You know what?

This is the 52nd post for the month. A new record. Set because of a flurry of posts in the past week, and 6 just from today (albeit, this and the stats one are a bit hard to pass off as posts, but there was some serious postage going on with the other 4, especially with Pelosi, Clinton, and that letter). It’s not because I ran out of things to post that I’m making this a post about being the 52nd post, rather that I’m rather proud with my month’s efforts in blogging that I’m taking a moment to indulge in my achievements. I wasn’t about to let a new record present itself only for me to turn my back on it.

March has been a great time for this blog. Tomorrow, you’ll find out about all the stats (I know you’re interested). I’ll crunch the numbers to make it all sound impressive-like. A whole bunch of records were set in this month – most monthly views, most weekly views, most daily views. And the U.S. politics scene has been dying down for a moment, so I must have been hitting the right pulses. I look forward to my statistical gloating tomorrow.

Thomas.

Tidbits of U.S. political news

The problem with a lot of the U.S. political news is that it’s over and done with in a day, plus the depth isn’t there to write a whole post about it. With that in mind, here’s a week’s worth of important to semi-important news (and one ring-in at the very end) that I didn’t write about, but wanted to:

• Howard Dean says that the superdelegates need to be decided by July 1;
• Al Gore plays it cool and says that he hopes the Democratic race will ‘resolve itself’. But what if hoping isn’t enough, Al?;
• Hillary Clinton says she will stay in the race until the Convention, and never drop out. Independent candidate Ralph Nader agrees (and if you’re getting support from Nader, you’re doing something wrong!);
• Barack Obama went bowling with an endorser from Pennsylvania, and says that Clinton can stay in the Democratic primary race ‘as long as she wants‘ (and thus he takes the higher ground);
• Continuing the sporting theme, he plans to play 3-on-3 basketball (he is rumoured to be a good basketballer) with voters in Indiana to drum up registration;
• On the other hand, Senator Chris Dodd and Senator Patrick Leahy (both Obama endorsers) said Clinton should exit the race;
• Bill Clinton is saying that politicians shouldn’t be afraid to get attacked, and that everyone should be happy to have arguments – which flies in the face of what Hillary was saying before voting started when she started kicking up a stink about being attacked by Obama and John Edwards;
• Chelsea Clinton completes the triangle and chips in some comments (as if she matters …).

Thomas.

Pelosi, Clinton, and that letter

The ongoing bit of news that came out over the week, but I didn’t blog about, was a big mistake made by the Clinton campaign. I didn’t write about it because I wanted to wait until the fallout started. That’s when this issue was going to get interesting. And it didn’t take long for the impact to start a reaction or three.

It’s recognised by anyone watching the Democratic primary race that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is a brokerer, a deal-maker, a really powerful Democrat, and one of the top 3 superdelegates to get an endorsement from. Should Obama get her endorsement, the race would be officially over. I guarentee you that. So why would you do something that pushes her towards endorsing Obama if you’re Clinton? Because that’s what happened last week.

A list of 20 of Clinton’s most rich and wealthy donors sent a letter (PDF – a good read for a laugh) to Pelosi as a reaction to her comments on the role of superdelegates:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says it would be damaging to the Democratic party for its leaders to buck the will of national convention delegates picked in primaries and caucuses.

“If the votes of the superdelegates overturn what’s happened in the elections, it would be harmful to the Democratic party.”

Which saw me boldly proclaim that Obama became the Democratic candidate then and there. I maintain that position because that’s my belief in what the superdelegates should do, and that’s the most fair outcome. The same sort of thoughts (that saying something like that made Obama the candidate, not that that’s how the superdelegates should vote) must have set off some alarms in the Clinton campaign, because that letter was drafted.

For the people that didn’t read the letter, it’s basically a shakedown and threat to Pelosi – either rescind those comments and say that the superdelegates should vote for the candidate they think is best, or we won’t donate to the Democratic party again. It’s blackmail, it’s a threat, it’s ugly politics. It’s a way for these donors to get a puppet of theirs into the White House. We know that Obama doesn’t take the ‘big’ money like Clinton, so they are better off if Clinton gets into the White House.

Like I said, a really stupid move by the Clinton campaign (do you really think that these 20 donors thought it up themselves?) in that it’s reaching for a gun against the most armed Democrat out there. Not a smart idea to threaten the woman who has the most sway over the superdelegates – the people you need to win the race!

The Obama campaign was the first to react. Spokesperson Bill Burton had this to say right after the letter was made public:

This letter is inappropriate and we hope the Clinton campaign will reject the insinuation contained in it. Regardless of the outcome of the nomination fight, Senator Obama will continue to urge his supporters to assist Speaker Pelosi in her efforts to maintain and build a working majority in the House of Representatives.

Straight away, that response does two things. The first is that it ties the letter to the Clinton campaign, when originally it wasn’t necessarily assoicated with Clinton herself. It was a bunch of donors who could have gone rouge. Unlikely, but could have. Now, everyone will be thinking Clinton was responsible if she doesn’t denounce. She didn’t denounce, and, thus, she might as well have penned it herself.

The second thing the Burton response did was side up further to Pelosi. It said ‘Well, we’ve got your back, we still like you, we’re going to be good for you and for the party. Yep, no headaches from the Obama team. Now, how about an endorsement?’ He played up the importance and the role of Pelosi and her job while the other side was happy to cut her down to a mere spokeswoman. It was good politicking by the Obama campaign.

The next to react, and as you would expect with the speed of news spreading on the Internet, was the website MoveOn.org. It’s a pro-Democratic website that resoundingly endorsed Obama back on February 4, just prior to Super Tuesday. Obviously a move like this by the Clinton campaign would get a few people annoyed. But the reaction by MoveOn.org was really great. In a show of strength, instead of just e-kicking and e-screaming about it (which effectively boils down to crying about the letter in forums), the website and its subscribers started a movement.

The website has a petition up for people to sign saying that they will donate money to the Democratic party, and that Pelosi shouldn’t be afraid to confront those who wrote the letter. MoveOn.org is getting people out in force to say to Pelosi ‘Look, you don’t need those 20 people’s money – you have millions of people who have your back right now. Don’t cave in!’ The organisers had this to say about the whole issue:

It’s the worst kind of insider politics – billionaires bullying our elected leaders into ignoring the will of the voters. But when we all pool our resources, together we’re stronger than the fat cats. So let’s tell Nancy Pelosi that if she keeps standing up for regular Americans, thousands of us will have her back. And we can more than match whatever the CEOs and billionaires refuse to contribute.

It’s a fantastic, democratic, grass-roots move by the website. Very admirable, I think. This movement provoked the Clinton campaign to actually come out and claim some responsibility for the letter:

We got a heads up that a letter was being sent, but we didn’t know what was in it and that was it. Our supporters let us know that they were sending something over.

Maybe it’s my naivity on all this, but here’s the metaphor I think of it as. You get into a fight at school. There’s a process that needs to be followed for both you and the other person in the fight, whether it be suspension or whatever. Then you get a call from one of your friends saying that they are going to the principal to talk to him. That’s my take on the whole letter. Now, if your friend calls you and tells you this, aren’t you instantly going to ask ‘What are you going to say?’ For the Clinton campaign to say they knew nothing about the content of the letter is another slap in the face for the people of America. Never have they been treated with so much disdain by a candidate in a primary election.

Of course, the comments by the Clinton campaign didn’t denounce the letter either:

I think that the letter speaks for itself. There’s clearly a broad feeling among many Democrats, many people who are active in the party, that the role of superdelegates is to exercise independent judgment, to make their decision based on what is best for the party, what is best for the country.

Like hell it does! It’s 20 rich people who don’t want their puppet strings cut. It’s not a braod feeling, it’s not anything else than what I just said!

But none of these were the reactions I was waiting for. I wante dto see how Pelosi reacted. Why? Because there were three options for her. One was to bow to the donor’s wishes. Another was to come out all guns blazing, ripping heads off (which she is entitled to do at the moment). And then there was the option were she could walk back out, cool, calm, and collected as if the letter was nothing, and continue to suggest that Barack Obama is the candidate. First, Brendan Daly, a Pelosi spokesperson, came out and said:

The speaker believes it would do great harm to the Democratic Party if superdelegates are perceived to overturn the will of the voters. This has been her position throughout this primary season, regardless of who was ahead at any particular point in delegates or votes.

Speaker Pelosi is confident that superdelegates will choose between Senators Clinton or Obama — our two strong candidates — before the convention in August. That choice will be based on many considerations, including respecting the decisions of millions of Americans who have voted in primaries and participated in caucuses.

So Pelosi was standing by her remarks that she made that triggered the letter. Fantastic. But what was better were the unnamed reactions, and the ‘off the record’ remarks. First, a senior aide to a congress-person who actually supports Clinton said:

[There are] grumblings that pressuring Pelosi was a stupid thing to do [because it looks like they were] bullying the speaker.

Another aide, working for a senator yet to endorse either candidate said:

If the misguided effort hasn’t already blown up in their face, mark my words it will. For the life of me how they think they can win this argument with the Speaker is beyond me.

A neutral congressperson had this to say. Before I get to it, I’ll say something. The donors who were threatening to not give money to the party were threatening to not give the Democratic institution called the DCCC money. It’s like the ‘bank’ of the Democratic party. Anyway, here’s what was said:

Members of Congress – who are superdelegates – make up the DCCC. Threatening the DCCC is essentially threatening the very superdelegates Hillary Clinton is trying to court. The Clinton donor letter will just push undeclared superdelegates in Congress leaning toward Obama to endorse him sooner. It also reinforces the notion that the Clintons will destroy the party to win the White House. I just don’t get it.

And those three things are exactly why I was excited about the letter. Clinton has destoryed her race, her chances of winning, and is progressively destroying her party. I was waiting to see if anyone would say that the move was stupid (check), if the move would backfire (check), and someone to ask what the frig she was thinking (check).

But a spokesperson is only a mouth. When was the big gun herself going to come out? Well, over the weekend, it happened. Pelosi had this to say:

Here’s what you and I can’t let happen. We can’t allow the tension and pressures of a spirited presidential contest to spill over and harm hard-working Democratic candidates running to strengthen our Democratic majority in the House. I will do whatever it takes to protect our candidates and make sure their campaigns to drive change forward don’t skip a beat. I need you to do the same.

Demure? Soft? Hollow? Maybe. But consider this for a moment. She didn’t cave to the donors. First, she said that she still supported her statements about superdelegates endorsing the candidate with the most pledged delegates. In fact, she said it twice. Then she said what she said in that email. Given her role in the DCCC:

Always a part of the DCCC’s end of quarter fundraising program and, like previous her e-mails, has called for Party unity to elect a Democratic President and to strengthen our majority Congress,

her email, as I read it, was a message that she wasn’t about to be strong-armed and pushed around, not even threatened by either campaign. And after that, she’s not about to let some squabbling and pathetic campaign jeopardise the Democrats’ chances of getting the White House back. As I read her statements, she’s fed up with the childish politics, and I fully expect some big words, endorsements, and politicking to happen in the next week or so. She wants this race over, the rest of the party wants this race over, the majority of people want this race over, and the candidate who will run in the November election, Obama, wants this race over so he can get on with his real job.

Thomas.

Contrasts (of sorts)

I just finished watching YouTube clips of a couple of films. Of note, there was one called Dead and Breakfast, which is a parody of zombie movies. You could go so far as to call it a zombie musical. A lot of the narration is done by a country and western singing zombie in full regalia (hate, boots, jeans, western shirt). Also, there’s a scene where the narrator is playing with a complete bluegrass band and the rest of the zombies are dancing along in a very undead sort of way. Very funny. I saw it on SBS when they were having their ‘Zombie Zone Season‘ on Thursday nights (I think it was Thursdays). I only watched this one because I saw an ad and it had dancing zombies. How can you seriously turn that down?

The clip above is 1:39, so if you didn’t click it because you thought you would be wasting a whole lot of time, I’d like to know what you can do with 1:39 at your computer that could be any better than watching zombies dance.

Anyway, I was watching clips from another film called Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter. Made with a budget less than my bank account (OK, $100,000 might be a little more than what I have – but only a little) it has all the trademarks of being a concoction thought up during tedious maths classes in high school.

At first, I didn’t believe a movie called Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter could possibly exist. It sounded so ridiculous to be true. Then I went and Wiki’d it, and this is the more ridiculous plot summary it had:

Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter is a 2001 cult film from Odessa Filmworks which deals with Jesus’ modern-day struggle to protect the lesbians of Ottawa, Canada, from vampires with the help of Mexican wrestler El Santos.

Like I said, a concoction thought up during maths lessons. What else are straight guys in Catholic schools thinking about in maths? Jesus, lesbians, and vampires, right? I didn’t go to a religious school, so you can take out one of those.

I went looking for the trailer, or some sort of clip video, that would confirm that this movie actually existed. After all, you can put a page up on Wikipedia for just about anything (say, a trophy?). And I found a clip video with (supposedly) the best scenes going. There were more videos, but this one was the best because it had:

• It had a rocking theme song about Jesus coming to kill vampires (“He came from Heaven/ With two stakes in his hand”);
• A prophetic moment where Jesus is explaining his mission with the use of sandcastles;
• Fighting lesbian vampires on the beach, in a gay bar, in a local park (after going out for firewood) while wearing his robes for the most part (I don’t mean he gets naked, rather he goes in disguise as a ‘commoner’);
• Jesus getting a hair-and-beard cut, ending up with killer sideburns, and then getting his ear pierced (they actually show this @1:00, so if you’re squeamish, skip past 0:59 to 1:05);
• A talking bowl of cherries and ice cream.

I think this film wasn’t just a poke at horror flicks, it was also a poke at itself. It looks so ridiculous and silly, and with a plot to boot, that it can’t be taken seriously.
All the while, I’m thinking back, and I don’t remember any riots by Catholics of effigy-burning by Christians when this was released. No reaction like a certain set of cartoons. I guess it’s just a contrast of things.

Thomas.

Blog stats for the week

The week gone (as viewed by WordPress) has ended up being the second most successful week on record. It finished up with 1,638 views over the 7 days, second to 2 weeks ago, which saw 2,361 for the week. The big hitter, for the posts, was Pennsylvania and North Carolina polls which had 408 views, followed by Gore/Obama? which had 224. These two were only put up in the last week, and while Gore/Obama? was a topical post, the PA and NC polls post is one that will have prolonged interest among people who are interested in the primary race.

With a little under a day remaining for the final numbers for the month, I’ll hold off from writing about them. Maybe I’ll be able to surprise people with the stats for March. I certainly was. Not just with the month’s views, but the individual views for posts too.

Thomas.

Obama wins Texas – again

As I reported on a while ago, caucus states have regional and state conventions to solidfy who is voting for who at the Democratic National Convention. The caucus voting that occurs is a rough idea of what will happen, but the benefit/detriment of the caucus system is that when the final caucus vote is counted, the race doesn’t stop. The caucus members can, if fact, change their mind*.

What did we see yesterday? The huge Texas regional caucus meetings to decide 67 at-large caucus delegates to report to the D.N.C. in August. Texas, as we know, was is a ‘big’ state, and part of the ‘big’ win that Hillary Clinton picked up on March 4. She only actually won the primary vote, and lost the caucuses. And she only won the primary on the back of a fear ad, and only an ad. The caucus voting that reported back had Obama wining enough delegates in the caucuses to win the state by 1 or so delegates. Nothing huge, but something that was rolled out by the Barack Obama campaign regularly.

It was always going to be a worry what happened next. Would the campaigning that happened in between the voting and the regional meetings change many delegates minds? Apparently it changed some because there has been some shifting in the numbers. The results being sent out now, with only 50% of the caucus regions reporting, is that Obama will end the night with a state-wide lead on Clinton of 5 delegates – the projected outcome for these 67 delegates is a 38 to 29 split to Obama. He is currently running with approximately 60% of the regional caucus votes to Clinton’s 40%.

It’s supposed to have been a crazy time there in Texas – even a fight broke out on one precinct when Clinton supporters tried to get Obama supporters to swap sides. Speaking of swapping sides, I came across a funny story here. Basically, it’s where a guy went to the original caucus vote, and intended to vote for Obama. There weren’t enough people there to get past the threshold to assign Obama delegates that day, so the guy said, with honesty and good intentions, that he’d go to the regional convention and vote for Clinton. He believed that he was locked into this commitment. Give some time, and he receives a call from the Clinton campaign saying that he doesn’t have to vote for the candidate that he said he would on March 4 – that he can swap. And swap he did. He went to the regional convention and voted for Obama instead.

The Clinton campaign is saying that it’s too early to write the math down, but seeings as Obama won the caucus the first time, I expect that the predicted results will ring true and he will win the latest caucus. If anything, it could get better. He originally won the state’s caucus with 56% of the vote, compared to Clinton’s 44%. There’s been an 8% shift in the first 50% of voting – quite a large change for a race that the Clinton campaign says they still have a chance in. If anything, these results make it more obvious that Clinton should get out of the race. She’s lost one of her big states on the delegate count in a race that is all about delegates.

So that’s another good day for Obama. Pennsylvania will get quite a bit of coverage of this I suspect. How, if it will, impact the polls and the voting will be interesting to say the least.

Thomas.

* Actually, all delegates can change their mind, but it would be insane if and primary-pledged delegates did because of the actual voting that occurred by the people.

Changes

The last week has been one problem after another on a personal level. It all culminated on  Sunday, in which there was so much crap flying around it wasn’t funny. I’m not going into details because the problems certainly shouldn’t be put up on a blog for the world to see. Suffice to say, though, that I am safe, healthy, and all that good stuff. I am, though, angry, frustrated, and melancholic.

Over the past day and some of serious thinking, I’ve come to realise that it all stems from Thomas not actually being Thomas. I haven’t been ‘me’ for some time now – six month or so. I’ve been lying to myself about the person I want to be. That’s why there’s going to be changes. Nothing that will be noticeable on the blog – my interests are still the same. Just as a person I’ll be changing myself back to the person I should be. I’m not meant to be the stereotypical 21 year old. I can’t try and be it – it keeps on causing problems. I’m going back to being Thomas.

This post might be quite confusing to people who might only read for U.S. politics news. It doesn’t matter though – my friends read this, and it’s the most efficient way of letting them know what’s going on with me. In fact, this post might be confusing to people who call me a friend. If needs be, I’ll explain to you guys what I mean when I next see you.

That’s it.

Thomas.

Polls – North Carolina, favorability, national

I have a question for you. Let’s say you’re invited to a party, and there’s roughly 100 people attending, and you can name 48 people that hate you, and all 48 people are going to be at that party. Will you attend? Would you actually go somewhere where 48% of the people there have a negative opinion of you?

Apparently Hillary Clinton does, as the latest poll from NBC would indicate. It showed that only 37% of the people surveyed had a positive opinion of Clinton, while 48% had a negative opinion of her. This, friends, is the lowest it’s ever been for Clinton. A new record low for the woman. What’s really bad for her is that her favourability among African-Americans fell a full 12%. However, what’s interesting to note is that she is still viewed favourably by a majority of African-American voters but they are still voting against her in record numbers. So Clinton’s 37% rating is being pulled down by white and ‘Hispanic’ voters – her two strong and target demographics!

Barack Obama’s overall favourability rating sits at 49% positive, 32% negative. Both good number when compared to Clinton and John McCain. McCain’s positive favouribility rating is at 45%, while his negative is at 25%. While the negative isn’t much of a surprise, it very interesting to note that he is still less than 50% and isn’t even competing in a primary race anymore!

These numbers have more importance than me being able to ridicule my candidate of choice’s two opponents. First, it is really bad for Clinton who is trying to convince all those superdelegates to not go with the pledged delegate winner because she is more electable than Obama. Her main argument is that she ‘unites’ people, and is ‘liked’ by the ‘people’ more, so the superdelegates shouldn’t endorse Obama at the D.N.C., rather they should support her. When your favourability levels are on  par with President Bush’s (who has a job approval rating of 31.3% on average, and a disapproval rating of 62.8%) you have some serious problems appealing to the superdelegates on ‘popularity’ issues. Seriously, if she were to win the nomination, her negative rating is near-on double that of McCains! There’s no real way she can convince those superdelegates. I declared it before. Not on issue, not on pledged delegate, not on ‘popularity’. Nothing.

Also interesting to note is that it’s obvious the Reverend Wright incident hasn’t left any marks on Obama for the Democratic primary. I expect it to pop up in the general campaign, but, for now, it looks like Obama has weathered the worst of it, and come out better. Gallop Tracking has Obama back up in the national polling – up by 4% on Clinton (48% to 44%) – and while it might not be by the huge margins we’ve seen, it’s saying something that Obama can take as big an incident as what Wright was, give the best speech in this campaign to date, and be back on top within a week.

Clinton’s 44% is the lowest she’s been at for over a week. I believe this to be because of not just her Bosnian lies, but because Obama impressed so much over the week. While Clinton was obviously trying to spin the Wright thing for all it was worth, she went too far with it, and kept going even after Obama put the full-stop with his speech. The people saw this, and if that had been it, they would have probably tied. But then she made her lies up about Bosnia, people found out, and that led to Obama getting the upper hand in the polls.

I say polls because in the latest McCain versus Obama/Clinton, Obama beats McCain by 2%, Clinton loses to McCain by 2%.  That’s progress.

And finally, another new poll about North Carolina. Obama’s up, and by what will be the minimum he wins the state by – 15%. The PPP poll that I reported on earlier I noted my tentative approach to it. This time, an InsiderAndvantage poll has Obama at 49%, Clinton at 34%, with a quite large 17% undecided. A majority of the media too, I note, have turned on Clinton for still bringing up Rev. Wright and the Bosnia fiasco, and are now saying too that she needs to win North Carolina. That’s good for the Obama campaign for people to be saying that, but awful for Clinton. Saying she needs to win North Carolina is a death-blow for her campaign because she will not win it.

Thomas.

Al Gore – The Democratic Candidate?

It appears as though the Internet is (rightly) abuzz with what was a little bit of news. I reported on it a few hours after the speculation broke, but now, in true political style, it has exponentiated to a point where even Time magazine is writing about it, as well as gracing the main player of the article on their cover.

The story: Will Al Gore still be part of the Democratic primary race?

Ever since Congressman Tim Mahoney (which I just remembered is my dentist’s name) said:

If it (the nomination process) goes into the convention, don’t be surprised if someone different is at the top of the ticket.

Quickly followed by a suggestion that it could be Gore, things have gone crazy. The blogs were ablaze, news reports started picking up on it, then started really talking about it, and now, the print media has taken up the question.

Time magazine has an article up by Joe Klein, headed ‘Is Al Gore the Answer?’ in which he accepts that it is a very long shot (as does everyone who’s thinking about this) but there is a scenario in which Gore could be nominated, alongside Barack Obama for V.P., and head into the general election as the Democratic candidate. The crux of the argument is this:

Pish-tosh, you say, and you’re probably right. But let’s play a little. Let’s say the elders of the Democratic Party decide, when the primaries end, that neither Obama nor Clinton is viable. Let’s also assume—and this may be a real stretch—that such elders are strong and smart enough to act. All they’d have to do would be to convince a significant fraction of their superdelegate friends, maybe fewer than 100, to announce that they were taking a pass on the first ballot at the Denver convention, which would deny the 2,025 votes necessary to Obama or Clinton. What if they then approached Gore and asked him to be the nominee, for the good of the party—and suggested that he take Obama as his running mate? Of course, Obama would have to be a party to the deal and bring his 1,900 or so delegates along.

Let’s face it, while having Gore nominated on the floor and then watching him get the majority of the delegates is a long shot, Obama and Hillary Clinton leaving the Democratic primary race in pretty bad shape isn’t so hard to imagine. If the attacks get any worse than they are now (Wright, Lewinsky, race, sex – where else is there to go?), then we begin to get into an area where the attacks do damage to both candidates that can’t be mended.

It’s on the verge of happening, this unrepairable damage. John McCain, who was traveling around the world for ‘diplomatic reasons’, managed to bring the last few week’s rounds of polls onto level peggings. Without so much as being in the country, he was scoring ties and sub-5% wins over Obama in national polling. Of course, he was still convincingly beating Clinton by 5% or more, but this was the first time that he had a few weeks where Obama didn’t come out still the favourite. He’s (Obama) come back now to a better position with this week’s polling mind you.

I’m going to look at the prospect of the Gore/Obama ticket a little more, assuming that the scenario Klein puts out there occurs, and Gore wins the nomination.The first thing that hits me is you now have a Southern candidate heading the ticket. This is an important step to the Democrats gaining their victory. They need to poach a couple of swing states that are in the Republican ‘areas’. Here’s a map of the U.S. with state predictions – it’s from Wikipedia. There’s a couple there that I don’t consider swing states (Oregon, Minnesota, and New Mexico I believe will go Democrat), but for the most, let’s take the purple group as what’s up for grabs. Instantly, Tennessee is Democrat favourable – a ‘local boy’ is heading the ticket. Arkansas and North Carolina both become a lot closer having Gore on the ticket, and combined with Obama’s presence on the ticket, South Carolina and Louisiana aren’t exactly Republican locks anymore. Kentucky and Virginia, while more ‘North’ than the traditional ‘South’, also become more competitive. Now, I’m not saying that by having Gore leading the ticket then the Democrats automatically win these states – the Democrats just have a better chance in them.

Note: From here, down some way, I got a little distracted and talked excessively about one possible scenario and path to Democratic victory. While there’s talking points about why Gore would be better, it’s more hypothetical college maths, rather than talk about why Gore should be on the Democratic ticket. Look for a note like this to see where I resumed the post further down.

Looking at the 2000 election which Gore won/lost, he won Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania (which are considered a swing state for this race). Again, there’s no guarantee that he will carry them in this race should he run with Obama (actually, we’d rather Gore didn’t exactly follow his state-carrying from 2000 – other than New Mexico, he didn’t win a state South of Illinois and East of California). Assuming that the Democrats win, from the Wiki map, what they are favoured to win plus Oregon, New Mexico, Minnesota, and Tennessee, Gore and Obama find themselves on 233 electoral college votes. They are trying to get 216, so they only need 64 more.

For the Republicans, I agree with the Wiki map plus one. New Hampshire will go to the Republicans. The state loves John McCain. So that brings his electoral vote count up to 153.

233 vs. 153. I’d say the Democrats are in a good position here. So we look at the states Gore carried in 2000 – Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania. If the ticket carried all 4 of them, that would bring the tally to 271 – and that’s the election. It wouldn’t matter where the other states fell, the Democrats have won. However, that’s a big task. Winning Pennsylvania and Michigan is going to be one heck of a fight for any candidate – and mark it down, the candidate to win will need to win them both. Both states have various reasons to not vote for either party, but Michigan has a really big one. It has been excluded from the Democrat’s primary. If the party can’t rally the troops back together in the state, there’s a chance they will just stay home. I’m of two mind about it personally (why would you stay home if you could vote your party in anyway? What sort of party freezes you out of its process?).

Colorado is up for grabs, and the Democratic National Convention is being held in Denver in an attempt to sway over the state to their side. It borders with New Mexico, and the chances of winning the state have been on the up for Democrats. Let’s say they win it, and don’t win Michigan. 254 plays 179, Democrat’s way. They need just 16 more. North Carolina is worth 15, Arkansas is worth 6, Louisiana worth 9, South Carolina 8, Kentucky is 8, Virginia is 13, Missouri 11, Nevada worth 5 – nearly any two-combination of these will win the election for the Democrats too. For now, we’ll run with the scenario that the Republicans win Louisiana and South Carolina. It still leaves quite a few options, as we will see.

And then we have some big guns: Florida and its 27 votes; Ohio and its 20. Just one of them tips the balance to the Democrats. Florida is on Michigan’s side of the pool – it was ’shunned’ by the Democrats in the primary process. Will this have an effect? It could, just as it could in Michigan. If it does, and it goes Republican, then the race gets pretty tight. 254 plays 206, the Democrat’s way. And it’s a fight for all those states listed in the previous paragraph for the win.

Now, if we get to this point – 254 vs. 206, with only North Carolina, Arkansas, Kentucky, Virginia, Missouri, Nevada, and Ohio in the race, we have 14 available paths to victory for the Democrats, and only 5 for the Republicans all of which dictate they must win Ohio and North Carolina. Now here is where we come (in a roundabout way) to where this post started: Which two politicians would you want on the ticket to exact one of these 14 different victories? What are the 14 options?

Ohio by itself; North Carolina and any other state; Virginia and any other state; Missouri and any other state; or Kentucky, Arkansas, and Nevada.

Barack Obama will win big in North Carolina come the primary. I would put him as a favourite to with North Carolina in the general election over Clinton. If the Democrats win North Carolina in this scenario, it takes them to269 electoral college votes – and the maximum number of college votes that the Republicans can then get is … 269! It would be a tie. That would be insane, but that would be the result. There are, then, no winning combinations for the Republicans, and the Democrats just need one more state. Missouri, Arkansas, and Nevada are looking pretty good then.

Note: The post really resumes here.

And I seem to have got a little distracted there. Anyway, all of that really says that having a Southern candidate with a Northern candidate brings Southern states into play.

There’s a whole lot of theorising about having a white man and a black man on the ticket, but I’m not getting into that mess. Some will say having a black man gets more Republicans out, some say it won’t matter. Inevitably, someone is going to say ‘gradual exposure’ – that having Obama as V.P. ‘desensitises’ people to the idea of having a black man in charge.

Gore has no problem rallying the Democratic party base. No problem at all. That’s why every candidate is clambering for his endorsement. It’s why everyone wants him at fundraising events, to appear at rallies, and to show up in advertisements. He’s the prize endorsement right now – the #1. He has been since the campaign started. Put this with Obama. While Clinton draws heavily on the traditional Democrat voters for support, Obama appeals to the often-Democrats, the centrists, and then nibbles into the fringe Republicans. Gore gets support from all of Clinton’s supporters. Plus, he brings in ‘green’ votes – and while the Green party might not be political power in the U.S. as here in Australia, you’re not likely to turn away votes, are you?

In terms of what to expect in attacks from the Republican party, they will go crazy on his apparent ‘lack’ of experience. Having Gore at the top of the ticket does two things. One, it takes Obama away from those attacks, and positions Gore as the primary concern for experience (and boy does he have some). Second, it gives Obama experience when he becomes V.P., and in 8 years time, not only is he the most qualified candidate from the Democrats, but he’s the most qualified candidate of either party. You’re not seriously going to tell me that McCain will last that time? Or Mike Huckabee will find a political job while he waits? Or the Republicans will find their own Obama (albeit with one big difference). And the voters won’t want to turn down another 8 years of Obama, now will they?

Some critics of the Gore-led ticket have pointed out that he hasn’t been through the hard slog and vetting process of this primary campaign. I don’t necessarily see this as a completely negative thing. For one, Gore being the nominee is a huge curveball – there aren’t going to be any prepared campaigns against him, because we know the R.N.C. has already prepared the next 8 months of work against either Obama or Clinton. It will catch the Republicans off-guard. Also, his image hasn’t been tarnished by months of attacks from the opposition. Obama is still clean, but he isn’t squeaky clean. Clinton is as dirty and dirt – there’s no recovering her image. But Gore hasn’t been subjected to all that character assassination that’s been going on.

This curveball, too, would create a monster media circus. As was discussed with St. Ives the other day, it would be at least 2 continuous weeks of Gore/Obama coverage. The convention would get prime time coverage. The news stations would be going crazy. By the end of it, you’d forget that there was another election, or even another party. It would just be wall-to-wall Democrats, Gore, and Obama. Which is good – free coverage, free media.

There are pitfalls to this idea. One big one is that no one has voted on Gore. Leading up to the primaries, he was positioned better than Obama before Obama got his surge and Gore missed his opportunity. I think that if it had been a Gore/Obama/Clinton primary, Obama would have fared a little worse, Gore would have knocked Clinton out long ago, and Obama and Gore would have figured something out by now. We wouldn’t have this mess, suffice to say. But the voters didn’t get to decide this.

Another is that it would take some serious backroom wheeling and dealing by the party ‘elders’ who would first have to get enough superdelegates to abstain from voting to send it to a second round, to get Gore to agree to the prospect, to get Obama to agree to the deal and bring his 1,900 delegates to the party, and then enough superdelegates to push this ticket over the line. All the while, keeping Clinton in the dark, but not her big supporters, so as to not put their nose out of joint. It would be a politicking feat of and unprecedented level. I would love to be a fly on the wall for all of that. I’d pay a lot to be privy to the conversations and handshaking.

So is it going to happen? It is a long shot, this actually occurring, but the scenario that sees it happening is a significant prospect. Not a prospect I look forward to (unless Gore gets involved), but it’s a chance of happening. So as wild an idea as it might seem, maybe, just maybe, it stands a little bit more of a chance it is being given credit. We will see Gore at the convention either way – if not under these circumstances, then as the man giving the speech that brings all the superdelegates over to Obama. Heck, he might even be the guy to nominate Obama. Maybe even keynote address? Either way, Gore will be involved, it just depends how …

Thomas.

Pennsylvania and North Carolina polls

Within the past few days, a few polls have been released for Pennsylvania, and things look promising for Barack Obama. The week prior, the polls had Hillary Clinton at a 15% lead, and bigger depending on the poll you were readings, and all things looked like it would stay there. That was the really bad week for press for Obama, with the Reverend Wright incident and a few more niggling news cycles that did him no good. However, once he made the now famous ‘More Perfect Union’ speech, and then it was exposed that Clinton has been lying about her trip to Bosnia (she has been claiming that her foreign policy credentials are better than Obama’s, and one example was when she landed among a hail of sniper fire, and they ran with their heads down to safety. This was a lie – there was a reception for her and she met a kid and heard her read a poem. There is video and photos of this encounter), Obama managed to pick up in the polls.

The latest figures show that none of the bad press for Obama over the Wright incident stuck – that his own speech and Clinton’s lies have managed to boost him up in the most recent polls. The latest Rasmussen poll had Clinton up, but not by her required margin. 49% to 39% – Obama only trailing by 10% with a 12% undecided. During the previous week, Clinton led in a 51% to 38% poll, and the week before 52% to 37%.

That change, in Rasmussen’s polling, comes off the back off purely the race speech of Obama’s and Clinton’s Bosnian bungle. Also something to note: Clinton has been campaigning hard in Pennsylvania, Obama has hardly stepped foot in the state. He’s been on holidays in the Virgin Islands for the past few days, and his bus tour, his first campaigning since, begins on Friday.

The changes are important for a second reason. The campaign narrative floated by the Obama campaign, that Clinton needs to win Pennsylvania by 15-20% at least, has been taken up by the media. The news outlets are saying the same things. Obama’s campaign has repeatedly said that if Obama loses by a single-digit number, even 9%, then he sees that as a victory. The media has begun to say the same thing – that Clinton needs a massive win to stay in the race.

The second part of the narrative, that Obama will win North Carolina, has also been taken up. The latest polls there indicate a big Obama win – bigger than Clinton’s in Pennsylvania. PPP has a 55% to 34% leaning to Obama – a huge 21% lead. The data for this was gathered around the time of the race speech, so while some might say it’s inflate because of that, I’d say that the speech didn’t have time to ’settle in’ among the voters. If Obama wins North Carolina by this much, and manages to get a single-figure loss in Pennsylvania, then the media will turn on Clinton in a heartbeat. If she can’t stay competitive in North Carolina, where she has to, and can’t push Obama out of a state that she should be winning big in, then she’s going to be called into question.

Now that the basic narrative has been taken up by the media, watch for them to start talking about margins of victory. Like I have been here, I expect that news people to start saying: “If Clinton loses Pennsylvania by anything less than X, and Obama wins North Carolina by Y, Clinton has lost the two states, and Obama has made more gains on the pledged delegate count.” That will then turn into questioning whether one should get the nomination based on pledged delegates, and if that is the topic of the news, Obama has the much better footing.

Similarly, the old question of building momentum going into the final races will come up. A single-digit loss for Obama will create more momentum for him than it will for Clinton. And then going into North Carolina, and getting a 20% win this late in the race, and only a week after his ‘loss’ in Pennsylvania, it will give him a big push in the eyes of the media, and this will translate into momentum among the voters. If Obama could get out a win in Indiana as well (which has no polling, and is the enigma of the last races), combined with the win in North Carolina and the ‘win’ in Pennsylvania, then I believe it will put the final nail in the coffin for the media. The rest of the states have already been decided, except Indiana. Some outlets are saying that Clinton needs to win Pennsylvania, Indiana and North Carolina to be a viable candidate. Without North Carolina, she still needs Indiana. Because we know she won’t win North Carolina.

Thomas.