It’s easy to lose sight of the real enemy. Never forget.
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Category Archives: Politics
The fact that you can say pretty much whatever nasty thing you want about them, and they’ll bend over backwards to prove you right.
“They’re writing off half the country.”
Sweet. Zombie. Jesus.
There’s a point when you’ve got to ask yourself, “how the hell are these people planning on getting elected?” Let’s make that time before the general. Seriously.
I think maybe, though, they’re some sort of bizarre light rock trojan horse from the Republicans.
Whoever it is needs to update their technology. It’s like they’re from Bedrock, splicing this with a snarky bird.
Bleh.
If you haven’t been watching the Democratic Primary race closely, you’ve been missing some prime political theatre.
After failing to land a knockout blow on Super Tuesday (as predicted by this very blog, not that anyone reads it), the Clinton campaign has lost 8 straight primaries and is all but in free-fall. They’ve gone from having a substantial lead (counting super-delegates) to being, by most accounts, behind the would-be challenger.
The situation is exacerbated by Clinton’s apparent willingness to through her campaign staff under the bus. She’s already dropped her campaign manager, citing accounting shortfalls, and a deputy manager has resigned as well. At least they’re getting paid again.
Now, they’re basically giving Barack Obama Wisconsin, and focusing on Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania, because ostensibly those are “real” states.
And to top it all off, her best fundraisers, having long since given the maximum they can, are looking into starting a series of 527′s (non-affiliated campaign groups) so that they can spend more of their money advertising for her, because she’s having trouble bringing in that oh-so-elusive small donor base.
Now, she’s got Ed Rendell telling me that I’m not ready for a black president.
The wheels are really starting to come off now. Not that it’s wise to count Clinton out just yet. Not while she’s still breathing.
Let the swift-boating commence.
The Clinton’s lent their campaign $5 Million today, and a good number of their senior staff are going without pay for the month of February in order to try to balance the books after massive spending for Iowa, New Hampshire and the Super Tuesday states.
Edit: In the interest of fairness, the Clinton campaign has apparently raised $3 million dollars this week, in an effort to offset the cost of the loan. Not bad, but it’s not $7 Mil in a little over 24 hours.
On the other side, The Obama campaign raised $2 million during my walk home from work. They’ve got a solid shot at topping Ron Paul for highest one-day online fundraising, $6 million which came during one of his “money bombs” late last year.
But if you ask the Clinton camp, Obama’s out of momentum.
Spin, spin, spin. Makes me dizzy just watching.
Edit: The Obama Campaign has been updating their donation graphic all night;
Obama 49%
Clinton 36%
Clinton 52%
Obama 42%
Somebody’s coming out of this with egg on their face. Big, steaming, electoral egg.
Super Tuesday: Two men persons enter, one man person leaves. Right? Well, not really.
As it stands, there’s almost 0 chance of a true knockout blow coming out of tomorrow’s flurry of state-based primaries. There will be lots of posturing, gnashing of teeth and general excitement all around (well on the Democratic side, the GOP really isn’t generating any of it’s own), but there is unlikely to be a clear winner.
I can hear you now, all 3 of you that read this blog; But, Bats, they keep saying that Super Duper Tuesday is the end. How can it not produce a winner? Well, gather round, kids. Here’s how Super Tuesday is probably going to turn out to be largely irrelevant.
The delegate counts are pretty much even. Right now the superdelegates, the ones that aren’t going to come directly from the electorate but rather as personal endorsements, are slanted strongly towards Clinton. Obama is catching up, and if he does well tomorrow he’ll probably pick up enough steam that they’ll come flooding in.
It takes 2,200 delegates and superdelegates to tie up the Democratic nomination. There simply aren’t enough in play tomorrow for that to be a realistic possibility for either candidate, even if the polls we have (which are admittedly rather flawed) are way off. The race is tight enough that any victory tomorrow is going to be in terms of anywhere from 100 to maybe 300 delegates, which really isn’t that much in the big picture.
The most important thing about Super Tuesday at this point isn’t really who comes out on top, it’s which campaign gets the narrative it needs. Clinton wants to hold Obama low enough that they can claim his momentum has stalled, and Obama wants to make some serious in-roads to specific states where Clinton is expected to be strong (CA and NJ among them) so that he can talk about the appeal of his message of change.
To be perfectly honest, I don’t expect Obama to come out on top tomorrow. He’s got a lot of momentum, and it’s going to keep going after this round of primaries, but Clinton’s name recognition is just too strong in a lot of these states. The thing is, he doesn’t really need to win it, tomorrow. The primaries that are left, with the exception of Pennsylvania, are very very good states for him. Places where the population of registered Democrats has a very high percentage of african-americans and where his style of oration is going to bring back some very good memories. In fact, a near-miss tomorrow would give him another opportunity for a “Concession Speach” like the one he gave in New Hampshire, and he can fire up his base all over again.
The bottom line is that even though this is being hailed as the last push for either campaign, it’s really not going to be. Clinton will win the popular vote by a narrow margin, she will claim that Obama’s momentum has stopped, he will give another speach about the power-that-be holding down the people and we’ll see how it shakes down over the next two months.
Via Youtube:
Not being from California, I have no idea how much this is going to impact the race. Seems like it could be big, especially given the Clinton campaign’s dependence on the female vote in CA. Between Michelle, Oprah, Caroline and Maria, it seems like Hillary might be having some trouble holding on to those female voters that she was seemingly assured of last night.
Edit: This is also another “my daughter/son convinced me” endorsement. That’s been kind of a theme for Obama.
Edit 2: 
AP Photo via HuffPost.
That’s one hell of a front pager, isn’t it?
There’s quite the contest going on out there today, and I’m not talking about the Super Bowl. If you’re a political junky like me, you’ve probably noticed the crazy polling results that are trickling in at this point. They’re all over the board, all over the country.
Pollsters are having trouble locking down who or what really signifies a “likely” voter in this, the mother of all modern political uprisings. Everybody is getting ready to hit the polls, but nobody has any real idea how it’s going to shake down. Now Rassmussen has Obama up by 1 point in California, a state the Clinton led by 20 points less than a month ago. Three seperate polls have the margin in Georgia being 20 points in Obama’s favor, 6 points for Obama or statistically tied (link unavailable, I’ll try to dig it up).
Why is this? Why can’t the people who supposedly have their fingers on the pulse of America (the pundits and pollsters that constantly talk about how relevant they are) formulate any type of realistic estimation of who’s voting where? Because there are no more “likely” voters, and the people who are going to decide this election don’t have home phone numbers. From college students and senior citizens to housewives and Nascar fans.
Everyone is voting. No one is sitting this one out, they can’t afford to. We’ve got to move forward, and we’ve got to do it now. This is Democracy at it’s best, folks. High voter turnout forces the people in government to stand up and take notice, no matter who’s doing the voting. It’s how we hold them accountable, how we effect the course of this country.
Welcome to the 21st Century. Let’s kick some ass.
