Primary Thread 3: Race to Denver

[MarkG]

apparently we are not sure what "high winds" are any more

from the above url

The announcement of Ms. Solis Doyle’s replacement came minutes after Mrs. Clinton was grounded by what her campaign said were high winds at Dulles Airport. After arriving at the airport for a charter flight to Roanoke, Mrs. Clinton, her staff and the traveling press corps were not allowed to board the plane.

A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton said high winds at the airport had forced “a number of planes” to be kept on the ground, and that some planes that had taken off today had suffered structural damage. (Other planes at the airport were taking off as Mrs. Clinton’s motorcade drove away, en route to Washington.)

so what are the NY Times implying here?

[Bosh]

Originally posted by Ramo
The only odd thing about the projection is that it shows Obama winning IN and losing OH. If the nomination were to still be competitive in May, IN is solid Clinton territory (since it's OH with fewer black and educated people).

Yes, but people keep on forgetting how very very well Obama does among non-Southern Baptist rural white people. Obama usually racks up massive margins with those sorts of voters. For example where my parents were Caucusing in rural northern Maine, Clinton got crushed by Obama by a 4-1 margin (at least so my parents say). Most of Clinton's votes in Maine probably came from the area around Portland.

[Zkribbler]

& now Obama whips Bill Clinton

Obama wins -- a Grammy
The Associated Press


Sen. Barack Obama and aced out former President Bill Clinton for the "Best Spoken Word Album" Grammy in the 2008 Grammy Awards, announced today.

Obama's album, "The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream," was announced as a Grammy winner at a pre-show news conference at Staples Center.

In addition to President Clinton, Obama beat spoken word recordings by actor Alan Alda, poet Maya Angelou, and former President Jimmy Carter, the Academy announced.

Obama is known as an orator, senator, groundbreaking presidential candidate, and may have the current momentum in the Democratic primary race. Today, he can add "Grammy Award winner" to that list.

[Apocalypse]

Hey, just so you know, the logo for hillaryis44.com is actually Hillary's boobs. There, now you can't unsee it.

[Zkribbler]

I jab my eyes out with a red-hot poker...but it wouldn't do any good.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Ramo
I just told you what was significant. Taking account MI and FL. If you allocate FL and MI delegates (giving Obama the none of the above vote from MI) double it, you get a little over a 100 delegate margin...

It was a rhetorical question. 100 is an arbitrary number you made up, a meaningless marker.

Excluding MI and FL, Obama should be narrowly ahead in the popular vote (IIRC, Clinton won Super Tuesday by 0.4%).

Yes, excluding the votes from two key battleground states....

How does that matter, exactly? There are Dems in these states as well; why should their opinions be dismissed? He also won swing states (CO, IA, MO, MN) and blue states (CT, DE, WA). The "Obama can only win in red states" meme boils down to that he lost CA. Which he did, but I have no idea why that's so meaningful...

It matters because this is a presidential election. We all know the actual direct vote is secondary. Whether 5% or 30% of voters in Utah vote for the dems in November makes 0 difference when it comes to the actual outcome of the presidential election. And Obama did not only lose California, he lost NJ, Massachusetts, NH, and a variety of toher states. He hasn;t won every state, though you seem to have forgotten that.

I think it's much more hypocritical of any candidate to tell voters that they collectively matter as much as much as the vice chair of the local Dem Party, and at the same time decry the terrible disenfranchisement of FL and MI, which broke the rules, and was a situation that all candidates at least implicitly agreed to originally (they signed a pledge not to campaign, etc.). If Clinton wanted FL and MI to matter when the rules of the game were being established, she should've simply said so. That would've forced Obama and Edwards to follow suit, then the DNC, and we wouldn't be in this mess.

So what is it? do the rules of the party matter or not? because I don't see you saying that the voters of FL and MI should count, yet you are saying that superdegelates should follow the national vote, which has nothing to do with party rules or the point of superdelegates, which is to give party functionaries a voice, and to chose whomever they want. Obviously the democratic party needs to change rules, but if you want to play by the rules, then making demands of superdelegates that they don't have to follow is just as wrong as trying to get FL and MI back in the game.

I should theoretically be a big Obama supporter, I fit most of his contituency (male, higher income brackets, college educated) and he was my state senator, I have his autographed book, and I like him, but its his general supporters and his campaign that drive me nuts. Rachel Meadows is right when she points out similarities betwen Obama and Bush when it comes to campaigning. Obama supporters act as if he were the second coming, and are horribly self-righteous, as if supporting Obama made them better....

[Dinner]

Hilldawg, reeling from a series of defeats to Barack Obama, has decided to fire her campaign manager. She, of course, claims he backed out on his own but I personally doubt it just like I doubt it when a Bush official claims he just wants to spend more time with his family.

Clinton replaces campaign manager

WASHINGTON - Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton replaced campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle with longtime aide Maggie Williams on Sunday, engineering a shake-up in a presidential campaign struggling to overcome rival Barack Obama's financial and political strengths.

The surprise announcement came hours after Obama's sweep of three contests Saturday. The Illinois senator also grabbed the early lead in caucuses in Maine on Sunday. In a fierce and historic fight with Obama for the party nod, Clinton also made a private visit this week to North Carolina to seek an endorsement from former Sen. John Edwards.

Campaign aides said Solis Doyle made the decision to leave on her own and was not urged to do so by the former first lady or any other senior member of the team. But it comes as Clinton struggles to catch Obama in fundraising and momentum and faces the prospect of losing every voting contest yet to come in February.

Solis Doyle announced the shift in an e-mail to the staff on Sunday.

"I have been proud to manage this campaign and prouder still to call Hillary my friend for more than 16 years," Solis Doyle wrote. "Maggie is a remarkable person and I am confident that she will do a fabulous job."

Solis Doyle said she will serve as a senior adviser to Clinton and the campaign, and travel with Clinton from time to time.

Williams, who served as Clinton's White House chief of staff, is a longtime Clinton confidante who joined the campaign after the New York senator narrowly won the New Hampshire primary Jan. 8. She will begin assuming the duties of campaign manager this week.

After Clinton's third-place finish in Iowa, Williams and other top strategists were brought aboard to help hone the political operation and sharpen Clinton's message. According to campaign aides, Solis Doyle, who has two young children, made the decision to step down as campaign manager at the time and agreed to stay on until Super Tuesday, Feb. 5.

The staff shake-up caps a week in which Clinton grabbed the bigger prizes on Super Tuesday, winning New York, California and New Jersey, but Obama prevailed in more contests. Obama won the popular vote in 13 states, while Clinton won in eight states and American Samoa.

Both Clinton and Obama have been competitive in fundraising for most of the campaign, but Clinton recently has lagged behind Obama in money collected. He raised $32 million in January to her $13.5 million, forcing her to lend her campaign $5 million before Super Tuesday. The campaign said Saturday that it had raised $10 million since the beginning of February.

Obama enjoyed a three-state sweep Saturday night, winning the Louisiana primary and caucuses in Washington state and Nebraska. He has the potential to pad his victories in contests Tuesday in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia, as well as next week in Wisconsin and his native Hawaii.

Clinton is hoping to stem the tide on March 4 when Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont vote.

In a statement, Clinton praised Solis Doyle and said she looked forward to her continued advice in the coming months.

"Patti Solis Doyle has done an extraordinary job in getting us to this point — within reach of the nomination — and I am enormously grateful for her friendship and her outstanding work," Clinton said. "And, as Patti has said, this already has been the longest presidential campaign in history and one that has required enormous sacrifices of everyone and our families.

"I look forward to her continued advice in the months ahead," Clinton added.

"Patti and I have worked with Maggie Williams for more than a decade," Clinton said in the statement. "I am lucky to have Maggie on board and I know she will lead our campaign with great skill towards the nomination."

The daughter of Mexican immigrants who cut her political teeth in Chicago, Solis Doyle served as Clinton's scheduler for eight years in the White House and began overseeing her political operation during her first run for Senate in 2000.

But Solis Doyle's appointment as Clinton's presidential campaign manager last year surprised many Democratic operative including some in Clinton's inner circle, who believed she did not have sufficient political experience to run the operation.

Clinton aides loyal to Solis Doyle say she proved the naysayers wrong, smoothly managing a staff of several hundred and a budget that swelled to well over $100 million while leaving most of the campaign's major strategic decisions to others — particularly Clinton pollster Mark Penn and media adviser Mandy Grunwald. But she was also criticized by others for, among other things, failing to anticipate and plan for Obama's fundraising prowess.

The Democratic Party's system of awarding pledged delegates proportionally and the oversized role of superdelegates, the 796 lawmakers, governors and party officials who are not bound by state votes, meant that no candidate had a commanding lead.

According to The Associated Press' latest survey, Clinton had 243 superdelegates and Obama had 156. That edge was responsible for Clinton's overall edge in the pursuit of delegates to secure the party's nomination for president. According to the AP's latest tally, Clinton has 1,125 total delegates and Obama has 1,087. A candidate must get 2,205 delegates to capture the nomination.

The delegate numbers increased the possibility of a protracted fight for the Democratic nomination, perhaps lasting through this summer's national convention in Denver.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080210/ap_on_el_pr/clinton_campaign_manager

[Dinner]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
How does he plan on paying for it? How does he plan on stopping $4000 tuition increases?

I don't know.He has promised to end the Iraq war so that frees up around $270 billion per year. Even if the increased student aid costs $2 billion that still leaves $268 billion for deficit reduction.

[DinoDoc]

That's a big goose egg on question 1 then. Anything on question 2?

[Ramo]

It was a rhetorical question. 100 is an arbitrary number you made up, a meaningless marker.

It's not a meaningless marker. I spelled out it's meaning: roughly twice the MI and FL margin.

Yes, excluding the votes from two key battleground states....

You realize that the race isn't over, yet? Right? After this weekend, I've heard estimates of the popular vote for a 70,000 margin for Clinton (out of something like 20 million). In other words, even.

It matters because this is a presidential election. We all know the actual direct vote is secondary. Whether 5% or 30% of voters in Utah vote for the dems in November makes 0 difference when it comes to the actual outcome of the presidential election.

Because the job of the nomination process is to represent Democrats, not Democrats only in swing states (a group of states, incidentally, in which Obama did well).

And Obama did not only lose California, he lost NJ, Massachusetts, NH, and a variety of toher states. He hasn;t won every state, though you seem to have forgotten that.

I never claimed that he won every vote. This is an even race. What kind of absurd argument are you trying to make?

As I was saying, you were making an argument that his appeal is entirely limited to red states. That simply isn't true. You can split the difference between delegates from Obama blue states and Clinton blue states, and the margin ultimately derives from her victory in CA.

because I don't see you saying that the voters of FL and MI should count

And once more, I believe that MI and FL will and should have representation. There are a few scenarios to get there, and I spelled out one of them above.

Honestly, this is an insane rant. I already stated that FL and MI should get representation. A couple times in this thread.

Obama supporters act as if he were the second coming, and are horribly self-righteous, as if supporting Obama made them better....

Projecting much?

[Ramo]

Yes, but people keep on forgetting how very very well Obama does among non-Southern Baptist rural white people. Obama usually racks up massive margins with those sorts of voters. For example where my parents were Caucusing in rural northern Maine, Clinton got crushed by Obama by a 4-1 margin (at least so my parents say). Most of Clinton's votes in Maine probably came from the area around Portland.

True Bosh, but white people in Southern IN or OH vote a lot more similarly to white people in places like OK or TN (where Obama was slaughtered) than in ME. I think that if he loses OH, he would also lose IN absent fundamental changes in the race.

[Bosh]

Originally posted by Ramo


True Bosh, but white people in Southern IN or OH vote a lot more similarly to white people in places like OK or TN (where Obama was slaughtered) than in ME. I think that if he loses OH, he would also lose IN absent fundamental changes in the race.

Well OK and TN have a lot more Southern Baptists types than Indiana or Ohio I would think...

And Obama did win Missouri...

[Ramo]

Yeah, but in a squeaker, and he had institutional support there (McCaskill was a big help, and IIRC the Carnahans backed him). That won't be the case in OH and IN (where the biggest players - Strickland in OH and Bayh in IN are Clinton backers). Sherrod Brown would probably be the most important endorsement Obama could get at this point, short of Gore.

[Dinner]

Gore isn't going to endorse anyone. He'll sit back and wait for a winner to emerge then he'll endorse hoping to get a plumb job like head of the EPA or something.

[Dinner]

Obama for Obama.

The Japanese town of Obama is rooting for Obama.

If foreign nationals were permitted to select US presidential candidates, the senator from Illinois would be assured of the votes of the people of Obama, a fishing town on the Japan Sea coast that has taken its namesake to its heart.

Residents in Obama - small port in Japanese - have formed a support group whose members are monitoring every twist and turn in his bid to become the Democratic candidate.

As the race for the nomination heated up, the town's tourism office received a stream of calls from locals wishing Obama well. On Super Tuesday, supporters nervously clutched photos of Obama as they watched the results come in at their makeshift headquarters in a hotel, whose lobby is currently home to a large portrait of the candidate.

Obama's most ardent fans, who include a hotel executive and a couple of farmers, believe their campaign, like that of their hero, is gathering momentum. With his name recognition at an all-time high, they plan to produce hachimaki "victory" headbands - a common campaign accoutrement in Japan - themed lacquerware chopsticks, and manju sweet buns bearing his name and face.

"I think our support base will keep growing", Seiji Fujihara, the group's secretary general, told ABC News. "We wanted to do something because Mr Obama doesn't feel like a stranger to us. He's like a relative to us."

Residents started taking a close interest in Obama's political career in 2006 after a customs official claimed on TV that the senator had joked about his "Japanese origins" on arrival at Narita airport.

The town's mayor, grateful for the free publicity, sent Obama a personal letter of thanks, a set of chopsticks and a tourist brochure.

The Narita exchange could be apocryphal, but the people of Obama, previously known only for its seafood and Chinese-influenced architecture, are grateful all the same.

"The publicity could last for another four or eight years if Mr Obama becomes president," an advertising agency executive told the Zakzak news website.

"In terms of advertising costs, that's free publicity equivalent to billions of yen, or even more."

At Campaign Obama's Japanese HQ, plans are being made to send a delegation to Washington early next year if his bid takes him all the way to the White House.

His opponent for the Democratic nomination, meanwhile, has won a small but ardent following among workers at a factory in southern Japan that makes construction equipment.

The elections are giving the firm's "Hillary" transportation machines unprecedented media coverage. Launched after Bill Clinton became president in 1992, the machines are said by builders to be robust, yet easy to manoeuvre.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/11/japan.barackobama