Obama '08?

OCCOM BILL wrote:

Roxxxanne wrote:

Again, Republicans should stay the f*** out of our business.

If you're trying to make an ass of yourself; it's working. Until such time as the Two Party System in this country is stripped of every advantage over third parties; calls for Independent voters to stay out of Democrat or Republican affairs will continue to constitute a desire for disenfranchisement. Furthermore, those Obama supporters not saddled with terminal ignorance know that without Independents and Republicans, Hillary would have wrapped up the nomination by now. Please quit with the shrill repetition of nonsense already.

If you want to run our party, you need to join. If you can't understand that, I feel for you.

CHILL OUT....

The hot topic of conversation right now is the proposition that a long, drawn-out Democratic primary runs the risk of destroying the party and putting John McCain in the White House. So for the good of the country, Hillary should withdraw.

Now, this might be true. But I'd like to offer a historical counterexample: 1968. Consider. The Democratic incumbent president was forced to withdraw after a primary debacle in New Hampshire. The Vietnam War had split liberals into warring factions and urban riots had shattered the LBJ's Great Society legacy. A frenzied primary season reached all the way to California in June, culminating in the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. The Democratic Convention in Chicago was a nationally televised battle zone. Hubert Humphrey, the party's eventual nominee, had never won a primary and was loathed by a significant chunk of the liberal community. New Left radicals hated mainstream Democrats more than they hated Republicans.

In other words, this was the mother of all ugly, party-destroying campaigns. No other primary campaign in recent memory from either party has come within a million light years of being as fratricidal and ruinous. But what happened? In the end, Humphrey lost the popular vote to Nixon by less than 1%. A swing of about a hundred thousand votes in California would have thrown the election into the House of Representatives.

If long, bitter, primary campaigns really destroy parties, then Humphrey should have lost the 1968 election by about 50 points. "Bitter" isn't even within an order of magnitude of describing what happened that year. And yet, even against that blood-soaked background, Humphrey barely lost.

So I say: chill out. Like a lot of people, I'm not very happy about the direction the Democratic campaign has taken, but the idea that it's going to wreck the eventual winner's chances in the fall seems pretty far fetched. It takes more than a few nasty exchanges to do that. And who knows? By keeping Dems in the spotlight, it might even help them. Stranger things have happened.

That was flatly denied by the Obama campaign. That doesn't necessarily mean anything -- if it was in the works they'd probably not say it was in the works until they're ready to unveil it -- but FYI.

Who are all these people? Kevin Drum? They don't seem to knw what they are talking about.

Typo correction should read:

"Hillary is going to try to paint Pennsylvania as a some sort of National Primary. SHE has the numbers there and Ed Rendell. This thing can't go to the convention and it appears that is what CNN is rooting for. (I don't have MSNBC in my room. and I have been stuck listening to Woilf, Candy, and ANderson root for Hillary Clinton. It is unconscionable.

Anyway, I am really pissed that Hillary won Texas and I am siting here in a hotel room in Plano and can't do a thing about it.

I have to say I had the same impression watching CNN today. I'm sure there was an element that was just "Yay us! It's gonna stay close and it's a better story and we're gonna get more eyeballs!"

By the way, I asked a while ago and I don't think I've seen an answer yet (here or elsewhere) -- if Hillary wins the Texas primary but loses the caucus and ends up with fewer Texas delegates, HAS she won Texas?

I still haven't seen any final numbers (and I'm not clear yet if there will be final numbers -- presumably the "38% reporting" or whatever will eventually become "100%," but wasn't there something about June...?) but the numbers I've seen thus far indicate that the latter two might be the case. (That Obama won the caucus and that his caucus + primary delegate total may top Hillary's caucus + primary total.) If so -- who won TX?

Bfn wrote-

Quote:

Anyway, I am really pissed that Hillary won Texas and I am siting here in a hotel room in Plano and can't do a thing about it.

Was the typo a missed "t" or an "h"?

There were 370 Democratic delegates at stake in Tuesday's contests, and nearly complete returns showed Clinton outpaced Obama in Ohio, 74-65, in Rhode Island, 13-8, and in the Texas primary, 65-61.

Obama won in Vermont, 9-6, and was ahead in the Texas caucuses, 30-27. Ten of the dozen that remained to be awarded were in Texas; the other two in Ohio.

Kevin Drum is a blogger and doesn't know what he is talking about.

Obama's campaign is expected to win handily in Wyoming and Mississippi on the 8th and the 11th, and Plouffe emphasized those states as well as the contests following Pennsylvania, rather than the primary there on April 22nd. He reiterated that it was delegates that mattered not wins in states, but he also admitted that Obama's campaign has less support in Pennsylvania than Clinton and more ground to make up.

Roxxxanne wrote:

Kevin Drum is a blogger and doesn't know what he is talking about.

He's the frontpage blogger of the Washington Monthly, yes. I've found him an exceptionally reasonable voice throughout. And by the way, he too favours Obama, if hesitantly.

I have no clue what you're doing slagging off fellow-Obama supporters on top of independents whom Obama will need in the generals, if he does win the nomination. Pissing off both fellow and potential supporters sounds like the very worst thing you could do if you actually care about the Obama campaign.

Do you know who?