Okay, by counting Florida and Michigan, you also count their superdelegates. I estimate that Sen. Clinton would get a 40-50 superdelegate bounce by counting those two states. Then you look at the pledged delegates. I have to estimate she would get a net of about 50. All together that would bring Sen. Clinton within about 20 delegates of Sen. Obama heading into the convention, just as things stand now. Considering big enough wins in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Indiana, and West Virginia, and Clinton could potentially overtake Obama even in pledged delegates.
The problem still stands though. That problem is Barack Obama. I love how he claims that the people should decide, while at the same time having his lawyers stand in the way of millions of Americans voting. Same thing with Pelosi. She said, just today, that the will of the American people must be honored. Well, how about applying that standard to Florida and Michigan. They are, after all, people and Americans, aren't they? So is this how Obama wins? By silencing millions of voters? Is this democracy? Cause let's face the current outlook: the only way Obama ends with more popular votes, and potentially delegates, is if Florida and Michigan don't vote. Sad, really, really sad.
6 comments :
"We're honoring the pledge and we won't campaign or spend money in states that aren't in compliance with the DNC calendar," said Clinton spokesman Jay Carson. "We don't think it's necessary to remove ourselves from the ballot."
What wasn't said. Of course, if we're behind in the nomination, we'll cry and whine like little school children about how unfair it is to exclude these states that weren't in compliance with the rules. Of course, we believe fair includes counting voters who only had our candidate as an option or states where the other candidates didn't even campaign because all of the candidates swore to abide by the rules.
It seems the Clintons have a real problem with "honoring pledges" and other vows.
Ahhhhh, that 3:00 AM phone call.
The extent to which Hillary's campaign has become desperate is most obvious in her explanation for recent "misstatements" about coming under sniper fire in Bosnia. She blames the error on sleep deprivation.
Never mind that claiming repeatedly to have come under sniper fire when you know perfectly well you didn't is not an error so much as it is a conscious lie -- it's the explanation itself that shows folks aren't thinking clearly over at Hillary HQ. If they were, it would surely occur to them, as they ran "sleep deprivation" up the flagpole, that they had recently gotten tremendous mileage out of an attack ad featuring a 3:00 AM telephone call at the White House.
It's almost too easy for Senator Obama to ask now whether -- if sleep deprivation can cause Hillary to utter a whopper like the sniper claim -- we might also expect her to have trouble with 3:00 AM phone calls
.... since she said the same basic "misstatement" on four different occasions recently (and more going back a few years), Senator Clinton must be chronically sleep deprived.
Senator Clinton did indeed honor the pledge and did not campaign in Michigan and Florida. Clinton was not the only candidate or choice on the Michigan and Florida ballot. I leave it to anonymous to check and see who else the people had a choice to vote for.
^ Only Senator Clinton is now demanding that the illegal delegates be seated. When she was the front-runner, she was saying the same thing about the Michigan and Florida contests that the other candidates were saying, they were illegitimate.
How fair would seating delegates from Michigan be when she was the only major candidate on the ballot? How fair would it then be to seat Florida's delegates and not seat Michigan's? How meaningful would ANY future party rules be if the democratic party caved into Hillary and her financial hitmen? Would ANYONE ever follow party rules again?
Is what's best for the Clinton Party also best for the democratic party?
For sometime Bill and Hillary Clinton have been boosting the electability of John McCain by continuing to offer effusive praise of his character, his "maverick" nature, and his ability to be Commander-in-Chief.
Senator Clinton supporters remain blind to the two-pronged Clinton strategy of holding out some sliver of hope of grabbing the Democratic nomination or elevating McCain to such a pedestal that it will be that much extra work for Barack Obama to beat McCain. (Then Hillary Clinton would run for the presidency again in 2012 if McCain wins.) In fact, the Clinton homages to McCain appear so ill-advised as offered by someone running against him (and her spouse) that there has been speculation that if Senator Clinton doesn't get the Dem nomination, she might bolt and run on some sort of "dream team" fusion ticket with McCain. (Although that is a highly unlikely scenario because it would be rather challenging, to say the least, to get the Republican base to support such a move. But given McCain's age, he -- were he to win -- might be a one-term president, making Clinton the likely successor in 2012.)
But even the most ardent of Hillary Clinton supporters must in their hearts be puzzled by the following and unusually accurate excerpt from the right wing publication NewsMax, posted at 1:45 PM on March 28:
For the second time in a week, Bill Clinton offered high praise for Republican presidential nominee John McCain — the candidate who could end up squaring off against Clinton’s wife Hillary.
At a stop in rural Pennsylvania on Thursday, Bill told the gathering that McCain is a “moderate” who “has given all you can give for this country without dying for it.”
He said McCain is on the right side in opposing the torture of enemy combatants and on the global warming issue, which “just about crosses the bridge for [Republicans].”
Clinton also told the audience that the race should not about the past, but about who is going to do more for the country in the future, ABC News reported. That person, he said, is Hillary.
One week ago Clinton expressed similar sentiments at a gathering in North Carolina, calling McCain a war hero who had demonstrated his love for his country.
Clinton noted that McCain supported campaign finance reform and “he doesn’t think global warming is a myth … so it is not going to be all that easy to beat him.”
At that same campaign stop, Clinton angered the Barack Obama campaign by saying that McCain and Hillary share a love of America — without mentioning Obama.
“I think it would be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country,” he said.
“And people could actually ask themselves who is right on these issues, instead of all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics.”
By not mentioning Obama, he suggested to some observers that he believes Obama’s patriotism is lacking.
What are the Clintons doing continuing to promote McCain's candidacy? It's getting to the point that Bill is coming close to pulling a Lieberman in terms of undercutting the Democratic Party in the 2008 election. He's trying to diss Obama and promote McCain at the same time.
To what end?
Whatever it is, it's not putting the Democratic Party and the country first. It's the Clintons hedging their bets at the expense of the Dems.
There's a point at which Senator Hillary Clinton supporters have to decide whether they are members of the Democratic Party or of the Clinton Party.
And we passed that point a long time ago.
^^" Only Senator Clinton is now demanding that the illegal delegates be seated. When she was the front-runner, she was saying the same thing about the Michigan and Florida contests that the other candidates were saying, they were illegitimate.
How fair would seating delegates from Michigan be when she was the only major candidate on the ballot? How fair would it then be to seat Florida's delegates and not seat Michigan's? How meaningful would ANY future party rules be if the democratic party caved into Hillary and her financial hitmen? Would ANYONE ever follow party rules again?"
Anonymous, you're talking about the process. I'm talking about the people. Guess what? Maybe the Clinton campaign was wrong then? I disagreed with them. I wrote a post back in the fall saying that it was ridiculous to punish Michigan and Florida. But why can't you stop for a minute and think of the people? How is it fair that the DNC limits only 4 states to go in January. It's not fair. And it's also not fair to punish the PEOPLE of Michigan and Florida for something that their government and the DNC did.
Secondly, you're really stepping to a new low if you're going to attack Bill Clinton for calling McCain a hero for how he served his country. I don't agree with John McCain on most of the issues, but McCain is an American hero and I have all the respect in the world for him on that issues. Secondly, Bill was right that McCain isn't going to be easy to beat. He is more moderate on most issues than George Bush. McCain happens to be right, too, on several issues such as global warming and torture. And finally, it's ridiculous to say that Bill was implying that Obama isn't an American. He is campaigning for his wife. He wants her to face John McCain. It's not his job to promote Barack Obama's ability to face John McCain in an election.
Finally, if Democrats known what is good for them, they're not going to question McCain's great service to this country. I'm sure you, anonymous, as I, were infuriated at the Swift Boat ads in '04 against Kerry. We don't have to agree with McCain on the issues, and we certainly don't have to support him, but we should commend him for all he went through.
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