Well, taking the weekend off was nice to regenerate the batteries but the campaign slogs on and on.
Basically, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, the leader in popular votes and delegates over Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Party, seems to be making headway among the so-called "superdelegates" with the proposition that he should receive the presidential nomination.
He leads Senator Clinton in the realclearpolitics.com delegate tally by 133 out of 3,131 delegates either pledged or committed (including superdelegates, those Democratic convention delegates who are given voting privileges because of their status within the party). He also leads in the popular vote by 717,000 votes out of 25,993,612 cast. These are not large margins--2.6 percent in the popular vote and 4.2 percent in the delegate count.
But they are leads and if the convention were held today, he would win, and rightly so.
However, the convention is not today, it is in August and there are still some ten contests to go. They will be held in states and territories that are more favorable to Senator Clinton than Senator Obama. The political analyst Michael Barone looked at the remaining contests in his U.S. News and World Report blog:
(http://www.usnews.com/blogs/barone/2008/3/28/projection-clinton-wins-popular-vote-obama-wins-delegate-count.html
He basically says it is possible, given past voting patterns in demographically equal areas among states that have already voted, that Sen. Clinton could sprint past Senator Obama in the popular vote total in the primaries.
Much would depend upon the June 1 vote in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, but if Sen. Clinton can win big there, it is possible for her to erase his popular vote lead, but the delegate lead would remain with Senator Obama.
This scenario, if it came to pass, would truly be the train wreck that Democrats are fearing. Then the superdelegates would be forced to choose which candidates' lead would be more critical: the delegates or the popular votes. Since neither would have enough delegates to claim the nomination on the first ballot, it would be an excruciatingly difficult choice for superdelegates to make in the hothouse of a nationally-televised convention.
Perhaps that is why some superdelegates are seeking a "superdelegate" convention to award the nomination to Senator Obama (who picked up some key endorsements over the weekend from previously uncommitted Democrats).
But this is like conceding a soccer match down a goal with ten minutes to play. Senator Clinton gains nothing by conceding at this point, according to many observers (including me). If Senator Obama loses by double digits in Pennsylvania and that leads to other losses in other states, wouldn't that send a signal that the race is not yet over?
It seems we have been at this point before. In advance of the primaries in Ohio and Texas in March, there was also pressure for Senator Clinton withdraw. She says she won't, former President Clinton says she won't, and therefore, I don't think she will, despite what "party leaders" wish. In politics, there are too many variables, and another Jeremiah Wright scandal could emerge or a few losses could once again send the press to calling the race "a tossup".
Clue: The U.S. press would love to see a wild convention with the nomination still in doubt. It would make up for the decades of covering coronations of incumbent presidents and gatherings with as much excitement as watching paint dry. They will try to keep the race going but, if things break Senator Clinton's way as polls suggest they might, the press can sit back and enjoy.
Of course, Senator Obama will be doing as much as he can to win the state of Pennsylvania (which would be a knockout blow).
But the way I view this, I don't think this race is over yet, not with the ten contests remaining which appear to be favorable to Senator Clinton in the post-Wright atmosphere.
If Michael Barone is proved right, the Democratic National Convention of 2008 could be one for the ages.
I'll blog tomorrow on speeches and ads that Republican Party presumptive nominee John McCain is putting together. There are some revealing tidbits about his assessment of the race at this point.
Keep it here and at www.voanews.com, and this weekend, look at our new Election USA weekly wrap up of the 2008 political race in the U.S. It is right on our front page on the new website. Hope you enjoy it!
March 31, 2008
March 28, 2008
Weekend Update
Well, sorry I've been off the grid for awhile. Other duties intervened but let's take a look at where we stand now and what's been happening.
The tally in the Democratic Party's presidential race, according to RealClearPolitics.com, finds Senator Barack Obama of Illinois with a 131-delegate lead (when counting announced superdelegates) and a 2.6 percent lead over Senator Hillary Clinton in the popular vote. If you just go by the number of pledged delegates he has won, the lead goes up to 166. But if you count in the disputed state of Florida's popular votes, his vote margin shrinks to 1.4 percent.
Over in the Republican Party, Senator John McCain of Arizona clinched the presidential nomination on March 4, and is now putting together a national campaign.
I've written quite extensively about the Democratic race since that is where all the action is. It seems clear from statements by former President Bill Clinton (who should know) that Senator Hillary Clinton has no intention of quitting the race although public signals have been sent by major party officials.
Democratic Party national Chairman Howard Dean says he wants the race wrapped up by July 1 and he is asking the superdelegates (those delegates who are given voting privileges in the Democratic convention because of their party status-elected officials, party administrators, former administration leaders, etc.) to arrive at a consensus before then, hopefully even in June.
The Democratic Party primaries end in June and the likelihood, according to most political observers, is that neither Senator Obama nor Senator Clinton will amass enough delegates through the electoral process to claim an outright victory. The Obama forces have been saying (along with other Democrats) that the superdelegates should respect the will of the voters in the Democratic contests and ratify the leader. That should be Senator Obama. And in fact, he has won the most delegates in primaries and caucuses, clearly following the party rules. If there is a "will of the voter" in the Democratic Party, it is with Senator Obama.
Senator Clinton's case is to argue to the superdelegates that she has won Democratic contests in the major industrial states because of her appeal to bedrock party constituencies-women, Hispanics, older voters, and blue-collar workers. She also says that Senator Obama may now have enough cachet to capture the nomination but his natural coalition of upper-income white liberals, younger voters, and African-Americans, in the end, would not be enough to win against the Republicans.
Senator Obama has expanded that coalition along the way but recently, he has been losing those constituencies and the question being asked is if he would win them in the general election.
Troubling for Democrats are recent polls suggesting that significant numbers of Clinton and Obama supporters say they would not vote for the party nominee if their candidate loses in the primary contest. Most analysts say that by Election Day, when the passions of the moment cool down, those voters would return to the Democratic fold. But others aren't so sure. The longer the election goes on, the harder these feelings will be, and even if five percent vow not to vote for the party nominee, it could have an impact.
Over on the Republican side, many conservatives who have grumbled at the prospect of John McCain heading the ticket, also could stay home on Election Day. These conservatives don't view the Arizona senator as someone who shares their views and point to numerous times over the years when Senator McCain seemed to go out of his way to oppose them. You don't hear these noises publicly but you have to wonder if indeed some die-hard conservative voters in the Republican Party could just not pull the lever for the presumptive nominee. Well, the pundits said it was going to be a very different election and they may be right!
Meanwhile, the next Democratic Party contest is April 22 in Pennsylvania. Polls still show Senator Clinton ahead by 10 points in the last survey taken which ended on March 24. But Senator Obama is beginning to work the state and is hoping to eat into that advantage. Most experts don't think he can win, given the state's demographics, but a slight loss could be spun into a victory. An outright victory for Senator Obama and the race is over. But a huge loss in Pennsylvania, and the doubts, which might be being expressed privately by superdelegates, will linger.
The tally in the Democratic Party's presidential race, according to RealClearPolitics.com, finds Senator Barack Obama of Illinois with a 131-delegate lead (when counting announced superdelegates) and a 2.6 percent lead over Senator Hillary Clinton in the popular vote. If you just go by the number of pledged delegates he has won, the lead goes up to 166. But if you count in the disputed state of Florida's popular votes, his vote margin shrinks to 1.4 percent.
Over in the Republican Party, Senator John McCain of Arizona clinched the presidential nomination on March 4, and is now putting together a national campaign.
I've written quite extensively about the Democratic race since that is where all the action is. It seems clear from statements by former President Bill Clinton (who should know) that Senator Hillary Clinton has no intention of quitting the race although public signals have been sent by major party officials.
Democratic Party national Chairman Howard Dean says he wants the race wrapped up by July 1 and he is asking the superdelegates (those delegates who are given voting privileges in the Democratic convention because of their party status-elected officials, party administrators, former administration leaders, etc.) to arrive at a consensus before then, hopefully even in June.
The Democratic Party primaries end in June and the likelihood, according to most political observers, is that neither Senator Obama nor Senator Clinton will amass enough delegates through the electoral process to claim an outright victory. The Obama forces have been saying (along with other Democrats) that the superdelegates should respect the will of the voters in the Democratic contests and ratify the leader. That should be Senator Obama. And in fact, he has won the most delegates in primaries and caucuses, clearly following the party rules. If there is a "will of the voter" in the Democratic Party, it is with Senator Obama.
Senator Clinton's case is to argue to the superdelegates that she has won Democratic contests in the major industrial states because of her appeal to bedrock party constituencies-women, Hispanics, older voters, and blue-collar workers. She also says that Senator Obama may now have enough cachet to capture the nomination but his natural coalition of upper-income white liberals, younger voters, and African-Americans, in the end, would not be enough to win against the Republicans.
Senator Obama has expanded that coalition along the way but recently, he has been losing those constituencies and the question being asked is if he would win them in the general election.
Troubling for Democrats are recent polls suggesting that significant numbers of Clinton and Obama supporters say they would not vote for the party nominee if their candidate loses in the primary contest. Most analysts say that by Election Day, when the passions of the moment cool down, those voters would return to the Democratic fold. But others aren't so sure. The longer the election goes on, the harder these feelings will be, and even if five percent vow not to vote for the party nominee, it could have an impact.
Over on the Republican side, many conservatives who have grumbled at the prospect of John McCain heading the ticket, also could stay home on Election Day. These conservatives don't view the Arizona senator as someone who shares their views and point to numerous times over the years when Senator McCain seemed to go out of his way to oppose them. You don't hear these noises publicly but you have to wonder if indeed some die-hard conservative voters in the Republican Party could just not pull the lever for the presumptive nominee. Well, the pundits said it was going to be a very different election and they may be right!
Meanwhile, the next Democratic Party contest is April 22 in Pennsylvania. Polls still show Senator Clinton ahead by 10 points in the last survey taken which ended on March 24. But Senator Obama is beginning to work the state and is hoping to eat into that advantage. Most experts don't think he can win, given the state's demographics, but a slight loss could be spun into a victory. An outright victory for Senator Obama and the race is over. But a huge loss in Pennsylvania, and the doubts, which might be being expressed privately by superdelegates, will linger.
March 26, 2008
Penn Pals
After several weeks of Sen. Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, serving as a punching bag in the imbroglio over the statements of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the punches have begun to fly in another direction.
This time they are landing on Sen. Hillary Clinton, the chief opponent of Sen. Barack for the Democratic presidential nomination.
If you follow the American presidential race, you'll note that the two are involved in a titanic struggle to be the Democratic Party's standard-bearer against Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the Republican Party's presumptive nominee.
The latest turn in their ongoing struggle came in response to remarks made by Senator Clinton last winter. In those remarks, she recalled a trip to Bosnia she made in 1996 when she was First Lady. Senator Clinton said that when she landed, she had to run from her plane and that there was sniper fire on the tarmac. She was contradicted by one of the participants in the trip, the comedian Sinbad, and an Obama supporter. His comments were attacked as partisan.
Then like the deus ex machina of the Greek classic plays, enter YouTube. YouTube has become an American Oracle at Delphi issuing digital declarations that can lead candidates to reward or ruin. Videos of Senator Clinton's landing in Bosnia in 1996 showed a far different scene than she implied. She didn't run from the plane, there was no sniper fire, and she warmly greeted a child upon deplaning. A report aired on American network news and the pile-on began.
Senator Clinton said she "misspoke" and the incident "proves I'm human." What it did do was throw a roadblock in her campaign against Senator Obama in the state of Pennsylvania that holds a critical primary on April 22. While Senator Obama's campaign was trying to recover from the pummeling he has taken over the Jeremiah Wright affair (see the previous posts), along came this incident to focus the self-righteous ire of the press in Senator Clinton's direction.
Not that other candidates don't embellish or exaggerate. Longtime presidential watchers recall some of the claims made by Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 campaign (he "invented" the internet; he and his wife Tipper were the inspiration for the couple in the film Love Story based on the novel by Erich Segal; as a young child, he recalled hearing a song about labor unions [Look for the Union Label] which hadn't been written when he claimed he heard it); Senator Obama, according to the New York Times, claimed his parents fell in love during the great civil rights march in Selma, Alabama in 1965, although he actually was born four years earlier. Some of the fond recollections of President Ronald Reagan were often found to be based on myth than reality (like the story he told about the World War Two tail gunner who died in a crash landing because he was too wounded to crawl out of his combat space; the genesis was traced to Hollywood movies not a verifiable incident).
And so on and so on.
But one of the weaknesses of the Clinton campaign, according to polling data, is that Americans believe both she and her husband are, how to put this, factually-challenged, and are willing to parse words and phrases to obfuscate meaning and attempt to be on both sides of an issue at once. The most glaring example came in the October 31, 2007, Democratic presidential debate when Senator Clinton did not give a yes-or-no answer on whether or not she supported then-New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's plan to issue driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.
Pressed and pressed, she refused to provide a thumbs up or down and continued in this vein for several days until she finally declared in the negative. But by then, the damage was done and her image reinforced. I always peg that as the time when Senator Obama's campaign began to make headway against the then "inevitable" candidacy of the former First Lady.
At a time when she began to make headway against Senator Obama, voters are reminded once again about one of the characteristics they don't like about her instead of some of the ones they do.
Nevertheless, current polling puts her at least 10 points up in Pennsylvania and political commentators there suggest she may be stronger than that. She needs a double digit win in the Keystone State to keep her candidacy going and win in high double digits (15-20 points) could really disturb the sleep cycles of Democratic Party superdelegates who will likely be called on to supply the winning votes for one of the two Democratic protagonists.
I'll try and post again tonight about some interesting developments in Pennsylvania including a registration drive by Republicans to vote in the Democratic Primary for Senator Clinton…to keep the contest going to the advantage of Senator McCain.
Also, I'll have the latest on polls and other things. See ya later.
This time they are landing on Sen. Hillary Clinton, the chief opponent of Sen. Barack for the Democratic presidential nomination.
If you follow the American presidential race, you'll note that the two are involved in a titanic struggle to be the Democratic Party's standard-bearer against Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the Republican Party's presumptive nominee.
The latest turn in their ongoing struggle came in response to remarks made by Senator Clinton last winter. In those remarks, she recalled a trip to Bosnia she made in 1996 when she was First Lady. Senator Clinton said that when she landed, she had to run from her plane and that there was sniper fire on the tarmac. She was contradicted by one of the participants in the trip, the comedian Sinbad, and an Obama supporter. His comments were attacked as partisan.
Then like the deus ex machina of the Greek classic plays, enter YouTube. YouTube has become an American Oracle at Delphi issuing digital declarations that can lead candidates to reward or ruin. Videos of Senator Clinton's landing in Bosnia in 1996 showed a far different scene than she implied. She didn't run from the plane, there was no sniper fire, and she warmly greeted a child upon deplaning. A report aired on American network news and the pile-on began.
Senator Clinton said she "misspoke" and the incident "proves I'm human." What it did do was throw a roadblock in her campaign against Senator Obama in the state of Pennsylvania that holds a critical primary on April 22. While Senator Obama's campaign was trying to recover from the pummeling he has taken over the Jeremiah Wright affair (see the previous posts), along came this incident to focus the self-righteous ire of the press in Senator Clinton's direction.
Not that other candidates don't embellish or exaggerate. Longtime presidential watchers recall some of the claims made by Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 campaign (he "invented" the internet; he and his wife Tipper were the inspiration for the couple in the film Love Story based on the novel by Erich Segal; as a young child, he recalled hearing a song about labor unions [Look for the Union Label] which hadn't been written when he claimed he heard it); Senator Obama, according to the New York Times, claimed his parents fell in love during the great civil rights march in Selma, Alabama in 1965, although he actually was born four years earlier. Some of the fond recollections of President Ronald Reagan were often found to be based on myth than reality (like the story he told about the World War Two tail gunner who died in a crash landing because he was too wounded to crawl out of his combat space; the genesis was traced to Hollywood movies not a verifiable incident).
And so on and so on.
But one of the weaknesses of the Clinton campaign, according to polling data, is that Americans believe both she and her husband are, how to put this, factually-challenged, and are willing to parse words and phrases to obfuscate meaning and attempt to be on both sides of an issue at once. The most glaring example came in the October 31, 2007, Democratic presidential debate when Senator Clinton did not give a yes-or-no answer on whether or not she supported then-New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's plan to issue driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.
Pressed and pressed, she refused to provide a thumbs up or down and continued in this vein for several days until she finally declared in the negative. But by then, the damage was done and her image reinforced. I always peg that as the time when Senator Obama's campaign began to make headway against the then "inevitable" candidacy of the former First Lady.
At a time when she began to make headway against Senator Obama, voters are reminded once again about one of the characteristics they don't like about her instead of some of the ones they do.
Nevertheless, current polling puts her at least 10 points up in Pennsylvania and political commentators there suggest she may be stronger than that. She needs a double digit win in the Keystone State to keep her candidacy going and win in high double digits (15-20 points) could really disturb the sleep cycles of Democratic Party superdelegates who will likely be called on to supply the winning votes for one of the two Democratic protagonists.
I'll try and post again tonight about some interesting developments in Pennsylvania including a registration drive by Republicans to vote in the Democratic Primary for Senator Clinton…to keep the contest going to the advantage of Senator McCain.
Also, I'll have the latest on polls and other things. See ya later.
March 24, 2008
McCain for a Change
With all the excitement of an undecided going on in the Democratic Party, it’s easy to overlook the latest comings and goings of the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party, Sen. John McCain.
It’s been a while since Senator McCain clinched the nomination [March 4 with wins in Ohio and Texas] of his party. Since then, almost all the media focus has been on the titanic struggle between the two Democratic protagonists, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and Senator Hillary Clinton of New York. But until April 22, when Senators Obama and Clinton face each other in Pennsylvania, there’s enough of a lull to take a look at what Senator McCain has been doing as he positions himself as his party’s standard bearer.
To begin with, Senator McCain won despite—not because off—his party’s conservative base which has never been friendly to him. Senator McCain’s stands on global warming (he recognizes it and calls for solutions], and campaign finance reform [the major piece of legislation for campaign finance reform bears his name], among others, are at wide variance with the Republican conservative base.
In fact, throughout the Republican Party presidential campaign, the conservatives would tell anyone who would listen what they didn’t like about the Arizona senator even while praising him as a great American for his service in Vietnam and his captivity in Hanoi as a POW.
But conservatives never had a candidate around whom they could rally; Fred Thompson, the former senator and actor, turned out to be a not-great campaigner; Mitt Romney’s deathbed conversion to conservative principles were viewed as too convenient; Rudy Giuliani’s conservative views on national security were not enough to overcome his liberal views on social policy. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee had great credentials on social policy but on domestic policy, he was more akin to a liberal government activist. And on and on.
So, while the conservative base was stewing, McCain was doing. He kept racking up win after win and before the conservatives could really do anything (except fulminate on talk radio and on their blogs), McCain was I, and became the nominee. Even then, conservatives were morose and their griping and sniping continued.
But now, the rumblings by conservatives have died down and while Senator McCain may never be a centerfold in conservative publications like National Review, he at least has begun to draw the party in around him as he faces uphill odds in his quest to hold the White House for the Republicans.
One doesn’t have to be a political Svengali to note that Republicans face numerous challenges in their attempt to keep their party’s brand at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The war in Iraq remains unpopular, there are troubling economic signs, and political history in America suggests that usually, two terms of a political party in the White House is enough. Add to that the excitement in the Democratic Party evidenced by increased registrations and fundraising, and you can see that the Arizonan has his work cut out for him.
But….
The surge in Iraq ordered by President Bush has worked to tamp down the levels of violence and while there is still not great support for the war, the numbers of Americans who think the U.S. could fulfill its goals in Iraq has been rising. Senator McCain was a supporter of the surge and likes to say that early on, he opposed the administration’s strategy in Iraq when it wasn’t working. In fact, you could argue that the surge has been the most helpful development in his presidential bid. Without it, he might be back at his Senate desk thinking of what might have been.
The economy has emerged as a major issue in the campaign and Senator McCain will need to focus on some domestic solutions for the housing situation, health care costs, increases in fossil fuel prices and the like. He has been painted as someone who is more at home with foreign affairs than domestic issues but that will have to change if he wants to take the oath of office at high noon on 1/20/09. There is evidence of that emerging.
Democrats are attempting to morph Senator McCain into the unpopular President George W.
Bush with attacks on the “Bush-McCain War” and the “Bush-McCain Foreign Policy.” Senator McCain is hoping his long history of opposing the Bush administration and his willingness to speak out in favor of ideas that are not exactly on the Republican Party’s radar screen (like global warming and campaign finance reform) will help him.
As one writer said, it is going to be delicate tightrope that Senator McCain must walk—not distancing himself too far from the president, but far enough to convince voters looking for change that he could be their guy.
This past week, the senator went on a trip to five countries in Europe and the Middle East that resulted in high-level meetings with foreign leaders. Europeans and Middle Easterners, according to press accounts of the trip, were wondering how different a President McCain would be from President Bush. The meetings may help them decide.
The trip received high marks save one reported mistake: Senator McCain said that Iran was training insurgents rather than Shiite extremists. This generated a few days of “gaffe” coverage, even though the senator quickly recovered with some help from traveling companion and fellow senator, Joe Lieberman, Democrat from Connecticut.
But even with the gaffe, Senator McCain is getting some precious quality time to take trips like these, discuss strategy and a vice presidential choice, and plot the campaign for the fall.
There have been some unfavorable articles about lobbyists and the senator’s ties to so-called “special interests,” but they haven’t had a lasting effect, if there was any effect at all.
He will come under pressure to satisfy the Republican Party base with the direction of his campaign, but there is another school of thought that says the nominee may instead focus on independents and those Democrats who would not be satisfied with the choice of their party.
Some polling data indicates that no matter who wins the Democratic Party’s presidential nod, some of the losing candidate’s supporters may consider tilting towards the GOP candidate in the fall. This seems particularly true of Senator Clinton’s supporters (based on foreign policy considerations) should Senator Obama take the nomination.
While most analysts believe the political tea leaves strongly favor the Democrats on Election Day, Republicans, while anxious, now feel they can at least make a fight of it and recent polls show a tight race between Senator McCain and Senators Clinton and Obama.
Senator McCain’s most difficult electoral challenge, according to some political observers, would not be against the Democrats in the fall, but against factions of his own political party in the summer.
We’ll stay tuned to see how Senator McCain faces this challenge and how it plays in the broader electorate.
As always, flip over to www.voanews.com for the latest. Over and out.
It’s been a while since Senator McCain clinched the nomination [March 4 with wins in Ohio and Texas] of his party. Since then, almost all the media focus has been on the titanic struggle between the two Democratic protagonists, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and Senator Hillary Clinton of New York. But until April 22, when Senators Obama and Clinton face each other in Pennsylvania, there’s enough of a lull to take a look at what Senator McCain has been doing as he positions himself as his party’s standard bearer.
To begin with, Senator McCain won despite—not because off—his party’s conservative base which has never been friendly to him. Senator McCain’s stands on global warming (he recognizes it and calls for solutions], and campaign finance reform [the major piece of legislation for campaign finance reform bears his name], among others, are at wide variance with the Republican conservative base.
In fact, throughout the Republican Party presidential campaign, the conservatives would tell anyone who would listen what they didn’t like about the Arizona senator even while praising him as a great American for his service in Vietnam and his captivity in Hanoi as a POW.
But conservatives never had a candidate around whom they could rally; Fred Thompson, the former senator and actor, turned out to be a not-great campaigner; Mitt Romney’s deathbed conversion to conservative principles were viewed as too convenient; Rudy Giuliani’s conservative views on national security were not enough to overcome his liberal views on social policy. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee had great credentials on social policy but on domestic policy, he was more akin to a liberal government activist. And on and on.
So, while the conservative base was stewing, McCain was doing. He kept racking up win after win and before the conservatives could really do anything (except fulminate on talk radio and on their blogs), McCain was I, and became the nominee. Even then, conservatives were morose and their griping and sniping continued.
But now, the rumblings by conservatives have died down and while Senator McCain may never be a centerfold in conservative publications like National Review, he at least has begun to draw the party in around him as he faces uphill odds in his quest to hold the White House for the Republicans.
One doesn’t have to be a political Svengali to note that Republicans face numerous challenges in their attempt to keep their party’s brand at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The war in Iraq remains unpopular, there are troubling economic signs, and political history in America suggests that usually, two terms of a political party in the White House is enough. Add to that the excitement in the Democratic Party evidenced by increased registrations and fundraising, and you can see that the Arizonan has his work cut out for him.
But….
The surge in Iraq ordered by President Bush has worked to tamp down the levels of violence and while there is still not great support for the war, the numbers of Americans who think the U.S. could fulfill its goals in Iraq has been rising. Senator McCain was a supporter of the surge and likes to say that early on, he opposed the administration’s strategy in Iraq when it wasn’t working. In fact, you could argue that the surge has been the most helpful development in his presidential bid. Without it, he might be back at his Senate desk thinking of what might have been.
The economy has emerged as a major issue in the campaign and Senator McCain will need to focus on some domestic solutions for the housing situation, health care costs, increases in fossil fuel prices and the like. He has been painted as someone who is more at home with foreign affairs than domestic issues but that will have to change if he wants to take the oath of office at high noon on 1/20/09. There is evidence of that emerging.
Democrats are attempting to morph Senator McCain into the unpopular President George W.
Bush with attacks on the “Bush-McCain War” and the “Bush-McCain Foreign Policy.” Senator McCain is hoping his long history of opposing the Bush administration and his willingness to speak out in favor of ideas that are not exactly on the Republican Party’s radar screen (like global warming and campaign finance reform) will help him.
As one writer said, it is going to be delicate tightrope that Senator McCain must walk—not distancing himself too far from the president, but far enough to convince voters looking for change that he could be their guy.
This past week, the senator went on a trip to five countries in Europe and the Middle East that resulted in high-level meetings with foreign leaders. Europeans and Middle Easterners, according to press accounts of the trip, were wondering how different a President McCain would be from President Bush. The meetings may help them decide.
The trip received high marks save one reported mistake: Senator McCain said that Iran was training insurgents rather than Shiite extremists. This generated a few days of “gaffe” coverage, even though the senator quickly recovered with some help from traveling companion and fellow senator, Joe Lieberman, Democrat from Connecticut.
But even with the gaffe, Senator McCain is getting some precious quality time to take trips like these, discuss strategy and a vice presidential choice, and plot the campaign for the fall.
There have been some unfavorable articles about lobbyists and the senator’s ties to so-called “special interests,” but they haven’t had a lasting effect, if there was any effect at all.
He will come under pressure to satisfy the Republican Party base with the direction of his campaign, but there is another school of thought that says the nominee may instead focus on independents and those Democrats who would not be satisfied with the choice of their party.
Some polling data indicates that no matter who wins the Democratic Party’s presidential nod, some of the losing candidate’s supporters may consider tilting towards the GOP candidate in the fall. This seems particularly true of Senator Clinton’s supporters (based on foreign policy considerations) should Senator Obama take the nomination.
While most analysts believe the political tea leaves strongly favor the Democrats on Election Day, Republicans, while anxious, now feel they can at least make a fight of it and recent polls show a tight race between Senator McCain and Senators Clinton and Obama.
Senator McCain’s most difficult electoral challenge, according to some political observers, would not be against the Democrats in the fall, but against factions of his own political party in the summer.
We’ll stay tuned to see how Senator McCain faces this challenge and how it plays in the broader electorate.
As always, flip over to www.voanews.com for the latest. Over and out.
March 23, 2008
Sunday Update
It is a glorious Easter Sunday morning in Washington. The sun is shining, there is a clear sky, and the sounds of woodpeckers fill the air.
But that won't stop the political train from going and here are some updates on what has transpired...
Bill Richardson Endorses Obama
Current New Mexico Governor and former presidential candidate for the Democratic Party, Bill Richardson, endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for the nomination. This is a little unusual given that the governor used to be U. S. ambassador to the United Nations and Secretary of Energy under the presidency of Bill Clinton. In fact, former Clinton aide James Carville was quoted in the NY Times as saying: "Mr. Richardson’s endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic."
Gov. Richardson informed Senator Hillary Clinton about his decision and said to the Times, "Let me tell you: we’ve had better conversations."
The endorsement came in the middle of the flap over Senator Obama's ties to his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright whose comments on America during his sermons are, depending upon the source, "outspoken," "provocative," or "incendiary," take your pick. You can read some of the comments in past posts of mine.
Gov. Richardson is also Hispanic which should help Sen. Obama with a Democratic Party ethnic group for which he could use a little help.
Gov. Richardson has always been floated as a possible vice presidential nominee because of his mix of foreign and domestic policy experience. Whether Sen. Obama picks him (should the Illinois candidate get the nomination) remains to be seen, but the endorsement certainly raises that possibility.
Clinton Can't Win...
Just weeks after Sen. Clinton's comeback wins in Ohio and Texas (among others) which purportedly created a whole new race in the Democratic Party's presidential contest, the new meme emerging is: face it, folks. she can't win. The math is against here, and truly, we all know better.
This line of thought came up on the blog Politico. A report there [http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0308/9149.html] says she "...has virtually no chance of winning. Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates."
She would have to win the remaining ten primaries with large enough margins to overhaul Senator Obama's lead in the popular vote which (without the voting in Michigan and Florida's primaries which will not count) stands at more than 700,000 votes according to RealClearPolitics.com. Forget pledged delegates, where RCP says he leads by 167.
Unless the New York senator racks up huge wins, odds are she will never catch Sen. Obama there and it is unlikely she will catch him in the popular vote. The only way to victory, according to this argument which is beginning to find purchase, is to convince the party's "superdelegates" that Sen. Obama cannot win.
Sen. Clinton can help herself if she wins the remaining primaries convincingly and gets close enough to have these superdelegates consider the question.
The flap over Rev. Wright has hurt Senator Obama, there is no doubt about that. He dropped in polls, then came back over the weekend. But his negatives have risen, and among white Democratic voters, particularly in the working class, the Wright comments and the senator's response, have greatly lessened the post-racial appeal. At the very least, as one writer put it, Sen. Obama was knocked off his pedestal.
But supposing he loses Pennsylvania by high double digits which is not out of the question. Reports are the Obama campaign is working to secure as many delegates out of a potential loss as possible. But a double digit loss in another big industrial state would change the press meme yet again.
Which brings us to North Carolina, a state in the American south that has a primary on May 6, two weeks after Pennsylvania on April 22.
This was supposed to be the state that would put Sen. Obama over the top. It has, according to one poll, a 33 percent African-American voter base in the primary that would presumably go 95-5 for Sen. Obama. But recent reports show a much tighter race with him leading by one point where he led by much higher margins not that long ago.
If he were to lose that race (I don't think he will at this point but it is possible and more possible following a big loss in Pennsylvanaia) then I think the Obama campaign might start to sweat a little as they near the prize but find themselves slipping backwards.
If anything, the Wright imbroglio could have an impact on the Tarheel state (which I bet right now is more concerned with the University of North Carolina's attempt to win the U.S. college basketball championship).
The state's former senator and past Democratic Party vice presidential candidate, John Edwards, who dropped out of this year's presidential race, is not likely to make a Richardson-like endorsement, according to news reports. He is staying neutral and waiting until the contest is decided.
If you are in the Politico-thinking crowd, that date is thought to be May. I say, keep the powder dry.
With Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican Party nominee who was on a foreign trip this week, out of this controversy, it is easier for him to concentrate on the general election against either candidate. The assumption is it is going to be Sen. Obama.
I know I keep saying I will have more on the Republican and I will but not today.
That's it, keep reading, and I want to hear from you. What do you think about all this, particularly the Wright episode? I'm curious.
But that won't stop the political train from going and here are some updates on what has transpired...
Bill Richardson Endorses Obama
Current New Mexico Governor and former presidential candidate for the Democratic Party, Bill Richardson, endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for the nomination. This is a little unusual given that the governor used to be U. S. ambassador to the United Nations and Secretary of Energy under the presidency of Bill Clinton. In fact, former Clinton aide James Carville was quoted in the NY Times as saying: "Mr. Richardson’s endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic."
Gov. Richardson informed Senator Hillary Clinton about his decision and said to the Times, "Let me tell you: we’ve had better conversations."
The endorsement came in the middle of the flap over Senator Obama's ties to his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright whose comments on America during his sermons are, depending upon the source, "outspoken," "provocative," or "incendiary," take your pick. You can read some of the comments in past posts of mine.
Gov. Richardson is also Hispanic which should help Sen. Obama with a Democratic Party ethnic group for which he could use a little help.
Gov. Richardson has always been floated as a possible vice presidential nominee because of his mix of foreign and domestic policy experience. Whether Sen. Obama picks him (should the Illinois candidate get the nomination) remains to be seen, but the endorsement certainly raises that possibility.
Clinton Can't Win...
Just weeks after Sen. Clinton's comeback wins in Ohio and Texas (among others) which purportedly created a whole new race in the Democratic Party's presidential contest, the new meme emerging is: face it, folks. she can't win. The math is against here, and truly, we all know better.
This line of thought came up on the blog Politico. A report there [http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0308/9149.html] says she "...has virtually no chance of winning. Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates."
She would have to win the remaining ten primaries with large enough margins to overhaul Senator Obama's lead in the popular vote which (without the voting in Michigan and Florida's primaries which will not count) stands at more than 700,000 votes according to RealClearPolitics.com. Forget pledged delegates, where RCP says he leads by 167.
Unless the New York senator racks up huge wins, odds are she will never catch Sen. Obama there and it is unlikely she will catch him in the popular vote. The only way to victory, according to this argument which is beginning to find purchase, is to convince the party's "superdelegates" that Sen. Obama cannot win.
Sen. Clinton can help herself if she wins the remaining primaries convincingly and gets close enough to have these superdelegates consider the question.
The flap over Rev. Wright has hurt Senator Obama, there is no doubt about that. He dropped in polls, then came back over the weekend. But his negatives have risen, and among white Democratic voters, particularly in the working class, the Wright comments and the senator's response, have greatly lessened the post-racial appeal. At the very least, as one writer put it, Sen. Obama was knocked off his pedestal.
But supposing he loses Pennsylvania by high double digits which is not out of the question. Reports are the Obama campaign is working to secure as many delegates out of a potential loss as possible. But a double digit loss in another big industrial state would change the press meme yet again.
Which brings us to North Carolina, a state in the American south that has a primary on May 6, two weeks after Pennsylvania on April 22.
This was supposed to be the state that would put Sen. Obama over the top. It has, according to one poll, a 33 percent African-American voter base in the primary that would presumably go 95-5 for Sen. Obama. But recent reports show a much tighter race with him leading by one point where he led by much higher margins not that long ago.
If he were to lose that race (I don't think he will at this point but it is possible and more possible following a big loss in Pennsylvanaia) then I think the Obama campaign might start to sweat a little as they near the prize but find themselves slipping backwards.
If anything, the Wright imbroglio could have an impact on the Tarheel state (which I bet right now is more concerned with the University of North Carolina's attempt to win the U.S. college basketball championship).
The state's former senator and past Democratic Party vice presidential candidate, John Edwards, who dropped out of this year's presidential race, is not likely to make a Richardson-like endorsement, according to news reports. He is staying neutral and waiting until the contest is decided.
If you are in the Politico-thinking crowd, that date is thought to be May. I say, keep the powder dry.
With Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican Party nominee who was on a foreign trip this week, out of this controversy, it is easier for him to concentrate on the general election against either candidate. The assumption is it is going to be Sen. Obama.
I know I keep saying I will have more on the Republican and I will but not today.
That's it, keep reading, and I want to hear from you. What do you think about all this, particularly the Wright episode? I'm curious.
March 21, 2008
This and That
Just some short takes on the campaign; I’ve been off the grid, busily involved with other things, so here goes:
Michigan-Florida:
It appears as if the agreement to hold another primary election in Michigan has fallen through. Michigan was one of two states (the other being Florida) that moved up its primary in an attempt to cash in on the publicity and importance showered on states that hold their contests early. The Democratic Party’s governing body, the Democratic National Committee (DNC), said that as a result, neither state would receive delegates at the party’s national conventions.
The states went ahead anyway thinking that the national party would relent later. Michigan Democrats agreed on a plan but the legislature and the campaign of Sen. Barack Obama, Democrat from Illinois, couldn’t take it forward and come out with a concrete election.
With Florida also throwing up its hands at another vote to take the place of its early primary and stripped delegates, it is bad news for Sen. Obama’s challenger, Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, who “won” both contests. I use the quotes because in one case, there was no one else on the ballot, and in the other, there was no campaigning as candidates honored the DNC’s dictates not to seek votes personally in Florida and Michigan.
Sen. Clinton is looking to make up ground on Sen. Obama, her “victories” in the two states could have netted her around 300,000 votes in the popular contest and around 50 delegates.
But that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen so that makes her job even harder.
It also could anger voters in those two states who might retaliate for the perceived slight by staying home on Election Day. The national party insists the rules needed to be followed and that they cannot be changed in the middle of the game. They also think that, in the end, Democratic voters will, well, vote Democratic come November.
Skullduggery….
Employees at the U.S. Department of State apparently were snooping in the passport files of the three major candidates for president—Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton of the Democratic Party and Senator John McCain of the Republican Party. Department officials discovered the prying into Sen. Obama’s files some time ago, the revelations of access to the files of the other two candidates came to light on Friday.
A similar controversy erupted in the 1992 election when a political appointee in the State Department was caught investigating then-candidate Bill Clinton’s passport records before Election Day.
Besides information about foreign travel, passports have sensitive personal data including the social security number which could yield all sorts of private statistics, like credit reports, financial records, etc.
An investigation is ongoing. The campaigns were informed and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice apologized to both campaigns. Several of the contractors involved in the affair have been dismissed.
More on the Obama Speech…
The comment and debate over Sen. Barack Obama’s speech on race this past week continues to rage pro and con.
As I suspected, the speech is being viewed in two ways: as a piece of rhetoric and as a political tactic.
The rhetoric is being praised but politically, a consensus is emerging that Sen. Obama may not have done enough to dispel the raw feelings left in the minds of many voters by the incendiary statements on circulating videos of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of the Trinity United Church of Christ.
You can read my previous posts for the details.
A new line of thought is developing that journalists missed the content of the speech and have instead concentrated on the political impact. I am not so sure that the two can be disconnected. And has the senator really said things that have not been said before?
Perhaps his way of saying them, and that it is coming from a politician of mixed heritage may make it unique, but others have posited these questions rhetorically in the past. I am not quite sure how much new ground has been broken in the discussion (such as it is) over race in America.
According to polling data taken after this imbroglio happened, Sen. Obama has lost quite a bit of support as Sen. Clinton has overtaken him in some national opinion polls. It may not do her any good as Sen. Obama’s lead in convention delegates and the popular vote at this stage may be too much for Sen. Clinton to overcome. Also, the party’s “superdelegates” may be loathe to overturn what appears to be Sen. Obama’s lock on the nomination for fear of losing the support of the party’s most faithful and perhaps important voting bloc, African-Americans.
There is discussion of some party elders approaching the campaign of Sen. Clinton to ask her to step aside for the good of the party in the fall. That may be a little premature and even unnecessary. If Sen. Obama were to win the April 22 Pennsylvania, all questions would be moot. He currently trails in all polls by double digit deficits, some approaching the 20 figure.
It is very possible that Sen. Clinton could finish on a winning streak with the remaining contests on the Democratic Party calendar, and while it’s difficult, it’s not completely beyond reason that she could come very close to him in popular votes and trail by 100-200 delegates.
I am not sure what that means (if anything) at this point, but this race, while perhaps solidly going Sen. Obama’s way, could still prove costly. But clearly, he is in the driver’s seat and is the clear favorite to make history in August when he may become the first African-American to accept the presidential nomination of one of our two major political parties.
While all the political signs point to a massive Democratic victory in the fall, there is much yet to be done and both parties are going under the assumption that it is going to be touch and go to see who sits in the Oval Office at 12 noon on January 20, 2009 (when the new president is sworn in).
Michigan-Florida:
It appears as if the agreement to hold another primary election in Michigan has fallen through. Michigan was one of two states (the other being Florida) that moved up its primary in an attempt to cash in on the publicity and importance showered on states that hold their contests early. The Democratic Party’s governing body, the Democratic National Committee (DNC), said that as a result, neither state would receive delegates at the party’s national conventions.
The states went ahead anyway thinking that the national party would relent later. Michigan Democrats agreed on a plan but the legislature and the campaign of Sen. Barack Obama, Democrat from Illinois, couldn’t take it forward and come out with a concrete election.
With Florida also throwing up its hands at another vote to take the place of its early primary and stripped delegates, it is bad news for Sen. Obama’s challenger, Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, who “won” both contests. I use the quotes because in one case, there was no one else on the ballot, and in the other, there was no campaigning as candidates honored the DNC’s dictates not to seek votes personally in Florida and Michigan.
Sen. Clinton is looking to make up ground on Sen. Obama, her “victories” in the two states could have netted her around 300,000 votes in the popular contest and around 50 delegates.
But that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen so that makes her job even harder.
It also could anger voters in those two states who might retaliate for the perceived slight by staying home on Election Day. The national party insists the rules needed to be followed and that they cannot be changed in the middle of the game. They also think that, in the end, Democratic voters will, well, vote Democratic come November.
Skullduggery….
Employees at the U.S. Department of State apparently were snooping in the passport files of the three major candidates for president—Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton of the Democratic Party and Senator John McCain of the Republican Party. Department officials discovered the prying into Sen. Obama’s files some time ago, the revelations of access to the files of the other two candidates came to light on Friday.
A similar controversy erupted in the 1992 election when a political appointee in the State Department was caught investigating then-candidate Bill Clinton’s passport records before Election Day.
Besides information about foreign travel, passports have sensitive personal data including the social security number which could yield all sorts of private statistics, like credit reports, financial records, etc.
An investigation is ongoing. The campaigns were informed and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice apologized to both campaigns. Several of the contractors involved in the affair have been dismissed.
More on the Obama Speech…
The comment and debate over Sen. Barack Obama’s speech on race this past week continues to rage pro and con.
As I suspected, the speech is being viewed in two ways: as a piece of rhetoric and as a political tactic.
The rhetoric is being praised but politically, a consensus is emerging that Sen. Obama may not have done enough to dispel the raw feelings left in the minds of many voters by the incendiary statements on circulating videos of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of the Trinity United Church of Christ.
You can read my previous posts for the details.
A new line of thought is developing that journalists missed the content of the speech and have instead concentrated on the political impact. I am not so sure that the two can be disconnected. And has the senator really said things that have not been said before?
Perhaps his way of saying them, and that it is coming from a politician of mixed heritage may make it unique, but others have posited these questions rhetorically in the past. I am not quite sure how much new ground has been broken in the discussion (such as it is) over race in America.
According to polling data taken after this imbroglio happened, Sen. Obama has lost quite a bit of support as Sen. Clinton has overtaken him in some national opinion polls. It may not do her any good as Sen. Obama’s lead in convention delegates and the popular vote at this stage may be too much for Sen. Clinton to overcome. Also, the party’s “superdelegates” may be loathe to overturn what appears to be Sen. Obama’s lock on the nomination for fear of losing the support of the party’s most faithful and perhaps important voting bloc, African-Americans.
There is discussion of some party elders approaching the campaign of Sen. Clinton to ask her to step aside for the good of the party in the fall. That may be a little premature and even unnecessary. If Sen. Obama were to win the April 22 Pennsylvania, all questions would be moot. He currently trails in all polls by double digit deficits, some approaching the 20 figure.
It is very possible that Sen. Clinton could finish on a winning streak with the remaining contests on the Democratic Party calendar, and while it’s difficult, it’s not completely beyond reason that she could come very close to him in popular votes and trail by 100-200 delegates.
I am not sure what that means (if anything) at this point, but this race, while perhaps solidly going Sen. Obama’s way, could still prove costly. But clearly, he is in the driver’s seat and is the clear favorite to make history in August when he may become the first African-American to accept the presidential nomination of one of our two major political parties.
While all the political signs point to a massive Democratic victory in the fall, there is much yet to be done and both parties are going under the assumption that it is going to be touch and go to see who sits in the Oval Office at 12 noon on January 20, 2009 (when the new president is sworn in).
March 18, 2008
The Speech
The long-awaited (well, long awaited for a day) speech on race by presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama of Illinois was delivered today in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Philadelphia is known as the "City of Brotherly Love," which seems an apt place to present a speech on race, and Pennsylvania is the state that votes next on April 22 in the Democratic presidential nomination race.
Senator Obama, who is of mixed racial heritage but identifies as an African-American, leads Senator Hillary Clinton of New York narrowly in the Democratic Party's total of popular votes and delegates. But the race is far from over and it is likely neither candidate will emerge from the voting with enough delegates to claim the nomination outright.
Today's speech was seen as a very important one for Senator Obama's campaign. For the past two weeks, he has been getting a critical press after months of adulatory coverage.
Now that he is the frontrunner, and after many complaints from the Clinton camp that the coverage of the campaign was biased towards the Illinois senator, the press began to look more critically at Sen. Obama.
After the press reported some gaffes and misstatements by the senator and surrogates, an old issue flared up with a vengeance. Video sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the former pastor of the church in Chicago where the senator and his family are members-The Trinity United Church of Christ-began showing up on network newscasts and on YouTube. The videos showed the Rev. Wright launching into invective that shocked most Americans. The Rev. Wright said that because of past racial discrimination, American blacks should not sing, "God Bless America," but "God Damn America;" the U.S. attacks on Hiroshima in World War Two led "the chickens coming home to roost" in the form of the attacks in New York and Washington on 9/11; and that the U.S. government created the AIDS virus for dissemination to minorities.
When confronted with these videos, the senator first tried to brush them off saying although he was a member of the Church for nearly 20 years, he never heard the Reverend Wright speak this way. And the statements, he told Jewish leaders, were like those of a "crazy old uncle," and while he disavowed them and repudiated them, he would not leave the church.
The answers proved less than satisfactory and he dropped five points in a presidential tracking poll in one night after this story broke. Reports surfaced that Senator Obama did not want the Rev. Wright present at the launch of his presidential campaign because he knew the reverend would be considered "controversial." Paragraphs about Rev. Wright popped up in Sen. Obama's books and it became clearer there was a controversy brewing that threatened to harm the campaign in the home stretch.
So, to the speech today in Pennsylvania.
In the speech, Sen. Obama condemned the inflammatory statements by the Rev. Wright, saying the reverend chose, "incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation, that rightly offend white and black alike."
But he said that Reverend Wright's comments shown over and over again on television and on the Internet do not do justice to the man, that he was: "more than snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and YouTube…[he] has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country" and has spent his time "housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS."
For the first time, Sen. Obama admitted that he had been present when these statements were made: "Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely - just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed."
He added that the views expressed in this church were emblematic of African-American life in the United States, "The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and, yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America."
In attempting to put Rev. Wright's remarks in context, Sen. Obama said, "For the men and women of Rev. Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away, nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years…The profound mistake of Rev. Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society, it's that he spoke as if our society was static, as if no progress has been made, as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black, Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old - is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past."
He would not disassociate from the church saying he could not leave it as much as he could not disavow his own grandmother (who is white) even though, she was "a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."
There were other parts of the speech in which he talked about the fears of whites who, "are told to bus their children to a school across town, when they hear that an African-American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed, when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time."
In the end, he concluded that, "…today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation - the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election."
The speech has caused a great deal of reaction in the press. Many have praised its eloquence and its frank and open approach to the discussion of race in America-a topic that many try to avoid in any honest terms given the freight in carries in the American experience.
Words like "courageous" (Paul Mirengoff, Power Line) and "a marvel of contemporary political rhetoric;" (Mark Ambinder, Atlantic) "the most honest speech on race in America in my adult lifetime," (Andrew Sullivan) and more.
But along with the praises is some criticism. One commentator wrote that, "[Sen. Obama would] make it appear as though the disgusting remarks of his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, are the merest speck, a mere glancing moment in time in the centuries-long history of American race relations."(John Podheretz, Commentary). And there is some doubt (although it is a minority view at this point) that he fulfilled his mission of getting the subject behind him:
"Where it was weakest was in explaining the very reason for the speech: how the inflammatory, even repugnant, comments of Obama's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, are understandable." (Mike Allen, Politico)
The view from here is that this is going to go a long way in helping Sen. Obama but perhaps not the entire way. For those looking for a complete repudiation of the Rev. Wright's remarks, it was not there; nor did the senator take stronger action, such as leaving the church. In effect, he was saying, people need to understand the depths of African-American despair in the United States given the legacy of slavery to comprehend why he has a conflicted nature about the entire affair.
But for those put off by the Rev. Wright's remarks, this may not do. "Understand" may come awfully close to "tolerate" when it comes to their reactions to those statements, and it could even be read as a tacit admission that while Sen. Obama repudiated the remarks, he can never completely disassociate himself from them given his past, and the past of African-Americans in the United States. That could be a tough sell to many voters.
For supporters of Sen. Obama, this was another example of his rhetorical talents and gifts in addressing a difficult and tense subject in a way that is rarely done in American politics. His honesty and forthrightness and his logic and ability to educate and persuade could work to put the matter behind him and move on in the presidential race.
There will be another two to three days of reaction and I suspect the majority will be favorable. But first glance suggests that not all were swayed by the speech and his candidacy has been forever changed from the days of swoons and "chills running up and down the leg" in reaction to his campaign.
The real reaction will come April 22 when voters go to the polls in Pennsylvania in a critical primary four weeks after this speech when there is plenty of time to think about it.
Senator Obama, who is of mixed racial heritage but identifies as an African-American, leads Senator Hillary Clinton of New York narrowly in the Democratic Party's total of popular votes and delegates. But the race is far from over and it is likely neither candidate will emerge from the voting with enough delegates to claim the nomination outright.
Today's speech was seen as a very important one for Senator Obama's campaign. For the past two weeks, he has been getting a critical press after months of adulatory coverage.
Now that he is the frontrunner, and after many complaints from the Clinton camp that the coverage of the campaign was biased towards the Illinois senator, the press began to look more critically at Sen. Obama.
After the press reported some gaffes and misstatements by the senator and surrogates, an old issue flared up with a vengeance. Video sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the former pastor of the church in Chicago where the senator and his family are members-The Trinity United Church of Christ-began showing up on network newscasts and on YouTube. The videos showed the Rev. Wright launching into invective that shocked most Americans. The Rev. Wright said that because of past racial discrimination, American blacks should not sing, "God Bless America," but "God Damn America;" the U.S. attacks on Hiroshima in World War Two led "the chickens coming home to roost" in the form of the attacks in New York and Washington on 9/11; and that the U.S. government created the AIDS virus for dissemination to minorities.
When confronted with these videos, the senator first tried to brush them off saying although he was a member of the Church for nearly 20 years, he never heard the Reverend Wright speak this way. And the statements, he told Jewish leaders, were like those of a "crazy old uncle," and while he disavowed them and repudiated them, he would not leave the church.
The answers proved less than satisfactory and he dropped five points in a presidential tracking poll in one night after this story broke. Reports surfaced that Senator Obama did not want the Rev. Wright present at the launch of his presidential campaign because he knew the reverend would be considered "controversial." Paragraphs about Rev. Wright popped up in Sen. Obama's books and it became clearer there was a controversy brewing that threatened to harm the campaign in the home stretch.
So, to the speech today in Pennsylvania.
In the speech, Sen. Obama condemned the inflammatory statements by the Rev. Wright, saying the reverend chose, "incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation, that rightly offend white and black alike."
But he said that Reverend Wright's comments shown over and over again on television and on the Internet do not do justice to the man, that he was: "more than snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and YouTube…[he] has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country" and has spent his time "housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS."
For the first time, Sen. Obama admitted that he had been present when these statements were made: "Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely - just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed."
He added that the views expressed in this church were emblematic of African-American life in the United States, "The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and, yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America."
In attempting to put Rev. Wright's remarks in context, Sen. Obama said, "For the men and women of Rev. Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away, nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years…The profound mistake of Rev. Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society, it's that he spoke as if our society was static, as if no progress has been made, as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black, Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old - is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past."
He would not disassociate from the church saying he could not leave it as much as he could not disavow his own grandmother (who is white) even though, she was "a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."
There were other parts of the speech in which he talked about the fears of whites who, "are told to bus their children to a school across town, when they hear that an African-American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed, when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time."
In the end, he concluded that, "…today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation - the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election."
The speech has caused a great deal of reaction in the press. Many have praised its eloquence and its frank and open approach to the discussion of race in America-a topic that many try to avoid in any honest terms given the freight in carries in the American experience.
Words like "courageous" (Paul Mirengoff, Power Line) and "a marvel of contemporary political rhetoric;" (Mark Ambinder, Atlantic) "the most honest speech on race in America in my adult lifetime," (Andrew Sullivan) and more.
But along with the praises is some criticism. One commentator wrote that, "[Sen. Obama would] make it appear as though the disgusting remarks of his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, are the merest speck, a mere glancing moment in time in the centuries-long history of American race relations."(John Podheretz, Commentary). And there is some doubt (although it is a minority view at this point) that he fulfilled his mission of getting the subject behind him:
"Where it was weakest was in explaining the very reason for the speech: how the inflammatory, even repugnant, comments of Obama's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, are understandable." (Mike Allen, Politico)
The view from here is that this is going to go a long way in helping Sen. Obama but perhaps not the entire way. For those looking for a complete repudiation of the Rev. Wright's remarks, it was not there; nor did the senator take stronger action, such as leaving the church. In effect, he was saying, people need to understand the depths of African-American despair in the United States given the legacy of slavery to comprehend why he has a conflicted nature about the entire affair.
But for those put off by the Rev. Wright's remarks, this may not do. "Understand" may come awfully close to "tolerate" when it comes to their reactions to those statements, and it could even be read as a tacit admission that while Sen. Obama repudiated the remarks, he can never completely disassociate himself from them given his past, and the past of African-Americans in the United States. That could be a tough sell to many voters.
For supporters of Sen. Obama, this was another example of his rhetorical talents and gifts in addressing a difficult and tense subject in a way that is rarely done in American politics. His honesty and forthrightness and his logic and ability to educate and persuade could work to put the matter behind him and move on in the presidential race.
There will be another two to three days of reaction and I suspect the majority will be favorable. But first glance suggests that not all were swayed by the speech and his candidacy has been forever changed from the days of swoons and "chills running up and down the leg" in reaction to his campaign.
The real reaction will come April 22 when voters go to the polls in Pennsylvania in a critical primary four weeks after this speech when there is plenty of time to think about it.
March 17, 2008
Michigan Yes, Florida, No
The state Democratic Party in Florida has decided not to hold a second primary or caucus. State officials said today that they could not hold one even if someone else, rather than the State of Florida, will pay for it.
That means the 210 delegates allotted to Florida are caught in no man's land. The State of Florida wanted to move its primary up to January 29 in defiance of Democratic Party rules. The Democratic Party said it would strip Florida of its delegates if it did (the Republicans merely cut their Florida delegation in half as punishment).
Florida went ahead anyway figuring the national party wouldn't dare not seat them. Well, now, the mess has been dumped back in the national party's hands.
This is important because Senator Hillary Clinton, who narrowly trails Sen. Barack Obama, "won" the primary although no one officially campaigned there. Sen. Clinton wants to have the delegates seated or new primaries held.
Now that the state says a new vote cannot be held, some Solomonic solution is needed. U.S. Senator Bill Nelson of Florida suggested seating the delegation but giving each delegate a half vote. That plan is still alive but is likely to be absorbed into plans that are acceptable to the two campaigns, the national party, Florida's congressional delegation, and perhaps the governor.
Good luck with that; that's going to be a tough one.
Meanwhile, Michigan, which is in the same boat as Florida, has all but agreed to hold a second primary on June 3. State officials and the campaigns are considering the plans which allow for outside funding of the primary election.
The Clinton campaign would like the states' results to stand but a re-vote is always risky as the campaign for Sen. Obama caught fire well after the Florida and Michigan voting. What would be the result this time? Who knows?
And there are those who think the two states should be stripped of their delegates for violating party rules.
I heard from one web visitor from China who takes that view. What's yours?
That means the 210 delegates allotted to Florida are caught in no man's land. The State of Florida wanted to move its primary up to January 29 in defiance of Democratic Party rules. The Democratic Party said it would strip Florida of its delegates if it did (the Republicans merely cut their Florida delegation in half as punishment).
Florida went ahead anyway figuring the national party wouldn't dare not seat them. Well, now, the mess has been dumped back in the national party's hands.
This is important because Senator Hillary Clinton, who narrowly trails Sen. Barack Obama, "won" the primary although no one officially campaigned there. Sen. Clinton wants to have the delegates seated or new primaries held.
Now that the state says a new vote cannot be held, some Solomonic solution is needed. U.S. Senator Bill Nelson of Florida suggested seating the delegation but giving each delegate a half vote. That plan is still alive but is likely to be absorbed into plans that are acceptable to the two campaigns, the national party, Florida's congressional delegation, and perhaps the governor.
Good luck with that; that's going to be a tough one.
Meanwhile, Michigan, which is in the same boat as Florida, has all but agreed to hold a second primary on June 3. State officials and the campaigns are considering the plans which allow for outside funding of the primary election.
The Clinton campaign would like the states' results to stand but a re-vote is always risky as the campaign for Sen. Obama caught fire well after the Florida and Michigan voting. What would be the result this time? Who knows?
And there are those who think the two states should be stripped of their delegates for violating party rules.
I heard from one web visitor from China who takes that view. What's yours?
More Wright
Sen. Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, has announced he will give what he is billing as a major address on "the larger issue of race in this campaign." The speech will come tomorrow. We will all be watching and listening.
The speech is in response to a week's worth of negative publicity about the senator's ties to the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. The church's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr., has made statements over the years that have been characterized as anti-American. You can read some of them on my previous post, "The Wright Stuff."
Sen. Obama has been a member of the church for 20 years and he and his family are active members. He has tried to distance himself from the more controversial ideas of Rev. Wright but his explanation that he never heard the more outlandish statements because he wasn't present for them or did not know about them strained credulity in the political press.
Hence, the speech.
Another reason might be that since the story of the speeches broke this past week, the Rasmussen Reports polling organization notes: "Sen. Obama has lost 5 points to Sen. Clinton in his daily tracking (52% to 47%) since Thursday, when the Wright comments really exploded into the mainstream."
Additionally, the poll points out that on the Wright controversy, "Most voters, 56%, said Wright's comments made them less likely to vote for Obama. That figure includes 44% of Democrats."
The poll finds the same racial split that we have seen emerging in past primaries. For African-American voters polled, according to Rasmussen, "29% said Wright's comments made them more likely to support Obama. Just 18% said the opposite while 50% said Wright's comments would have no impact...White voters, by a 46% to 33% margin, say that Obama should leave the Church. African-American voters, by a 68% to 16% margin, say he should not. Wright retired last month as Pastor of the Church."
So, Sen. Obama has a pretty hot issue on his hands and his previous statements repudiating any language from Rev. Wright that anyone found offensive while not leaving the church have not worked to assuage voter reaction to the Rev. Wright's comments.
Sen. Clinton has remained silent on the issue (although the two have fired volleys back and forth over the Iraq war).
Tomorrow's speech should be interesting because the senator cannot be seen as abandoning the sentiments of African-American voters who have been supporting him monolithically but he also cannot be seen ignoring an issue that a broad spectrum of voters finds troubling.
We'll see what he says tomorrow.
The speech is in response to a week's worth of negative publicity about the senator's ties to the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. The church's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr., has made statements over the years that have been characterized as anti-American. You can read some of them on my previous post, "The Wright Stuff."
Sen. Obama has been a member of the church for 20 years and he and his family are active members. He has tried to distance himself from the more controversial ideas of Rev. Wright but his explanation that he never heard the more outlandish statements because he wasn't present for them or did not know about them strained credulity in the political press.
Hence, the speech.
Another reason might be that since the story of the speeches broke this past week, the Rasmussen Reports polling organization notes: "Sen. Obama has lost 5 points to Sen. Clinton in his daily tracking (52% to 47%) since Thursday, when the Wright comments really exploded into the mainstream."
Additionally, the poll points out that on the Wright controversy, "Most voters, 56%, said Wright's comments made them less likely to vote for Obama. That figure includes 44% of Democrats."
The poll finds the same racial split that we have seen emerging in past primaries. For African-American voters polled, according to Rasmussen, "29% said Wright's comments made them more likely to support Obama. Just 18% said the opposite while 50% said Wright's comments would have no impact...White voters, by a 46% to 33% margin, say that Obama should leave the Church. African-American voters, by a 68% to 16% margin, say he should not. Wright retired last month as Pastor of the Church."
So, Sen. Obama has a pretty hot issue on his hands and his previous statements repudiating any language from Rev. Wright that anyone found offensive while not leaving the church have not worked to assuage voter reaction to the Rev. Wright's comments.
Sen. Clinton has remained silent on the issue (although the two have fired volleys back and forth over the Iraq war).
Tomorrow's speech should be interesting because the senator cannot be seen as abandoning the sentiments of African-American voters who have been supporting him monolithically but he also cannot be seen ignoring an issue that a broad spectrum of voters finds troubling.
We'll see what he says tomorrow.
March 15, 2008
The Wright Stuff
The biggest issue in the biggest political race in the country right now concerns a former pastor for Sen. Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois. Sen. Obama narrowly leads Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York in for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.
When Sen. Obama became the frontrunner, press scrutiny increased, and the media's adulation evaporated like the morning dew. Some of that evaporation was due to Sen. Obama's frontrunner status, and some was due to outside criticism that the press was treating Sen. Obama with kid gloves.
At any rate, the gloves are off, and after a series of minor gaffes and surrogate blunders, this week saw the re-emergence of Sen. Obama's former pastor, The Reverend Jeremiah Wright of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, as a major issue. It briefly was discussed last year.
The Rev. Wright has made statements in his sermons over the years that are quite controversial. Videos of him saying things like, "...God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human...We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost (about the attacks of 9/11)...Jesus was a poor black man who lived in a country and who lived in a culture that was controlled by rich white people...." and more.
I have no doubt there are Americans across the spectrum who agree with this. I think they are a minority, but they are there.
Some of Rev. Wright's statements were played on national television and eventually caused Sen. Obama to first distance himself from Rev. Wright, and later issue a more forceful repudiation:
"The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation. When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign. I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments...Let me repeat what I've said earlier. All of the statements that have been the subject of controversy are ones that I vehemently condemn. They in no way reflect my attitudes and directly contradict my profound love for this country."
But in Sen. Obama's memoir, "Dreams of My Father," the senator notes, "While the boys next to me doodled on their church bulletin, Reverend Wright spoke of Sharpsville and Hiroshima, the callousness of policy makers in the White House and in the State House."
Some reporters are questioning whether this may mean Sen. Obama did in fact, over the 20 years he was a member of the church, hear some of these statements. And if he did, did he agree with them or tolerate them, as he now says he does not?
As a result, the Rev. Wright, who was on a religious advisory group supporting Sen. Obama's candidacy, stepped down and no longer has any tie to the campaign.
Sen. Obama also spoke about this on a series of interviews on American networks.
The Obama campaign is hoping that the interviews and statements like the ones he made earlier today at a town hall meeting in Indiana, decrying the racial "forces of division," will defuse the situation.
But these forces have been in evidence in this primary fight since the South Carolina Primary on Jan. 26. And some of this has been due, according to observers, to the tighter scrutiny that the press is applying to Sen. Obama. Some commentators are suggesting that this is the first time that the Illinois senator has ever faced anything but a glowing media. This will take all of Sen. Obama's formidable political skills to tamper this issue and others like it down.
The kind of press he was getting before couldn't last forever. Anything that makes Sen. Obama look like a typical politician, after his calls for change and a new politics, hurts him.
Sen. Obama's rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton has been silent for the most part, and the Republican nominee in waiting, Sen. John McCain, said he will soon be on the way to visit foreign leaders in Europe and the Middle East.
Suffice to say, Senator Obama has been brought down from his lofty status and his once saintly image has been tarnished. There may be more of this ahead but his lead in delegates and votes still makes him the favorite for the nomination. But as issues like this one emerge, it could cause some head scratching among those yet to vote in the Democratic Primary and among the super delegates who may decide the issue in the end.
When Sen. Obama became the frontrunner, press scrutiny increased, and the media's adulation evaporated like the morning dew. Some of that evaporation was due to Sen. Obama's frontrunner status, and some was due to outside criticism that the press was treating Sen. Obama with kid gloves.
At any rate, the gloves are off, and after a series of minor gaffes and surrogate blunders, this week saw the re-emergence of Sen. Obama's former pastor, The Reverend Jeremiah Wright of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, as a major issue. It briefly was discussed last year.
The Rev. Wright has made statements in his sermons over the years that are quite controversial. Videos of him saying things like, "...God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human...We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost (about the attacks of 9/11)...Jesus was a poor black man who lived in a country and who lived in a culture that was controlled by rich white people...." and more.
I have no doubt there are Americans across the spectrum who agree with this. I think they are a minority, but they are there.
Some of Rev. Wright's statements were played on national television and eventually caused Sen. Obama to first distance himself from Rev. Wright, and later issue a more forceful repudiation:
"The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation. When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign. I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments...Let me repeat what I've said earlier. All of the statements that have been the subject of controversy are ones that I vehemently condemn. They in no way reflect my attitudes and directly contradict my profound love for this country."
But in Sen. Obama's memoir, "Dreams of My Father," the senator notes, "While the boys next to me doodled on their church bulletin, Reverend Wright spoke of Sharpsville and Hiroshima, the callousness of policy makers in the White House and in the State House."
Some reporters are questioning whether this may mean Sen. Obama did in fact, over the 20 years he was a member of the church, hear some of these statements. And if he did, did he agree with them or tolerate them, as he now says he does not?
As a result, the Rev. Wright, who was on a religious advisory group supporting Sen. Obama's candidacy, stepped down and no longer has any tie to the campaign.
Sen. Obama also spoke about this on a series of interviews on American networks.
The Obama campaign is hoping that the interviews and statements like the ones he made earlier today at a town hall meeting in Indiana, decrying the racial "forces of division," will defuse the situation.
But these forces have been in evidence in this primary fight since the South Carolina Primary on Jan. 26. And some of this has been due, according to observers, to the tighter scrutiny that the press is applying to Sen. Obama. Some commentators are suggesting that this is the first time that the Illinois senator has ever faced anything but a glowing media. This will take all of Sen. Obama's formidable political skills to tamper this issue and others like it down.
The kind of press he was getting before couldn't last forever. Anything that makes Sen. Obama look like a typical politician, after his calls for change and a new politics, hurts him.
Sen. Obama's rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton has been silent for the most part, and the Republican nominee in waiting, Sen. John McCain, said he will soon be on the way to visit foreign leaders in Europe and the Middle East.
Suffice to say, Senator Obama has been brought down from his lofty status and his once saintly image has been tarnished. There may be more of this ahead but his lead in delegates and votes still makes him the favorite for the nomination. But as issues like this one emerge, it could cause some head scratching among those yet to vote in the Democratic Primary and among the super delegates who may decide the issue in the end.
March 14, 2008
Questions, Questions
We have received some questions from our listeners on the VOA web page--www.voanews.com. Here are the questions and my responses:
Question from John:
Why do you and numerous other news agencies insist on using Hillary Rodham Clinton’s middle name and fail to utilize Barack Hussein Obama’s middle name? Do you really assume that people would not realize this? I truly believe that a secret Muslim such as Hussein Obama should not even entertain the idea of becoming President of the United States. It will be an Obama Nation, or should I say an Abomination; that brings forth Desolation?
Answer:
I use the name, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton because she uses her middle name herself and has used it in the past. It is also more common journalistic practice to use her middle name although Hillary Clinton, without the Rodham, is also used.
Sen. Barack Obama has not used his middle name as a common practice so I will call him what he calls himself. He has gone out of his way to say he is not a Muslim and I have no evidence that is a “secret” Muslim. I have no problem using the middle name—it has caused a bit of a journalistic flap when a talk show host introducing Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee made a big deal of it—but unless the candidate identifies with the name, I tend not to use it.
Question from Margaret Altink:
Geraldine Ferraro stated that Sen. Barack Obama would not be where he is today if he was not considered black. Hilary Clinton would not be where she is today had her husband not been the President of the U.S.
Also why is Obama considered black when he is also half white?
Who was it who said speak softly and carry a big stick? That describes Obama to me. After Bush you need someone with intelligence, and that for me is Obama. Thank you.
Answer:
As I commented in an earlier post (March 13), the comments from former Rep. Ferraro caused quite a stir and now commentators are weighing in on both sides of the issue. People have also written about Sen. Clinton and the political relationship to her husband, the former president.
I believe it is fair to say that although Sen. Obama is the son of a white mother and Kenyan father, he identifies himself as an African-American. Who was it that said, speak softly and carry a big stick? Former President Theodore Roosevelt.
Question from Annette Alt:
Ladies and Gentlemen:
As a voter in the United States, I am upset that the Florida and Michigan delegates did not count. We the people make up the rules that govern our lives, and we will stand up and be counted. The individual voters of Florida and Michigan deserve to be heard, not ignored due to party rules. After all, we are the party right? Let’s get off our high horses and remember why the party exists ~ it is to bring a collective voice of the American democrats, so let’s get this correct and re-do the primaries in Michigan and Florida.
I am sick and tired of the rhetoric, that is what we have had for seven years. Just do the right thing and honor the voters who work hard every day to pay their bills, take care of their families, and honor their country. How can you possibly tell them that they do not count due to an antiquated rule? Shame on the party. Perhaps I should join a different one? Independent, Republican, not my first choice, however I WILL BE HEARD!
Answer:
As you know, both officials of the Democratic Party and the states of Florida and Michigan are trying to work out some kind of revote in the two states.
The latest information I have is that the Democratic Party officials in the state of Michigan say they have an agreement for a primar, likely on June 3. The money to stage the primary would come from the Democratic Party. The primary would need to be okayed by both the Clinton and Obama campaigns, the Democratic National Committee, the state legislature of Michigan and Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm.
A potential hangup is that members of the Michigan legislature, which is controlled by Democrats, leave at the end of March on a two-week spring break.
Florida is another issue. Not much progress there. The Democratic Party there offered to hold a mail-in primary but odds of that being approved are not very great. Opposing this plan is the state’s Democrats in the U.S. Congress, and Sen. Obama’s campaign has expressed concerns about a mail-in vote, questioning the security and accuracy of such an enterprise.
Any vote has to be completed by June 10 but officials in the state say they will decide on a plan to hold both a mail-in and in-person vote. One of the state’s two senators, Democrat Bill Nelson, suggested seating half of the state’s delegates.
We should know something about Florida Monday.
But I maintain that when you say “we the people make up the rules,” the “people” did make up the rules and they came up with the rules that said Florida and Michigan could not move their primaries up they way they did. Florida and Michigan chose to violate the rules to which other states adhered. It wasn’t an “antiquated” rule, it was passed in this campaign season.
The two states gambled that the rules would not apply to them. It is still not clear as to what will happen but if the states are allowed to violate the rules without any sanction, there will be no rules at all.
If you violate the rules and vote illegally, your vote does not count, no matter if you are a “voter who works hard every day to pay their bills, take care of their families, and honor their country.” I know you will disagree with this, but I think both states knowingly violated the rules thinking their size and importance would exempt them from what was agreed to.
Your ire should be directed at the state officials who promulgated this, not the party officials carrying out the rules they passed for everyone.
Question From Bingye Xue:
I'm not an American but I just say the rules are rules. For the Democratic Party, there are totally 4049 delegates, and who wins 2025 who will win the nomination.
I don't see any reason that the superdelegates should vote based on the primary voting. If the superdelegates follow the public voters, I think assigning superdelegates is like wasting time and money. Just count the primaries and caucus.
Answer:
Bingye, I couldn’t agree more. Great observation.
I will have a post on the controversy regareding Sen. Obama and his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, tomorrow. A big story here in the US.
Thanks for the questions!
Question from John:
Why do you and numerous other news agencies insist on using Hillary Rodham Clinton’s middle name and fail to utilize Barack Hussein Obama’s middle name? Do you really assume that people would not realize this? I truly believe that a secret Muslim such as Hussein Obama should not even entertain the idea of becoming President of the United States. It will be an Obama Nation, or should I say an Abomination; that brings forth Desolation?
Answer:
I use the name, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton because she uses her middle name herself and has used it in the past. It is also more common journalistic practice to use her middle name although Hillary Clinton, without the Rodham, is also used.
Sen. Barack Obama has not used his middle name as a common practice so I will call him what he calls himself. He has gone out of his way to say he is not a Muslim and I have no evidence that is a “secret” Muslim. I have no problem using the middle name—it has caused a bit of a journalistic flap when a talk show host introducing Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee made a big deal of it—but unless the candidate identifies with the name, I tend not to use it.
Question from Margaret Altink:
Geraldine Ferraro stated that Sen. Barack Obama would not be where he is today if he was not considered black. Hilary Clinton would not be where she is today had her husband not been the President of the U.S.
Also why is Obama considered black when he is also half white?
Who was it who said speak softly and carry a big stick? That describes Obama to me. After Bush you need someone with intelligence, and that for me is Obama. Thank you.
Answer:
As I commented in an earlier post (March 13), the comments from former Rep. Ferraro caused quite a stir and now commentators are weighing in on both sides of the issue. People have also written about Sen. Clinton and the political relationship to her husband, the former president.
I believe it is fair to say that although Sen. Obama is the son of a white mother and Kenyan father, he identifies himself as an African-American. Who was it that said, speak softly and carry a big stick? Former President Theodore Roosevelt.
Question from Annette Alt:
Ladies and Gentlemen:
As a voter in the United States, I am upset that the Florida and Michigan delegates did not count. We the people make up the rules that govern our lives, and we will stand up and be counted. The individual voters of Florida and Michigan deserve to be heard, not ignored due to party rules. After all, we are the party right? Let’s get off our high horses and remember why the party exists ~ it is to bring a collective voice of the American democrats, so let’s get this correct and re-do the primaries in Michigan and Florida.
I am sick and tired of the rhetoric, that is what we have had for seven years. Just do the right thing and honor the voters who work hard every day to pay their bills, take care of their families, and honor their country. How can you possibly tell them that they do not count due to an antiquated rule? Shame on the party. Perhaps I should join a different one? Independent, Republican, not my first choice, however I WILL BE HEARD!
Answer:
As you know, both officials of the Democratic Party and the states of Florida and Michigan are trying to work out some kind of revote in the two states.
The latest information I have is that the Democratic Party officials in the state of Michigan say they have an agreement for a primar, likely on June 3. The money to stage the primary would come from the Democratic Party. The primary would need to be okayed by both the Clinton and Obama campaigns, the Democratic National Committee, the state legislature of Michigan and Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm.
A potential hangup is that members of the Michigan legislature, which is controlled by Democrats, leave at the end of March on a two-week spring break.
Florida is another issue. Not much progress there. The Democratic Party there offered to hold a mail-in primary but odds of that being approved are not very great. Opposing this plan is the state’s Democrats in the U.S. Congress, and Sen. Obama’s campaign has expressed concerns about a mail-in vote, questioning the security and accuracy of such an enterprise.
Any vote has to be completed by June 10 but officials in the state say they will decide on a plan to hold both a mail-in and in-person vote. One of the state’s two senators, Democrat Bill Nelson, suggested seating half of the state’s delegates.
We should know something about Florida Monday.
But I maintain that when you say “we the people make up the rules,” the “people” did make up the rules and they came up with the rules that said Florida and Michigan could not move their primaries up they way they did. Florida and Michigan chose to violate the rules to which other states adhered. It wasn’t an “antiquated” rule, it was passed in this campaign season.
The two states gambled that the rules would not apply to them. It is still not clear as to what will happen but if the states are allowed to violate the rules without any sanction, there will be no rules at all.
If you violate the rules and vote illegally, your vote does not count, no matter if you are a “voter who works hard every day to pay their bills, take care of their families, and honor their country.” I know you will disagree with this, but I think both states knowingly violated the rules thinking their size and importance would exempt them from what was agreed to.
Your ire should be directed at the state officials who promulgated this, not the party officials carrying out the rules they passed for everyone.
Question From Bingye Xue:
I'm not an American but I just say the rules are rules. For the Democratic Party, there are totally 4049 delegates, and who wins 2025 who will win the nomination.
I don't see any reason that the superdelegates should vote based on the primary voting. If the superdelegates follow the public voters, I think assigning superdelegates is like wasting time and money. Just count the primaries and caucus.
Answer:
Bingye, I couldn’t agree more. Great observation.
I will have a post on the controversy regareding Sen. Obama and his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, tomorrow. A big story here in the US.
Thanks for the questions!
March 13, 2008
Thursday Update
Back on the grid again after a day or two off...
Well, lots of things happening offstage (if there is such a place) on the US presidential race. All eyes are focused now on the Democratic Party's presidential nomination race between Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.
For the record, after wins in the Wyoming caucus and Mississippi primary last week, RealClearPolitics has it 1618-1494 in total delegates (pledged plus committted super delegates) in favor of Sen. Obama. He also leads in the total popular vote cast, 13,280,770 to 12,577,044, a margin of 47.1 percent to 46.9 percent. This does not take into account the voting in Michigan and Florida. Voting in those two states for the Democrats don't count (for now) because they moved their elections up in violation of Democratic Party rules. The Democrats may devise a system to revote in these states but that's not happened yet and that is a post for another time.
Suffice to say, Sen. Obama has the lead in delegates and the popular vote and he will probably hold the delegate lead through the end of the primary season in June. It is possible that Sen. Clinton could overtake him in the popular vote category which would really put the Democrats into more of a dilemma than they already are.
Republicans, for their part, are just about done--Sen. John McCain of Arizona has clinched the nomination and is now trying to stay in the headlines while everyone focuses on the Democrats. A popular parlor game is guessing the vice presidential choice of Sen. McCain. It seems like former rival and past governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, wants the job and is publicly campaigning for it. There is still time for Sen. McCain to be thinking about the number two spot.
The next big stop on the road to Denver (site of the Democrats' Convention) is Pennsylvania, where on April 22, Senators Obama and Clinton will face off again with 158 delegates at stake. Currently. Senator Clinton holds the early lead in public opinion polls in a state whose demographics seem tailor-made for her candidacy. But I expect Sen. Obama to eat into that lead although so far, with both candidates campaigning in the state, she is holding onto a double-digit lead.
A double digit win for Sen. Clinton could make things even more interesting in the Democratic race than they already are.
Meanwhile, Gov. Eliot Spitzer, Democrat of New York, resigned his office effective this Monday. Gov. Spitzer was discovered to be "Customer Number 9" in a high-price prostitution ring. Gov. Spitzer held a news conference to say that he was involved in the ring and called it a "private matter." He made no statements about resigning.
Republicans in New York threatened to impeach him, Democrats at the state level began speaking out, and two days later, Gov. Spitzer (dubbed by New York tabloids as "The Luv Guv") said he was stepping down in favor of Lt. Governor David Paterson. There is a chance of prosecution of soon to be ex-Governor Spitzer for breaking various laws but we will find out about that later.
With that resignation out of the way, the political focus returned to the Democrats' presidential race and the specter of racial turmoil began to heat up yet again. Earlier during the South Carolina Democratic Primary, former President Bill Clinton, campaigning for his wife, said that Sen. Obama's biography and campaign claims had been "a fairy tale." This angered African-Americans and the former president (who had been up to that point very popular with African-Americans) was roundly criticized. He toned down his comments.
After a Barack Obama supporter named Samantha Power was quoted last week as calling Sen. Hillary Clinton a "monster," she had to step down from her advisory role to Sen. Obama. Then, former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, who ran with Walter Mondale in a 1984 wipeout loss to President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H.W. Bush, was quoted as saying that Sen. Obama would not be where he is if he were a "woman or any color or a white man."
When challenged about her remarks, she refused to repuditate them. Sen. Clinton did repudiate the remarks, and eventually Ms. Ferraro withdrew from the campaign. Sen. Obama called the remarks "wrong-headed," "ridiculous," and "divisive."
The comments set off a frenzy of punditry with one end of the spectrum saying it was Sen. Obama's talent not his race, (Joe Klein, Time) that has led him to the brink of the nomination. But others (Mickey Kaus, Slate) argue that part of Sen. Obama's appeal is his race and that if his face became America's to the world, quoting Mr. Kaus, it would "be an effective weapon in the fight against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology."
This all follows last week's racially polarized voting in the Democratic primary in Mississippi where Sen. Obama won African-American voters by a 9-1 margin and lost white voters to Sen. Clinton by a 3-1 margin.
Most Americans find this kind of rhetoric and debate unsettling as the Democratic Party race increases in intensity and invective. Whether we like it or not, these racial back and forths have the potential to turn the race very ugly before its conclusion. Both sides in this race are going to have to find a way to cool down passions on what is becoming a heated subject as the nomination contest takes a perilous turn.
Still no settlement on the Florida or Michigan revotes; it looks as if a plan for Florida to vote by mail is not going to happen.
Well, lots of things happening offstage (if there is such a place) on the US presidential race. All eyes are focused now on the Democratic Party's presidential nomination race between Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.
For the record, after wins in the Wyoming caucus and Mississippi primary last week, RealClearPolitics has it 1618-1494 in total delegates (pledged plus committted super delegates) in favor of Sen. Obama. He also leads in the total popular vote cast, 13,280,770 to 12,577,044, a margin of 47.1 percent to 46.9 percent. This does not take into account the voting in Michigan and Florida. Voting in those two states for the Democrats don't count (for now) because they moved their elections up in violation of Democratic Party rules. The Democrats may devise a system to revote in these states but that's not happened yet and that is a post for another time.
Suffice to say, Sen. Obama has the lead in delegates and the popular vote and he will probably hold the delegate lead through the end of the primary season in June. It is possible that Sen. Clinton could overtake him in the popular vote category which would really put the Democrats into more of a dilemma than they already are.
Republicans, for their part, are just about done--Sen. John McCain of Arizona has clinched the nomination and is now trying to stay in the headlines while everyone focuses on the Democrats. A popular parlor game is guessing the vice presidential choice of Sen. McCain. It seems like former rival and past governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, wants the job and is publicly campaigning for it. There is still time for Sen. McCain to be thinking about the number two spot.
The next big stop on the road to Denver (site of the Democrats' Convention) is Pennsylvania, where on April 22, Senators Obama and Clinton will face off again with 158 delegates at stake. Currently. Senator Clinton holds the early lead in public opinion polls in a state whose demographics seem tailor-made for her candidacy. But I expect Sen. Obama to eat into that lead although so far, with both candidates campaigning in the state, she is holding onto a double-digit lead.
A double digit win for Sen. Clinton could make things even more interesting in the Democratic race than they already are.
Meanwhile, Gov. Eliot Spitzer, Democrat of New York, resigned his office effective this Monday. Gov. Spitzer was discovered to be "Customer Number 9" in a high-price prostitution ring. Gov. Spitzer held a news conference to say that he was involved in the ring and called it a "private matter." He made no statements about resigning.
Republicans in New York threatened to impeach him, Democrats at the state level began speaking out, and two days later, Gov. Spitzer (dubbed by New York tabloids as "The Luv Guv") said he was stepping down in favor of Lt. Governor David Paterson. There is a chance of prosecution of soon to be ex-Governor Spitzer for breaking various laws but we will find out about that later.
With that resignation out of the way, the political focus returned to the Democrats' presidential race and the specter of racial turmoil began to heat up yet again. Earlier during the South Carolina Democratic Primary, former President Bill Clinton, campaigning for his wife, said that Sen. Obama's biography and campaign claims had been "a fairy tale." This angered African-Americans and the former president (who had been up to that point very popular with African-Americans) was roundly criticized. He toned down his comments.
After a Barack Obama supporter named Samantha Power was quoted last week as calling Sen. Hillary Clinton a "monster," she had to step down from her advisory role to Sen. Obama. Then, former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, who ran with Walter Mondale in a 1984 wipeout loss to President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H.W. Bush, was quoted as saying that Sen. Obama would not be where he is if he were a "woman or any color or a white man."
When challenged about her remarks, she refused to repuditate them. Sen. Clinton did repudiate the remarks, and eventually Ms. Ferraro withdrew from the campaign. Sen. Obama called the remarks "wrong-headed," "ridiculous," and "divisive."
The comments set off a frenzy of punditry with one end of the spectrum saying it was Sen. Obama's talent not his race, (Joe Klein, Time) that has led him to the brink of the nomination. But others (Mickey Kaus, Slate) argue that part of Sen. Obama's appeal is his race and that if his face became America's to the world, quoting Mr. Kaus, it would "be an effective weapon in the fight against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology."
This all follows last week's racially polarized voting in the Democratic primary in Mississippi where Sen. Obama won African-American voters by a 9-1 margin and lost white voters to Sen. Clinton by a 3-1 margin.
Most Americans find this kind of rhetoric and debate unsettling as the Democratic Party race increases in intensity and invective. Whether we like it or not, these racial back and forths have the potential to turn the race very ugly before its conclusion. Both sides in this race are going to have to find a way to cool down passions on what is becoming a heated subject as the nomination contest takes a perilous turn.
Still no settlement on the Florida or Michigan revotes; it looks as if a plan for Florida to vote by mail is not going to happen.
March 11, 2008
So What's New in Pennsylvania?
Now that Sen. Barack Obama has won Mississippi, it's only 42 days and counting until the big primary in Pennsylvania. Some 158 delegates at stake and it's another one of those must-win states for Sen. Hillary Clinton.
While Sen. Obama could probably afford the loss in terms of the number of delegates he would still win under the Democratic Party's proportional allocation scheme, a loss would turn up the heat on the notion that he hasn't won any big states in the primary process. If nothing else, it's fodder for the super delegates to mull over as they might (more than might, it's probably likely) have to make the final choice between the two.
Latest poll is the SurveyUSA poll showing Sen. Clinton 19 points ahead. That figure is sure to slip as the campaigning, already underway, heats up in the state. A 19-point win at this point for Sen. Clinton would have enormous psychological implications in the race. A win by Sen. Obama--of any kind--would come close to wrapping it up for him (based on my reading of the situation) in terms of delegates and the electability argument.
BTW, there is a Republican primary in Mississippi as well but since Sen. John McCain has already clinched the nomination, not much happening there. In fact, ten percent of voters in the Democratic Primary were Republicans!
FWIW, Sen. McCain was declared the winner over former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who has already conceded the race. Exit polls show Mississippi voters liked Gov. Huckabee and think that Sen. McCain is not conservative enough.
Both Democratic Party candidates are campaigning in Pennsylvania today and will stay there for another 42 days. With rhetoric heating up, this should be one heckuva race.
While Sen. Obama could probably afford the loss in terms of the number of delegates he would still win under the Democratic Party's proportional allocation scheme, a loss would turn up the heat on the notion that he hasn't won any big states in the primary process. If nothing else, it's fodder for the super delegates to mull over as they might (more than might, it's probably likely) have to make the final choice between the two.
Latest poll is the SurveyUSA poll showing Sen. Clinton 19 points ahead. That figure is sure to slip as the campaigning, already underway, heats up in the state. A 19-point win at this point for Sen. Clinton would have enormous psychological implications in the race. A win by Sen. Obama--of any kind--would come close to wrapping it up for him (based on my reading of the situation) in terms of delegates and the electability argument.
BTW, there is a Republican primary in Mississippi as well but since Sen. John McCain has already clinched the nomination, not much happening there. In fact, ten percent of voters in the Democratic Primary were Republicans!
FWIW, Sen. McCain was declared the winner over former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who has already conceded the race. Exit polls show Mississippi voters liked Gov. Huckabee and think that Sen. McCain is not conservative enough.
Both Democratic Party candidates are campaigning in Pennsylvania today and will stay there for another 42 days. With rhetoric heating up, this should be one heckuva race.
More on Mississippi's Demographic Divides
Some additional exit polling and turnout information.
Turnout in the Democratic Party primary was considered light to moderate. Both parties combined for about 10 percent of voters. There was some rain in Mississippi this morning which may have held down vote totals.
But the stories about incredible turnouts breaking records and long lines, seem to fading out a bit. Perhaps people are getting tired of the race or we are coming back down to more normal totals.
Secondly, there are votes in Mississippi, at least, that are breaking along racial lines. Seventy two percent of white voters in the Democratic Party, according to Fox Exit polls, supported Sen. Clinton, only 27 percent supported Sen. Obama. MSNBC polls show that Sen. Obama beat Sen. Clinton among black men by 93-7 and black women by 88-12. Conversely, Sen. Clinton won white men over Sen. Obama, 70-30, and white women--her strong suit--75 to 24.
So Sen. Obama's showing among white voters was better than Sen. Clinton's showing among black voters. According to the Fox poll, 72 percent of all primary participants said that race was not an issue but 40 percent of black voters said that it was.
Again, Sen. Clinton won older voters, Sen. Obama won younger voters.
Not too much difference from what has taken place in past elections, but given the large number of African-American voters in the Mississippi Primary, the heavy support given Sen. Obama led to his overall victory.
It seems not that long ago that African-Americans were largely supporting Sen. Clinton but Sen. Obama's win in South Carolina changed all that. It is expected that Sen. Obama will attract the support of African-American voters in Pennsylvania on April 22 while Sen. Clinton will get the votes of downscale economic white voters.
This race in the Democratic Party is certainly breaking across several demographic fault lines of class, race, age, and gender. To watch this is both fascinating and somewhat troubling at the same time.
Perhaps in Mississippi with its stark population patterns, results like these are to be expected but it is going to take a lot to smooth over these divides once a winner is ultimately selected. But if it is one thing that the American system has done well in the past, it's fashion compromises. Maybe this time will be no exception.
Turnout in the Democratic Party primary was considered light to moderate. Both parties combined for about 10 percent of voters. There was some rain in Mississippi this morning which may have held down vote totals.
But the stories about incredible turnouts breaking records and long lines, seem to fading out a bit. Perhaps people are getting tired of the race or we are coming back down to more normal totals.
Secondly, there are votes in Mississippi, at least, that are breaking along racial lines. Seventy two percent of white voters in the Democratic Party, according to Fox Exit polls, supported Sen. Clinton, only 27 percent supported Sen. Obama. MSNBC polls show that Sen. Obama beat Sen. Clinton among black men by 93-7 and black women by 88-12. Conversely, Sen. Clinton won white men over Sen. Obama, 70-30, and white women--her strong suit--75 to 24.
So Sen. Obama's showing among white voters was better than Sen. Clinton's showing among black voters. According to the Fox poll, 72 percent of all primary participants said that race was not an issue but 40 percent of black voters said that it was.
Again, Sen. Clinton won older voters, Sen. Obama won younger voters.
Not too much difference from what has taken place in past elections, but given the large number of African-American voters in the Mississippi Primary, the heavy support given Sen. Obama led to his overall victory.
It seems not that long ago that African-Americans were largely supporting Sen. Clinton but Sen. Obama's win in South Carolina changed all that. It is expected that Sen. Obama will attract the support of African-American voters in Pennsylvania on April 22 while Sen. Clinton will get the votes of downscale economic white voters.
This race in the Democratic Party is certainly breaking across several demographic fault lines of class, race, age, and gender. To watch this is both fascinating and somewhat troubling at the same time.
Perhaps in Mississippi with its stark population patterns, results like these are to be expected but it is going to take a lot to smooth over these divides once a winner is ultimately selected. But if it is one thing that the American system has done well in the past, it's fashion compromises. Maybe this time will be no exception.
As Expected Obama Leading or Has Won
Fox News has called the Mississippi Primary in the Democratic Party for Sen. Barack Obama, CNN says Sen. Obama is "leading" over Sen. Hillary Clinton.
I think it is safe to say that Sen. Obama is going to win this and the only question is how many delegates of the 33 at stake tonight will he earn.
But he is expected to win this primary because of the large African-American vote which should propel him to victory.
Interesting exit polling: Six in 10 voters for Sen. Obama say he should pick Sen. Clinton as his running mate should he win, but only four in 10 voters for Sen. Clinton believe she should pick Sen. Obama as her running mate.
More ominously, nearly three-fourths of Clinton voters said they would be "dissatisfied" if Sen. Obama wins the nomination but little more than half of Obama voters would be "dissatisfied" if Sen. Clinton wins.
One in five voters for Sen. Clinton said that Sen. Obama could beat Republican Party nominee Sen. John McCain, but only one in 20 voters for Sen. Obama believes that Sen. Clinton can beat the Republican standard-bearer in November.
What does all this mean? The vice presidential choice questions tells me that Sen. Obama's supporters are much more confident than Sen. Clinton's at the moment as they feel they can be magnanimous towards Sen. Clinton. Feelings are harsher the other way around.
Secondly, the second finding surprises me. I would have thought given the passion behind Sen. Obama's voters, that they would be much less willing to accept Sen. Clinton as the presidential candidate than the other way around. Of course, if the question were posed that somehow Sen. Clinton didn't win the majority of delegates through the electoral process but rather the super delegate process, I wonder if that would change. At any rate, a surprising poll result.
What is not surprising is how few supporters of Sen. Obama believe Sen. Clinton can triumph in the fall instead of Sen. Obama.
Taken together, it shows that voters on both sides have some strong feelings about their candidates and it will take quite a lot of work to bring the losing side along with the winner come convention time.
0023 UTC: NBC News Declares Sen. Obama the winner in Mississippi.
I think it is safe to say that Sen. Obama is going to win this and the only question is how many delegates of the 33 at stake tonight will he earn.
But he is expected to win this primary because of the large African-American vote which should propel him to victory.
Interesting exit polling: Six in 10 voters for Sen. Obama say he should pick Sen. Clinton as his running mate should he win, but only four in 10 voters for Sen. Clinton believe she should pick Sen. Obama as her running mate.
More ominously, nearly three-fourths of Clinton voters said they would be "dissatisfied" if Sen. Obama wins the nomination but little more than half of Obama voters would be "dissatisfied" if Sen. Clinton wins.
One in five voters for Sen. Clinton said that Sen. Obama could beat Republican Party nominee Sen. John McCain, but only one in 20 voters for Sen. Obama believes that Sen. Clinton can beat the Republican standard-bearer in November.
What does all this mean? The vice presidential choice questions tells me that Sen. Obama's supporters are much more confident than Sen. Clinton's at the moment as they feel they can be magnanimous towards Sen. Clinton. Feelings are harsher the other way around.
Secondly, the second finding surprises me. I would have thought given the passion behind Sen. Obama's voters, that they would be much less willing to accept Sen. Clinton as the presidential candidate than the other way around. Of course, if the question were posed that somehow Sen. Clinton didn't win the majority of delegates through the electoral process but rather the super delegate process, I wonder if that would change. At any rate, a surprising poll result.
What is not surprising is how few supporters of Sen. Obama believe Sen. Clinton can triumph in the fall instead of Sen. Obama.
Taken together, it shows that voters on both sides have some strong feelings about their candidates and it will take quite a lot of work to bring the losing side along with the winner come convention time.
0023 UTC: NBC News Declares Sen. Obama the winner in Mississippi.
Mississippi
The southern state of Misssisippi will conclude its Democratic primary shortly with 33 delegates at stake. With African-Americans making up about half of the electorate down there, it is no surprise that Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois is favored to win the lion's share of delegates over Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.
The expected victory would be the second in four days for Sen. Obama who won the Wyoming caucauses on Saturday. His expected triumph in Mississippi, along with the win in Wyoming, should, as one writer here put it, restore some of his luster as well as pad his delegate lead, which according to RealClearPolitics.com is at 119.
I'll be back with any calls which should come fairly soon. I'll also examine the exit polls for what it is saying about the state of the race.
Stick around.
The expected victory would be the second in four days for Sen. Obama who won the Wyoming caucauses on Saturday. His expected triumph in Mississippi, along with the win in Wyoming, should, as one writer here put it, restore some of his luster as well as pad his delegate lead, which according to RealClearPolitics.com is at 119.
I'll be back with any calls which should come fairly soon. I'll also examine the exit polls for what it is saying about the state of the race.
Stick around.
March 10, 2008
New Scandal Snares Democratic Governor
A scandal broke late Monday ensnaring New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat.
Governor Spitzer, a former Attorney General in New York, was caught on tape soliciting the services of a prostitute. When the story broke in New York, the governor called a news conference where he apologized but stopped short of resigning.
Before becoming governor, Eliot Spitzer was an attorney general and political analysts were saying today his "hard charging" style as attorney general made him few friends. Apparently, they say, he continued that behavior while governor and now has few political allies to help him. The term "self-righteous" has surfaced quite a bit in the press among both critics and supporters.
Several top political officials in New York are calling for his resignation. As Attorney General, Gov. Spitzer was in charge of enforcing laws against prostitution rings and he did so; so this looks especially bad. He is calling it a "private matter" but as Attorney General in 2004, his prosecution of two prostitution rings resulted in several arrests and statements about high-level and high stakes operations that were in the end, as he put it, "prostitution rings".
Gov. Spitzer may have played a key role in the presidential campaign when his plan for awarding drivers licenses to illegal immigrants in New York came up in an Oct. 30, 2007, debate among Democratic Party candidates. When asked point blank if she supported Gov. Spitzer's plan, Senator Clinton hummed and hawed and refused to give a yes-or-no answer. The media jumped on the prevarication and in subsequent interviews, she still did not give a definitive statement on whether or not she supported the governor's plan.
Days later, in another debate, she finally said she would not, but by then, the damage had been done, and you can look at that debate back in October as the time that Sen. Barack Obama's candidacy began to take off.
Gov. Spitzer has endorsed Senator Clinton for the presidency but no one is expecting the governor's troubles to reflect on the Clinton campaign. But it doesn't help either. If he does resign, he may lose his status as super delegate, but that is probably the least of his troubles.
While not exactly a presidential campaign issue, it nevertheless is driving political coverage in Washington and the nation and there is a tie to the campaign. BTW, after the debates, Gov. Spitzer dropped the idea after days of negative responses to his proposal.
In campaign news, more water thrown on the idea promulgated from Sen. Clinton that she and Senator Obama would be a "dream ticket," one that former President Bill Clinton called an "unstoppable force."
Very expertly, Sen. Obama argued that if Senator Clinton is saying he is not ready to be president and lacks the experience for the job, how can she promote him as the vice president, a heartbeat away from the Oval Office?
Great response. Even though there are some who think he will be pressured into taking the number two slot, I really don't see it. Some others agree with me that it's not in the cards. There is a long way to go before we are at that point and Sen. Obama has said over and over, he is running for the presidency. I believe him.
Governor Spitzer, a former Attorney General in New York, was caught on tape soliciting the services of a prostitute. When the story broke in New York, the governor called a news conference where he apologized but stopped short of resigning.
Before becoming governor, Eliot Spitzer was an attorney general and political analysts were saying today his "hard charging" style as attorney general made him few friends. Apparently, they say, he continued that behavior while governor and now has few political allies to help him. The term "self-righteous" has surfaced quite a bit in the press among both critics and supporters.
Several top political officials in New York are calling for his resignation. As Attorney General, Gov. Spitzer was in charge of enforcing laws against prostitution rings and he did so; so this looks especially bad. He is calling it a "private matter" but as Attorney General in 2004, his prosecution of two prostitution rings resulted in several arrests and statements about high-level and high stakes operations that were in the end, as he put it, "prostitution rings".
Gov. Spitzer may have played a key role in the presidential campaign when his plan for awarding drivers licenses to illegal immigrants in New York came up in an Oct. 30, 2007, debate among Democratic Party candidates. When asked point blank if she supported Gov. Spitzer's plan, Senator Clinton hummed and hawed and refused to give a yes-or-no answer. The media jumped on the prevarication and in subsequent interviews, she still did not give a definitive statement on whether or not she supported the governor's plan.
Days later, in another debate, she finally said she would not, but by then, the damage had been done, and you can look at that debate back in October as the time that Sen. Barack Obama's candidacy began to take off.
Gov. Spitzer has endorsed Senator Clinton for the presidency but no one is expecting the governor's troubles to reflect on the Clinton campaign. But it doesn't help either. If he does resign, he may lose his status as super delegate, but that is probably the least of his troubles.
While not exactly a presidential campaign issue, it nevertheless is driving political coverage in Washington and the nation and there is a tie to the campaign. BTW, after the debates, Gov. Spitzer dropped the idea after days of negative responses to his proposal.
In campaign news, more water thrown on the idea promulgated from Sen. Clinton that she and Senator Obama would be a "dream ticket," one that former President Bill Clinton called an "unstoppable force."
Very expertly, Sen. Obama argued that if Senator Clinton is saying he is not ready to be president and lacks the experience for the job, how can she promote him as the vice president, a heartbeat away from the Oval Office?
Great response. Even though there are some who think he will be pressured into taking the number two slot, I really don't see it. Some others agree with me that it's not in the cards. There is a long way to go before we are at that point and Sen. Obama has said over and over, he is running for the presidency. I believe him.
Thanks for the Comment
To Anonymous and Fly on the Wall, thanks for the comments to my blog. I appreciate your well thought out and reasoned additions.
I made my own comments to yours as well.
Hope you stick around throughout the season. It is nice to hear from you
Here now, another in our series from Jeff Young on How America Elects: This time on polls:
How America Elects
The Power of Polling
Every political campaign, from the race to the White House on down to the local level, uses polling of some sort to provide strategic information critical to success at the ballot box.
Think of the political process as a marketing exercise. Candidates and their parties present themselves to the voters (consumers) as a product they can purchase at the ballot box. Is the product viable in the marketplace? Polling tells campaigns where they stand in the competitive field.
By doing surveys of the voting population, pollsters such as The Gallup Organization, Zogby International, the Mason-Dixon Poll and others provide political campaigns with current marketing information on the candidate's popularity and the ranking of issues that matter to voters. As is true with any marketing exercise, polls also reference current information with that obtained in earlier surveys, to create what it called "trending." Trending indicates, for instance, whether the candidate is gaining or losing popularity over time, or whether the public believes that one major party has gained voter perceptions that is better capable of addressing a particular problem as compared to the other major party.
Just as important as the information gained through polling is its analysis. Campaign strategists may see that polling indicates their candidate has weaker than desired support in a particular region or state. Campaigns respond by having the candidate visit that area more often, and by beefing up the campaign organization there. Conversely, areas where the candidate is overwhelmingly supported are areas where the candidate can spend less time and effort.
Such analysis would also tell candidates which issues resonate strongest with voters in a particular area, or a particular age or other demographic group. Then, candidates typically develop multiple "messages" to address those groups. For instance, if polling showed that older men put national security at the top of their concerns, the candidate's speeches to, say, veterans groups would stress national security. If the polls showed that 18-35 year old voters rank envrionmental concerns highly, the candidate's appearances involving that demographic group would obviously address his or her plans to clean up the environment.
As for the mechanics of polling, logistics make it impossible to survey an entire country's population. So, pollsters create a "sample group" to represent the population at large using mathematical formulas that have been proven over time. This is how pollsters can survey one thousand people to represent the opinions of an entire country of perhaps 300 million.
Nearly all polling is presently done by telephone as opposed to face-to-face or via the Internet. But Internet polling is growing, though pollsters have had the challenge of trying to ensure that data collected over the Web remains "one person, one opinion" because of the ease someone might have using the Internet to "stuff" the survey box. Another trend affecting telephone polling is the embracement by younger demographic groups of mobile phones versus traditional landline versions. Polling presently isn't done to mobile phone numbers, but perhaps mobiles will have to be included somehow to properly sample certain groups.
Perhaps the most famous U.S. election polling failure of all time took place during the 1936 race for the White House, in which incumbent Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt was challenged by Republican Alf Landon. A well-known national magazine, "Literary Digest,"
announced that its election poll showed that Landon was going to handily defeat Roosevelt.
The results on election day were quite the opposite - Landon was crushed nearly nationwide.
What happened? Pollsters say Literary Digest constructed a fatally flawed survey sample group. The magazine drew its sample from telephone directories, its own subscribers, and motor vehicle registrations. The problem was that in 1936, with the United States struggling to emerge from the Great Depression, many people did not have automobiles or telephones.
People short of cash also didn't typically spend their money on a subscription to Literary Digest. So by creating a sample group based on those factors, the sample was made up of people who did not represent the bulk of the voting public. Incidentally, after the embarrassment of its survey, Literary Digest folded not long after the 1936 election.
Jeffrey Young VOA-TV
This look at election polling is part of the VOA-TV series "How America Elects."
If you want to view this and other segments of How America Elects, go to:
http://www.voanews.com/english/HowAmericaElects.cfm
Comment: Before publishing this piece, I surveyed my "staff"--38 percent liked the piece; 35 percent did not like it, 27 percent had no opinion. Just kidding :-)
I made my own comments to yours as well.
Hope you stick around throughout the season. It is nice to hear from you
Here now, another in our series from Jeff Young on How America Elects: This time on polls:
How America Elects
The Power of Polling
Every political campaign, from the race to the White House on down to the local level, uses polling of some sort to provide strategic information critical to success at the ballot box.
Think of the political process as a marketing exercise. Candidates and their parties present themselves to the voters (consumers) as a product they can purchase at the ballot box. Is the product viable in the marketplace? Polling tells campaigns where they stand in the competitive field.
By doing surveys of the voting population, pollsters such as The Gallup Organization, Zogby International, the Mason-Dixon Poll and others provide political campaigns with current marketing information on the candidate's popularity and the ranking of issues that matter to voters. As is true with any marketing exercise, polls also reference current information with that obtained in earlier surveys, to create what it called "trending." Trending indicates, for instance, whether the candidate is gaining or losing popularity over time, or whether the public believes that one major party has gained voter perceptions that is better capable of addressing a particular problem as compared to the other major party.
Just as important as the information gained through polling is its analysis. Campaign strategists may see that polling indicates their candidate has weaker than desired support in a particular region or state. Campaigns respond by having the candidate visit that area more often, and by beefing up the campaign organization there. Conversely, areas where the candidate is overwhelmingly supported are areas where the candidate can spend less time and effort.
Such analysis would also tell candidates which issues resonate strongest with voters in a particular area, or a particular age or other demographic group. Then, candidates typically develop multiple "messages" to address those groups. For instance, if polling showed that older men put national security at the top of their concerns, the candidate's speeches to, say, veterans groups would stress national security. If the polls showed that 18-35 year old voters rank envrionmental concerns highly, the candidate's appearances involving that demographic group would obviously address his or her plans to clean up the environment.
As for the mechanics of polling, logistics make it impossible to survey an entire country's population. So, pollsters create a "sample group" to represent the population at large using mathematical formulas that have been proven over time. This is how pollsters can survey one thousand people to represent the opinions of an entire country of perhaps 300 million.
Nearly all polling is presently done by telephone as opposed to face-to-face or via the Internet. But Internet polling is growing, though pollsters have had the challenge of trying to ensure that data collected over the Web remains "one person, one opinion" because of the ease someone might have using the Internet to "stuff" the survey box. Another trend affecting telephone polling is the embracement by younger demographic groups of mobile phones versus traditional landline versions. Polling presently isn't done to mobile phone numbers, but perhaps mobiles will have to be included somehow to properly sample certain groups.
Perhaps the most famous U.S. election polling failure of all time took place during the 1936 race for the White House, in which incumbent Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt was challenged by Republican Alf Landon. A well-known national magazine, "Literary Digest,"
announced that its election poll showed that Landon was going to handily defeat Roosevelt.
The results on election day were quite the opposite - Landon was crushed nearly nationwide.
What happened? Pollsters say Literary Digest constructed a fatally flawed survey sample group. The magazine drew its sample from telephone directories, its own subscribers, and motor vehicle registrations. The problem was that in 1936, with the United States struggling to emerge from the Great Depression, many people did not have automobiles or telephones.
People short of cash also didn't typically spend their money on a subscription to Literary Digest. So by creating a sample group based on those factors, the sample was made up of people who did not represent the bulk of the voting public. Incidentally, after the embarrassment of its survey, Literary Digest folded not long after the 1936 election.
Jeffrey Young VOA-TV
This look at election polling is part of the VOA-TV series "How America Elects."
If you want to view this and other segments of How America Elects, go to:
http://www.voanews.com/english/HowAmericaElects.cfm
Comment: Before publishing this piece, I surveyed my "staff"--38 percent liked the piece; 35 percent did not like it, 27 percent had no opinion. Just kidding :-)
March 8, 2008
Obama Wins Wyoming
To no one's surprise, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois won the caucuses in the western state of Wyoming today by a percentage of 58-40 percent. He picked up 12 convention delegates with his win over Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.
The total, according to RealClearPolitics.com, is 1588-1465 in favor of Barack Obama. That is the total of pledged delegates and those committted super delegates I have been posting about recently. It is 1378-1223 in pledged delegates.
This is Sen. Obama's 13th straight win in these small state caucuses. A caucus is different from an election in that in a caucus, participants gather in a public place, and publicly and in the open, declare their support for their candidate. It is more a display of organizational strength than voter support. A primary election is just that...an election in which voters cast secret ballots for the candidate of their choice.
Sen. Obama's overall lead is based on his victories in the Democratic Party caucuses; Sen. Clinton has only three caucus wins.
With this win, and an expected win on Tuesday in the southern state of Mississippi, which is a primary, it is likely Sen. Obama will erase any gains Senator Clinton made last week in her wins in Ohio and Texas.
But all eyes are anticipating the April 22 primary in Pennsylvania when 158 of 187 convention delegates will be at stake.
A good day for Sen. Obama.
The total, according to RealClearPolitics.com, is 1588-1465 in favor of Barack Obama. That is the total of pledged delegates and those committted super delegates I have been posting about recently. It is 1378-1223 in pledged delegates.
This is Sen. Obama's 13th straight win in these small state caucuses. A caucus is different from an election in that in a caucus, participants gather in a public place, and publicly and in the open, declare their support for their candidate. It is more a display of organizational strength than voter support. A primary election is just that...an election in which voters cast secret ballots for the candidate of their choice.
Sen. Obama's overall lead is based on his victories in the Democratic Party caucuses; Sen. Clinton has only three caucus wins.
With this win, and an expected win on Tuesday in the southern state of Mississippi, which is a primary, it is likely Sen. Obama will erase any gains Senator Clinton made last week in her wins in Ohio and Texas.
But all eyes are anticipating the April 22 primary in Pennsylvania when 158 of 187 convention delegates will be at stake.
A good day for Sen. Obama.
March 7, 2008
Funny Thing
Just as I was posting about super delegates and how to interpret Sen. Obama's lead in pledged delegates in the Democratic Party presidential race, here comes an excellent article on the subject from Jonathan Cohn in The New Republic magazined.
Mr. Cohn says that the delegate count ("the will of the people") is often based on rules that are less than democratic: arbitrarily drawn congressional boundary lines, party rules that add delegates in states that have voted Democratic in past elections, which punishes states that haven't, and that what super delegates may look to is the popular vote, that is, the total number of votes each candidate has gotten in this process instead of the delegates:
"That's not to say the 'will of the people' ought to be irrelevant to the superdelegates' deliberations. All other things equal, that's probably the best criteria that superdelegates can use. But the key here is defining 'will of the people' properly.
http://tinyurl.com/2r6ggk
Mr. Cohn says that the delegate count ("the will of the people") is often based on rules that are less than democratic: arbitrarily drawn congressional boundary lines, party rules that add delegates in states that have voted Democratic in past elections, which punishes states that haven't, and that what super delegates may look to is the popular vote, that is, the total number of votes each candidate has gotten in this process instead of the delegates:
"That's not to say the 'will of the people' ought to be irrelevant to the superdelegates' deliberations. All other things equal, that's probably the best criteria that superdelegates can use. But the key here is defining 'will of the people' properly.
And the way to do that, I think, is by looking not at the committed delegate count but at the popular vote--that is, the sum total of votes cast by individuals in the primaries and caucuses. It may not be a perfect reflection of the voters' will, but it's surely a more accurate reflection than the delegate count."
You can read the entire piece at:http://tinyurl.com/2r6ggk
BTW, in the same magazine, the pro-delegate argument is made by Jonathan Chait in a piece suggesting Sen. Hillary Clinton leave the race. You can read this one at:
http://tinyurl.com/39ks9z
How America Votes
Here is a very nice piece by VOA's Jeffrey Young on how the United States registers voters. It's bound to become an election issue, in fact, it already has, as parties are trying to quickly register those Americans they think will vote for them in the 2008 election.
Here is Jeff's report:
Voter registration is the beginning of the electoral process. Political parties consider voter registration to be a cornerstone of their power and influence, because registration identifies people likely to support that party and vote accordingly on election day. People who register can indicate which party they want to be aligned with, or they can also register as unaffiliated with any party.
Voter registration rolls swell in times of heightened political interest. The 2008 election cycle is one of them. The emergence of a very spirited contest between Democratic presidential aspirants Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama has driven both campaigns to conduct massive voter registration drives in hopes of filling the primary elections with their supporters. Along with those two candidates, the Democratic Party also benefits from a swell in registrations because it may well translate into a higher Democrat turnout in the November general election.
Registration is tied to residence. When someone moves, they have to re-register in their new location. Since states also require people who move to get a new driver's license, a federal law popularly called the "motor voter" law went into effect in January 1995 that enables people using their state's Motor Vehicles Department to register to vote at the same time.
The "motor voter" measure is credited with adding millions of people to the voting rolls.
Along with conventional paper registration, two states - Arizona and Washington - have also set up voter registration on the Internet. Arizona authorities report a notable gain in registrations after the Internet site opened. Internet registration is expected to eventually expand nationwide.
The minimum age in the United States for voting is 18. It was lowered from 21 in the early
1970's in the Vietnam War era. Young people were arguing then that they could be drafted into the Army and face possible death or injury when they were 18, and because of that, they should be able to have a say in the political process. Congress agreed.
Voter registration in the United States is not conducted by the federal government. It is done by subdivisions of states called "counties." Each county's voter roll is then compiled into a state database, administered by an office called the Secretary of State. Voter registration is assisted by the efforts of civil society groups such as the League of Women Voters.
Because of the system under which voter registration is conducted, the state rolls of voters can and have been used as a political tool. Before elections, state Secretaries of State are expected to go over the rolls and purge names who are found invalid for any proper reason, such as death or moving out of the state. Because of that, there have been accusations over time that such purging was done to weaken a particular party's voting strength ahead of elections. This accusation was made, for instance, against Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, a Republican, in the 2000 election cycle. Harris was accused of selectively purging racial minority members and others deemed likely to support the opposition Democratic Party. But over the years, the Democrats have been accused of engaging in the same activity.
In the 2008 election cycle, a unit of the U.S. Department of Justice has told at least ten states to review their voting rolls. The Justice Department asserts that these states, and possibly others, appear to have more registered voters than voting-age population. Those who have pressured the Justice Department to do this say it is vital to help prevent voting fraud, the casting of ballots by people ineligible to do so. But critics contend that this pressure is purely politically motivated.
Jeffrey Young VOA-TV
This look at voter registration is part of the VOA-TV series "How America Elects."
If you want to view this and other segments of How America Elects, go to:
http://www.voanews.com/english/HowAmericaElects.cfm
I'll be posting more of Jeffrey's "primers" and you are invited to go see them yourself at the VOA website. The URL is in the previous paragraph. Thanks, Jeff.
Here is Jeff's report:
Voter registration is the beginning of the electoral process. Political parties consider voter registration to be a cornerstone of their power and influence, because registration identifies people likely to support that party and vote accordingly on election day. People who register can indicate which party they want to be aligned with, or they can also register as unaffiliated with any party.
Voter registration rolls swell in times of heightened political interest. The 2008 election cycle is one of them. The emergence of a very spirited contest between Democratic presidential aspirants Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama has driven both campaigns to conduct massive voter registration drives in hopes of filling the primary elections with their supporters. Along with those two candidates, the Democratic Party also benefits from a swell in registrations because it may well translate into a higher Democrat turnout in the November general election.
Registration is tied to residence. When someone moves, they have to re-register in their new location. Since states also require people who move to get a new driver's license, a federal law popularly called the "motor voter" law went into effect in January 1995 that enables people using their state's Motor Vehicles Department to register to vote at the same time.
The "motor voter" measure is credited with adding millions of people to the voting rolls.
Along with conventional paper registration, two states - Arizona and Washington - have also set up voter registration on the Internet. Arizona authorities report a notable gain in registrations after the Internet site opened. Internet registration is expected to eventually expand nationwide.
The minimum age in the United States for voting is 18. It was lowered from 21 in the early
1970's in the Vietnam War era. Young people were arguing then that they could be drafted into the Army and face possible death or injury when they were 18, and because of that, they should be able to have a say in the political process. Congress agreed.
Voter registration in the United States is not conducted by the federal government. It is done by subdivisions of states called "counties." Each county's voter roll is then compiled into a state database, administered by an office called the Secretary of State. Voter registration is assisted by the efforts of civil society groups such as the League of Women Voters.
Because of the system under which voter registration is conducted, the state rolls of voters can and have been used as a political tool. Before elections, state Secretaries of State are expected to go over the rolls and purge names who are found invalid for any proper reason, such as death or moving out of the state. Because of that, there have been accusations over time that such purging was done to weaken a particular party's voting strength ahead of elections. This accusation was made, for instance, against Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, a Republican, in the 2000 election cycle. Harris was accused of selectively purging racial minority members and others deemed likely to support the opposition Democratic Party. But over the years, the Democrats have been accused of engaging in the same activity.
In the 2008 election cycle, a unit of the U.S. Department of Justice has told at least ten states to review their voting rolls. The Justice Department asserts that these states, and possibly others, appear to have more registered voters than voting-age population. Those who have pressured the Justice Department to do this say it is vital to help prevent voting fraud, the casting of ballots by people ineligible to do so. But critics contend that this pressure is purely politically motivated.
Jeffrey Young VOA-TV
This look at voter registration is part of the VOA-TV series "How America Elects."
If you want to view this and other segments of How America Elects, go to:
http://www.voanews.com/english/HowAmericaElects.cfm
I'll be posting more of Jeffrey's "primers" and you are invited to go see them yourself at the VOA website. The URL is in the previous paragraph. Thanks, Jeff.
Let the Super Delegates be Super
First, just the latest on where the presidential nomination race in the Democratic Party stands. As of today, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois leads Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York in the delegate race, 1575-1464, with both pledged and committed Super Delegates added in.
There are races coming up Saturday in Wyoming, a "closed" primary (that is Independents or Republicans cannot take part) then on Tuesday in Mississippi (an "open" primary in which party affiliation is not required). Wyoming has 12 unpledged delegates at stake out of 18 total, Missisippi has 33 pledged delegates at stake out of 40.
Sen. Obama is up by six points in a poll taken in Mississippi, I can't find much about Wyoming. But all eyes will be on the critical primary April 22 in Pennsylvania.
There are some other things going on in the day to day race that are pretty interesting but I will get to those tomorrow. For now, I want to talk about super delegates.
You've seen and heard the term perhaps without really knowing who and what these people are. I have alluded to them briefly but here is more background on them and an argument for them doing what they do.
While both parties have "pledged" delegates, that is, delegates who are selected in caucuses and primary elections, they also have delegates who are not determined by those mechanisms. These delegates in the Democratic Party are made up of current and former elected officials as well as party luminaries and retired office holders. There are 794 of them now and they comprise about one-fifth of the number of total delegates at the convention; that's why they are so important.
They were created in the early 1980s as a way of ensuring that party leaders and elected officials still have influence at the convention. The total number of these delegates have changed over the years and another category of these delegates called "add-ons" will hike the total of unpledged delegates from 794 to 870.
These 870 delegates will act as a counterbalance to the sentiments expressed by participants during the primary campaigns. These longtime party officials balance out the passions of new party members or people who vote in "open" contests who aren't members of the party at all.
Now the argument is heard that if neither Sen. Obama nor Sen. Clinton have enough votes to claim victory on the first ballot (and this is becoming more likely) these super delegates should reflect the will of the voters by affirming the candidate with the most delegate votes. Sounds pretty simple and straightforward.
But say the two combatants for the Democratic nomination are within 100 votes of each other after some 3,253 delegates have been chosen. That is a difference of only 1.5 percent! Not too much, is it?
That hardly qualifies as a mandate to me. Even though one candidate would be ahead of the other, it's a virtual tie. Now if the super delegates are supposed to merely reflect the will of the voters, is that enough of a margin to bear the entire voting weight of these delegates? One and a half percent? If that is the case, then why do you need them at all? That is not why they were created. They were created to break these ties--virtual or otherwise--by selecting the candidate who they think would be the best for the party.
There are those who say putting the choice of candidate selection in the hands of unelected officials is "undemocratic." On paper, that looks great, but in the U.S., there are dozens of examples of power concentrated in the hands of "unelected" officials. Judges can rule on political issues and in some cases, overturn elections. Many judges are appointed, not elected. Commissions, boards, and councils in the U.S. have varying degrees of power in our political system and their members and leaders are not elected.
One of the great things about the American system to me (warning: brag coming up) is the checks and balances on power in the American system. There are checks and balances on the president, Congress, the courts...and yes, even the voters. The Founding Fathers who set this all up way back when were not completely enthusiastic about democracy and were quick to cite its shortcomings (voters swayed by sentiment and emotion, the factor of corruption, the threat from outside influences, etc., the concentration of power in an individual). But nevertheless, they established a system where democracy was front and center but even some checks and balances were put on the people.
So it is not so un-American to my way of thinking that these super delegates were put in place for a reason and the reason was not to rubber-stamp voter choices. Besides, the political parties can set the rules they wish. Now of course, that is not completely true; they may be private organizations but they are so entwined with our political traditions and laws, that there are a whole series of laws and precedent involving them.
But if the Democrats (the Republicans have super delegates too but they are not called super delegates, there are not nearly as many--only 123!) want to set up a system in which ties are broken by more than 800 super delegates, then so be it. There is nothing, to my mind, inherently wrong, outside the mainstream, or undemocratic about it.
Obviously, others have different views. I would like to hear yours--should unelected party officials have the power to choose the Democratic Party's presidential candidate if neither have enough to triumph?
Of course, it will really get interesting if the super delegates split in a way that will still fail to produce a winner. That is a possibility, too.
All this is part of what makes American politics so fascinating and so thought-provoking. If you've got an opinion on this, shoot it my way via the comment or e-mail in the box to the right. I want to hear from you.
More later.
There are races coming up Saturday in Wyoming, a "closed" primary (that is Independents or Republicans cannot take part) then on Tuesday in Mississippi (an "open" primary in which party affiliation is not required). Wyoming has 12 unpledged delegates at stake out of 18 total, Missisippi has 33 pledged delegates at stake out of 40.
Sen. Obama is up by six points in a poll taken in Mississippi, I can't find much about Wyoming. But all eyes will be on the critical primary April 22 in Pennsylvania.
There are some other things going on in the day to day race that are pretty interesting but I will get to those tomorrow. For now, I want to talk about super delegates.
You've seen and heard the term perhaps without really knowing who and what these people are. I have alluded to them briefly but here is more background on them and an argument for them doing what they do.
While both parties have "pledged" delegates, that is, delegates who are selected in caucuses and primary elections, they also have delegates who are not determined by those mechanisms. These delegates in the Democratic Party are made up of current and former elected officials as well as party luminaries and retired office holders. There are 794 of them now and they comprise about one-fifth of the number of total delegates at the convention; that's why they are so important.
They were created in the early 1980s as a way of ensuring that party leaders and elected officials still have influence at the convention. The total number of these delegates have changed over the years and another category of these delegates called "add-ons" will hike the total of unpledged delegates from 794 to 870.
These 870 delegates will act as a counterbalance to the sentiments expressed by participants during the primary campaigns. These longtime party officials balance out the passions of new party members or people who vote in "open" contests who aren't members of the party at all.
Now the argument is heard that if neither Sen. Obama nor Sen. Clinton have enough votes to claim victory on the first ballot (and this is becoming more likely) these super delegates should reflect the will of the voters by affirming the candidate with the most delegate votes. Sounds pretty simple and straightforward.
But say the two combatants for the Democratic nomination are within 100 votes of each other after some 3,253 delegates have been chosen. That is a difference of only 1.5 percent! Not too much, is it?
That hardly qualifies as a mandate to me. Even though one candidate would be ahead of the other, it's a virtual tie. Now if the super delegates are supposed to merely reflect the will of the voters, is that enough of a margin to bear the entire voting weight of these delegates? One and a half percent? If that is the case, then why do you need them at all? That is not why they were created. They were created to break these ties--virtual or otherwise--by selecting the candidate who they think would be the best for the party.
There are those who say putting the choice of candidate selection in the hands of unelected officials is "undemocratic." On paper, that looks great, but in the U.S., there are dozens of examples of power concentrated in the hands of "unelected" officials. Judges can rule on political issues and in some cases, overturn elections. Many judges are appointed, not elected. Commissions, boards, and councils in the U.S. have varying degrees of power in our political system and their members and leaders are not elected.
One of the great things about the American system to me (warning: brag coming up) is the checks and balances on power in the American system. There are checks and balances on the president, Congress, the courts...and yes, even the voters. The Founding Fathers who set this all up way back when were not completely enthusiastic about democracy and were quick to cite its shortcomings (voters swayed by sentiment and emotion, the factor of corruption, the threat from outside influences, etc., the concentration of power in an individual). But nevertheless, they established a system where democracy was front and center but even some checks and balances were put on the people.
So it is not so un-American to my way of thinking that these super delegates were put in place for a reason and the reason was not to rubber-stamp voter choices. Besides, the political parties can set the rules they wish. Now of course, that is not completely true; they may be private organizations but they are so entwined with our political traditions and laws, that there are a whole series of laws and precedent involving them.
But if the Democrats (the Republicans have super delegates too but they are not called super delegates, there are not nearly as many--only 123!) want to set up a system in which ties are broken by more than 800 super delegates, then so be it. There is nothing, to my mind, inherently wrong, outside the mainstream, or undemocratic about it.
Obviously, others have different views. I would like to hear yours--should unelected party officials have the power to choose the Democratic Party's presidential candidate if neither have enough to triumph?
Of course, it will really get interesting if the super delegates split in a way that will still fail to produce a winner. That is a possibility, too.
All this is part of what makes American politics so fascinating and so thought-provoking. If you've got an opinion on this, shoot it my way via the comment or e-mail in the box to the right. I want to hear from you.
More later.
March 5, 2008
The Day after Super Tuesday II
The analyses is flying in, scenarios are being rewritten, and the political landscape in the 2008 US presidential election has been changed dramatically.
First off, rising from the political dead, Arizona Sen. John McCain clinched the Republican Party's presidential nomination last night defeating former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. Sen. McCain won the old-fashioned way: he earned it. Given up for dead last year because of his stances on Iraq (he favored the war and the surge) and illegal immigration (he resisted measures that would have made his party look anti-Hispanic), he weathered staff resignations, talk radio accusations and more to come back and win.
Conservatives in the party, a potent bloc, never really had a candidate around which they could rally (I can't end a sentence with a preposition!). They flirted with former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, and several others. But in the end, their strength was diffused among various candidates. Some even backed Sen. McCain because of his stance on the war.
When the surge began to shove Iraq down the issue scale among voters, and the Arizonan began winning primaries, most Republicans pegged him as the guy most likely to succeed in the fall. So what if you have some disagreements on policies? There's plenty of time to mend some fences. That was the idea that many conservatives confessed to after the McCain win.
He has formidable obstacles ahead of him--the war issue, an economy which many Americans worry about, and his age. If he wins, he would be the oldest elected first-term president at 71. Democrats are saying he represents a third term for President Bush. He is going to have to embrace the president but not too much and carve out his own space but that is what these candidates do. The good thing for him is that he will have several months to do this.
In the Democratic Party, as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said earlier this week, "I'm just getting warmed up." So is the party. Her victories in Texas and Ohio (and Rhode Island) last night propelled her back into the race with Illinois Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois (who won in Vermont). It guarantees that the contest is going to go on through the spring, perhaps through to the final vote in the U.S. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico in June. It may even go beyond that to the convention itself.
Sen. Obama leads in delegate totals, according to RealClearPolitics.com, 1570-1465, which includes so-called "super delegates". These "super delegates" are 796 party officials, honorees, and insiders who have voting power at the Democratic National Convention. They are bound to no one and can vote as they choose. Next comes the "add on" delegates--76 delegates who are added on to each state's allotment of "super delegates". The add-ons are determined by virtue of a formula that gives states one add-on for each number of seats they have on the Democratic National Committee, the party's ruling body. According to the Wall Street Journal, most states will have one or two; California will have five. These "add-ons" will be selected at upcoming state party conventions in the coming weeks.
These "add-ons" were made part of the Party's rules in 1988 and they were supposed to reflect the popular vote in party primaries. But over time, they became prizes for party activists.
The issue facing the Democrats now is that because of their rules by which delegates are rewarded according to the proportion each candidate receives in the primary election, it will be very difficult for Sen. Clinton to pass or equal Sen. Obama unless she racks up some huge margins in her victories. The math, as most analysts are writing in the US on Wednesday, works against her.
But it is also not clear that Sen. Obama will gain enough delegates (2,025 needed to win) to grab the nomination either. And if they are within a hundred votes or so out of some 3,176 pledged delegates, that is not a very big margin. It is also not clear who will win the popular vote totals among the two candidates after all the races have been won.
So I am moving to the idea that it is the superdelegates who will decide the outcome of the race. And they may split evenly as well depending upon how they vote: do they vote their conscience? The person who won in their state? Congressional district? How will these choices be made? Both campaigns now are courting these super delegates which again makes it only more likely that these delegates will tip the balance one way or the other.
Sen. Clinton is talking about a "dream ticket" of her and Sen. Obama for VP. We're a long way from that, as the Obama campaign has already said. But one thing is beginning to be talked about quietly among political reporters. If Sen. Obama has a lead in delegates going after the primaries, but loses because of super delegate support for Sen. Clinton, it would be a raucous convention with a breach that may never heal.
Somebody's gotta win this thing and there are scenarios for either but the bruised feelings on the part of the loser will take a lot of time to heal, and since the party convention is in late August, it's going to be difficult to heal if there's a lot of blood on the floor (speaking figuratively) before the vote in November.
In fact, several political writers noted that the real winner last night in the Democratic races was Sen. McCain!
There is a caucus upcoming in Wyoming on March 8 and a primary in Mississippi on March 11 which should bring delegates to Sen. Obama. Then a huge primary in Pennsylvania on April 22 with 158 delegates at stake.
We'll cover the polls and predictions on that one and others. And hey, I was right about Texas in my prediction and just a little off on Ohio--right candidate, wrong margin. Keep it here for the best in campaign coverage and head over to www.voanews.com for all the latest on the race.
Back at ya later.
First off, rising from the political dead, Arizona Sen. John McCain clinched the Republican Party's presidential nomination last night defeating former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. Sen. McCain won the old-fashioned way: he earned it. Given up for dead last year because of his stances on Iraq (he favored the war and the surge) and illegal immigration (he resisted measures that would have made his party look anti-Hispanic), he weathered staff resignations, talk radio accusations and more to come back and win.
Conservatives in the party, a potent bloc, never really had a candidate around which they could rally (I can't end a sentence with a preposition!). They flirted with former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, and several others. But in the end, their strength was diffused among various candidates. Some even backed Sen. McCain because of his stance on the war.
When the surge began to shove Iraq down the issue scale among voters, and the Arizonan began winning primaries, most Republicans pegged him as the guy most likely to succeed in the fall. So what if you have some disagreements on policies? There's plenty of time to mend some fences. That was the idea that many conservatives confessed to after the McCain win.
He has formidable obstacles ahead of him--the war issue, an economy which many Americans worry about, and his age. If he wins, he would be the oldest elected first-term president at 71. Democrats are saying he represents a third term for President Bush. He is going to have to embrace the president but not too much and carve out his own space but that is what these candidates do. The good thing for him is that he will have several months to do this.
In the Democratic Party, as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said earlier this week, "I'm just getting warmed up." So is the party. Her victories in Texas and Ohio (and Rhode Island) last night propelled her back into the race with Illinois Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois (who won in Vermont). It guarantees that the contest is going to go on through the spring, perhaps through to the final vote in the U.S. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico in June. It may even go beyond that to the convention itself.
Sen. Obama leads in delegate totals, according to RealClearPolitics.com, 1570-1465, which includes so-called "super delegates". These "super delegates" are 796 party officials, honorees, and insiders who have voting power at the Democratic National Convention. They are bound to no one and can vote as they choose. Next comes the "add on" delegates--76 delegates who are added on to each state's allotment of "super delegates". The add-ons are determined by virtue of a formula that gives states one add-on for each number of seats they have on the Democratic National Committee, the party's ruling body. According to the Wall Street Journal, most states will have one or two; California will have five. These "add-ons" will be selected at upcoming state party conventions in the coming weeks.
These "add-ons" were made part of the Party's rules in 1988 and they were supposed to reflect the popular vote in party primaries. But over time, they became prizes for party activists.
The issue facing the Democrats now is that because of their rules by which delegates are rewarded according to the proportion each candidate receives in the primary election, it will be very difficult for Sen. Clinton to pass or equal Sen. Obama unless she racks up some huge margins in her victories. The math, as most analysts are writing in the US on Wednesday, works against her.
But it is also not clear that Sen. Obama will gain enough delegates (2,025 needed to win) to grab the nomination either. And if they are within a hundred votes or so out of some 3,176 pledged delegates, that is not a very big margin. It is also not clear who will win the popular vote totals among the two candidates after all the races have been won.
So I am moving to the idea that it is the superdelegates who will decide the outcome of the race. And they may split evenly as well depending upon how they vote: do they vote their conscience? The person who won in their state? Congressional district? How will these choices be made? Both campaigns now are courting these super delegates which again makes it only more likely that these delegates will tip the balance one way or the other.
Sen. Clinton is talking about a "dream ticket" of her and Sen. Obama for VP. We're a long way from that, as the Obama campaign has already said. But one thing is beginning to be talked about quietly among political reporters. If Sen. Obama has a lead in delegates going after the primaries, but loses because of super delegate support for Sen. Clinton, it would be a raucous convention with a breach that may never heal.
Somebody's gotta win this thing and there are scenarios for either but the bruised feelings on the part of the loser will take a lot of time to heal, and since the party convention is in late August, it's going to be difficult to heal if there's a lot of blood on the floor (speaking figuratively) before the vote in November.
In fact, several political writers noted that the real winner last night in the Democratic races was Sen. McCain!
There is a caucus upcoming in Wyoming on March 8 and a primary in Mississippi on March 11 which should bring delegates to Sen. Obama. Then a huge primary in Pennsylvania on April 22 with 158 delegates at stake.
We'll cover the polls and predictions on that one and others. And hey, I was right about Texas in my prediction and just a little off on Ohio--right candidate, wrong margin. Keep it here for the best in campaign coverage and head over to www.voanews.com for all the latest on the race.
Back at ya later.
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