Some more interesting stats about media coverage of the candidates in the last week. These are some of the findings in the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s inaugural Campaign Coverage Index, a measure of which candidate is winning in the all-important race for media exposure. http://www.journalism.org/node/9266
In the Kurdish part of Iraq. The Kurds love us and want us there forever. We are the only allies they have. The conditions are so completely different than the rest of Iraq you wouldn't believe it.
Good news for Obama - federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Clinton supporters to dismantle the caucuses on the strip where the big union endorsed Obama.
I've never actively campaigned for a candidate in my life, but I will tomorrow. I got a call from Ron Paul's Louisiana office asking for volunteers that wouldn't be allowed caucus. I will be among the crazy Ron Paul supporters tomorrow.
Man, is Obama's campaign teetering on the brink of disaster or what?! Today he's calling Bill Clinton a liar. WOW. Obviously Bill Clinton is a proven liar, but as a democrat, he is really taking a big risk there of alienating a large core of his own voters. If he doesn't win South Carolina, he's toast. He has been bested now in NH, Michigan and Nevada. If he loses the majority-black democratic primary in SC, his candidacy is finished.
So I just got back. It was a different experience, much different from primary elections. You won't hear any results, because there was no straw poll tonight. The election was for "uncommitted" delegates to the state GOP convention. There will be a "primary" on February 9, but that election is meaningless unless a candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, at which point the 20% at-large delegates will vote for the majority candidate. There were probably 20 Ron Paul volunteers and one guy from the national campaign trying to get our delegates elected, 3 Mitt Romney volunteers standing around who did have a list of delegates that they handed to a few, and 10 or so from the Parish Republican party that were trying to get a set of "Pro-life/Pro-family" delegates elected. The last group was really pushy, pulling Ron Paul and Mitt Romney delegate lists out of voters' hands and replacing it with their own. I found out later that they were long time convention attendees that were really only interested in going to the convention (at which point they'd probably vote for the front runner). According to our count, 40% of the voters who showed up told us that they were voting for Ron Paul delegates. I didn't wait around for the actual vote count. I was in Lake Charles which counts for 1/2 of Louisiana's seventh district. The other half voted in Lafayette.
I think this article by Pat Buchanan is spot-on: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/01/ghettoizing_barack.html Somewhere in the last two weeks, a racial & gender divide formed and that's been a disaster for Obama. At this point, he needs to win South Carolina (he he likely will) and then hope for a miracle or a major breakthrough. Frankly, he needs to change his message completely. He's got his optimist/hope supporters. He's also got the black vote, the youth vote, and the educated/wealthy vote. I'm not sure he can really win the Hispanic vote at this point, based on the Nevada results where he had the support of a huge union and still got blown out with Hispanics. But he needs to make up ground with some combination of women, older voters, and/or whites. After being super-competitive or outright winning all of these categories in Iowa, he's really lost ground amongst all three since. And in each of the splits (men/women, young/old, white/black), he's got the support of the smaller group. He ultimately can't win that way - he has to tune his message to those groups and break Hillary's hold on them in the next two weeks. If he doesn't, Super Tuesday will be the unofficial end of his campaign, most likely. He has millions in the bank. If I'm him, I start blowing through it fast or it will be too late. Mix in the hope commercials that shows parts of his best speeches with substance commercials and some targetted towards each of those demographic groups. If it's not too late, I'd frankly pay the $2MM or whatever for a 30-second or 1-minute ad during the Superbowl. You get mass exposure of 50 million people, and that's when you have lots of people together in a room. Come up with a good ad that hooks a few people and get people into a conversation and maybe hook even more people that way. It has to be the perfect ad, though.
Update: I just heard from Ron Paul's District Campaign leader that all 15 delegates and all 15 alternates that support Dr. Paul won. Also, in Natchitoches (not sure which district that was), Ron Paul won 11/15 votes. It's looking more and more like Paul will win Louisiana outright.
Just wanted to commend you on getting involved in the process, weslinder. No, I'd never support your guy, but dammit, you are getting in the trenches, a hell of a lot more than most people here. Kudos! Impeach Bush.
Dick Morris' take on all this is quite interesting, especially in light of his service to the Clintons during their gubernatorial and White House years. If he is correct in predicting her South Carolina strategy (and he has been so far), once Hillary uses the race card as trump, where else can the black vote go? http://www.dickmorris.com/blog/?p=241#more-241 HOW CLINTON WILL WIN THE NOMINATION BY LOSING SOUTH CAROLINA By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN Published on TheHill.com on January 23, 2008. Hillary Clinton will undoubtedly lose the South Carolina primary as African-Americans line up to vote for Barack Obama. And that defeat will power her drive to the nomination. The Clintons are encouraging the national media to disregard the whites who vote in South Carolina’s Democratic primary and focus on the black turnout, which is expected to be quite large. They have transformed South Carolina into Washington, D.C. — an all-black primary that tells us how the African-American vote is going to go. By saying he will go door to door in black neighborhoods in South Carolina matching his civil rights record against Obama’s, Bill Clinton emphasizes the pivotal role the black vote will play in the contest. And by openly matching his record on race with that of the black candidate, he invites more and more scrutiny focused on the race issue. Of course, Clinton is going to lose that battle. Blacks in Nevada overwhelmingly backed Obama and will obviously do so again in South Carolina, no matter how loudly former President Clinton protests. So why is he making such a fuss over a contest he knows he’s going to lose? Precisely because he is going to lose it. If Hillary loses South Carolina and the defeat serves to demonstrate Obama’s ability to attract a bloc vote among black Democrats, the message will go out loud and clear to white voters that this is a racial fight. It’s one thing for polls to show, as they now do, that Obama beats Hillary among African-Americans by better than 4-to-1 and Hillary carries whites by almost 2-to-1. But most people don’t read the fine print on the polls. But if blacks deliver South Carolina to Obama, everybody will know that they are bloc-voting. That will trigger a massive white backlash against Obama and will drive white voters to Hillary Clinton. Obama has done everything he possibly could to keep race out of this election. And the Clintons attracted national scorn when they tried to bring it back in by attempting to minimize the role Martin Luther King Jr. played in the civil rights movement. But here they have a way of appearing to seek the black vote, losing it, and getting their white backlash, all without any fingerprints showing. The more President Clinton begs black voters to back his wife, and the more they spurn her, the more the election becomes about race — and Obama ultimately loses. Because they have such plans for South Carolina, the Clintons were desperate to win in Nevada. They dared not lose two primaries in a row leading up to Florida. But now they can lose South Carolina with impunity, having won in Nevada. But don’t look for them to walk away from South Carolina. Their love needs to appear to have been unrequited by the black community for their rejection to seem so unfair that it triggers a white backlash. In this kind of ricochet politics, you have to lose openly and publicly in order to win the next round. And since the next round consists of all the important and big states, polarizing the contest into whites versus blacks will work just fine for Hillary. Of course, this begs the question of how she will be able to attract blacks after beating Obama. Here the South Carolina strategy also serves its purpose. If she loses blacks and wins whites by attacking Obama, it will look dirty and underhanded to blacks. She’ll develop a real problem in the minority community. But if she is seen as being rejected by minority voters in favor of Obama after going hat in hand to them and trying to out-civil rights Obama, blacks will even likely feel guilty about rejecting Hillary and will be more than willing to support her in the general election.
Interesting notion. It's clear Obama will win South Carolina and that Hillary has moved on. She has a huge advantage in that she can leave Bill in South Carolina and move on to other states. The strategy is good although I'm not sure Obama winning a high % of the black vote will diminish his appeal to whites, especially those outside the South. It's on Obama to make sure Bill & Hillary don't redefine him that way. I almost get the feeling most Democrats realize she isn't the right choice but they are going to choose her anyway. Reminds me of 2004 where Edwards was a much better choice than Kerry but Dems chose Kerry because he was safer and more of a longtimer. To this day I remain convinced that Edwards would have beaten Bush. Right now, I think Obama would blow McCain away while Hillary and McCain would be down to the wire.
thumbs, that column is rediculous. Perhaps someone could enlighten me as to why Morris and friend decided to scribe this hit piece, but I've rarely seen a more tortured, convoluted attempt to make a candidate look bad. Rove, at least, is blatantly dirty. Impeach Bush.
I totally agree here. If Hillary is nominated and loses to McCain, the Dem Party is going to go through an interesting next 4 years. I believe it will be a lot like what Republicans are going through now. This is supposed to be the election that Dems have been waiting for for years - the one they can't lose. But if they lose it, all hell will break loose. I suspect in 2012, you'll have a good number of legitimate candidates with significant policy and personality differences, very similar to what you're seeing with the GOP in their fight between social and fiscal conservatives.
I can offer no enlightenment on their rationale, but Morris does have a unique perspective on the Clintons. If you read his emailers consistently, you will find he still likes Bill but absolutely hates Hillary. Keeping that in mind, IMO the strategy he suspects Hillary has in play certainly matches her campaign style. If true, black voters get shafted with nowhere to go but back, tails between their legs, to Hillary. Historically, blacks have made a blunder by not being a serious presence in both parties. Had they done so, the Republican Party might not be so far to the right in this day and age.
No, he just hates Hillary that much. Oh, yes, he zings Bill on occasion but overall I get the impression he admires Bill. I never thought I would say this, but I wish Bill were running for the Democratic nomination. He would win in a walk. IIRC, he still could run since he has now had an intervening President to separate his terms in office. But, on the other hand, I'm really tired of the Bush/Clinton domination of the political landscape.
