I hated the new Obama song, but this McCain Song is great.
(via Huffington Post)
|
I forgot to ask before Super Tuesday, even though I knew I had readers in several Super Tuesday states… but I remembered for this one. Tomorrow are the primaries in Virginia, DC and Maryland. I know I have several readers in those areas. Do any of you have any thoughts? Are you planning to vote? If so which party? For who? Why? Do you have a sense of what your friends, coworkers and neighbors are thinking? Jump in on the comments, or email me if that still doesn’t work for you. Or just remain stoically silent if that is your preference. :-) But comments are always appreciated.
All I can say is wow. With the preliminary results rolled in from Maine and additional updates from Saturday’s contests as those were finalized… we have 50.0% Clinton, 48.8% Obama, 1.1% Edwards. Clinton is just BARELY over 50%. 50.022% or so actually. If Obama does anywhere near as well in the Tuesday contests as he is expected to based on recent polls, he will almost definitely push Clinton below 50%. I think he will PROBABLY actually take the delegate lead as well. I mean the total delegate lead, including superdelegates. Obama *already* has the lead in pledged delegates. Obama is building massive momentum here. Clinton is counting on being able to come back massively in Ohio and Texas on March 4th. But if she doesn’t manage a win or two between now and then, and if she keeps not just losing, but losing by big margins… and she falls behind in delegates… whatever she is hoping for in Ohio and Texas may just fail to materialize… Now, could she keep it close enough so it will “be decided” by the superdelegates? Yes. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it will be decided in her favor. She just can’t lose everything in February and expect to come back after that. Guiliani tried that in January, and we can see how well that worked for him. She needs to pull out some strong showings in some of the next few states. And right now her odds aren’t looking good. My prediction has always been an Obama win. I’ll stick by that. But I don’t expect Clinton to stop fighting any time soon. There will still be some significant battles left to fight I think. And who knows, she may pull out a surprise somewhere.
Oh yeah, and there were some minor adjustments in the Republican delegate totals too. McCain picked up a handful more. Sam talks about:
At first Brandy watched with me, but she HATES this kind of movie, so that didn’t last. Amy watched the last half of it with me, and didn’t appear to hate it, although I doubt she’ll be watching it again any time soon. From my point of view, I was actually enthralled for most of the movie. I particularly was impressed by the large scale scenes with dozens and dozens of extras. I mean, this was 1930. In 2008 if there is a movie with that kind of scene, it is done with CGI. You just don’t see that kind of massive thing done with real people. But here it was, done some 77+ years ago. And done well. Massive battle scenes. Explosions. Things happening all over the place. It was just very well done. And it was done in 1930. I was impressed. Also, I did notice they REALLY liked the camera shot with a view from inside of a room through a window or door to a lot of things going on outside. Those are fun, but you can tell they were using that over and over and over again. As for the story itself… the acting was not great. Especially at the beginning. But it still got the effect across. Kids who were initially innocent changed by a senseless war as everybody dies around them, with the world that has not been directly touched now a completely alien place for them. And the iconic final scene still resonates today. Anyway… it was a little long… at times the audio wasn’t great and it was hard to hear what people were saying. But it was a good movie to have seen… once anyway. :-) Here are the updates to the delegate graphs based on the Results from the Saturday contests in Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska and Washington State. Note however that I think some results from those contests have not been officially registered in these totals yet because while they are not 100% official yet.
So, Obama continues to close the gap with Clinton. Right now we are at 50.8% Clinton, 48.1% Obama, 1.2% Edwards. All the questions right now are about momentum. Obama “won” all the states (and the Virgin Islands) who played yesterday. Of course, delegates were split, this is not winner takes all. But he won by pretty convincing margins. We have Maine today, then Maryland, Virginia and DC on Tuesday. A week after that is Hawaii and Wisconsin. From what I’ve been hearing, Obama is favored in all of them, although Virginia and Hawaii are both places where Clinton is very competitive and could win. But Clinton is apparently banking on the big March 4th states, Ohio and Texas. The question is, if Obama keeps racking up wins between now and then, will Clinton start faltering in those states as well under the pure momentum of a winning Obama? And then there is the superdelegate question. Right now if you only look at pledged delegates who have been “won” through primaries and caucuses, Obama is ahead 918-885-26. Clinton is still in the lead only due to the superdelegates who have already said they are supporting her which outnumber those who are supporting Obama by a decent margin. Will superdelegates start changing their minds if Obama has a clear lead in pledged delegates? Dunno. It could get interesting… But… If Obama continues to win all the rest of the states in February, and continues to do so with not just close victories, but with significant margins… then the super delegates may well start to sway. It is still a very interesting dynamic race.
And the Republicans. All the press has been about Huckabee’s big win on Saturday. OK. I think this is one of the places where CNN has not yet put in all of the delegates. They took some away from Romney which has appeared on Friday which were apparently an error. And Huckabee got a few, but just a few. So I guess I’ll withhold too much comment on Huckabee’s “big win”, as it may end up looking slightly bigger than the non-event it currently appears to be on the chart. BUt let me just say. Huckabee says: “I didn’t major in math, I majored in miracles.” Well, lets just say I think this is a perfect opportunity to show why math is usually superior to miracles. Maybe Huckabee is waiting for God to step in personally and strike McCain down… but that is the level of miracle Huckabee would really need here. I mean, it is certainly not mathematically IMPOSSIBLE yet for McCain not to win… but it really would take something HUGE for it to happen at this point. And hey, huge things do happen sometime, but… On the other hand, I think the degree of the split in the Republicans might mean that they really SHOULD consider splitting the party. Huckabee’s level of support, specifically in some geographic areas, indicates I think that if you did have a split of the Republican party into McCain supporters and “everybody else”, then the new party WOULD be able to win actual electoral votes along with the two old parties. This would almost certainly throw the election into the house of representatives. And that would be awesome. Please Huckabee… Please… forget the Republicans… run as a third party. You can do it! It would be fun! Really!
They said attendance was about triple what it was four years ago. Nobody changed their minds, although some people lobbied Brandy. So 3 Obama delegates (and none for Clinton or Uncommitted) were elected from my precinct to go on to the county convention. I am one of them. (To be clear, I’ve been elected to represent my precinct at the district caucus and the county convention along with 2 other people… This is NOT to be a national delegate. The county convention will elect delegates to the state convention and the state convention will elect delegates to the national convention.) 16 people. 14 Obama. 1 Clinton. 1 Uncommitted. That is the initial vote. There is still opportunity for people to change. Wow. (PS: Brandy is the uncommitted, I was one of the Obamas.) Well with 15 minutes until it starts Brandy and I are in the elementary school gym where the caucuses for our district are… the Democratic Caucus… So far there are FIVE people from our precinct. 2 Obama. 3 uncommitted. Ah, more people showing up now… |
||
