Will Obama Speak at the Texas Democratic Convention This Week?

I think it depends on what his opponent is going to do about the fact that he is the presumed nominee, and she isn’t. For reasons that the pundits have been trying to fathom all day, Hillary Clinton failed to concede the nomination to the presumed nominee. I don’t want to join them in trying to figure out why. I don’t care why.

What, though, is this going to do to the 2008 Democratic campaign up and down the ballot in Texas? The Democratic convention in Austin begins on Friday, well Thursday night if you throw in all of the parties, drinking, and backroom meetings. It would be nice to have a single rallying point. It would be nice to have some single thing to unify this badly fractured party around.

But that isn’t going to happen.

So instead of party unity, we are going to have delegates have at each other. With nothing settled, and with something akin to defiance in the air, I think, in the absence of having anything finally resolved, this is going to be a very rancorous convention.

I’ll use the adjective “shrill”.

So will Obama show up to address this group of 16,000? Who in their right mind would want to? Who would want to attend a convention where half of the audience will greet you warmly, even wildly, and the other half will boo loudly? I think that’s not a moment that the Obama campaign will want to see on You Tube.

And now come to find out, quite accidentally, the Obama campaign is going to send a surrogate to address the crowd. Virginia Governor Tim Kaine will come to the Democratic Convention in Austin, and will speak to the general session on Friday.

I don’t envy him.

He will have to stand in front of a roomful of delegates who have still not stopped bickering. This crowd knows that although Clinton carried Texas by a slim majority in the March 3rd primary, she lost in the precinct conventions that were held later that evening. So Texas stands unique among the 50 states as the only state that cast a majority of votes to Clinton, but Clinton will not receive a majority of Texas delegates at the national convention. Clinton delegates are pretty sore about that.

Half of me wants to be there to watch this spectacle. But I have a long-standing conflict that prevented me from applying for a “blogger’s credential” (yes, they really have them).

But then the other half (the empty part) doesn’t think he can take it anymore.

UPDATE: Just out is that Clinton will suspend her campaign and concede on Friday. Now I have to ask, has anything changed? I think not. It’s going to take people some time to adjust to all of this. No, nothing will really change unless she actually does her concession speech in Austin.

And what do you think the chances are of that happening?

The Beginning of the End, and the End of the Beginning

Well everyone seems to have kept to the script. So as a result, this is going to be a very well orchestrated event today and tonight as we move from Barack Obama being one of the Democratic candidates for President of the United States, to Barack Obama becoming the presumptive, inevitable, predictable and unavoidable Democratic nominee.

All Obama has to do is win some delegates in South Dakota and he can turn over a couple of superdelegate cards and claim victory early during prime time. Or if he’s crazy, he can wait until the polls close at 10 o’clock in Montana and make his victory speech to the west coast.

It all started earlier today as uncommitted superdelegates made their move to narrow the delegate list to 18.5 (as MSNBC is saying at this writing). This is the list of previously uncommitted superdelegates who came out for Obama today (courtesy of Demconwatch):

DNC Tina Abbott (MI)
DNC Joyce Beatty (OH)
DNC Maria Chappelle-Nadal (MO)
Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (MI)
DNC John Daniello (DE)
DNC Jennifer DeChant (ME)
DNC Debbie Dingell (MI)
DNC Carnelia Fondren (MS)
DNC Diane Glasser (FL)
DNC Kwame Kilpatrick (MI)
DNC Debra Kozikowski (MA)
DNC Joyce Lalonde (MI)
Rep. John Olver (MA)
DNC John Perez (CA)
DNC Harriet Smith-Windsor (DE)Rep. John Spratt (SC)
DNC Richard Wiener (MI)

In addition, four superdelegates that had previously declared for Clinton have switched their vote to Obama.

DNC Ben Johnson (DC)

DNC Kamil Hasan (CA)

Rep. Maxine Waters (CA)

DNC Rhett Ruggerio (DE)

And Jimmy Carter, who broadly hinted several weeks ago that he would be supporting Obama now says that he will declare for Obama after the polls close tonight. But I think that pretty much means the same thing, so add to Obama’s list:

Jimmy Carter (GA)

Now this is interesting. Just in the writing of this, that 18.5 needed superdelegates number just changed to 11. At this rate he should have the nomination by 6:48 PM CDT unless someone can go out there and put the brakes on this avalanche that we have all been waiting for.

Now how long do you think it’s going to take for Hillary Clinton to mention that she is open to the possibility of becoming Barack’s runn . . . oops . . . that’s already happened, too.

Things are moving too fast for me today.

Ah, here we go: my superdelegate, Congressman Nick Lampson has yet to declare who he will support for the nomination.

(Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, NICK, NICK, NICK, NICK)

Superdelegates Can Switch Endorsements

It’s somewhat anticlimactic at this point, but the media keep replaying that news clip of Hillary Clinton saying this:

“One thing about superdelegates is that they can change their minds.”

I find it ironic that she says these words at this time, because from the things I am hearing, her words may just be the prophetic ones that will bring the Clinton campaign to a close very soon now.

Yes, superdelegates can change their minds and have in the past. From what I am hearing, we are about to see a big mind-changing, and it will be as I said . . . very soon now.

On Pain and McCain

Yesterday we saw the Democratic Rules and Bylaws Committee give Hillary Clinton 19 delegates in Florida, and give Barack Obama 4 delegates in Michigan. Some would argue that they gave Obama 59 delegates in Michigan because Obama wasn’t on the ballot. Others will say that Obama should have gotten 64 delegates in Michigan since their primary, as I found out this morning from DNC Chairman Howard Dean, was nonexistent because it was illegal.

Others have said that Obama was being magnanimous in taking fewer delegates in Michigan and allowing his supporters to give Clinton 19 in Florida. My feeling is that his campaign doesn’t want it to look too much like a total rout for Clinton, that the deal is in the bag and now is not the time to be in a delegate grabbing mode.

The delegates will come anyway. Word is that there is a bloc of superdelegates, or charter delegates as we all now know to call them, who have declared for Clinton, but will switch sides later this week.

This will not be good news to the many women who have pinned their hearts, hopes and treasure to someone that they thought was going to be the first woman to be President of the United States. The piece that I wrote a couple of days ago, about women, Democratic women, who will vote for McCain if Obama is the nominee showed the level of the pain that they feel. Especially now when we see a Catholic priest do an outrageous take-off on Clinton’s tearful moment in New Hampshire.

Yes there will be pain and suffering this week if there is a significant superdelegate shift to Obama. Women will feel cheated. They will be angry, just as the woman in this You Tube video clip was when she left the room after the Rules Committee made their decisions known. I actually remember hearing her outbursts – she has a very thick accent that makes her voice unmistakable. But clearly, this woman was in pain.



If you listened at the very end you heard the laughter of a young woman near the video camera’s microphone. This is the kind of reaction that we don’t need right now. Right now we have women who are making very short-sighted voting decisions that go against their own self-interest.

They say that they will vote for McCain this fall.

I think what we have to do now is let that anger and frustration run its course. This is a unique primary season. It is like no other in American history. It is the first time that both race AND gender are issues. Post-primary feelings are going to be higher than they have been in the past when all we had running against each other were some middle aged white men.

As the nominee emerges, some women will simply shift their allegiance to Obama, crestfallen but certain in the knowledge that the real enemy is not Obama, but McCain. I think others will need more time and may say things that they will want to retract later. What we don’t want to do is deride these women in their pain or it will only make it harder for them to recognize where the real problem is, who is their real adversary, and what is at stake.

The last thing we want is for McCain to reap the benefit of their pain.

2118

Today the Rules and Bylaws Committee of the Democratic Party voted to restore half of the delegate votes of both Florida and Michigan. Each delegate from each of these states that moved their primary dates up in contravention of Democratic Party rules will be able to cast one half of a vote a the Democratic National Convention in Denver this August.

It was a partial victory for both states, each of which submitted challenges to the committee that they restore to them one half of their votes as opposed to denying them any votes at the convention.

The new goalpost is now set at 2118 votes to nominate a presidential candidate.

The committee met in a fish bowl, an open meeting where vocal partisans of the Clinton campaign and Obama campaign looked on. It was covered by both MSNBC and CSPAN, but on CSPAN, at least, one could view the proceedings on a PC, which is what I had to do while distributing SD-18 T-shirts to state convention delegates this morning.

It became clear to me that the committee would not be restoring full votes to either of these two state delegations, despite the impassioned pleas of Jon Ausman for Florida and, and Carl Levin for Michigan. Ausman unsuccessfully argued that it was Republicans that forced the date of the primary. Democrats voted for it as well in the Florida state house because the bill included voting reforms that restored a paper trail to Florida’s voting process.

It was pointed out that the rules committee’s previous ruling that would deny Florida 100% of its delegates served to deter some Florida voters from voting in their primary election. Indeed, Robert Wexler (D – FL) pointed out that Florida stood out as the only state in the union that had fewer Democrats participating in their primary election than Republicans.

That, to me, was a very persuasive argument that the Florida vote was not fully reflective of all Florida voters, indeed representing a subset of voters that one could successfully argue might have produced a different outcome if the election process was unimpeded.

Rules are rules, and under the rules, Florida was to have its delegation halved. My thought, however, was that if the Florida results were in some way skewed, the total effect of that skewing might be mitigated by having its voting power halved. I wonder if this was on the minds of some of these rules committee members.

Michigan, however, was another matter. Michigan Democrats, led by Sen. Carl Levin, were in a fight to deny New Hampshire their continued status of always being first. His argument, also well-received, was that if you look at the results of Iowa and New Hampshire, and look at who continues to be running for president, it is the three winners of them: Obama and Clinton split one each, McCain took both states. His fight, and that of other Michiganders, led to the inclusion of Nevada and South Carolina as two more pre-Super Tuesday primaries, with one of them to occur before New Hampshire’s primary. But, singularly, New Hampshire ran an end-around and placed its primary date second after Iowa. This thoroughly enraged Michigan when the rules committee let them do this, and enraged them further when Michigan voted themselves a pre-February 5th date in retaliation, and they did not also receive a waiver.

Levin also argued that half of their delegation votes be restored, per party rules.

Levin admitted that the Michigan primary election was a “flawed election” in that all candidates did not have their names on the ballot – four withdrew their names, actions that it was later admitted, were something the state should not have allowed. But since it was, it set up an impossible situation where Michigan voters had to choose between Clinton, Kucinich, Gravel and Dodd. Either that or vote “uncommitted”, which 40% of voters did.

The question was asked: did voters who voted for one of the other three, vote for them because their candidate wasn’t listed? Were there those that did not vote for any of the choices because their candidate wasn’t listed? It was also pointed out that there were 30,000 write-in votes (5% of the total) cast that were not counted because of Michigan rules which only allows registered write-in candidates to have their votes counted. And then again, how many Michigan voters simply stayed home because their presidential vote wouldn’t count?

Clinton’s camp’s position was that the votes should be counted and delegates awarded, as-is, 73 delegates for Clinton, 55 uncommitted, without regarding the obvious fact that the election was ”flawed”. Obama’s people argued the fact that the delegate votes should be split 64-64, ignoring the fact that a vote had taken place. The Michigan Democratic Party offered a compromise, one that they had agreed to among all factions in their state, one that they begged the committee adopt: 69 Clinton, 59 Obama. This figure, they came up with mainly from exit polls and those 30,000 uncounted write-in votes. They were obviously squeamish about this compromise as well, but the fact was, it had already been agreed to within the state by all parties concerned.

This split, and the half vote per delegate rule was eventually passed by the committee with a combination of votes from Obama supporters, uncommitted supporters, as well as 4 Clinton supporters.

Harold Ickes, Clinton’s chief advisor, also on the committee, was visibly upset by the ruling, uttering words not permitted on the public networks, and promising a fight in the Credentials Committee.

The committee meeting adjourned to heckles and catcalls from the Clinton supporters in the audience. Clearly Harold Ickes’ words were having an effect that rulings handed down in this committee meeting did not serve to unite the Party, but would further divide it. It made me further reflect on the threats of staunch Clinton Democrats (Clintocrats ?) who threaten to bolt to the Republican side if Obama is handed the nomination. Are they truly serious? Would they purposely inflict more pain on our country because they couldn’t have their female nominee?

I cannot fathom it, but then when it comes to understanding the female mind, I am truly, very truly, Half Empty.

Clinton Supporters Pressure Swing District Superdelegates; Will Support Their Republican Opponents.

I have stayed away from this subject because, frankly, it sickens me. But here in Texas we have a group of feminist supporters of Hillary Clinton who are so strident in their support of their candidate, that they openly threaten to vote for John McCain should Barack Obama be, as they say, be “forced on them” by the DNC.

That or support a write-in candidate.

But now they, as reported in a blog by Linda Starr, are openly threatening not to support local superdelegates Nick Lampson (TX 22) and Charles Gonzalez (TX 20) and will support and vote for their Republican opponents. Says she:

“I’ve been contacting the HRC supporters and contributors, all of whom previously supported Nick Lampson in his bid to take Tom Delay’s old seat. These women are so incensed because they say Lampson could never have won without their volunteer help and financial assistance and they will vote Republican, if Obama is made the nominee because their own representative defied them.”

I just have to object here. On several levels.

First, I just want to point out that a lefty Democrat would never support a Republican candidate in anything. Starr, on her various blog appearances, seems to align herself with the left. So I have to say that either this is just so much huff and bluster, and an empty threat, or Starr or her sisters are not Democrats anymore.

In fact, Starr in this same blog piece mentions that she is “starting a new national women’s party for the specific purpose of electing women”. So that’s how you get a true majority: form a splinter group.

Second, need I point out that Starr and others of her ilk are saying that they intend to vote for a resolute anti-choice presidential candidate? I need to ask which one of the “feminist issues” surpasses the right of a woman to choose whether or not to have a child? And it isn’t just a four-year thing when they can have Hillary as president in 2012. When they help to elect McCain president this November, they will usher in an era when Roe v. Wade will be overturned. Justice John Paul Stevens, a pro-choice justice who turns a 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court to a 4-5 minority whenever an abortion case comes before it, has made no bones about the fact that he wants to retire. He’s battling poor health, but clearly is hanging on in order to preserve women’s abortion rights.

With McCain in office, there goes a woman’s right to choose, and we are back to the bad old days of backroom botched abortions.

And third, I am suspicious why Starr lumps Lampson’s district, CD 22, with Gonzalez’ CD 20. This is again a new metric, I think. Boy, am I getting tired of new metrics.

While I don’t know how Charlie Gonzalez’ district went in the primary as far as the presidential race, I think that it’s safe to assume from its large Hispanic population that it went for Clinton. Gonzalez, however, has endorsed Barack Obama. Now that would irritate me, also. If my congressman was endorsing the candidate that my district did not support in the primary, I would be righteously irate. But how, pray tell, are these supposedly Democratic women hoping to bring Republican Robert Litoff (who has no campaign fund to speak of) a victory in November in a congressional district so heavily Democratic that Republicans did not bother to oppose Gonzalez in ’06, and he trounced his Republican opponent 65% to 32% in ’04?

Are they using some new metric to back up their threat?

Contrast that to Nick Lampson’s CD 22. Now Nick’s district IS a swing district and everyone knows it. Nick’s own votes in several key areas bear witness to the fact that he is trying to play to both sides of the aisle. But from the quote above, it would seem like Lampson has also gone the way of Charlie Gonzalez and thrown in with the Obama camp.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I heard it from the man’s own lips. He will remain uncommitted in this presidential dust up. I, and everyone else I know, assume that he will make his choice known when the winner is a foregone conclusion.

But now, here we have all these irate women gnashing their teeth at how Lampson needs to vote with his constituents. I quote:

“My whole point, if the superdelegates are willing to defy their constituents and vote for Obama for whatever reason, they are no longer representing their constituents interests (women’s suffrage), their constituents primary votes, or their will.”

Now MY whole point is this: if Nick Lampson were to bow to the will of his constituents he would now be supporting Barack Obama for President. I did the math. I did the grunt work and added up each and every vote in every precinct in CD 22. I reported on it here, here, and here. But for those of you who have Comcast as an ISP and don’t want to start another pageload, I’ll repeat myself. CD 22 snakes through parts of 4 counties (courtesy of Tom DeLay). Here are the county totals and the total totals.

Fort Bend County: 25,812 for Obama, 18,209 for Clinton

Harris County: 13,650 for Obama, 17,501 for Clinton

Brazoria County: 7,170 for Obama, 4,948 for Clinton

Galveston County: 5,440 for Obama, 4,814 for Clinton

CD 22 Totals: 52,072 for Obama (53.4%), 45,472 for Clinton (46.6%)

So I just have to ask: what metric allows Linda Starr to come to the conclusion that Nick Lampson would “defy” his constituents if he casts his super vote for Barack Obama?

Is it the metric that says if he doesn’t bend to the minority will they will be royally “pissed off” (her words)?. Well, OK, that’s fine. Be pissed off. Be angry that Barack Obama has the majority of delegates and seems to be inevitable.

Yell and scream.

Then, at the end, in the fall, let passions subside and let self-interest, logic, and, yes, party loyalty prevail. No true Democrat wants John McCain to be president. No feminist wants Roe v. Wade overturned. And most Americans want to put an end to the war in Iraq next year.

Yes, be angry. But then do as many of us who have a bone to pick with some of our Democratic candidates do.

Vote a straight Democratic ticket.

Stick A Fork In Her, She’s Done

No not literally. It’s a baseball saying for a pitcher who has tired to the point of not being able to deliver a serious pitch any more.

From what I can gather of her comments today about why she remains in the primary race despite any reasonable chance of success, Hillary Clinton is either one of two things:

1) Tired beyond all ability to reason
2) A cold-blooded calculating eater of the dead.

I am guessing number 1, but wonder about number 2.

Everyone has been wondering why Hillary Clinton remains engaged in a nomination battle where the numbers are clearly against her. Today we found out why: she’s apparently waiting for Barack Obama to drop dead or be assassinated.

The now infamous quote:

“My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. You know I just, I don't understand it.”

In 1968, Bobby Kennedy was all set to run against Dick Nixon for president. He won the June primary in California and virtually sealed his nomination. He was shot and killed just after leaving his victory party. Hubert Humphrey was next in line, won the nomination and lost in the general election.

Hillary Clinton is apparently trying to follow the footsteps of Hubert Humphrey. Or so she implied.

Then when her ghoulish gaffe raised the hackles of just about everyone, she delivered the most cryptic apology known to man:

“I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation and in particular the Kennedy family was in any way offensive. I certainly had no intention of that whatsoever”

Who was she apologizing to? Anyone? The only thing I get out of those words is that she’s sorry she said that because it got her in a bunch of trouble with voters, delegates, superdelegates and the DNC Rules and Credentials Committees.

Quite frankly I think she’s just tired and frustrated. Those two things, mark me, are a deadly combination and makes you say things you don’t mean, or if you are thinking about those things, you normally restrain yourself in order to be polite and tactful.

Quite frankly, it strikes me that this is the kind of thing that Hillary Clinton was hoping to occur within the Obama campaign – some sort of unforgivable gaffe or event that would cause superdelegates to rethink their votes. Ironic, isn’t it, that the campaign killer she was anticipating may just have occurred in her own campaign.

Huckabee Hearts McCain

Even up to today it still looks like former governor Mike Huckabee is jumping up and down waving his hands saying ”Me! Me! Let it be ME!”

Mike Huckabee hearts John McCain and wants to be his Vice President.

On Meet the Press this morning:

“MR. RUSSERT: But if he said to me, ‘In order to become president, you could help me. Would you be my vice president,’ you'd say yes?”

“GOV. HUCKABEE: There's no one I would rather be on a ticket with than John McCain. You know, let, let me point out that all during the campaign, when I was his rival, not a running mate, there was no one who was more complimentary of him publicly and privately. He was my number two choice. I want to make sure you know he was my number two choice. I still wanted to win, but if I couldn't, John McCain, from always, was the guy I would've supported and have now supported.”

This was apparent even last March as Huckabee was slowly withdrawing from the campaign, leaving a string of burning bridges between his chief rival for the #2 spot, Mitt Romney, and McCain.

From The Politico:

“But as long as Huckabee is campaigning vigorously, he is likely to draw a sizable bloc of social conservatives — and deny former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney the direct one-on-one contest he is hoping for against McCain.”

“Huckabee did not mention Romney in his concession statement Saturday. But Huckabee and his aides have barely disguised their disdain for Romney, whose chameleon-like stance on issues and free-spending negative ad campaign have made him the most unpopular candidate among his GOP rivals.”

Hilariously, Democratic political consultant Bob Shrum, has had only good things to say about Mike Huckabee as the GOP presidential nominee, and equally now, as McCain’s VP of choice, as he stated on Meet the Press this morning:

“MR. SHRUM: You don't have to be culturally--well, actually, I endorsed you for president. I thought the Republicans should've nominated you, and I think maybe McCain should pick you for vice president. And I mean that with all due respect.”

Obviously the only reason Huckabee would make a good fit on the ticket is that this would bring balance to a John McCain campaign that does not wear religion on its sleeve or anywhere else. It would give the evangelicals something to cheer about.

But this time we are looking at a VP who may just have something more to do than cast tie-breaking votes in the Senate – a hopefully rare event after this year – in staying alive and well. A 72-year old president on Inauguration Day should give one pause, and make GOPers look long and hard at the VP.

And the problem there is that where McCain’s self-admitted strength is in defense and security, it is long viewed as Huckabee’s weakness. Putting a Baptist minister in charge of the nation’s military would be, at best, a display of American audacity.

But really, Huckabee’s main problem is going to be his “tax problem”. As governor he raised Arkansas taxes and anyone knows that only Democrats are allowed to do that. I think that this is just going to follow him around.

No, I’m with Shrum, I want Huckabee on the ticket. First I wanted him as president, but I’m not proud, I’ll take him on the VP slot and throw in 3 Clinton superdelegates to boot.

So it’s not going to happen because they know we want it to. Who will McCain choose? I am going to go out on a long, long limb and predict that he will at some point approach Hillary Clinton. Not saying she’ll accept, not at all. But if you saw McCain in his appearance on Saturday Night Live last night you know that the best thing we Democrats can do is come completely apart during this campaign, and one way to do it is to have Clinton on McCain’s ticket.

It would be a Limbaugh “Operation Chaos” writ large.

John Edwards: Fence? What Fence?

My main man, John Edwards has had a fence to sit on since he pulled out of the presidential primary process in February. And there he sat as the weeks dragged on as the mud was slung across it from Clinton to Obama and then back again.. A hint dropped here and there about how Elizabeth Edwards favored Clinton’s health care plan. But Edwards stayed neutral.

I thought I detected a shift when he came out earlier in the week suggesting that continued internecine angst was okey-dokey unless it was going to be hurting the party in the general election. Words echoing those of Obama surrogates who bemoaned Clinton’s slash-and-burn win-at-any cost sort of politics.

But now, as of this afternoon, John Edwards is officially off the fence and has embraced the candidacy of my other main man, second-best main man, Barack Obama.

I just never thought he would ever endorse the Clintons. Sure they are speaking on the same populist level as Edwards often did, but I never bought that their message was really very sincere. Edwards could do populism because that was him. Hillary Clinton does populism because it makes her sound like the salt of the earth, and not a Wellesly alumnus.

Now what does this do for Barack Obama? Edwards has delegates but aren’t they bound to their candidate? I think so. So this isn’t about delegates, this is about getting others off the fence. Uncommitted superdelegates. Uncommitted labor unions. Edwards, as I recall, has the endorsement of the United Steel Workers and the United Mine Workers, and since he suspended his campaign, the unions haven’t made any commitments to either Clinton or Obama. Is this a signal to them who they should now endorse? If so, I am wondering whether the West Virginia vote would have gone any differently had Edwards made his endorsement a little earlier.

Naaaaah.

But that’s another story.

This is only good news for Obama’s campaign. The party is starting to unite. Will this provide a catalyst for Clinton to end her campaign?

Naaaaah.

West Virginia . . . mountain mama . . . take me home . . .

On this evening of all of us sitting down to find out how many white voters Hillary Clinton can scare into voting for her (instead of that guy who simply can’t attract white working people), there are two short Obama ads on You Tube that show both cleverness and ingenuity. Two traits that personifies the campaign of that less-than-white guy.

By the way, is it just me or is anyone else completely turned off by Hillary Clinton’s “whites only” remarks?

Here’s my fave. Mom . . . sit down . . . I have . . . hope.



And this one. Clearly Obama wants to turn a new page in history. Do I have to draw you a picture?

Hillary Clinton’s Metric Allows Her to Claim She Won Texas CD 22

I have to wonder about the quality of the rope that Hillary Clinton’s statistics group is smoking these days. On Talking Points Memo, Clinton has a slide show up for congressional superdelegates to view, showing that she wins “in the tough districts”. In that PowerPoint presentation, on Slide 4 to be specific, Clinton’s people clearly indicate that Hillary Clinton carried Nick Lampson’s CD 22 in the March primary.

Now I know that Hillary Clinton’s campaign staff have come up with numerous metrics to prove to superdelegates that she is the one, and not Barack Obama, who is the strongest candidate to face John McCain in the fall. These metrics have been quite creative in their construct, with many of them taking advantage of one aspect, let’s say being able to carry a district in the primary, without due consideration of another key aspect, let’s say being able to win against a completely different opponent, a Republican one, in the same district in November. That winning against Obama is in some way a measurement of how she will win against McCain.

But now I have come to find out that Hillary Clinton claims that she carried Nick Lampson’s Texas CD 22, and I know that this is, to use Barack Obama’s more tactful way of putting it, “an inaccurate statement”.

I don’t know where her people got this information, but it was obviously not the way I got mine. I got mine by looking at the precinct-by-precinct vote totals for Fort Bend, Harris, Brazoria and Galveston Counties where Nick Lampson was on the ballot. It’s laborious but it gets you to the truth so there’s some value in that.

Could they have come to the conclusion the way this Hillary Clinton blogger/supporter came to his? By making the erroneous assumption that Senate District 11’s boundaries were a virtual overlay to CD 22’s, and that Clinton carried SD 11? At the time I saw that I thought at best this was sloppy statistics, and at worst another attempt at statistics of whatever the truth is conveniently supposed to be.

Whatever.

Whatever the case, CD 22 definitely did not go to Hillary Clinton, and Clinton has no claim on winning in Lampson’s tough district. That honor goes to Barack Obama.

OK, OK. At the top is the graphic. Here is the math. County breakdowns go like this:

Fort Bend County: 28,512 Obama (61.1%), 18,209 Clinton (38.9%) – 98 precincts
Harris County: 13,650 Obama (43.8%), 17,501 Clinton (56.2%) – 76 precincts
Brazoria County: 7,170 Obama (59.2%), 4,948 Clinton (40.8%) – 20 precincts
Galveston County: 5,440 Obama (53.1%), 4,814 Clinton (46.9%) – 21 precincts
Totals: 52,072 Obama (53.4%), 45,472 Clinton (46.6%) – 215 precincts

But now this is what I have to ask myself. If this is something that I know with a certainty, and Clinton’s people have it wrong, if they are mistaken in an area that I definitely know about, can they be mistaken in other areas that I don’t know about?

In short, where else is the Clinton campaign ly . . . er . . . making inaccurate statements?

Clinton Metrics: What Counts is What Helps

Olberman had me rolling on the floor yesterday evening. Now with polls in Indiana and North Carolina about to close, maybe now is the time to include his Hillary Clinton’s new metrics rant here.



He hit just about every way the Clinton campaign has attempted to spin this primary season using every line of reasoning they can dream up.

All except for the only one that matters.

2025 delegates.

Oh, that’s right. It’s not 2025 now, it’s 2209. Clearly, the Clintons want to take the fight to the convention floor in August.

For Democrats this year, the White House is theirs to lose, and apparently they’re trying their level best to do just that.

Cowboy Diplomacy in the Middle East: McCain and Clinton Rattle Their Sabers

First it was John McCain issuing bomb threats to the Iranian people:



Then, with Pennsylvania on the line, McCain's saber rattling was brought to Democratic politics when Hillary Clinton donned her spurs and Texas ten-gallon hat and assumed the position of the character that Slim Pickens played in the classic dark comedy Dr. Strangelove, when she gave these remarks:



And Barack Obama? What does Barack Obama have to say about John “Lucas” McCain and “Hopalong” Hillary Clinton? He held forth today on “Meet the Press”. In case you missed it:



Again, you have to take into account that two of these candidates aren’t so much talking to the electorate but to the superdelegates whose support they want or whose support they don’t want to lose. What is Clinton’s message to them here? It’s obvious, isn’t it? Over and over again you hear Clinton saying that the issue of the fall election will be security and defense. It has become obvious that Clinton’s people have decided that the best way to go up against McCain is to agree with him. It negates his advantage.

Ironic, isn’t it? These contests were fought in the past by having the candidates show how different they were from each other. This is how Barack Obama plans to do it, a strategy that promotes change as opposed to a 3rd term for Bush, and this is ironically similar to what has traditionally been done in the past. Hillary Clinton plans to fight McCain by embracing his ideas and making them hers. A strategy that promises the same old thing, but ironically, this is a new approach to woo the voters.

Conclusion? Obama’s is a campaign for change. Clinton’s is a change for campaigning.

Of the Coffee, By the Coffee, For the Coffee . . .

Now let me get this straight. Barack Obama is the Chardonnay-sipping elitist, right? How then do we explain the fact that the man shoots some mean hoops, yet Hillary Clinton can’t operate a mini mart’s coffee machine?



Perhaps this multimillionaire just needs to call a spade a spade and have her staff make her the usual cup of Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee. The coffee that is served at the White House.

Only $28.90 per pound.

Guam Caucuses Reporting In

I swear this campaign, this endless presidential campaign, continues to amaze me.

Guam is in the news.

Today, May 3rd, is the Territory of Guam’s day to caucus for their choices for their 8 pledged Democratic National Convention delegates. Yep, eight, count ‘em. But these days it’s a news item when a single superdelegate makes his or her preference known, and an even bigger day when a single superdelegate switches sides. That’s like a net gain/loss of two. So with 8 delegates on the line, all eyes and ears are now on . . . Guam.

But Guam has 8 delegates? Well no, 4 really. Because Guam is a U.S. Territory, and not a state, their delegates only have a half vote each.

So Guam has 4 pledged delegates.

I had to ask myself, is anything going differently on Guam? Come to find out, no. Well . . .yes and no. No, in that Guamanians and Chamorros (that’s what they call themselves) have shown up in record numbers at their 20 caucus centers in schools and community centers. Twice as many as showed up for their 2004 caucus. Guamanians are also showing up undecided, but leaning toward Clinton. Female Guamanians tend to vote for Hillary Clinton.

But one difference I found was that one Guamanian, at least, was leaning toward Obama because he grew up in Hawaii. Hawaii, you know, is a mere stone’s throw from Guam. A mere 4000 miles. Out in the vastness of the Pacific Ocean I think they do distance differently.

Another similarity, they assign delegates pro rata, like most states. So if the vote goes for Obama by more than 56.25%, then Obama wins Guam by ½ of a vote. But it’s not looking very good for an outright net pledged delegate gain for Obama today. It looks like the candidates will split those 4 votes 2-2. How do I know this? CNN. CNN is watching the Guam caucuses. With 79% of the caucuses reporting 1420 votes are for Obama (%53.3) and 1246 (46.7%) are for Clinton. Things could turn rapidly around, though. Votes from the village of Dededo have not come in yet, and Dededo has a bunch of Guamanians and Chamorros.who vote.

Who they vote for no one seems to know. No one knows whether Guamanians prefer beer and shots or Chardonnay. Are they into bowling or basketball?

No one knows.

Interestingly enough, though, Guam has as many superdelegate votes as it has pledged delegates. 4. But these are whole people. So there is another similarity. It is going to be the superdelegate votes that are going to decide who ultimately will win.

In Guam.

UPDATE (8:28 PM):

With all caucuses reporting, it looks like Barack Obama has won the popular vote on the Territory of Guam. By 7 votes. That's Obama 50.1% to Clinton 49.9%.

Over 5000 islanders showed up to vote in the Democratic caucuses this year, far outstripping the 1500 that came to vote in 2004. In all, with a population of 175,000, this represents 2.8% of the total population. However, considering that many of these are children under 18 and, and that many of these are Republicans, it is not unreasonable to assume that this number is close to the turnout we have been having on the mainland.

Why are Clinton and McCain Singing the Same Gas Tax Holiday Tune?

I’d swear McCain said it first. I mentioned it way back here. John McCain’s solution to the straining economy is a summer gas tax holiday. And now we have Hillary Clinton calling for the exact same minimalist approach.

Now what is with that? Are we back to basic government as usual? Why is Hillary Clinton making it look like we don’t have a clear choice between her and John McCain? Really, I have to ask myself, if she is going to agree with McCain in her proposal of a gas tax holiday this summer, what else is she going to settle down and agree with him about?

As mentioned in my piece knocking McCain on this, not only will this not do ANYthing for the economy or an average American’s monthly bottom line – I think I estimated it would save me $13.32 for the entire summer – it takes away federal revenue that we use to maintain our infrastructure.

Our crumbling infrastructure.

Clinton goes one better than McCain, though, claiming that the holiday will have a trickle down effect where gas savings will be passed on to the downstream consumers.

“You’ve gotta bring those logs in; you’ve gotta send the finished products out. And the costs are sent down the supply chain, from the factory floor to the corner store.”

Now, where did I hear about that before . . . trickle down.

Oh, that’s right. That was Herbert Hoover’s and Dick Nixon‘s and Ronald Reagan’s way to justify tax cuts to the corporations and the rich. From Rolling Stone (2004):

“Every GOP administration since 1952 has let the Military-Industrial Complex loot the Treasury and plunge the nation into debt on the excuse of a wartime economic emergency. Richard Nixon comes quickly to mind, along with Ronald Reagan and his ridiculous "trickle-down" theory of U.S. economic policy. If the Rich get Richer, the theory goes, before long their pots will overflow and somehow "trickle down" to the poor, who would rather eat scraps off the Bush family plates than eat nothing at all.”

Now, for the first time, a Democrat (and, let us not forget, her Republican foe) is using the idea of the “trickle down theory” to justify a minimalist approach to an economy on the ropes.

The question posed at the top of this piece is “Why”. Why is Clinton doing this? Obama’s campaign has called it “a gimmick”. Basically true, a gimmick it is, but not only that, but an elitist gimmick. A “let them eat cake” gimmick. Clinton hopes to capture the votes of Americans for 18.4¢ per gallon, and she expectes them to be enthusiastic about the prospect. Clinton expects Americans, in the year of Change, to embrace the same old tired politics that go back to Herbert Hoover.

If anything, Hillary Clinton has just illustrated and underlined how her policies are to those of Barack Obama are . . . excuse me . . . as white is to black.

As Republican is to Democrat.

As old tired politics of smoke and mirrors are to the new politics of a new generation.

You have to ask yourself then, if the people Hillary Clinton is playing to these days is not the electorate in primary states, but uncommitted superdelegates, is this her message? Is she telling the superdelegates that the old politics still fit the Democratic Party like a glove?

Like a silk glove?

Democratic National Committee Slams McCain in TV Ads

There are two of them now. I have seen both of them aired on MSNBC. I assume Fox News won’t run them, but will never know because I am one of those people who don’t ever tune in Fox News because I don’t like to waste my time.

The DNC says that McCain is howling over this ad because it quotes him out of context. They say that McCain has threatened to sue TV stations if they air the piece so that pretty much decided it for me that I would embed the ad here.



I recognize that guy’s voice. I think it belongs to an actor named Stephen Tobolowsky. It has a very innocent quality. A perfect voice for someone who is just trying to understand why John McCain is promising Americans a US presence in Iraq for the next 100 years.

This ad was closely followed on by a slam on McCain’s domestic policies, or rather, his lack of them. It’s a play on Ronald Reagan’s famous and effective question to voters in 1980 when he asked, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” Brilliant, because then, as now, the country was in a severe economic downturn. This video takes some video clips of McCain from a while ago and runs then effectively with present-day reality.



The beauty of these clips is that it captures McCain’s voice just as he delivers it today. That calm analytical voice that always goes up a half a note on the final word or syllable.

It’s good to see these ads come out right now. What with Obama having to put up with the mainstream media (and Fox News) taking Wrighteous dumps on him, and Clinton stalking about challenging Obama to a “Lincoln-Douglas-style” debate (something nobody in this century would ever want to sit through), someone has to do their job.

28% of Clinton Supporters Will Vote For McCain

Sometimes I can’t believe my ears when I hear people whose politics run to the left run on about John McCain. “He’s not that bad,” they say, or “I could live with him as president.” Most often what you hear in Red Texas is this: “Well, he won’t be as bad as Bush was.”

“Is,” I keep reminding them, “he’s still president and McCain is still his lapdog.”

“Nooooo,” they exclaim, “McCain is a maverick. McCain won’t be another Bush.”

You have to ask yourself where these people get their information. Fox News seems to be out and I literally don’t speak to people who listen to Rush Limbaugh unless it is to answer their questions on directions to the Museum of the Confederacy.

So where?

Could it be the mainstream media? Is John McCain being remodeled and reformed in the mainstream media in the image of some fantastic embodiment of Republican perfection? I have to say I think so. John McCain is being reformulated and repackaged for centrist American consumption.

A maverick. Unbeholden to the corporations. Not Bush’s man.

Lies. Duplicitous lies.

And now these lies are starting to be considered by moderate Democrats who support Hillary Clinton for president. If Hillary Clinton doesn’t get the nomination, they are saying they will vote for McCain in the fall. Or 28% of them will, anyway.

At first blush, when I heard this news, I thought that these Clinton supporters, these Hillarycrats, were simply making idle threats at best, or considered McCain as the most viable alternative between he and Barack Obama, at worst.

I am now characteristically opting for the worst-case scenario.

Now the mainstream media is making it very hard, you know, hard for truth to reach the ears of Americans considering a vote for McCain. And once word reaches them, it’s very difficult to get past the first word that comes to their minds when the name “McCain” is uttered, and that word is “maverick”.

Well get a hold of these facts and figures:

John “Maverick” McCain voted with the Bush Regime 95% of the time (when he voted) in 2007. 95%. That’s more than our own junior senator, John “Rubberstamp” Cornyn. True enough, John McCain has flip-flopped on so many issues it is hard to figure out just what his opinion is on things, but I tend to settle on his final flop rather than his original flip.

Like how he flopped a couple of months ago on the Intelligence Authorization Bill. The bill that forbids government interrogation by waterboarding. McCain, himself the recipient of government-sponsored torture, unbelievably voted against this bill that passed 51-45. McCain, who was so vehemently opposed to US torture of its prisoners because of fear of reprisals from other governments in how they treat our soldiers, resolutely spoke out against waterboarding in the past.

But now he favors government-sponsored torture.

In his attempt to distance himself from Bush in the Katrina disaster, McCain recently said that, referring presumably to Air Force One he “would have ordered the plane landed at the nearest air force base, and I would have been over here . . . OK?” That would have been fine, except that The Huffingtonpost, found photographs taken of McCain on the day after Katrina hit New Orleans, in a Hillaryesque photo op, McCain found himself meeting Air Force One and George Bush where he landed to present McCain with a birthday cake. It was John McCain’s birthday. The president was giving him a cake, and apparently not listening to McCain’s exhortations for him to get back on that plane and get over to New Orleans.

McCain is no friend of Katrina victims. He voted against a $28 billion appropriation for hurricane relief. He voted against a 5-month program to put Katrina victims on a Medicaid emergency health care.

Economy? Iraq? Has anyone who is seriously thinking of voting for John McCain stopped to think that he is in lockstep with the Bush Regime on these issues? McCain actually now wants to extend and deepen Bush’s tax cuts to the richest Americans. Tax cuts in wartime. McCain sees a US presence in Iraq to rival our presence in South Korea. Decades.

This is the person Hillarycrats will opt for if their candidate fails to get their party’s nomination? What kind of person is that? Obviously, quite obviously, this kind of person is more “heart” than “head”. Common sense tells any Democrat that John McCain is simply unacceptable as a voting option. Common sense and rational thought.

Things that I think these 28% of Clinton supporters clearly lack.

Hillary Clinton Has a New Ally: The North Carolina Republican Party

The North Carolina Republican Party will come out with a new TV ad on Monday that they hope will cause Democratic voters to turn away from two strong Democratic candidates for governor in their Democratic primary. Both Bev Purdue and Richard Moore, North Carolina’s State Treasurer and Lieutenant Governor, respectively, are running for their party’s nomination for Governor against Dennis Nielsen. On Monday, Supposed Democrat Nielsen will receive a little gift from the North Carolina Republican Party. As will Hillary Clinton. Nielsen, by my own estimate is a Republican in name only. And both of his opponents have endorsed Barack Obama.

So what did North Carolina’s Republican Party do? They created a TV ad that they are will show in North Carolina’s media markets starting Monday. An ad that clears a path for their man, RINO Dennis Nielsen.

And incidentally, an ad that does a pretty good job for Hillary Clinton’s campaign as well.

Don’t believe me? Take a look for yourself.



That Barack Obama is "too extreme for North Carolina"?

That’s a little freebie for Nielsen courtesy of the Republican Party. And it couldn’t possibly hurt the chances of Hillary Clinton, either, could it? After all, Clinton gets gratis from the Republican Party some negative trash talk of Barack Obama. Their enemy is her enemy.

How about that? Clearly the message is that the North Carolina Republican Party, the party of Jesse Helms, would not only like their shill running in the Democratic ticket for Governor, they also would like to see Hillary Clinton win their presidential primary.

By the way, John McCain has asked the party to pull the ad.

“I don't know why they do it. Obviously, I don't control them, but I'm making it very clear, as I have a couple of times in the past, that there's no place for that kind of campaigning, and the American people don't want it.”

Oh, no, counters the NCRP. This isn’t an attack against Obama. This is a “local issue” (wink, wink, nudge nudge).

So what began as a Rush Limbaugh exhortation to his ‘ditto heads’, to get out there and vote for Hillary Clinton, has now become policy of the North Carolina Republican Party. McCain has denounced it, thus getting its coming some national news air time. Giving it a national audience. Win-win for McCain.

Not surprisingly, Hillary Clinton has not denounced it, and in not doing so, has given tacit approval of the actions of the opposing party.

Tonight, Hillary Clinton has gone on TV proclaiming that Barack Obama is not electable in the fall, a big flip flop from the recent debate’s “Yes, yes, yes” response when asked whether Obama could win in the fall. Now I am beginning to wonder if Hillary Clinton has a tacit agreement with the McCain campaign. That, since she has no chance at the nomination this year, she and her surrogates (surprisingly now, the North Carolina Republican Party) will issue punishments to Obama in the primaries so McCain can finish him off in the fall.

Setting herself up for a more successful run in 2012.

Talk about victory at any price. Now things are starting to make sense. Hillarycrats saying that they would vote for McCain in the fall instead of voting for Obama.

It makes a lot of sense. I wonder if any superdelegates have put this thing together and will now move in to stop this anti-Democratic Party insanity.

An Afternoon With True Believers

I didn’t write a post about how there was going to be an Obama Rally in Sugar Land this afternoon because, frankly, I couldn’t find out what time it would be and didn’t want to steer anyone wrong.

Well, with 20-20 backward vision, the Obama Rally will have taken place starting at 12:15 PM, that is 4 hours ago at this writing, today at the Sugar Land Memorial Park in Sugar Land, Texas.

It’s a brand new park on the floodplain above the east bank of the Brazos River as it flows past First Colony. I had never met any of its organizers and was frankly wondering where they came from. My visit with them this afternoon answered that question. These people are all brand new friends who were all a part of the Obama for President effort of Fort Bend County.

In other words, these people are True Believers in Barack Obama.

True Believers in a presidential candidate that they all admire. True Believers in the man and his message. People that I like to call the new activists who have come out in 2008 in droves to put an end to the Republican hegemony in our nation’s capitol.

To put a Democrat in the White House.

First to speak, after the rally organizers, was a Democrat who likes to call himself a country lawyer. An activist Democrat at birth who made hand-painted JFK campaign signs when he was 13 years old. Don Bankston stood to give an empowering speech to this small crowd of Obama supporters. A speech filled with facts and figures of the county’s recent primary and its three senate district conventions, each of which brought the crowd to standing applause. As he wound it up, Bankston said something that needs to be said from now and on to the November election. He extolled the importance of the grassroots, that it was the grassroots that was going to deliver our country back into the hands of the people.

I know what he was talking about, and hope that there were those in the crowd that took what he said to heart. While it is fantastic that so many have decided to take it upon themselves to volunteer and help organize for the presidential campaign, what matters in the long run is what takes place after Obama wins in the general election. What is important is that these new activists not put their signs, buttons and banners away in their scrapbooks along with their memories of a stupendous political victory. What is important is that our new activists see their job as incomplete. Incomplete until Democrats have taken each and every county office in Fort Bend County. Incomplete until Democrats put our county, state and country back on the path of peace, fellowship and equality.

Don’t worry, there will always be those like Don Bankston around. Lifelong activists who will work tirelessly to see that our Republican friends will always have a minority voice in our government. But what this country needs right now is for some of these new activists, and these True Believers, to sign up now for another tour that goes beyond November 2008.

Our Republican friends and the corporations that support them won’t go away after November. They will be itching for a fight to take back what they have lost. We need our new activists to hang around and show our opponents that not only can they not have anything back that we’ve taken from them, but that also, we aren’t done yet.

Not completely.