Nothing particularly unusual here. http://www.drudgereport.com/flashoa.htm CLINTON STAFFERS CIRCULATE 'DRESSED' OBAMA Mon Feb 25 2008 06:51:00 ET With a week to go until the Texas and Ohio primaries, stressed Clinton staffers circulated a photo over the weekend of a "dressed" Barack Obama. The photo, taken in 2006, shows the Democrat frontrunner fitted as a Somali Elder, during his visit to Wajir, a rural area in northeastern Kenya. The senator was on a five-country tour of Africa. "Wouldn't we be seeing this on the cover of every magazine if it were HRC?" questioned one campaign staffer, in an email obtained by the DRUDGE REPORT. In December, the campaign asked one of its volunteer county coordinators in Iowa to step down after the person forwarded an e-mail falsely stating that Barack Obama is a Muslim. Obama campaign manager David Plouffe quickly accused the Clinton campaign Monday of 'shameful offensive fear-mongering' for circulating the snap. Clinton campaign manager Maggie Williams responds: "If Barack Obama's campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed." Developing... EDITOR'S NOTE: Other leaders have worn local costumes: I don't know if these pictures will stay accurate, but they are currently of Hillary, Bush, and Bill Clinton all dressed up in local attire at various places. Even Drudge put in an editor's note and is choosing not to use this as a smear - that should tell you something.
Are you in Houston? I searched all over the Harris County GOP and Dem websites, and couldn't find anything about regular polling locations. Here are the early voting locations: http://www.harriscountygop.com/ev.asp (Same for both parties.) Your best bet is to call your county party office.
Yeah I'm in Houston..or Stafford to be exact. Moved last year so I'm unsure where to go. I think I'll try the early voting for the primary so I don't get stuck in an hours long line like last time.
This is just a stupid tactic. I thought the best moment of the recent debates was when Hillary spoke of unity, and the like. The audience gave it a standing ovation. the moment that got booed was when Hillary went negative. It's been mentioned before that her letting down her guard and getting a little misty eyed in NH really turned things in her favor there. When she went negative in SC, that was when she started her slide. The strategy of going negative hasn't worked for her, and showing a person dressed according to local customs is just silly. I mean that's not even a real "negative".
The Fort Bend County Parties do a better job with the internet: http://www.fbcgop.org/html/polling-places.html http://www.fbcdp.org/voterinfo.html
To follow up on that, I found this to be the most interesting nugget in today's Rasmussen poll. Overall, it shows Clinton leading 46-45, but... Twenty-nine percent (29%) say they have already voted and Obama leads handily among this group. http://rasmussenreports.com/public_...n/texas/texas_democratic_presidential_primary
Wow - I had no idea that many had already early voted! Burnt Orange Report did a mini-study on this after the first few days of early voting and came up with this: It shows the 14 largest counties in the state and how early voter turnout increased compared to 2006 or 2004 or something. According to them, the counties with the least improvement (which is still close to doubling past turnout) are the biggest Clinton strongholds and the ones with the largest increase are the Obama strongholds. The graph basically shows that the more "Hispanic" the county is, the lower the increase. I voted in a fairly Republican part of Austin (Westlake) and the vast majority of people there were all asking for Democratic ballots. I'll be interested to see the exit polling and how many Independents/Republicans ended up voting for him. McCain having unofficially clinched on the GOP side helps Obama a lot in getting the independent vote.
I voted at the UGL last week, and there were TONS of first-time voters out there. This was on the first day of early voting, and the line was pretty long, and I'd say almost 95% of the people there were doing the Deomcractic ballots (not a big surprise since the R side is already decided). Based on the crowds around the West Mall during lunch, as well as the overall attitudes around campus, I'd say UT is heavily in favor of Obama. Ditto the city of Austin, which turned out in droves for the rally on Congress last Friday.
From CNN -- Obama takes 4 point lead in Texas Obama 50% Clinton 46% http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/25/texas.poll/index.html?eref=rss_politics&iref=polticker [edit] and from Gallup Here's a surprising number from the new Gallup Poll : Obama has, for the first time in Gallup polling, taken a double-digit lead over Hillary among national Dems. He leads her 51%-39%. Separately, in another startling finding, nearly three out of four Dems say Obama will be the nominee (73%), versus only a fifth (20%) who say Hillary will.
more numbers from the early vote: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/022608dnmetvoting.3c094e6.html Six days into early voting – and with a week left – about 360,000 voters in the state's 15 largest counties have cast early or mail-in ballots in the 2008 Democratic primary, compared with 120,000 in the Republican primary. In Dallas County, for instance, 49,485 people had voted in the Democratic primary by Sunday evening – nearly 10 times as many as at a similar point four years ago. About 14,000 had voted in the Republican primary in Dallas County. Democrats have been more active in traditionally Republican-dominated counties as well. Four years ago, Denton and Collin County Republicans outvoted Democrats in early voting. So far this year, the opposite is true.
Did nobody watch the debate tonight on MSNBC? I missed the first part of it, but from what they are saying early on Clinton went negative and it didn't work out too well for her. What I saw of the debate neither candidate seemed to land any huge blows, though I thought Obama bringing up the fact that the Bush admin just followed basically the same strategy that Clinton was criticizing him for, and authorized an operation in Pakistan without getting approval from the Paki government was a nice point to bring up. So who do you think won? I don't think Clinton did nearly enough from what I saw.
I don't think Clinton did nearly enough, and I think Obama presented himself as more "Presidential" in this one. That said, I thought Obama was great the first half of the debate, but started getting defensive and meandered a bit in the second half. I don't think Clinton took much advantage of it, but Obama definitely was weaker and a bit suspect later on in my opinion. Ultimately, I think Obama might pick up a few voters that didn't necessarily feel comfortable with him yet; I don't know that Hillary won any new voters - she took the same approach she has before and focused on the same issues and did a pretty good job, but she already had those voters in her corner (also, her early "SNL/why do I keep getting the first question" lines made no sense and sounded ridiculous).
dude I have msnbc in the background and I just read your post and jesse jackson basically says the same thing. I will say this, I was impressed by hillary's answers and obama's, but the difference is obama is more presidential
Seems like the more debates I see the worse they are. This one was totally worthless. Many people are saying Obama seemed more presidential. I didn't really see it that way but he didn't hurt himself. The semantical exercise over Farrakhan was interesting. Just get March 4th here so Hillary can pull out and we can take a 2-3 month break from the campaign. I like politics but I'm sick and tired of it right now.
I think Clinton sounded very whiney at the beginning complaining about always getting the first question and how that made it unfair for her. She seemed trying hard to go negative, and ended up sounding peevish. Saying that denouncing isn't as good as rejecting. It was just silly. Early on in the campaign, Obama was a below average to average debater at best. He has been a quick study. I think last debate it was pretty much even, and this debate Obama gets the slight edge. He got the edge in my opinion because of his answer to the Pakistan issue, and the way he highlighted how silly Hillary's point of reject vs. denounce was by saying, that if she felt there was a difference than that was fine with him, and he would reject and denounce the Farrakhan's support. That, and the way he defused the question after they showed Hillary making fun of Obama's hope speeches, and the way Obama just made a joke about it, and said that it sounded good to him. He then complimented her on her joke delivery, and went on to talk about his action. I think especially the Farrakhan answer shows how even though traditional politics say never to concede a point, and to turn around to your advantage, Obama just said fine, I concede your point on that issue where her point was already meaningless. It went against traditional political playbook, and it shows how things might be different if Obama was in a leadership role.
Yeah - I think this is a perfect summary. They both gave good answers to things; she had to attack more and try to "force points" in there to make up ground, and she's just not good with that, and it makes her sound un-Presidential. I don't see how the debate helps her - but then, I'm not sure what she could have done differently. He's absurdly good at killing any lines of attack and making it difficult for criticisms to really stick. And the fact that's he's occasionally willing to say "I fully agree with Hillary" makes it impossible for her to score points against him at times.
I love the elections (as you can tell by my many posts ), but I'm also ready for a long, long break. I can't believe it's been only 7 weeks since Iowa and we have 8 months to go. Bleh. Baseball season is ridiculously long, and it's a month away and the election is a month after it ends.
That's odd. I liked hillary's answers more last debate than this one. I could have been swayed by her early crazy victimization ploy about her being asked the first question as unfair, and bringing up SNL to try and make it look like she's catching all the bad breaks, and Obama is getting preferential treatment. I'm already biased towards Obama, and so those tactics could have clouded my judgment more than some other folks. I just thought her answers in the TX debate were a little better. I did like some of her answers such as the one on the Putin question.
FB I disagree on the Farrakhan question. I think if Hillary would have left it alone, she would have been better off and used it against him. There was a difference in what she said and what he said. He didn't answer tim russerts question fully, and i think it was clear that there are african americans he didn't want to offend by all out rejecting farrakhan. I thought he handled it, but he should have been more firm in the beginning. That could have been a lot worse.
