He'll back the GOP platform as much as Bush did to the GOP platform. I don't think the people backing his surge care about platforms. They care about getting behind a candidate they can "believe in". GWB has really alienated a lot of otherwise normal, rational folks and they're tired of being ignored by politicians who will cry on demand and do whatever is politically expedient. Obama would do the same thing, but they don't seem him as they see the others. That's the difference.

Is he a liberal? Sure. But I think that when you query people who've worked with him whether in the Illinois Senate or in the U.S. Senate, they've found him to be really good at consensus building and working across the aisle. It's actually the reason that the liberal blogosphere that support Edwards and the fringe are really not liking him. Because he's not their guy. He's too into working together and the netroots folks want to have the same sort of revolution that the Christian Right had with Bush.

Or at least, that level of influence to be pandered to.


What race issue? He brings it up in almost every speech. We know he's black, your name wouldn't allow you to indicate otherwise. His base of voters are mainstream, college-educated and independent white people. For a black mainstream candidate it's unprecedented. Middle America won't be offended by him and one of the most notable things about his "race" to the U.S. Senate was how well he did in areas like Southern Illinois that are really conservative. He's also well-liked in populist areas that are moribund right now like Western Illinois because of the number of industrial jobs that have been exported. He's amazing adept at reaching out to a cross-section of people.


To touch my point above, the most difficult thing about watching this race for me as it shaped up..was I felt like the GOP didn't have an answer for this guy, if he found a way to make it out of the primaries. It's still a long way to go, but...the fact that he's on the rise and that Hillary is basically flopping and we all know Edwards is a loser whose only chance was to face off against Hillary when Obama flopped early...says that if he comes out of this he's not just formidable, he's unstoppable.

You really think you can keep black voters home an in election year when a black candidate manages to win a nomination? Seriously? Not gonna happen. He's already registering new voters -- young folks and independents -- in huge waves and that's not going to stop. This is the same thing that started with Dean, but he wasn't anyone anybody wanted to rally around. He was just different and he was an outsider. But he blew that and fell off the map.

Obama doesn't have that problem and if you want to throw dirt on 'em, just get one of his books and regurgitate the same stuff people have known (and don't care about) for years.

I touched on it before, but the whole thing with him is simple. Baby boomers want to dominate everything. They want an entire generation to essentially ignore their turn in line to run this country, while they continue to do the shit they want to do..because they feel like they're more important than the rest of us.

The fact of the matter us, a lot of independents and young folks; moderate minded people too, are tired of the divisiveness. It goes beyond the same monochromatic debates about black and white race relations. Who the hell cares about that with the immigration we're seeing from Asia and Latin America? Those folks are ascending and want a seat at the table. Poor people are tired of being taken for granted, for being pimped by people who don't care about them and feel like this guy is someone that will speak for their cause in a way that every other well-heeled mainstream candidate won't.

What GOPer is going to attract Democrats? McCain eight years maybe, but now? Not gonna happen. Romney is a slimeball. Rudy couldn't win an election in New York this November, let alone America. Huckabee? He's a country-fried Bill Clinton wanna-be, but there's no Arsenio Hall to play his guitar on and Leno ain't gonna cut it.

The Dems offer retreads and has-beens at every turn too.

It's not really just about Obama being a black candidate and yet...that's really a poignant statement about his message to some degree. Because I said it before..but we're in a world where so many people feel like we truly can all succeed if we just try and that to have a guy like this -- someone who was theoretically impossible to all of us a decade ago when we thought (if we did) about an idea of the "first black president" -- just "show up" and do all of this, really makes me believe that it's bigger than politics.

I think that in the grand scheme of things, his politics are no more nutty than any of the other candidates who have flawed visions of what works and what doesn't. Hillary might be experienced, but she's like the Cosby Show on CBS. A show we've seen and whose golden years have come and gone.

This election -- regardless of the outcome -- speaks to a frustration that so many of us have about the way things work in this country and that the calls for folks calling for the "same ol' same ol'" are really operating under the veneer of their vaunted experience that's gotten us in a lot of the quandaries we are in.

Experience is ducky, but it doesn't do squat if the people involved aren't committed to the notion of change. The fact that so many folks are making a mockery of this theme of "change"; as if it's some sort of caricature really underscores the point that I think Obama is trying to make.

It's almost that, change isn't just a buzzword that looks good on a poster. It's a thing that requires us to dig deeper, to retire the old faces, promote new ones and rely on the experiences on the past -- and those people to some degree -- to collaborate and create a new day for America and for our partners around the world.

Because if we don't, our democracy and its standing in the world are far more in jeopardy than people probably want to believe.

And with all of that stuff, I still say that I'm not inclined to vote for Obama because I don't support his stances on issues that are key to me, I'm far from a modern liberal and that I'd prefer a candidate to surface that not just articulates my views to some degree..but having someone up there who I feel like truly cares about the people from all walks of life in this country and their situations.

The modern politician have truly ignored those folks who America possible and while I'd support no ponzi schemes aimed at taking my hard earned dollars to
"give" them a piece of the pie.

I do believe that there need to be a host of creative solutions -- from the local level, but agitated from the bully pulpit of the White House -- for America to create a new dawn for people and to revive the idea of the American Dream for people; especially native born folks, who have simply been left hung out to dry....and who we've left behind under the guise of "if they wanted it bad enough, they'd work as hard as I do."

I hate the one-sized fits all answer for every political issue out there and it comes largely from those of us on the right. At least left wingers will cavort among the poor, we're too busy hanging out in churches and advocating "private solutions" while endowing people who already have tons of cash to do even more under the false idea that "it will eventually trickle down."

That's an overly simplified view of things...but I've already gone on too long with this thing and that wasn't my intent.

Bullshit. No more waiting. No more patience. Stuff needs to happen and not just talking about. It needs to happen now and so, whoever is willing to roll up their sleeves and do it..and engage people in a meaningful way are the ones that I would support.

But haven't discovered that person yet for me. But I find the whole turn of events in this year's early going fascinating.

Obama is riding a wave to the Dem nomination, then that wave is going to roll right over the GOP nominee in the general election. A strong GOP candidate could stop it. But there are no strong GOP candidates. Seriously, look at those jokers. Are you kidding me?

Nice post (#151), Dark Cloud.


If stuff like this doesn't get people to question Faux News' connection to reality, then I'm not sure what will. I wonder if he knows that the price of a gallon of milk is these days.


Yes, but.... He's also pretty good at soundbites and impressive speeches. I think you'll see more of this if he's the nominee.


Flippant Answer: I'd rather pay for those kind of things than a trillion dollars to invade & "rebuild" Iraq & tax cuts for the rich.

Serious Answer: On the other hand, Obama's shown a propensity, especially as a community organizer, to take this kind of money and make sure something gets done with it. I get the impression from him that when he chooses to advocate funding for programs, he's also very interested in what the results are going to be and how those results are going to be measured. I like that approach.


That would be nice, but unless those people have their own money, they'll always be operating from behind the curve.


The past 8 years have certainly proven that.

Somebody needs to tell Richardson that when you have a giant, fat turkey neck, a turtleneck is not for you. He looks like a choking iguana.

I don't really get into most of the political debates on this forum as unlike most of you all, I definitly don't have all of the correct answers :)

I will say though, that I feel I am the type of voter that most of the candidates are trying to go for, and it is my vote (and others like me) that will decide the election. As a moderate independant that does not vote along any party line, this election has been pretty interesting so far. I do realize that voting in Massachusetts my vote actually doesn't really do alot (for the same reason as when I lived in Texas), this state has a strong party allegience and it usually is not in question..

That said, this election has been more about who I won't vote for rather than who I want to vote for. I don't know if that is a good or bad thing, but it feels weird for me. As I watch the various candidates campaign, and listen to their stance on issues, I don't have one that jumps out at me that says they are the one I want to back. Instead it is about people turning me off to them and causing me to just not want to vote for them.

I've already decided I absolutely won't vote Huckabee or Romney, I also won't be voting Clinton for any reason what so ever. So if it ends up Huckabee vs Clinton, I likely won't even place a vote for president between those two. Right now if I had to vote, it would be for Obama, but I could also go for Guilliani or Mccain as well. I wonder if the Obama surge that is being seen is alot of others who have similar moderate leanings as I do. The only difference is that I don't view myself as belonging to either party, so I don't vote in primary elections.

Dark Cloud, that was a good response and I'll respond more when I get home. To quickly clarify, what I meant by the race issue is pandering to the Jesse Jackson wing of the party. I would suspect that there are more of those than there are moderate black voters, but haven't seen any numbers. So far Obama has kept that wing at arm's length but somewhere down the line, he's going have to confront that (i.e., giving into the long-stated black-only demands that Jackson and his ilk keep bringing up). So far, Jesse has called Obama out for being "too white" (in reference to Jena 6). You and I both alluded to the same thing: the trade-off where you alienate some in order to gain others. McCain can do the same thing, as oppose to Guiliani who alienates everyone or Huck who is being alienated by his party.

It is Obama's to lose now. Even after Hillary played what my wife and I called the "tears card" last night. Maybe she was honestly choked up at a tender moment after months of grueling campaigning. Or maybe it was a well-calculated political ploy to pander to women. I know what my money's on with Hillary. I just really hope she doesn't win the nomination so I don't have to vote for her.

The thing is, where else are they going to go? Jesse can't stop people from supporting Obama and Obama's already recently been out with Al Sharpton and it looked to me like they were having a good time. I think that the bottom line is, those guys just want to be recognized for having been on the ground floor "of the struggle" and that so long as he's willing to pander to them in even token ways...they'll relent and realize that it's not their time anymore.

In the grand scheme of things, it's like I said before. No way that black voters will be the stumbling block to his ascendancy. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Jesse's comments were intentional and that they were attempting to use the idea that the media seizes about black on black divisiveness as a way to make (white) people think "gee, if they don't like this guy..maybe he's onto something. We ought to check him out."

I don't think this is like what the GOP candidates or other candidates face, because Obama's base isn't the black community, never has been and never has to be. He knows that and they know it. And that's what's so special about this race in terms of him being a post-Civil Rights black candidate.

Damn, this cynical view pisses me off. I am not a huge fan of Hillary's, but I just don't see the "well-calculated political ploy" angle of this thing. She's not Meryl Streep. The moment seemed quite genuine and what she said there was pretty much the most moving and compelling thing I have heard from any candidate to date.

The fact that she welled up when discussing the state of this country is in makes me like her even more.

Given the hatred Clinton inspires she can't win. I even remember when folks thought that whole hostage situation at one of her campaign headquarters was a "well-calculated political ploy". Come on, people, get it together.

I think I made the political ploy joke about the hostage thing. I was joking what the right would have to say about this.

I did say I think it could be genuine. But it was headline news on all the Evening News shows last night. I was just saying what I thought. Sorry to piss you off.

You are right that she can't win, though. I really think the tide has turned against her in terms of viewing her as "electable". Maybe it's too bad... maybe not. We'll probably never know. She still has her Senate seat to fall back on.

With 9% of precincts reporting, Obama and Clinton are in a tie with 37%. McCain is up by 9% over Romney on the Republican side with 37%. Democrat voters are outnumbering Republicans by 2-1 so far, same as Iowa.

With 12% of the vote in, John McCain is the projected Republican New Hampshire primary winner. Democrat race too close to call.

13% reporting. Hillary has a 4% lead.

23% reporting. Hillary's lead has expanded to 6% and about 3500 votes.

40% reporting and Hillary maintains a 2700 vote lead. If she wins this she will have defied all of the polls, will be crowned the comeback kid, and will go on to win Nevada, South Carolina, and the Democratic nomination.

None of the major college towns have reported yet. It's too early to say. But agree that if she wins here, she comes back and changes the tide.

:confused::confused:

John Titor...is that you?

46% reporting. Hillarys lead up to 4300 votes.

I still think that Obama is going to end up with a narrow win tonight for the Dems, but I just don't think the Clinton camp has quit in them. Really, a big issue is what Edwards does -- right now, his line is that he's staying around all the way to the convention, and if he does so, he probably will continue to drag 5-12% in most states, even without money and organization. My guess is that 2/3 or more of those Edwards voters, were they released by him dropping out, would vote for the leading non-Hillary candidate, and that's clearly Obama. I think he will continue to siphon votes from Obama as long as he continues to register in the polls.

It might turn into a battle where Obama can win states with fairly "open" primaries by pulling in independents, while Clinton will win most of the closed voting among party members only. If that is true, this has the greatest potential to meaningfully carry on all the way to the convention of any primary campaign in a few decades. (With this year's GOP primaries shaping up as another contender for the same label)

Also interesting that Schneider is dancing around speculation that the "crying" incident might be responsible for Clinton's strong showing among women voters (she is beating Obama by 13% among women as of the exit polling they have in hand).

I like how he avoided that too or even to speculate why she managed to get more women votes.

They are irritating with their buzzword, "the best political team on television."

Oh look, a Ralph Reed sighting.

It's official. Hillary Clinton has won the New Hampshire Primary. She is the comeback kid and there's no stopping her now.

you know...i've noticed...you are prone to hyperbole

edit:

and CNN.com still hasn't called it and shows it only 6k votes apart

Jas really does get excited rather quickly, eh?

I do get too excited and I'll try to stop. MSNBC did call it though.

hey it's okay...just be yourself man. Don't let me razzing you for it on a internet messageboard change who you are. It's not worth it.

I think you just have to understand that maybe that's why people can be somewhat...irritated by you sometimes. But as long as you're somewhat thick-skinned...shit...just ignore it.

dola

cnn.com has called it for billary too

I think it will be very interesting to hear a breakdown of what the experts thing happened here. Polling has been very reliable in measuring the actual votes in recent elections, but here the last few days projected an Obama win by something like 6 to 10% over Clinton. There are always last-minute decisions, and I'm guessing that maybe the two things that Obama had going for him (the swoon factor, and the fact that he is not Hillary Clinton) probably had attracted all the people that they were going to, and so the last wave of undecideds eventually mostly went for the more "established" candidate.

The one I've heard that makes the most sense is that a lot of Independents that planned on voting for Obama decided to vote in the Republican primary (likely for McCain) because all the polls showed Obama up by so much.

While I wouldn't go so far as the win Nevada, SC and the Dem nom (I think she'll win Nevada, the Dem nom, but may lose SC), it figures that a Clinton would be counted out for dead and then storm back and take victory from the jaws of defeat. Her husband was a master at it.

I agree. I admit that I was wrong and you were exactly right. Hillary was not done and she defied all of the polls which said that Obama had an 8% lead before the NH primary. Obama is going to try and rally the troops in S.C. with "Yes we can" but I don't know if it'll be enough to stop Hillary who has just began her trail of tears.

I have (deliberately) not been following things too closely during this cycle. I am not a swing voter (I will almost certainly vote for whomever the Democrats nominate, unless it is Edwards--in which case, I may not vote for president). I do, however, enjoy the history and geography of elections, so I will begin following more closely in the following months.

With that in mind, does anyone want to take a stab at picking out which states, that Gore and Kerry did not win, that Obama or Clinton would win? I am not as confident as others that the Dems will "steamroll" the Republican nominee. The best scenario that I can foresee is that Obama or Clinton pick Richardson as their VP candidate AND McCain does not win the Rep. nomination, then Richardson could help swing New Mexican/Arizona/Nevada/Colorado. Does anyone actually see the Dems chipping away any Southern States (Florida? Arkansas?) or somewhere like Iowa or Missouri?

I buy that in general (that he will have trouble in states where McCain has a strong presence) but I would expect that to have shown up in polling. I would presume that most of these polls ask people in what primary they intend to vote -- so you'd expect that independents who knew they were going to vote for McCain would indicate so in advance, and we would have seen that in pre-primary polling.

It's a whole different game trying to decide which candidates will do well in a state based on demographics, local issues, D/R splits, and so forth... as compared just to basing it on polling data, especially that done very near the actual vote. The latter, finding major differences between multiple polls and the actual vote, is often pretty mysterious.

Ohio. The Republican Party is an absolute mess in Ohio right now.

Iowa. Democrats in Iowa outnumbered Republicans 2-1 at the caucus. Our recent vote for Governor went to Democrat Chet Culver by a very comfortable margin. Iowa will go to Obama for sure in the general election and probably Hillary. They will pick up that state and its 7 electoral college votes for sure.

I think you are misunderstanding the premise slightly. I'm saying that independent voters that have Obama as their number 1 choice saw how far ahead he was and decided that their vote could be better spent in the tighter Republican race. So in the polls leading up to the election they showed as Obama voters, and on voting day they went out and voted for McCain or whatever other Republican. Obama does have strong support among independents as does McCain, so it'd make a lot of sense from that perspective.

well so much for the various news channels blowing Obama's horn all day saying how big a lead he had and now having to eat their words since Clinton's won. Had to turn it off because I couldn't stomach it anymore. They need to stop putting so much importance on early polls-their coverage today especially was what will happen when Obama wins New Hampshire and how the others will respond to it. No one (that I listened to at least) said anything about Clinton winning.

There are a lot of independents and last-minute decisions over who to vote for so far in this campaign, and they need to recognize that and stop using the early polls as the guide for their coverage. Because the "best political team on TV" sure didn't look like it after the results came in.

I think the conventional wisdom is that the overall temperature of the election determines which are the swing states. If the popular vote is looking close, then you likely have a similar list of "up for grabs" states as last time.

If, like some believe (not me, really) the Dems are going to come into this general election with a lot of swing voters in their pocket, then you might see a few states like Ohio or Nevada actually start out as fairly comfortably blue, and the swing states will shift slightly to the right. If that unfolds, then the electoral calculus can turn into a tough one for the GOP, where they would have to end up winning every one of the newly-defined swing states.

Another major wild card issue is immigration, which plays pretty differently in the southwest than in other parts of the country. If it plays a major role in the general election (as I suspect it will) then you could see some movement among specific states that doesn't simply track the national D/R split over issues like Iraq or economic policy.

My guess is that the Dems only take a true deep south state if they win handily and it's really an electoral landslide. It's possible they pick off Louisiana (for regional reasons) or I guess Arkansas (since it's traditionally pretty close), but by and large I don't think they win anything in the south unless they are winning the country pretty easily. I also suspect that a Dem victory in some of the states with a heavy military presence (I'm thinking Missouri here especially) are less likely, even though the votes were close last go-round.

That sort of thing really doesn't matter. It's all about PR and expectations. Indeps voting in the Rep primary instead (whether or not that actually happened) doesn't fit into the framework of Obama supposedly trouncing Clinton and Clinton miracualously winning.

It's all about framing the story.

Again, I am familiar with the general concept that the two may have been battling for some of the same potential votes.

The trouble with that theory is that lead-up polling showed a pretty comfortable lead for McCain as well as Obama. It's not like there was some clear indication that McCain really "needed" the I votes, and Obama didn't. McCain was pretty clearly going to win, and he did, by pretty much the margins that the polls suggested.

Given the sheer numbers of voters on each side (plenty more D than R voted today), for Obama to have lost 8-10% of the actual D turnout compared to poll data to McCain would have meant something like a 15-20% bump in McCain's numbers compared to poll data, and it just wasn't there. Yes, McCain outperformed his poll numbers a bit... but that swing (winning by 8-9% instead of 4-5%, or thereabouts) not enough to support the idea that there was a simple give-take with Obama voters.

In whatever happened between the latest polls and the actual voting, Obama didn't lose all his votes to McCain. He lost a lot of votes to Clinton, plain and simple.

Good point. I do still buy that it was potentially a significant factor, but there was certainly more going on than just that.

Given that this was the first secret ballot it's quite possible that we saw the first indications of whites not actually pulling the lever for Obama.

Of course all of the polls announced over the past few days had a very high percentage of undecideds, so maybe it was just a case of the famous late deciding New Hampshirites falling for Clinton.

This, though, goes to show how stupid the whole primary process is. Neither NH or IA mean shit in the delegate count. It's time for both parties to come up with a more representative primary system.

Didn't even think of that. Iowa has open voting, I totally forgot!

Interesting, despite "Winning" new Hampshire, Clinton got the same amount of delegates as Obama

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/

Delegates won in NH tonight

Republican
McCain 7
Romney 4
Huckabee 1

Democrats
Clinton 9
Obama 9
Edwards 4

Some guy on MSNBC made this point too. That the private voting could have made a difference from the open voting in Iowa or the polls beforehand.

He pointed out some double digit poll leads resulting in losses or very close victories in elections involving some african american candidates in the past. Not all of them, but some.

So Obama lost because white people were afraid to vote for a black man? And instead they voted in large numbers for Hillary Clinton over John Edwards? Doesn't make much sense. I would hope that NH voted for Hillary because they thought she was the best candidate. If the people of Iowa wanted to support Hillary or Edwards over Obama, they would have. What would it matter if the voting was open or closed? I don't think race was an issue here.

According to the exit polls, Obama won in the 41% of the white male category who voted 38% to Hillary's 30%. But Hillary crushed Obama in the 54% of the white women category 46% to 33%. I think it was more gender than race that propelled Hillary to victory.

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/pri...html#val=NHDEM

It's funny, with the tidal wave of Obamamania we saw after Iowa, and the polls showing big leads for him, that NH essentially reverted to what polls were showing in the state last month, though with Obama picking up some of Edwards' support. It was said by the media quite often that NH is often momentum-proof from the Iowa win, and the voters there proved it.

That's what I thought as well. Another thing to consider is the New Hampshire Democratic Machine. Hillary had all of the machine on her staff in N.H. this time around. And they never fail to disappoint.

So the debate is here is weather Obama lost because he's black, or if Clinton won because she's a woman.

Between that, the media treating Hillary having an emotional moment on TV as news that may sway votes, the media's obsession with Obama and zero corresponding discussion about why he may or may not be a good president (except for the fact that he'll apparently bring "change" (I guess because he's black and we haven't had a black president yet), this has been the most irritating presidential election ever. I'm going to do my best to stop paying attention or caring. PM me when we have a president.