Wag the Dog

So its been a little while since I've made a post. I've basically been dedicating most of my time to getting the McCain review out, but its going slowly as I try to find the free time to do it. Besides that, during my commute I've been reading the 9/11 Commission's Report and found something very interesting.

Apparently, there were two organized plans formed by the Clinton administration in 1997 and then again in 98 to apprehend, and take out Usama Bin Laden, respectively. The first was shot down due to low success rate and for political reasons, but did come very close to being executed. The second took place during the Whitewater Scandal and inspired the movie "Wag the Dog." Which people. This attack was executed specifically to launch cruise missiles at a meeting being held by Bin Laden and Bin Laden himself was the primary target. Its amazing how much slack Clinton took for launching this attack, that if happened today, regardless of any national politics would have received nothing but praise.

Why did it fail? Well shortly before this was the almost simultaneous nuclear weapons tests done by both India and Pakistan. The cruise missiles, in order to reach their target in Afghanistan, had to fly over Pakistan and as such the US wanted to inform Pakistan that these were our missiles and not India's to avoid a potentially disastrous situation. We know today that almost certainly, that Bin Laden had many friends in Pakistan and he was likely informed and able to leave the premises in time to avoid the attack. Sadly, before 9/11 not many people knew exactly how much influence Al-Qaeda had around the middle east.

America knows drama!

I should have made a post about it so the time stamp would have been evidence of my prediction. I've have a couple eye witnesses though that I gave this prediction though (for whatever thats worth). My prediction was with Romney out of the race, Huckabee may do significantly better than McCain in the coming primaries. Yesterday's primaries proved me right. CNN reported many times last night that it is almost mathematically impossible for Huckabee to win the election now, to which he responds (multiple times yesterday), “Folks, I didn’t major in math. I majored in miracles and I still believe in miracles.” If he does win, I may be saying bye bye to Catholicism and hello Baptism because he is obviously doing something right. Regardless, I've developed a serious case of the Underdogies (kind of like having a case of the Sillies or the Clumsies) and I'm routing for him.

On the Democratic side, its still a slight case of the people versus the party. As of noonish today, here's the superdelegate and pledged delegate predictions:

Clinton - Pledged: 885
Clinton - Superdelegates: 223
Obama - Pledged: 918
Obama - Superdelegates: 131

Obama leads by 33 votes made by the people and Clinton leads by 92 votes made by the party. This still doesn't say that Superdeletages are necessarily not voting with the people, Clinton may have just won states that just had a higher percentage of its votes consist of Superdelegats and I'm not not curious enough to backtracking through all of Super Tuesday to see just what happened. However, the numbers do suggest that the party is straying away from the people's choice. CNN reported last night (yeah I watched the news a lot yesterday) that Superdelegates were originally created to keep the primaries from being ridiculous (lets not forget that Stephen Colbert tried to join the race on his show at one point and I for one would have welcomed the Superdelegates if he succeeded), but they also argued last night that they might be making the situation worse!

To top that off, the Clintons are making an effort to get Michigan and Florida to count for the Primary! When it becomes DNC time, they are going to make a legal effort to get these votes to count. If this happens, its an injustice! Obama wasn't even on the ballot in Michigan because he choose to save campaign funds instead of showboating. Clinton opted to go showboating and won both these states (Obama was on the ballot in Florida) that had lost their delegates. I hadn't noticed this before, but if you look at the primary results (from the Associated Press) at the bottom of this blog you'll notice something shocking. Michigan and Florida were previously in possession of a HUGE number of delegates! Michigan was entitled to 156 and Florida 210, making up 8.3% of the Nation's delegates. That is a huge chunk that Clinton will try to get activated at the end of the election that most of the candidates were told didn't matter. There was some talk about having a do-over in those states, but elections cost money, and a lot of it. Plus since Clinton pushed to have these state's voices heard, she will probably have earned an advantage among the people if the do-over came to pass.

This election just keeps getting better and better. The watching the general election will be like, well like watching the news by comparison.

In an equally confusing story: Ron Paul still in race?

Romney dropped out? How does the runner up say, second place isn't good enough? While I am severely confused by this news it is interesting to see if Romney's supporters will go to McCain and rocket him to victory or give Huckabee a shot at appearing as a more strategically viable candidate. Critics of McCain say that he is far too liberal to win the Republican ballot, this now makes Huckabee the most likely conservative candidate for the GOP.

The Primaries just keeps on throwing out plot twists. If they weren't on strike, I'd say the writers of Heroes has something to do with this.

So whats the deal with New Mexico?

Based on the current primary results from CNN's primary report on 2/7/08, there are just over one thousand votes that separate Clinton and Obama in New Mexico. According to the Associated Press, there are 17,000 provincial ballots that still need to be counted. Thankfully, (sort of) I had to fill out a provincial ballot for my Primary vote so I actually know what this is. Although I can't find a good definition online (wikipedia let me down), as I understand it a provincial ballot is a ballot that needs additional research to validate the eligibility of their voter registration. This process could take several days to get all these votes counted. So of those 17,000 votes, some may not get counted, but because they are lumped together from all over the state there is no way to predict for anyone where these votes will go. NM is still anyone's game. There are still almost 17 times as many votes up for grabs as there are separating the two candidates, but with a race this close its quite possible that they will remain half and half.

Super Tuesday Resuts (minus NM)

So Super Tuesday is done and the results (with the exception of New Mexico for the Democrats and here are the results) as reported by CNN:

McCain: 559
Romney: 265
Huckabee: 169

Clinton: 783
Obama: 709

McCain has pulled a head as a clear front runner, but the Democratic race is much closer. There is actually a bit of a misnomer about the results if you examine the contribution of Pledged and Super Delegates

Clinton - Pledged: 590
Clinton - Superdelegates: 193
Obama - Pledged: 603
Obama - Superdelegates: 106

Now if you don't know, the difference between a Pledged and Superdelegate is as follows. Pledged Delegates are what most people think of when they think of Delegates. These are actual "points" awarded to Primary Candidates that are awarded based on how they did in the primary voting. Anyone over 13% (may vary) of the vote gets a percentage of the delegates. Some states have a winner takes all system where whoever wins the primary election wins all Pledged Delegates.

Superdelegates are a special status, used mostly by the Democrats, awarded to their higher officials. That Super delegate's "point" can be assigned to any primary candidate it so chooses. They are not restricted to giving their vote to the winner of the election.

What does this mean? It means that Obama is ACTUALLY winning the election part of the primaries, but by a very small amount (13 delegates). All of Clinton's lead can be attributed to the fact that she has almost 100 more Superdelegate votes than Obama. This means that Clinton is possibly winning because she has more ties in the DNC than Obama does. While favoritism is an obvious scapegoat it is possible that these officials are still basing their vote on the issues and there isn't much to read into this. It is interesting to see that Obama is actually favored in the election and it just shows how close this race really is.

Update: As of 1AM on Feb 7th (yeah, I know I should go to bed) CNN has come out with better Super Tuesday predictions which gives McCain a larger lead and makes the Democratic even closer.

McCain: 680
Romney: 270
Huckabee: 176

Clinton: 823
Obama: 741

The Democratic Delegate breakdown is estimated as follows:

Clinton - Pledged: 630
Clinton - Superdelegates: 193
Obama - Pledged: 635
Obama - Superdelegates: 106

While the Superdelegates haven't changed the Pledged Delegates now only shows a difference of five votes. Obama has claimed Super Tuesday as a victory for this election and I would certainly agree even though he is still behind in the election.

Delegates Before Super Tuesday

Today is the big day! Here are the standings as of Monday.

McCain: 111
Romney: 94
Huckabee: 29

Clinton: 241
Obama: 169

Lets see what happens!

Pre-Super Tuesday Debates

Wednesday Night - WWRRD

I was a bit turned off by the Republican Debates. Don't get me wrong, I know the debate was set in the Reagan Library and I fully believe he was a great President, but the focus on Reagan was a little but to pronounced. Huckabee gained a lot of points in my book with his answer to the last question of the night ("Would Reagan have endorsed you for President?") where he responded:

I think it would be incredibly presumptuous and even arrogant for me to try to suggest what Ronald Reagan would do, that he would endorse any of us against the others.

Let me just say this, I'm not going to pretend he would endorse me. I wish he would. I would love that, but I endorse him, and I'm going to tell you why[...]

For a bunch that seems so respectful of the man, the question itself does seem a bit presumptuous.

Besides that, the big news coming out of the debate was Mr. "Straight Talk Express" (as Obama called him last night) hitting Romney below the axle. McCain accused Romney of supporting a time table of withdrawal from Iraq (i.e. conservative poison) where many sources and my own research seem to point to as being false. McCain who has had a lot of star power lately, and has so far ran a clean campaign, could suffer from this attack more than it could help him. McCain may have one this debate, but at what cost?

Thursday Night - Queensberry Politics

The Democratic debate last night was without victory. Any punches thrown were gentle and eloquently phrased. If nothing else, it was a testament to how well these two politicians can shelve personal ambitions in favor of civil discourse. Strangely, harder punches were thrown from CNN's Wolf Blitzer who was running the debate than either candidate. It was almost a more exciting debate due to the suspense of seeing if anyone was going loose their cool. It was an impressive display in my opinion.

Transcripts
Republican Debate Transcript.
Democratic Debate Transcript.