posted
Let's count some of the bullets to the foot already fired.
Michigan and Florida denied democratic representation arbitrarily.
Clinton won lots of delegates in Michigan, and she wants them seated at the convention--but Obama's name had been withdrawn from the ballot at the request of the Democratic National Committee. People in Michigan say they cannot afford to repeat the primary, and it is questionable whether it would even be legal.
Obama failed to put away Clinton on Super Tuesday II, and he is trying to diminish the significance of Clinton's double-digit victories.
Clinton continues her claim that she wins all the big states Democrats have to win, and that most of Obama's wins have come in small states that Republicans usually have won in the past, and probably will again this November.
Something called "Super delegates" are viewed as possibly deciding the final outcome of the race for the nomination. This whole thing looks wierd to the general public, reminiscent of the old "smoke-filled room."
There's probably lots more I could come up with, but that's at least five toes that have already been blown off.
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posted
Obama's campaign is claiming Hilary gained 4 delegates. Do they have data we don't (like results of the caucus)? From CNN's projections (without the caucus data), Hillary gained 18.
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quote:MI and FL werent removed arbitrarily they were pulled because THEY BROKE THE RULES.
They broke the rules of the DNC by making decisions based on them determining when the should hold their primaries with an eye towards actualy having their votes count towards who was selected. The DNC responded by disenfranchizing them (so did the RNC, just not quite as severely). This does make the Democrats look bad and could turn into something very damaging.
quote:Super delegates have been largely how they always run things and as a system it makes sense.
Super delegates have only been around since 1980 and, as they have been drawn into the spotlight during this election, have been viewed with a great deal of disfavor by the voting public.
edited out an uneccesary derogatory comment
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:double digit? puhleaze, every clinton victory in every state that matters is no more then a 49-51 victory on average.
Really? California (52%-43%), New York (57%-40%), and Ohio (54%-44%) don't matter?
A quick perusal reveals that, of all Clinton's victory states, only New Mexico and Texas come close to your numbers.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
By the way, the Michigan/Florida situation has several potential effects. It could cause people in those states to resent the Democratic Party. It could lead to a big push to seat those delegates, which would leave the losing side of that battle feeling disenfranchised, and it could provide moral cover to super delegates who wish to support Clinton (assuming Obama retains his lead). No matter how it plays out, someone will feel as if the party discarded them.
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posted
But I'd argue that Obama spanks Clinton far more often, and in closed primaries, than the other way around.
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quote:Obama's campaign is claiming Hilary gained 4 delegates. Do they have data we don't (like results of the caucus)? From CNN's projections (without the caucus data), Hillary gained 18.
They're banking on picking up those numbers in the Texas caucus where he's currently up by 12% with 39% of the votes in.
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
So, have any of you seen any other articlea like this one? Is it accurate? (It's sure not unbiased! )
Basic Summary: A guy goes through the remaining primaries and hands Clinton fair to big wins in each. She still comes up short in delegates.
Posts: 254 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
pooka - Go ahead with the reader's guide, it could be very helpful.
Mucus - Have your penny ready. I want it in my hand by election day.
I read the other day that the governor of Florida said he would be okay with holding a new primary. Primaries are paid for by the state, cacuses are paid for by the party. Granholm I believe is still sticking to "no" for a new Michigan vote. But this could be interesting if Florida DOES vote over again. It could be crucial for Clinton.
Let's face it though, by any estimation, Clinton didn't pick up more than 20 delegates yesterday yes? I posted this a week ago:
March 8th - Wyoming (12) March 11th - Mississippi (33) April 22nd - Pennsylvania (151) May 3rd - Guam (3) May 6th - Indiana (66) & North Carolina (115) May 13th - West Virginia (26) May 20th - Kentucky (47) & Oregon (48) June 3rd - Montana (15) & South Dakota (14) June 7th - Puerto Rico (55)
And looking at it, having only picked up a few delegates, where in that schedule does she really see it happening? She's still down 90+ pledged delegates, and pledged delegates are what matters here. Wyoming and Mississippi will go Obama over the next week, possibly erasing whatever gains she has made thus far. She might win 60/40 in Pennsylvania, cutting into his lead again, but he'll take North Carolina by a good margin, and she might take Indiana but he'll still be up by at least 50 pledged delegates, probably more. She'd have to win by very, very high margins to make up the deficit, and I don't see that happening.
Unless Florida revotes and Obama is crushed, or there's a huge scandal, I don't see what is going to happen to get Clinton into the lead. It was those 11 straight losses, he built up too much of a lead, and yesterday, for all intents and purposes was a wash, much like Obama is saying. She might have snapped his momentum in some quasi real emotional way, but she did nothing to stop his lead when it comes to what matters: delegates.
I'll maintain what I said the other day and say that Obama has already won. I'll ammend what I said though to add that it's just going to take quite awhile for anyone to realize it.
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quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: MI and FL werent removed arbitrarily they were pulled because THEY BROKE THE RULES.
Actually, Florida Democrats had nothing to do with that. The decision to move the primary up was made by the Republican-controlled legislature. Democrats didn't have a say in their disenfranchisement. Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm is in favor of a Democratic redo of the primary. But it is not just up to her, and someone will have to pay for it. Michigan is suffering a one-state recession.
The thing is, over half a million people voted in the Democratic primary on Jan. 15, despite everything, and it seems like a betrayal of democracy itself for them to be disenfranchised. No one cares how much authority the Democratic National Committee arrogates to itself; no one agrees that they have the right to disenfranchize half a million citizens. This will properly and deservedly be held against the Democratic party if it is not fixed.
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
What are they going to do whine about? They broke rules, if theyre seated then they'll be seated on a 50/50 basis only fair way. Otherwise by seating them its not fair to Obama.
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posted
Ron, when did she say that? I just heard her on NPR the other day at the governor's meeting in DC say that she doesn't favor a redo, for a caucus or a primary.
I'm okay with having another primary...I don't think it'd be fair, but I don't think the status quo is fair either. Nothing that can be done will make this fair, the DNC already poisoned the well. When would we vote? June? That'd push this thing far beyond when it SHOULD go. There's just no good solution.
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posted
I am actually in favor of taking Florida and Michigan do their primaries again, and then moving every single primary or Caucus to April 22 so that this doesn't drag out. Then, we could get an agreement between Obama and Clinton that whomever comes out with more total delegates after that April 22 is the nominee and the other will drop out, and then begin to run against John McCain. But that is a pipe dream and may even be illegal at that...
A while back I posted what I think will happen, and I think yesterday's results kind of bear that out. Clinton will win Pennsylvania but still be short of delegates, she will insist on seating Florida and Michigan and Obama will fight that, the Democratic Party will probably allow Michigan and Florida to vote again but neither campaign will want that to happen (Clinton because she already "won" them and Obama because he knows he would probably lose them), and then the Democrats will go to the convention. At the convention, the democratic party will seat those delegates according to how they voted on in January because they don't want the legal fights and they don't want to disenfrachise those states, Hillary Clinton will then win the nomination based on wins in Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan, and because of her lead in super-delegates. It might even be a brokered convention, though I see no way that Obama accepts the VP slot.
I think Clinton will get this nomination at the convention, and like they always do, the Democrats will simply try to give away the election to the Republicans. The problem, I think, is simple: Hillary Clinton is the establishment, she has the democratic party machine at her back, and Barack Obama does not.
Ties or near ties always go to the champion, and Hillary Clinton is the champion.
Posts: 457 | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
I don't see it happening. The Superdelegates will either vote to abstain or will vote en masse for the pledged delegate winner. The party leadership has already said near as much.
Unless they revote, FL and MI won't count until after the candidate is chosen. Clinton likely WILL win PA, but any gains she makes there will be wiped out in subsequent states like North Carolina and maybe Indiana.
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Neither state is willing to pay for another election. There is a chance I suppose of new elections happening, but there seems to be universal disagreement on what action should be taken. The DNC will not allow the old elections to count, the convention would have to allow it in August, which means revote or not count.
Some Floridian lawmakers said they were considering a measure to remove the Democratic nominee from the presidential ballot in November, which probably won't be constitutional, but it's a sign of how heated the discussion is becoming.
In the end someone might have to bite the bullet, or they'll have a lot of pissed off Democrats in two extremely important states come the General.
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posted
And they'll have a lot of pissed off democrats in the rest of the country if they are seated the way they are.
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Obama was polling way ahead in Indiana, last time I checked.
Clinton remains a threat in that I'm fairly certain her victory in Texas was bolstered by Republican crossover, and her margin in Ohio was wider than the polls, and now that the Republican nomination is down to McCain and Paul, and Huckabee isn't out there to act as a lightning rod for evangelicals, Clinton's numbers are going to go way up in any open states. That's the question, who has won closed primaries and what primaries that remain are open?
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Lyrhawn, I heard her say that yesterday, on one of the news shows.
Here is an excerpt from Examiner.com:
quote:Mar 5, 2008 9:15 PM (13 hrs ago) By NEDRA PICKLER, AP WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Officials in Michigan and Florida are showing renewed interest in holding repeat presidential nominating contests so that their votes will count in the epic Democratic campaign.
The Michigan governor, along with top officials in Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign and Florida's state party chair, are now saying they would consider holding a sort of do-over contest by June. That's a change from their previous insistence that the primaries their states held in January should determine how the their delegates are allocated.
However, the Freep (Detroit Free Press) has this apparently contradictory statement, also dated March 5:
quote:Granholm, who is a Clinton supporter, told the Free Press last night a publicly financed second primary is out of the question: The first one cost $10 million.
Perhaps she is hoping for a caucus, which would cost a lot less; or for financing the primary by the Democratic National Committee.
Ah, yes--here is how the Detroit News has it in an article dated March 6 (today):
quote:Granholm, who is a Democrat and a Clinton backer, said she might favor a privately funded caucus or a "firehouse primary" agreed to by both presidential candidates. But she doesn't want another election paid for by Michigan taxpayers, who already shelled out about $12 million for the Jan. 15 contest. A firehouse primary is a vote of declared Democrats who would stop by a fire station or union hall that would be open all day and vote by secret ballot.
See, you get better news reporting from the Detroit News.
(That's an inside dig which Lyrhawn should appreciate--the "Freep" is known to be a Democrat-favoring newspaper, while its erstwhile publishing twin, the Detroit News, is widely regarded as Republican-favoring.)
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posted
Hmm, I wonder why they couldn't have us vote online, like we did for the 2004 (2003 actually) Democratic primary in Michigan. I participated in that--I voted for Sen. Joseph Lieberman. But he did not become the nominee, so I voted for Bush in the general election.
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quote:Actually, Florida Democrats had nothing to do with that. The decision to move the primary up was made by the Republican-controlled legislature. Democrats didn't have a say in their disenfranchisement.
According to an interview I heard on NPR yesterday with Howard Dean, it seems as if Florida Democrats could have bowed out of the state system if they wanted to and had their primary or caucus at a time of their choosing. Apparently the DNC offered to help pay for it.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
Only 2 of the remaining states have Open primaries: Mississippi and Montana. Several have Modified Primaries which were established to avoid crossover voting. Though some of them are so far out, it's possible people could change their party affiliation between now and then.
Right after Super Tuesday, a guy on the News Hour mentioned that Puerto Rico, the last primary of all, is winner take all with 63 delegates. Maybe they will leverage this into statehood bid.
So here's a question, are the people on Puerto Rico part of Clinton's Hispanic bloc?
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
PuertoRico coulda become a state since before you were born. But there are too many advantages to remaining a territory. I think that there's been a PuertoRican vote for full independence that came closer to passage than any of their votes for statehood.
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:PuertoRico coulda become a state since before you were born.
When, exactly, do you think I was born? I realize you may be older still, but "before you were born" suggest to me that you feel my opinion is invalid due to my youth.
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posted
On Indiana - I know that Obama was polling way ahead according to the last poll, but, there was a HUGE number of undecideds in that poll, like 25%. Besides, Indiana is going to be a weird state. There are a lot of rural areas that Clinton does well in, but the northwest end of the state is going to be strong Obama country. If the map looks anything like Ohio did, east Chicago, Indianapolis, maybe Gary and Ft. Wayne will go to Obama (and possibly Bloomington) and the whole rest of the state will go to Clinton. I'm not sure how many blue collar workers are in Indiana, but again, anything like Ohio and those numbers will change fast. We won't see new polling data soon though I think (could be wrong).
Ron -
Thanks, and yes, I did appreciate the dig . That sort of lines up with what I'd heard, that she refused to hold another primary that the state had to pay for, but I hadn't heard her feelings on another vote that someone else funded, or some such. Good luck getting both candidates to agree on any real format, but Obama has to walk a much finer line if he doesn't want to piss either of us off. We're both swing states. Thanks again for the links and such.
Lisa - A third to a half of Puerto Rico wants to become a state at any given time. There are a few different major political parties on the island, one of which wants statehood, one wants to stay a commonwealth, and one wants independence. They vote on it every dozen years or so, the most recent in the late 90's, and the numbers inch up and back down again. If they were admitted, they'd be the new poorest state of the Union. It really depends on what's going on at the time, but there is significant support for and against statehood. We aren't the ones currently standing in their way. I wouldn't be surprised one day though if they became the 51st state.
It's very likely that Puerto Rico won't matter by the time they make it there in the voting, and no, I don't think they'd count as anything near Clinton's usual hispanic voting bloc. Hispanics in America have wildly different issues than hispanics living in their own territory outside the US.
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posted
I think that the MI and FL democratic parties should each set up a fund to pay for a re-vote (caucus or primary, which ever is cheaper and ok with the national party). Allow people to contribute to it like they contribute to candidates or political parties. Let the candidates put in money they've already raised, if they want to. Last month Clinton raised $35 million and Obama $55 million. Let them raise money for the revote if they want to have a revote.
Just my $0.02. There may very well be some campaign financing law preventing parts of this plan though, I don't know.
posted
I read Puerto Rico's labor law summary recently. They get a ton of paid holidays, at least for full time permanent workers.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
In reply to fugu13's estimate of the cost of Iraq: the three trillion dollar war. Knew it was around, but couldn't remember sufficiently limiting keywords until I heard "congressional testimony".
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
It's a rather a large leap of faith, Enigmatic, to believe that either Granholm or Crist would allow a revote even if private individuals gave each state the money to hold another primary.
Michigan Democratic leaders colluded with the Republicans to override the majority of Michigan's Democratic legislators to create a Convention fight. Granholm has admitted they rigged the Primary to ensure that Clinton was the sole major candidate. 1) Michigan has another state primary still upcoming. 2) Even if they don't want to merge that state primary with a presidential redo, another $10million (for another election to correct the dirty-trick they perpetrated upon Michigan voters) is $1per$45thousand of their $45billion state budget. I could easily find the money in their budget without compromising the amount spent on the Michigan public by one cent. 3) Clinton has probably already pulled close to all of the votes she's gonna get in Michigan. It ain't as if Obama and Edwards and Biden and Richardson supporters are gonna be all gung-ho about showing up to vote for a candidate who helped strip them of their Primary votes. And Kucinich, Dodd, and Gavel voters would vote for a dog before supporting anyone who hasn't admitted that support for the IraqInvasion was a MAJOR mistake. Which Clinton still hasn't apologized for. So if Clinton were to become the Nominee, the Michigan GeneralElection comes down to who are the most apathetic, Republicans or Democrats.
In Florida, the Republican governor and the Republican-controlled legislature chose to disenfranchise Democratic voters. And they have no incentive to prevent disruption in the DemocraticConvention. 1) Florida has another state primary still upcoming. 2) Even if they have no desire to merge the state primary with the presidential, the cost of another election is less than a drop in the bucket when compared to the Florida budget. And there is the same ease in finding those ill-used funds to instead fund an election. 3) If Clinton were to become the Nominee, McCain wins Florida. While the Primary was just fair enough that very few Democrat-leaning voters would boycott the GeneralElection, it was hardly conducive to generating an enthusiastic turnout for the Democratic Nominee. However, Republican-leaning voters HATE the Clintons: for ElianGonzales deportation to Cuba, for gun-control legislation, and for so many etc's that ya might as well include for closing the FBI's X-Files office. With a little luck for Republicans*, that hatred could produce a HUGE antiClinton turnout which will create a McCain landslide that buries a significant number of Democratic officeholders.
So Crist and Granholm have no intention of allowing a redo. All the other stuff they're spouting is pure smokescreen -- in the manner of Dubya on carbon caps -- to coverup the fact that the current situation is exactly what they want.
* Such as a major hurricane causing a massive input of federal reconstruction dollars that'll boost the Florida economy.
posted
It's also as unfair to Clinton as seating the originally selected delegates would be to Obama.
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quote:In Florida, the Republican governor and the Republican-controlled legislature chose to disenfranchise Democratic voters. And they have no incentive to prevent disruption in the DemocraticConvention.
The Florida Democratic party could have opted out of the Florida-run primary had it wanted to. The Republicans didn't disenfranchise anyone.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: It's also as unfair to Clinton as seating the originally selected delegates would be to Obama.
Since when is rectifying the fact that she was the only name on the ballot unfair?
quote:to coverup the fact that the current situation is exactly what they want.m -- aspectre
I'll buy that they wanted to have the option, but I think the original scenario counted on the Republican nomination happening differently, either one of the divisive guys leading (Giuliani or Romney) or the Republicans having a 3 or 4 way race into the spring.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
As often happens in matters of political analysis (as opposed to ideology), I found myself agreeing with Pat Buchanan (on "Morning Joe" - MSNBC) this morning when he said that the Republican National Committee was a lot smarter in how they handled this issue with Michigan and Florida.
The RNC penalized the two states by cutting their delegate numbers in half.
As Buchanan rightly pointed out, if the DNC had handled the situation of the two states bucking the rules, they wouldn't be in the fix they're in now.
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quote:Why? Both candidates would be on the ballot and both would have the same opportunity to campaign.
Because changing the rules in the middle is the root harm here. Each candidate made decisions based on the rules, and Clinton broke no rule by being on the ballot in Michigan. Campaign budgeting decisions have been made based on the current rules. Positioning in other states was done based on those rules.
It's one thing to say it's unfair to retroactively recognize the Michigan primary results. But that doesn't mean it's fair to retroactively change other aspects of the selection process, either.
quote:Since when is rectifying the fact that she was the only name on the ballot unfair?
The other candidates chose to keep their names off the ballot. I thought this was stupid from the get go. IIRC, Clinton was on the ballot because her Michigan campaign did its job and got her on it BEFORE the DNC decision striking the delegates.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
In which case the Michigan delegates should not be seated. Senator Clinton and her supporter the govenor of Michigan, are arguing that they should be. That would be even more "changing the rules in the middle". They should not be rewarded for rigging the system and then not abiding by the rules.
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