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Arizona, California, Connecticut, Deleware, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, and Oklahoma. We won't know the final delegate count for McCain until tommorow, but it should about twice as many delegates as the next closest competitor - Romney. McCain at a minimum has cemented front runner status. If, as I suspect, Romney ends campaign shortly, then McCain will be the putative nominee and can start focusing on the Presidential race. Given that nearly twice as many people are showing up to vote in the Democratic primaries as the Republican, McCain's focus needs to quickly shift to energizing Republican voters. Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Utah And the Huckster managed to sell his snake oil in my neck of the woods . . . much to my chagrin. Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, West Virginia The Huckster has served his purpose in splitting in the Romney vote. Look for his to fade away until he receives his quid pro quo and McCain names his as his Vice Pontif nominee. Update(2) - Delegate Count: Needed to Win - 2,026 Arizona (51%), Arkansas (73%), California (55%), Massachusetts (56%), New Jersey (54%), New York (57%), Oklahoma (55%), Tennessee (54%) Obama keeps the Obamamania going. He won 13 states to Hillary's paltry 8. That is a big spread, even though he lost the delegate battle a little bit. There is no question how this will be spun tomorrow. Alabama (56%), Alaska (73%), Colorado (66%), Connecticut (50%), Deleware (53%), Georgia (66%), Idaho (80%), Illinois (64%), Kansas (73%), Minnesota (67%), Missouri (49%), North Dakota (61%), Utah (56%) Update: One of the nice things to see is the value of a Ted Kennedy / John Kerry endorsement for Obama. Both of the Massachusetts Senators endorsed Obama. Clinton won Massachusetts. Heh.
Update(2): Delegate Count: Needed to Win - 1,191
McCain: 680
Romney: 270
Huckabee: 176
McCain has won - or is projected to win nine states, including the big three of Califoria, Missouri and New York:
Romney won six states:
And On The Left . . . . . A Split, edge HillBill, but O has the Mo and can claim the most states won
Clinton: 818
Obama: 730
Clinton came away with winning less states, but she took the biggest ones and is expected to hold about a 100 delegate lead when the dust clears tomorrow. She won, or is projected to have won:
The next primaries will be Kanasas, Louisiana and Washington state on Saturday, and a week from today, Maryland, Virginia and Washington D.C.
All I can say is this Democratic battle is really fun to watch. I look forward to enjoying it until a candidate is chosen at the Convention.
Showing posts with label super tuesday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label super tuesday. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
McCain Cements Front Runner Status; Clinton & Obama Split (Updated)
Interesting News - Super Tuesday Edition
This is it. Super Tuesday is here.
Big Lizards Guide to Uber Tuesday for the Perplexed is a where to go for your scorecard. And pundits are using their columns to try and influence the vote. E.J. Dionne has found his personal savior in Obama. Can we have a "hallelujah" Indeed, we now know the debate is over and the only ones who consider it otherwise are racists. Could they be as racist as the head of Trinity United, however? On the right side, Andres Martinez leads with the question of whether McCain has accepted Jesus as his personal savior, while Rick Moran ponders the redefining of what it means to be a Republican. I happen to share the view of the Glittering Eye on McCain.
John Bolton ponder how our spy chief, Mitch McConnell, can undue the tremendous damage of the NIE on Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Program when he testifies before Congress this week.
David Aaronovitch ponders the horrendous ramifications of a withdrawal from Afghanistan. As does a professor in Pakistan. America will not abandon it, but NATO is shaky indeed, compliments of the cowardly and disloyal Germans who have refused to provide combat soldiers that would actually fight in the NATO operation.
As I have blogged previously, Gordon Brown plans to get upwards of 30% of the UK’s energy through a massive construction of wind turbines throughout Britain. It was nuts to begin with, and now its worse. "Nato has begun an investigation into British findings that wind farms make overflying planes invisible to radar . . ." Meanwhile, Labour has given £1 billion in tax receipts to energy companies to start building them – which the companies have pocketed while energy prices in the UK skyrocket.
More insane PC silencing of free speech in Britain. "Schools are being ordered to drop the term "mum and dad" in case it offends pupils from a single-parent, homosexual or turkey-baster ‘family.’" And if its not the PC crowd, it’s the bureaucrats doing in the quality of life.
"A new study says that mandatory diversity training backfires: After looking at data from 830 workplaces, researchers discovered that sensitivity seminars and their ilk led to declines in the number of women and minorities in management."
What will you do to celebrate Waitangi Day tomorrow, take a Mori tribesman to dinner?
Sleaze goes Goracle green. He is the modern version of a war profiteer.
More on the travesty of justice in the Maldives following the gang rape of a 12 year old girl by members of the religion of peace.
Gloria Steinem editorializes at TNOY as to the many accomplishments of the "womyn’s" movement in America. You will find a few of the accomplishments surprising, beginning with the more equal distribution of STD’s
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Hillary and Romney in Nevada, McCain in South Carolina
The Republican race got just a little tighter, with a decisive victory for Romney in Nevada and a squeaker for McCain over the Huckster in South Carolina. The only Democratic race today was in Nevada, and that one turned out to be a pyrrich victory of sorts for Clinton.
The next scheduled primaries are January 26 in South Carolina for the Democrats and then January 29 for both parties in Florida. Those votes are followed by February 5 Super-Tuesday, with 22 states in play.
Now, to read the entrails, consult the oracles, and make my own SWAG's:
On the Republican side, the field probably just narrowed to three viable candidates - Romney, McCain and Giuliani.
Romney stays viable and very much in the running with his victory in Nevada. And as the economy becomes more of an issue, Romney's stellar economic credentials may be a decisive consideration to many voters.
McCain has two big wins in New Hampshire and South Carolina - but both wins have relied heavilly on independents and cross-over votes. As we move into states that have strict party primaries, the question is will the base still hold McCain's previous heresies against him? I'll tell you on February 6. I happen to like McCain for his national security credentials and his promise not to approve any spending bills that contain earmarks.
Giuliani - the wild card. A win in Florida puts him very much back in the running. And I have no idea whats going to happen in Florida.
The Huckster - He just lost in a friendly Southern state with a very high concentration of Christian fundamentalists, which has been his only demographic to date. He will join Ron Paul as a side show from here on out.
Fred - On July 3rd, the Republican race was Fred's to enter and win. He looked like the strongest possible candidate to me. But he has fumbled and bumbled ever since. It really is too bad, but Fred is no longer in the running.
The Democratic primary in Nevada was pretty fascinating on several counts:
- Hillary won the "caucus" count pretty decisively, despite the strip's biggest union coming out for Obama. What does this say about the power of the Unions?
- Obama may well spin this as a victory - and with some reasonable basis for so doing. While Hillary may have won the "caucus" count, the way votes are weighted by region in Nevada, Obama actually won one more delegate than Hillary.
- The allure of Obama until ten days ago was that he was an African American candidate who transcended race. Then, ten days ago, he embraced the race card against Bill and Hillary. Was that a fatal mistake? It may well have been. While white progressives have spent decades joined with the black civil rights establishment in portraying as racist any conservative criticism of their post-civil-rights-era agenda, its probably another thing entirely when the penultimate white progressives - Bill and Hill - are getting carded. I am not of the white progressive persuasion, so I can only speculate on this one.
Obama will likely take South Carolina, with its large black population. And if Obama stays as far away from the race card as possible between now and 5 February, perhaps this might still be a race. Otherwise, after this bit of drama, I think Hillary retakes the mantle of inevitability.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Reading Tea Leaves & Contemplating Doomsday
If you want intelligent discussion of politics, Rick Moran provides it at Rightwing Nuthouse on a daily basis. Today, Romney's win in Michigan has thrown Rick into overdrive as he consults the oracles, reads the entrails and posits a possiblity that is looking ever more likely - that Republicans might not have a nominee prior to the convention held the first week in September. You will find Rick's worried musings in this article at PJM.
The exceptional site The Green Papers memorializes everything you want to know about the nominating process. They document that, to win the Republican nomination for President, a nominee will need to earn 1,191 out of 2,380 available delegates. If no candidate has that number of delegates locked up by the end of the primaries, then the matter gets decided at the convention.
That possibility would be a nightmare scenario for several reasons, as I see it. The ramifications are:
1) Republicans would have very little time to coalesce around a single candidate before the November election.
2) Coalescing around a single candidate would be all the more difficult becasue of a lot of raw and open wounds in the majority of Republicans whose favored ox just got gored.
3) The Republican candadate would have only two months to raise money and campaign nationally for the Presidency.
4) It would see the nomination of a Presidential candidate not on the democratic basis of a simple majority of those who voted in the primaries, but rather on the back room dealings of those several thousand people sent to take part in the convention. This would likely result in some perception that, whomever the candidate is, he is lacking in full legitimacy. This would be particularly true if the chosen candidate was not the person who had gone into the convention with the most delegates to begin with.
We are not there yet. As Rick points out, there are a lot of state primaries - most importantly the eighteen that will occur on Super Tuesday - to go before the doomsday scenario is upon us. Let's hope that the matter is setteled long before the doomsday clock reaches the midnight hour in September.
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