Rudy! His top staffers are now working without pay, he's fallen to 4th in recent FL polls and in the most recent NY poll, McCain is now even with him. Quick, we need more 9-11 references.
It's gotta suck spending a year running for President - leading most of the way - and not even getting to your first primary 3 weeks in before flaming out. It really does show how still it is how much impact Iowa and NH have.
I think the only thing it shows is what a terrible candidate Rudy is. He had name recognition and a buzz early on, but once people got to know him a little, they didn't want to vote for him.
The cynical side of me thinks Obama will carry the most states, but lose the convention by number of delegates to Hillary.
Daniel Gross of Newsweek makes the case why the Mitster will probably lose in MI. http://www.newsweek.com/id/91434/output/print
Unless Rudy pulls off a miracle in FL or Romney pulls one off in MI (they are both now trailing the polls in those states), I don't see how either one of them wins a single state going forward. I think every state would be either McCain or Huckabee. I really expected the GOP primary to go longer, but these candidates are flaming out at ridiculous rates given the amount of money and popularity they once had. The Dem primary now looks like the one that's going to go on longer.
Hope this isn't true. from josh -- Deserves Attention Maybe there's a reason this isn't as beyond the pale as it looks. But I'm not seeing it. The Nevada State Democratic party has set up nine at-large caucus locations on the Las Vegas strip for casino workers who might not otherwise be able to caucus on January 19th. Remember, because of the recent Culinary Workers Union endorsement of Barack Obama, casino workers are expected to vote heavily for him. Now, the Nevada State Education Association (the state teachers' union), which is supporting Sen. Clinton, is suing the Democratic party to prevent block those at-large caucuses from meeting on the grounds that similar arrangements have not been made for other Nevadans. I don't know the particulars of how the Nevada caucuses are arranged. But the 'tell' is the fact that the teachers' union apparently didn't think this was a problem until Sen. Obama bagged the key union endorsement. When asked why the union had never approached the state party about this issue until Friday, union president Lynne Warne, tellingly replied, "We're approaching them now." If there's one thing that's core to the modern Democratic party is that voter suppression tactics are always wrong. Much of the US Attorney purge scandal was at root about Republican voter suppression tactics. I suspect this is doubly wrong -- both in the sense that the suit is meritless on its face but certainly also in the sense that you don't decide how easy to make it for people to vote depending on who you think they're likely to vote for. Please leave these shameful tactics to Republicans. --Josh Marshall http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/
Anyone else notice all the endorsements Obama has picked up after "losing" NH? josh explains it all for you --
Dam! Tomorrow's a big day for the Mitster and republicans in general. Aren't any of our resident conservatives excited about the race anymore?
I've been a big believer that Obama is going to win this thing, but I'm starting to think it's not going to happen unless Edwards drops out before Super Tuesday and Obama gets most of his voters. Obama can win a lot of smaller states like NV and SC, but there's not going to be much of a national bounce at this point. Hillary has 50% of the vote in California and even more in NY/NJ. Fortunately, neither FL or MI count because they are big Hillary advantages as well. I'm not sure Obama can keep up in the delegate count, and that's ultimately what this is going to come down to. He needs a fantastic debate performance or some kind of good news ASAP. I still think he wins NV & SC, but I'm thinking he's going to lose ground on Super Tuesday. The states he wins will probably be a narrower margin than the states Hillary wins, meaning the net effect would be more delegates for Hillary. Hopefully they can drag this race out to early March and Obama could win Texas & Ohio, but who knows. I'm rooting for McCain in the GOP primary, but I do hope Romney wins MI and Guiliani wins FL just to drag it out more and keep it interesting. These are just too fascinating races to end this quickly.
Looks strong for McCain right now because the Establishment has chosen him and the other 3 guys are very weak. For this independent, it comes down to: McCain vs. Clinton: I will vote for McCain. McCain vs. Obama: Unless I learn something that disqualifies him, I would choose Obama.
I'm the same. My order of preference right now is: Obama Bloomberg McCain If none of them make it to a general election, yuck. I can see myself voting for any of those three, but I can't see myself voting for any of the other candidates. I'm not terribly opposed to Edwards, but I'm not much of a fan.
I take this back. I want McCain to roll through the primaries and it to be a foregone conclusion going into Super Tuesday that he's the nominee. The quicker he wins, the more likely independents and Republicans in open-primary states will jump into the Dem race and vote for Obama.
Early exit polls suggest Romney will win Michigan. Everything just seems to be going the opposite of what I want these days!
It's just frustrating that Obama-Edwards are splitting the anti-Hillary vote, and Obama-McCain are splitting the independent vote. And I have this growing feeling that Hillary is going to win by default, despite the fact that in a two-way between Obama and Hillary, I think she would lose. BLEH. Edwards really, really needs to get blown out in South Carolina and drop out before Super Tuesday.
