Michigan couldn’t get its act together and schedule a new primary. So, as it stands now, Michigan will have no delegates at the convention. Obama has no incentive to cede a single delegate to Clinton, and she rejected an offer to split them evenly. In Florida they are floating a plan that would favor Clinton.
Some Florida state Democratic lawmakers put out a new proposal to seat Florida’s delegates. “The plan offered by the lawmakers would provide for 100% seating of Florida’s delegates. The compromise solution calls for 50% of the delegates to be awarded based upon the results of the January 29th Florida Presidential Primary vote. The other 50% of delegates could be allocated according to any of several formulas, including but not limited to:
— an even 50/50 split,
— a proportional share based on the total popular votes received nationally excluding Michigan and Florida,
— a proportional share based on the total delegate counts nationally excluding Michigan and Florida.The one thing to keep in mind when you hear about various proposals to split the delegates: Even if the campaigns agree to something, the plan has to be approved by the credentials committee, so nothing becomes final until then.
This plan would reward Clinton for winning a contest that Obama was not allowed to compete in. Obama has no incentive to cede a single delegate from Florida to Clinton. While it would be nice to come to some kind of solution on the Michigan and Florida delegates, there is no rationale for Obama to give away delegates.
Clinton cannot win the pledged delegate contest. She cannot win the popular vote (she trails by 813,000 votes). She has already lost (badly) the contest over states won. She has no argument to be the nominee, and Pennsylvania isn’t going to change that. She will get no help from Michigan and Florida. And the superdelegates would be insane to nominate her over Obama, given what that would do to the youth and black vote.
This contest should be halted now, before the party suffers permanent brain damage, or death.
This contest should be halted now, before the party suffers permanent brain damage, or death.
Oh God please. I can’t tell you how every fiber of my being wants to support an actual adult with his promises of building the Democratic party, yet I’m recoiling at the thought of how everything may be destroyed for Hillary’s ego. Picture me as someone in 4th gear with the parking brake on.
Barack builds; Hillary breaks.
Interesting take.
It is a mark of how idiotic the MSM (and especially Stephanapoulis) is that they would even consider that Obama’s speech was aimed at blue collar workers.
as if to say ALL blue collar workers will vote for Clinton, not a one will vote Obama. Whatever happened to Af-Am blue collar workers?
How dum.
you forgot puerto rico an important vote for the hillary camp…they even abandoned caucuses in favour of a primary, since she can’t seem to compete in those…never mind that they have no electoral votes.
all she’s accomplishing by continuing is to destroy obama, the democratic party, and ultimately, the country itself.
she’s been instrumental in driving st. johns poll numbers up to the point that he’s beginning to take a lead over both her and obama in the daily tracking results…way to go demoRATs…circular firing squad indeed.
it’s well past time to put an end to this. there’s some serious arm twisting and knee-capping that needs done, and nobody willing to it…hand me that bat……
While Obama is making monumental speeches on serious topics, Hillary is running around in Michigan whining and moaning about a bunch of delegates that she isn’t going to get. Her latest line is that if the voters in MI and FL don’t get a re-vote, then the primary process will be illegitimate and our nominee won’t enjoy the support of the whole Party.
What a hypocritical crock of shit. She tried for a long while to convince the Party that the delegates from the flawed and ridiculous primaries held in those states should be seated, to her benefit. In spite of the fact that the DNC made it explicitly clear beforehand that the results of those elections would not count, she wanted to claim those delegates. And now she gets up on her high horse and lectures us about legitimacy?
Oy….
It would be correct to say that a married couple who holds a gun to the head of the political party to which they ostensibly belong and which, some would say, they even lead (at least the man) are treasonous. Now I just thought of James Carville and Mary Matalin, but they’re not the couple I’m talking about.
A history of ‘words’ on the Michigan primary
I couldn’t hear the audio, but this afternoon at lunch the TV in the cafeteria was showing MSNBC. The little key at the bottom of the page said something like “CLINTON: NOT SEATING MI DELEGATES PUTS CANDIDATE LEGITIMACY IN QUESTION”
and I’m thinking, you know, if they were seated after their state parties broke the rules and one candidate took advantage of the situation, THAT would call the legitimacy of the candidate into question.
I’m with everyone else who just wants this over.
Re: Obama’s electability. It is my firm belief that Obama is smart enough to more than neutralize any negative Rethug ads featuring Rev. Wright. Also, Obama will energize and bring to the polls a lot more of the younger voters than Clinton.
I view Bill Clinton as a slick-talking, master politician. I view Barack Obama as a master orater who is also a patriot.
All Obama need to do is air Huckabee’s video and McCain’s defense of him and Wright!
can someone explain something to me
i just did a quick tour of all the news sites around the internet…every one of them has headlines something like “hillary leading” whether its leading among all dems, leading obama, leading in critical states….they are all polls, rasmussen and gallup etc….so am i supposed to think obama can survive the next few weeks of vetting and media hounding? they just got started and it looks like he is tanking…dont you think superdelegates are watching this too? superdelegates can change their minds 10 times between now and the convention….so why should clinton quit now? obama might lose pa by 30 points by the time of the primary….he may lose west virginia by more….is it so hard to consider that they both may be toast by the time of the convention? then what?
Go to http://www.realclearpolitics.com. I’ve been watching it every day. His overall lead in the polls in the last two days went from 0.8% to 3%.
The media is making a problem where none appears to be.
He’s on his way to the 5% bump I predicted. We should see that as early as tomorrow.
what about gallop and rasmussen?
there are a lot of polls….i dont just want to read the ones that give me the outcome i prefer…i want the truth.
ok i went there
the largest and most recent poll is gallup and he is down 48 to 43 ….to me this is the most accurate poll because it comes after the speech and has the highest number of respondents by far.
the rcp average of all polls has him up by 3 but that goes back to the 13th, before the speech and the wright crap. i dont find that an accurate picture.
I think you have to wait for multiple post-speech polls to be available.
Also, polls fluctuate. Public opinion is notoriously fickle. Yes, Obama was down a bit last week over the whole Wright thing. But his polls didn’t drop instantly as soon as it broke, did they? They dropped over the course of a few days, as more people heard about it. The positive effects of his speeches will play out similarly – gradually building up his polls again as more and more people hear about them.
Scandals also seem to go in cycles. Last week, it was Obama and his “Damn America!” Reverend. This week, it’s Hillary Clinton’s lies about her NAFTA work, Bill Clinton’s ties with Wright, and McCain’s ignorance of foreign affairs.
An important thing to note is that the opinion polls haven’t really moved. While Hillary might be up in electoral polls, she’s still far down in opinion polls, which means that her gain in support is fleeting, not a real, solid gain.
Hey, the big winner in all this is going to be McCain, with Nurse Lieberman standing by his side to help cover up his mistakes.
Anna, my dear, all I want to say is Hillery is not the one we all want to be our president. I have never wanted her for that. I am a poster here and have always wanted the most strong democrat to do that which is what we all need done now. It is very imperative that we need to win this election and it has to be this year. I was willing to vote for her and hold my nose, but now, now! I am an independent democratic leaning person. How can you change my mind now that I see her sending the middle finger to me for I am not in her camp like you and many others are that tear the other candidate down. I thought you all were democrats. I am serious. What in the name of saving our country is she trying to do. I used to go to other progressive sites to read and I find I am being left out yet again by the democrats. I am so sick of this rumbling and tearing the dems down, that I think I will sit this election out if she is allowed to win with this nonsense. For me she is not qualified to be my president…that is it…plain and simple. She has not earned any thing that makes me trust her more than anyone else. I do not respect her in the least! She has failed in many aspects of her life and I do not let that go by my nose with out the smell test…hope you get my drift.
The dlc is not my kind of ppl and should not be any of our kind of ppl. As far as I know we all are hard working ppl that pay taxes and do not know any millionaires…Anyhow….why do not you go to no quarter. or other places that think she is the only one qualified. They simply do not give us credit for having our own thoughts on things…They want to dictate the conversation on why the other candidate is not qualified but can not really give her qualifications out for debate, lest they remove you from their friendships. I am so ashamed of ppl like this. Now I remember why I have not liked politics, ever.
We do have to look at this through the realistic views of all things considered. Frankly I am sick to death of bill and all of his cronies. I really am! Now can you change my mind..you and all the rest of her followers……convince me she is the best….It will be a hard sell I can definitely tell you right now. So go for it girl…
im not in the hillary camp
i wanted edwards….i voted for hillary after i saw the pileon….ill vote for either…ill vote for any democrat….ill vote for option number 3 if there is one after the mess that looks to be the convention….im asking valid questions….no quarter is just as disgusting as dk….bt is less so….but there is also plenty at no quarter and taylor marsh etc that makes sense…there is nothing to be gained by limiting myself to only the narrative on one site or another because as far as im concerned they all have serious flaws and none of them reflect the reality and the whole picture….what i dont want to hear are double standards and spin and im perfectly capable of sorting thru them….im open to changing my mind…im definitely willing to wait till the convention to see what shakes out…absolutely anything can happen.
so can someone answer my question?
Anna, Hillary isn’t winning in popular votes. She’s not winning in states won. And she’s not winning in the number of delegates won.
I suspect that the people who own the media want to have another friend like Clinton in the White House and will do whatever they can to make her the winner. I don’t think that they can.
I just googled and found an article “New Polls Have Hillary Winning It All.” It was posted on HillaryClintonNews on May 9, 2007.
i know what the numbers are….im asking what about the new polls that come out every day and will continue to come out….what if they indicate obama is tanking? seriously….do you think this cant happen? people voting in january dont have the same info as people voting in june….as much as i loved obamas speech, a lot of people didnt buy it….a lot of people are completely turned off by him….just like a lot of people are completely turned off by clinton….i used to think it didnt matter who we nominated, a dem would win anyway because of how bad the repubs were doing…..all the new people brought into the process…the many many dems voting in the primary as dems than repubs….but i dont know any more….how is it possible mccain is doing as well as he is against either dem in the polls…to me it shows we are possibly picking the wrong candidate…and we have till the convention to get it right.
Anna,
this is JUST my opinion..but im positive that the msm press is trying to ropa dope us. They are doing just like they did at the 2000 presidential debates..when Gore sounded like an intelligent man and Bush sounded like a 13 yr old trying his hand at debates for the first time “for the fun of it.” The press couldn’t stop cooing over how they finally had a pres they could drink with. Toward Gore they couldn’t stop talking about his sighs and they completely ignored all the good points he was scoring over mr Bush. Now they are cooing all over McCain.. even though Lieberman had to publicly correct the “foreign affair wise ” candidate’s foreign affair knowledge on msm TV.
From all we’ve seen we know the MSM is not our friend.. and the general election is a long way away. I expect to see -a lot- of slanted and misleading polls.
Once you understand how the MSM actually does have an agenda and how it blossoms then you start recognizing the scent.
Here’s the formula: A (faux) scandal over (fill in the blank; in this case angry black America-hating preacher) times the amount of media hand-wringing + instant polls indicating something (generally the diminishment of a political figure who somehow threatens the oligarchy) equals A Media Truth.
Here’s an interesting poll question:
Back to the topic.
By what logic would you want to ban Michigan Democrats who, since they could not vote for their candidate in a primary that did not count, crossed over to vote in the Republican primary?
I presume that people who voted in the Democratic non-primary are being allowed to vote. That means that people who are Hillary backers get to vote twice, but some Edwards and Obama supporters don’t ever get to vote for their candidates.
This is the problem with changing the rules.
Yes. That is exactly what’s wrong with the MI legislation that would allow for this redo-vote. Anyone who did not vote in the Democratic primary last time could not vote at all in this re-vote. So people who stayed home or people who took Kos’ advice and voted Romney in the Republican primary are screwed – disenfranchised. It’s the Hillary funded and legislated redo-election. That’s why Obama won’t agree. It’s just not a fair contest.
what exactly is the job of the superdelegates?
They don’t really have a “job” but they created the designation for two reasons:
#1 is what i think might happen
as much as you may hate taylor marsh, she has a pretty good take on this on her sight right now…its very balanced.
and if the outcome is the supers pick clinton or another candidate because obama tanks, i’ll be waiting to see just how much of that unity crap his followers really believed in.
if he doesnt tank and the supers pick clinton anyway due to shenanigans that dont seem right i’ll be first in line at the protests.
No, you’ll be at the end of the line.
A hell of a lot of us will be there first! I will not vote for another Clinton, now or ever. And if she strong-arms, whines, bribes, threatens, and cheats her way to the ticket, I won’t vote for anybody down-ticket, either.
No Clintons and No Bushes.
No damned dynasties!!!
No entitled patricians thinking they own the throne and getting all snippy when they actually have to prove they can govern.
No corrupt and money-starved thieves who’ll rob the VISA accounts of her own staffers!!!
Nobody is entitled to rulership by name alone!!!!!
And the sooner that Clinton gets hauled off her cloud and dosed with reality, the better. She can move to Pakistan where corrupt Presidents-for-life are normal, the titles are inherited, and bribery and corruption are SOP… and leave America to Americans.
:ptui:
If she wants to be Empress of the Arabies with all that unitary executive power, power, power, she can move to a third world country or banana republic. Otherwise, We the People will have to fight another revolution to get our country back.
It will be very, very ugly.
i wasnt talking about clinton cheating her way to the nomination…if obama tanks and the supers do their job and pick the more viable candidate at the time of the convention …well thats not stealing the nomination…..it will be hard to argue with polls unless they are very close…im not talking about that scenario….there are a lot of people out there who arent clinton haters and they want to win the general…and i dont care how many delegates and votes and states she has…if august comes and obama is tanking, the superdelegates better pick a better candidate, whether its clinton or somebody else.
but they can do that regardless of whether or not Clinton continues her campaign. None of the delegates are legally bound to a candidate.
All she is doing is giving the Republicans fodder for campaign commercials and viral youtubes.
booman seriously…giving them fodder? if anything its better to get the fodder thrown at you early rather than late when you dont have enough time to rebound. its not like she will drop out and there wont be anything coming from the repubs…he will have all their focus at that point. a really good strategy id like to see him adopt is to totally ignore her and make an annuncement he is now only focusing on the general and fighting mccain.
anna, Taylor Marsh writes something balanced? That certainly gives us a read of where you’re coming from.
(As an aside, I would love if anyone, anna, has some kind of biographical information on Taylor Marsh).
If I am faced with a choice between Clinton or McCain I would make a choice as to who is the better Republican. I view the Clintons as Republican-Lite. I suspect that a lot of Democrats would feel betrayed once again by the Democratic insiders and may show interest in the Green candidate, Nader or some other third-party candidate.
However, I think it’s too late for Clinton to pull this out. Richardson’s endorsement is one such indication. The kinds of statements coming from Dem leaders like Pelosi suggest strongly that Clinton’s campaign tactics are raising the ire of Party leaders not already beholden to Clinton. The game is over except for the bloodbath that Clinton continues. After this year the Dems, if the party isn’t destroyed, won’t let Clinton sniff the throne.
where im coming from?
where im not coming from is only reading things that fit what i want to hear…where im not coming from is the echo chamber….where im not coming from is a place where i only let in the thoughts of the 10% fringe left and leave out not only the rest of the democrats but republicans and right wingers too….we are all americans and i really wish the unity candidate’s followers would actually listen to what the unity candidate is trying to tell them sometime. he wants to have a conversation with americans, not just with people who line up behind him on all the issues.
im assuming this means you didnt even read the tm diary im referring to…yet you judge me …like the racists judging obama based on the 10 words they heard his preacher say on fox news every day for the last 2 weeks….like the black clergy who are all for getting rid of racism but support homophobia ….obama has his work cut out for him.