I have a very important point to make that I believe gets lost in the day-to-day quibbling about celebrity ads and the VP speculation.
Senator Obama is doing very, very well.
For Obama to win, he needs to win the electoral college. The fact of the matter is that Obama is in a much better position to win 269 electoral votes than McCain is. Consider the following:
Watching recent polls roll in about the Democratic race, I noted the continuing trend of Obama gaining with Democratic voters. In states where Obama was once losing to McCain by single-digits, the Democratic nominee has pulled ahead because he has increased his share of Democratic voters.
This trend is going to continue. As we get further and further away from the fierce primary battle, as we pass the VP selection, the convention, and the Presidential debates, more and more Democrats are going to support Obama. Clinton voters and previously undecided Democrats are going to come back into the fold and vote for Obama (and against McCain) in November.
For a comparison, I took a look at the exit polls from 2004 to see how John Kerry did with the Democrats in a year when the Republican brand was still strong. Surprisingly, a comparatively weak candidate like Kerry was able to pull in 89% of the Democrats nation-wide. In that race, Democrats made up 37% of the electorate and John Kerry pulled in 24% of the non-Democratic vote.
Hello everybody. You may remember my highly-controversial diary from back on February 6th. In it, I predicted that Obama would go on an outstanding 11 contest winning streak that month, gain a huge lead in the pledged delegates, then deliver the knock-out punches on March 4th by overcoming Clinton’s 20 point leads in Texas and Ohio.
Turns out that didn’t happen. Clinton still won Ohio handily (although Obama did cut into her lead) and eked out a narrow victory in Texas. A few more points for Obama in the Lone Star State and who knows? I might have been a seer!
Of course, one idea from my original post remains true: We’re talking when Clinton drops out, not if.
One of my favorite sites to visit during the 2004 Presidential campaign was Electoralvote.com. The site catalogued all the recent Bush/Kerry polls in each state to give us a better idea of how the election would shake out. After all, there is no national election in this country. Instead, each of the fifty states chooses who they want to be the next President. The site ignored national polls and instead focused on state polls.
The site now is focused on the primary results and has not shifted over to the general election matchups. That makes sense, as we do not have a Democratic nominee yet. But I wanted to get a sense of how Obama and Clinton fare against John McCain in the general election.
Using the latest polls, I put together a spreadsheet and a few maps to show the results. I have to add the standard disclaimers, though: The general election campaign is not yet here. We have not seen Obama, Clinton, and McCain campaign in the crucial swing states. Anything can happen between now and November.
It’s no secret that Hillary Clinton has a tough road ahead. While Clinton was planning on having a solid delegate lead of over 100 today, she is instead behind Obama. She has never taken the lead in delegates throughout this entire race. Last night was supposed to be the first time that she took the lead since Obama pulled ahead after Iowa, but instead an Obama wave crushed those hopes.
The upcoming states do not look friendly for Clinton. As I outlined in my diary last night, the upcoming states of Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington, Maryland, Washington DC, Hawaii, Maine, and Virginia all lean Obama. As the race stands right now, the only states that Clinton has a serious chance of winning are Texas and Ohio on March 4th.
What are Clinton’s plans to stop this Obama avalanche in February?
I think we might have some idea now regarding what she plans on doing and what she should do.
I went to see Barack Obama and Ted Kennedy today at my school, the American University in Washington DC. I heard last Thursday that he was coming to speak to us, and it was a pleasant surprise to find out yesterday that the senior Senator from Massachusetts was making his endorsement right in our Bender Arena.
My friend Carmen and I arrived at around 10am and the line was already over half a mile long. I couldn’t see the end of the line as it went right down Massachusetts Avenue. Fortunately, we ran into some friends who were at about the half-way point in the line. If not, I doubt we would have gotten in. Later on, I heard the line was literally a mile long.
After the standard metal detectors, we got to stand about five people back from the podium, to Obama’s left. About half an hour passed, and then American University’s a capalla group "On a Sensual Note" took the stage to warm up the crowd. After an outstanding performance, they left and we waited patiently for the two senators, to the background music of Simon and Garfunkle. ( "Still Crazy After All These Years" is one song you would never hear at a McCain rally!)
Barack Obama needs to change the state of the race. As the race lies today, he will win South Carolina on Saturday and Illinois on February 5th, but will not get a plurality in any other state. If every state had their primary today, Obama would end up with several hundred delegates—maybe even over one thousand—but he would be well short of winning the nomination. Say hello to the 2008 Democratic nominee, Senator Clinton.
But the primaries are not being held today. Obama has almost two weeks until Super Tuesday. During that time, he can catch Clinton. He is only about 10 points behind Clinton nationally, and a boost of 10 points will make him competitive in key states such as Alabama, New Jersey, Connecticut, and California.
Obama’s going to need to change the game before Super Tuesday if he wants to win this thing. Normally there is no huge bounce out of South Carolina. Remember that John Edwards did not get one in 2004. It’s very unlikely that a victory in South Carolina alone will bring Obama close enough to Clinton.
Obama needs to hope for a big development before February 5th. One such development involves John Edwards, and it’s not him dropping out of the race.
Here in our corner of the internet, we see many diaries, messages, and e-mails calling on people to contact their Congressional representatives, to encourage them to vote one way or another on an upcoming issue. Usually, these messages are very urgent, so getting your message across as clearly and quickly as possible is of the utmost importance.
However, Congress is a strange organization with many internal rules and procedures. There are 435 members of the House of Representatives, each with eight to twelve staff members in DC as well as up to six interns. In the Senate, Senators are given budgets for their staffers that corresponds with the size of the state. So Chuck Schumer can hire many more staffers than Bernie Sanders. Large Senate offices in DC can have up to 35 staffers with 8 interns. Of course, all these numbers are up to the discretion of the members and their Chiefs of Staff.
When we want to exercise our rights as constituents and tell our members of Congress how we feel on a certain issue, it can sometimes be a hassle. How do we know our message got through? How long will it take? And what is honestly the best way to communicate with our representatives?
As someone who majored in Political Science in college, I took quite a few classes on different aspects of our political system. I've taken classes on the Presidency, Congress, the budget, political parties, election systems, American history, and policy. Through my years in school, I've learned many very useful things about how our system works and how it can be taken advantage of.
But there are just some misconceptions I hear over and over again that I cannot let stand unchallenged. Most often, I hear these pet peeves of mine on TV from overpaid, isolated pundits or from lying politicians. But some of these misconceptions have trickled down into the mainstream, becoming the opinions of everyday Americans.
Here are my top five political discussion pet peeves:
I’m sure we all remember this bit from earlier in the year:
Even though I honestly had not planned on doing this, I guess with a billion people watching, it's as good a time as any. So, my fellow Americans, I'm going to take this opportunity right here and now to formally announce..." --Al Gore, before being drowned out by the orchestra at the Oscars
During the last week, Draft Gore.com was raising money to buy an ad to be placed in the New York Times that would pointedly ask Al Gore to run for President. The fundraising was successful and the ad has been purchased!
Ever since this campaign season began, I’ve been going back and forth on who I should support should President-elect Al Gore not enter the race. Edwards, Dodd, Clinton, Obama...they all have fantastic reasons as to why they should be our nominee and President. But now I’ve made up my mind as to who I will support.
One thing I have never understood is the Communist bogeyman. I have never understood how our foreign policy leaders in the White House have survived so long with an "Us vs. Them, Commies vs. Americans" mentality. I have never been able to understand why American foreign policy was once determined by separating the whole world into two neat camps and dishing out aid and justice based on who was more loyal to America and who was loyal to the USSR.
You see, I never saw the Cold War. I didn’t live through the Cuban Missile Crisis. I never saw any Vietnam protests on the 6:00 news. I never saw Regan say, "Tear down this wall!" or Nixon pine for "peace with honor."
I don’t remember any of that. I was born in 1986. I was three years old when the Berlin Wall fell.
Conventional wisdom on this site and among political pundits has been that, if Al Gore were to announce a run for the White House, he could not do so before July 7th, the date of his world-wide Live Earth concerts. If he, for example, announced tomorrow that he was running for the nomination, then all the work for Live Earth would be derided as a purely political show intended to help Gore win the nomination, and the case for action against the threat of Global Warming would be lost. Therefore, to avoid jeopardizing the underlying theme of the concerts, Gore has to wait until July 8th, at the earliest.
With Clinton, Obama, Edwards, and others running for the nomination since last January or earlier, is it too late for another candidate to jump into the fray? With Clinton and Obama raising a combined $60 million this quarter alone, how could Gore hope to compete? And when would be the best time for a Gore announcement?
I just got back from the June meeting of the DC Draft Gore Organization. It seems that Gore is hesitant to jump into the race because he doesn’t know how deep his support would be. We spent our time discussing new ways to get our guy into the race and into the White House.
The latest poll from the Washington Post shows just how strong a Gore campaign for the White House can be. Not only is Gore currently in the top tier—despite the fact that he’s not currently running and beating John Edwards nationally, but he has the deepest and strongest support of all the top-tier candidates. What’s more, Gore voters choose Hillary as their second candidate, lending credence to the theory that a Gore entry into the race will harm Clinton much more than it would harm Obama and Edwards.
On Tuesday, May 22nd, Al Gore told CNN’s Larry King that he couldn’t state an opinion on the Iraq spending bill being passed by Congress because "I have not seen the proposal that you're asking me about," and that:
You know, the tools that are available to the legislative branch of government are not always very precise. They are often blunt instruments. And they passed a measure that would have required a timetable. The president vetoed it. They were not able to override the veto. So their options have been sharply limited.
Again, I have not seen the details of what they have done but I have a lot of confidence in Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and rest of the leadership in the House and Senate now. And I'm sure that they have made some good decisions here.
However, last night Gore saw fit to refine his answer slightly for ABC.
