people are not looking for someone who can fix a carburetor. They’re looking for someone who can drive the car.”

I thought the Winehouse line was the best.