The Sunshine State won’t rain on Obama’s Parade
After her “big win” in Florida, Senator Clinton made quite the show of the state in which she won a grand total of zero delegates. This rather blatant attempt to make a mountain of a molehill is hardly surprising given Obama’s delegate lead and her crushing defeat in South Carolina, but still rather distasteful to watch in action.
Equally unsurprising is her unabashed attempt to now have her “victories” in Michigan and Florida, states in which no other canddiate had campaigned, be counted. If Hillary’s politics had a flavor it would be black licorice. Nobody in their right mind likes that shit.
Anyways, according to exit polls Hillary had significant support among women, latinos, and seniors that - should such patterns remain constant in other states - will win her a majority of the delegates come Super Tuesday. In light of this, many have made rather dark forecasts for Senator Obama’s chances in the Tuesday’s primaries. There are a few problems with her ascension to the democratic throne however.
For one, those exit polls are representative of Florida, a state in which Obama had not campaigned, and Florida alone. You might as well look at Obama’s numbers before he won Iowa. They’re effectively outdated as far as I’m concerned.
Still you might say, “But Rob, what about Latinos and seniors? Won’t they have a huge influence given their preference for Hillary?”
1) Shut up. This is my blog.
2) Behold mortal! The Kennedy Campagin Machine:
Constructed out of a Harvard accent, Pre-Clinton liberalism, and what appears to be a Dodge Neon, his beauty and majesty were clearly not meant for this world…
Is he highly regarded among Latinos? S?. Do seniors love him? Almost as much as medicare. Will he be campaigning all over states to help Obama win? Abso-freaking-lutely. Whats more, recent Gallup polls show Barack now as close as six points nationally, an area in which Clinton has consistently shut out the competition.
Don’t count out this Chicago man yet.
Note: Ted Kennedy is cybernetic organism: living tissue over a metal endoskeleton. His C.P.U. is a neural-net processor, a learning computer. Hillnet will learn at a geometric rate and become self-aware if she wins Super Tuesday.
Update:Obama now within 4 points of Clinton.
The Fallout from Florida: Johnny and Rudy bow out
What strikes me as odd about the Florida primaries is the general consensus? among the candidates that the Sunshine State is critical to the success of their campaigns?aren’t we talking about the same Florida that required the intervention of the state and U.S. Supreme Court to formally decide its election in 2000?
Not very comforting.
On to the shakedown: On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton cleared the floor with 50% of the vote. Obama was running a double-digit second with 33%. John Edwards finished a distant 3rd at 14%.
As a wake-up call to the rest of the floor, Dennis Kucinich received 1%. He’s out. It’s over. Let it go.
On the Republican side, McCain cleaned up 36% of the vote to Romney’s 31%. Guiliani finished at 15%.
To the Ron Pauleons out there?he finished at 3%. He’s only slightly more popular than Kucinich. Give it up.
What does this mean for the rest of the race? “America’s Mayor” Rudy Guiliani has conceded and is throwing his endorsement to McCain. John Edwards is expected to announce the end of his candidacy today. Hillary is no longer crying crocodile tears, and Obama seems to be hanging stalwart in 2nd place.
Guiliani was always a long shot, and the reason why this is true is purely social: the conservative, values-based voters that formed George W. Bush’s rock of support haven’t gone anywhere. It’s only been four years. But Guiliani’s departure leaves me more anxious than if Mitt Romney or John McCain had called it quits. Guiliani’s supporters and platform are the moderate, socially liberal conservatives, the conservatives voting on name recognition and a sense of reliability and safety. In other words, the all-important swing voters are now up for grabs. And who is going to grab them?
That other New Yorker (ahem, junior New Yorker). Bill v 2.0. The Hill-Bill tag team (be it beneath me to call them the Hill-Billies). Bill Clinton enjoys even more name recognition than Guiliani, and just as much charisma with a certain sect of the American population. His downfall is his candidate wife, Hillary? the NY-D senator who has done next to nothing to help the citizens of the Empire State, not even the ethnic poor and downtrodden, her most solid supporters.
Oh, and her other supporters? The slightly hawkish Democrats? Hillary’s sliding again. Check out this John McCain spoutoff on the Youtubenets:
If she sails into the Presidential race next Tuesday it will be on the wings of her last name (notice how she’s dropped the ‘Rodham’ since the campaign began? It’s a fact?look it up), not her less-than-stellar record of HillaryCare (her version of health-care reform) and all her nonexistent economic improvements.
As a citizen of a severely economically depressed city in upstate New York, I certainly have nothing to thank Hillary “I’ve Always Been a Yankees Fan” Rodham Clinton for. And neither does anyone else.
One can only hope Americans realize this in time.
New York Times: ?John McCain and his friends used to beat up Romney at recess?
(kudos to: Matt Drudge)
When I saw Mitt Romney speak in Washington D.C. last year, I definitely got a whiff of DuPont. The first and only impression I was left with was of MItt?s signature gel-molded, slicked-back hair and smooth delivery. Yet he lacks a quality that I believe all the other candidates have in some measure: depth. McCain?s got soul. Rudy?s got toughness. Thompson had charisma. Ron Paul has all the answers. And what has Mitt Romney got? The Olympics. And that hair.
Mitt Romney paints a slick picture all right. Perhaps slicker and more polished than anyone else on the GOP side of the presidential race, and so it seems that Romney has become something of a target for astonishingly personal attacks from the other candidates.
Mike Huckabee?s campaign chairman wants to knock out Romney?s teeth, but demurs so anger ?doesn?t get in the way of my thought process.? McCain called Romney a ?pig?.
Dan Schnur, a Republican strategist, has boiled down the playing field to a facsimile of the recess hierarchy, comparing ?Mr. Romney, the ever-proper Harvard Law School and Business School graduate, to Mr. McCain, the gregarious rebel who racked up demerits and friends at the Naval Academy.
?John McCain and his friends used to beat up Mitt Romney at recess,? Mr. Schnur said.?
Perversely, I?m glad to see the New York Times shining such a spotlight on the infighting over Romney?s character and tactics, because it takes the focus off Mormonism and Romney?s faith, a totally superfluous, unimportant issue, just as Barack Obama?s Muslim ties have been? made out to be. (In light of Florida, Barack Obama may become obsolete very soon, which is heartbreaking, considering his competition.)
In the end, Romney?s sheen of unbendable, water-repelling, plasticized correctness does not inspire trust. Yet.
And the State of the Union is….?
Survey says…Strong. Just once I think it’d be hilarious to see the president say something besides that. Anything really. “The State of the Union is…Gaseous?” At any rate, here’s the Commander-in-chief acting like anyone cares what a lame duck like him thinks.
Click here for transcripts of the speech.
Click here for State of the Union Fact Checking.
New blogger for The Spectrum
A bit of housekeeping, just to let you know about some changes for The Spectrum. I’m pleased to announce that we are adding a new blogger, Shanan Glandz. A junior writing major, Glandz is a welcome addition to our blogs. We’re looking forward to some great discussion and expanded opinion here as she gets on board, so look forward to her posts coming in the next couple of days.
The Count that Counts: Modern Election Fraud
With both parties’ primaries in full swing and the Presidential & Congressional elections just a hop, skip and a jump away, I feel its time to talk about one of my pet topics: Election fraud.Let us get two things straight before we start talking about this so that we can put it all in perspective.
1) Election fraud is roughly as old as elections themselves.
From one of the earliest known elections (circa 471 BC), archaeologists have found pottery that they believe were used as ballots. The fact that 190 of these ballots had only 14 different styles of handwriting on them suggests foul play in the earliest of the world’s democracies.
2) At some point in history, almost every country and every major political party has been guilty of election fraud.
That’s right, it’s not just a left-wing or right-wing conspiracy. Every country and every party has been guilty of it in some election. Whether its closing voting stations early, voter intimidation, “losing” ballets, invalidating voter eligibility, or just good old fashion “voting under the name of a dead person”, everybody has done it.
From that we can move on to saying that it’s ludicrous to think that either a) it can’t happen in America or that b) my candidate could never do something like that. It is only the very shortsighted who offhandedly declare allegations of election fraud to be the paranoid chatter of conspiracy theorists.
Bringing it back to the present, I am concerned about the upcoming elections and the current primaries. In all seriousness, we’re talking about which person is going to take the reins of the most powerful country to have ever existed. People get dirty and cheat in elections over who is going to be elected to the school council, but somehow people believe that presidential elections couldn’t possibly be subject to such vile motivations.
WAKE UP! Politics is a bloodsport and those in it fight to win at just about any cost. As they said in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, “There ain’t no rules in a knife fight.”
The latest development has been the use of Diebold election machines, which leave no paper trail to be recounted later and have questionable track records. As the Economist pointed out:
The problem with direct-recording-electronic (DRE) voting systems like Diebold?s Accuvote and others from Election Systems and Software (ES&S) and Hart InterCivic is their vulnerability to sloppy installation, poor maintenance, shoddy software, infrequent updates and accidental loss of data.
And thats just the stuff you have to worry about if you believe that people have the best of intentions. Despite assurances by the manufacturers, Diebold machines have been shown to be vulnerable to electronic tampering that could be done by anyone with access to the machine for even a few minutes.
Although I feel that your middle of the road American is more willing to talk seriously about election fraud given election discrepancies in the past few years (read: Florida and Ohio), people still think it’s a joke. This happens for a lot of reasons, but I think the biggest problem is that people depend on some certainties.
Much like a house of cards, our beliefs rely upon each other to exist. To threaten the integrity of this basic tenant - that we have the power to shape our future and our government through the vote - is roughly equivalent to pulling out card at the base of the house.Threatening the integrity of our elections, the backbones of democracy, threatens our faith in our very way of life. If government was not subject to the will of the people but rather to the will of those who are willing steal their way into power, what does that mean for our country?
Nitty-gritty: Suspicion of electronic voting machines that leave no paper trail isn’t technophobia. It’s a healthy paranoia about an untested method of voting who’s results in the 2004 election are shady to say the least. The truth is that it’s inevitable that someone is going to start hacking these things, if they haven’t already, and at present there’s absolutely no way for us to test for it. As a country, we have to start getting serious about the integrity of our voting systems before we find our democracy slipping through out hands.
P.S. Here’s Hacking Democracy, a documentary about the Diebold machines that are commonly taking the place of traditional paper ballots in American politics. Only watch it if you want to feel disenchanted with democracy.
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