The Third Dimension of the Primaries

This comes directly from CNN's Ballot bowl on 3/22/08 (no link to compliment this story can be found). They are reporting that besides the contest between Pledged Delegates and Superdelegates in this primary there is a third dimension that hasn't been examined yet which is, the popular vote.

Currently the delegate count is as follows:

-= Total =-
Obama: 1,622
Clinton: 1,485

-= Pledged =-
Obama: 1,413
Clinton: 1,242

-= Super =-
Obama: 209
Clinton: 243

Clinton still maintains a lead in superdelegates, but Obama has almost too substantial a lead on Pledged Delegates for Clinton to/ catch up. However, according to realclearpolitics.com the popular vote tells a different story.

-= Popular Vote =-
Obama: 13,281,132
Clinton: 12,577,409
These numbers do not include the states of (IA, NV, WA & ME) that do not include the head count from their primaries, but it shows that the difference between Clinton and Obama could be as small as some 700K votes. If you include the vote from the Florida election, which is still up for debate, you get:

-= Popular Vote with Florida =-
Obama: 13,857,346
Clinton: 13,448,395

This difference then shrinks to 400K, which is almost half of the divide. The Michigan vote isn't fair to include because Obama wasn't on the ballot.

The point of this isn only to say that Clinton could use this as leverage during the convention if she does indeed win the Popular vote but has not won the Delegate count.

If you'd like an explaination of Pledged Delegates vs. Superdelegates you can check the link.

Democrats endorsing eachother??

Bill Richardson endorsed Barack Obama today. There seems to be some debate over how signficant this is, but this seems like a bit win to me. Bill Richardson may not have that much influlence over the Clintons in the Latino vote, but it does bring attention to the fact that his race speech is significant to Latios as well as African Americans (as was highlighted in his endorsement speech). Also Richardson's call to back and candidate and focus on McCain as a party is something we haven't really hard the Democratic party talk much about yet (at least not as much as the Republicans were after Romney dropped out).

Lastly, the whole Obama is "a real good guy" seemed pretty significant as well.

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/03/21/politics/fromtheroad/entry3958349.shtml

Update: Here is a link to his endorsement speech:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=y62jhStuawA

Obama's Race Speech

Well its all the buzz today. I'm listening to Obama's race speech as I write this post as I, like many missed the list broadcast. For others who also missed this speech you can find it at the link below:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/18/obama-race-speech-read-t_n_92077.html

Also here is one of the speeches by Obama's minister, Jeremiah Wright, that spawned the above speech.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=vdJB-qkfUHc

Florida do-over, not in the bag yet

... mail bag that is.

If you haven't been following this, there has been a push to get Florida and Michigan's delegates counted since the election is so close. However, since both states still held elections and some Candidates even put money into those state's elections the cost of having a do-over seems too great. There was a recent plan of holding a mail in primary, which would obviously be much less expensive (unless you're a tree), however CNN is reporting now that this probably isn't going to work.

Apparently Florida has a law against mail in elections. Back to the drawing board Howard Dean!


BACKGROUND:
In case you haven't followed the origins of this problem. Both Florida and Michigan tried to give themselves a more significant role in the Primaries by moving their date forward. Well actually its not totally the Florida and Michigan Democrat's fault. The states' Republicans tried to move up the date first and the democrats (wanting to keep a consistent date) tried to follow. I'm not completely sure if this is how it played out, but I heard the date they choose was going to play out as occurring before Iowa and New Hampshire (the states that hold the "First in the Nation" status). Apparently though, Florida and Michigan didn't go through the proper channels to get permission from the Democratic National Convention to move their primary date ahead. As such the DNC striped these states of their delegates and thus all the participation rights in Democratic Primaries.

Nonetheless, Michigan and Florida had their primaries, but candidates were apparently instructed to not actively participate in them. Hillary Clinton and some other democratic candidates (John Edwards and Barack Obama were not included and weren't even on the ballot) broke that rule in Michigan. Later, when Florida had their turn, all Candidates then broke the rule and campaigned in the primary, but not vigorously as these states were not supposed to count.

To see more details about how these elections turned out check out the bottom of this blog for that and all post Super Tuesday primaries and caucus results.

No media bias here, nope... none at all.

The Clinton camp has been saying for a long time that the media has been showing a bias towards Barack Obama. I first read about this bias early on in the primaries from a disgruntled poster on a CNN site and the suspicion has stuck with me. I as I have caught roughly 90% of all the primaries live and watched the commentary this bias has been all too apparent to me. I'm making this post now because I found this article from the Associated Press (this is certainly not unique to them though its a fairly universal bias with the exception of Fox News which just hates all Democrats) that is quite strangely biased. While I have no doubt of the validity of what is being reported. It seems peculiar, however, that the media would ever go out of its way to protect ANY politician.

An Obama-Rezko Primer
By CHRISTOPHER WILLS
Associated Press Writer

Post March 4th Primary Cliff Notes

Democratic Side

• Obama won Vermont as his 12th straight victory
• Clinton then won Ohio, Texas, and Rhode Island
• Clinton's net gain for the night was 4 delegates
• The next big primary is in Pennsylvania on April 22nd
• There is also Primaries on March 8th in Wyoming and March 11th in Mississippi
• Spin Item: Clinton is proclaiming, "As Ohio goes, so goes the nation. Well, this nation's coming back and so is this campaign."
• Spin Item: Clinton is suggesting the primary end in a shared ticket.

Republican Side

• McCain won the nomination
• Huckabee has dropped out
• McCain congratulated Huckabee in his acceptance speech
• Bush backed McCain in a lunch meeting today (5/5/08)
  
• Bush has called Huckabee, Romney, Paul, Hunter, Thompson and Giuliani to congratulate them. (could not find source)

No hitting below the belt, I want a clean fight

The associated press put out a good article on the rules of the Texas and Ohio Primaries. It also points our how it would be very difficult for either Clinton or Obama win big in either state. Texas' primary is surprisingly complex and it could be a long night of counting votes.

Mini Super Tuesday

Texas, Vermont, Ohio, and RI are having their primary tomorrow and the time for this number of delegates to go up for bid couldn't be better. We could very well see the end of competition for both primaries, but in different ways:

If McCain wins big tomorrow then he will have actually gained the delegates needed to win the GOP Primary, thus ending the race. Likewise, on the Democratic side, if Obama wins big, he will probably have gained enough delegates where he'll effectively have this race in the bag. If he wins BIG or sweeps all four states, he'll very likely start being referred to as the "like Democratic party nominee."

On the flip side though are the two underdogs, Huckabee and Clinton. If Clinton wins big she effectively hurls herself back into this race and makes it anybody's game. However a Huckabee win will be much less exciting. As I said before, I'm really loving Huckabee's "hang in there kid" attitude, but a victory will only really delay the inevitable. If Huckabee stops McCain from winning the primary tomorrow it will be a big embarrassment, as he should win no contest.

My predictions
------------
McCain gets the nomination
Obama does indeed win, but just as many other states have played out, he will not win big. Clinton and him will be neck and it will probably not be enough to stop caring about the race. The question is, would Clinton ever pull out? I don't think she would, but unless she does catchup she really should and spare America the possible conspiracy of going to convention.