I do think it's telling that in the exit polls, at least for Alabama, Obama won something like 85% of the African-American vote.  Despite all the Clintons' campaigning of "I'm blacker than you."

I'd call that a major land slide.  That would be about five percent of the vote--and probably enough to carry most of the swing states.  Additionally, it would probably move good chunks of the west Republican.

Also, do we still have anybody who can actually vote in Ohio?  The Ohio primary is coming up--and it might actually be important this time.

SporkTim wrote:

I really wish that the Democrats would realize that a substantial percentage of Republicans would defect just to vote for Obama, whereas running Hillary will win approximately 0 republican vote.  If ten percent of republicans defect to the Democrats, you have the makings of a minor landslide victory in the general election.

Worse, Hillary as nominee may mobilize millions of additional 'R' voters, intent on simply voting against her…

To be fair, a great bit of the animosity towards her is unreasonable (framed in relative terms, considering she is a "politician" after all, and the traits she displays are shared by all of them, including the ones we like…)…

That be said, I pray that Obama captures the 'D' nomination, but who knows what is likely in store… …2008 campaign has been so bizarre, and no surprise if there are more twists and turns ahead…

Just got back from the Washington state caucus. It literally went like this:

Guy in charge: How many for Obama?

[everyone raises hands]

Guy in charge: How many for Edwards?

[one guy raises hand]

Guy in charge: How many for Clinton?

Guy in charge: ...

Guy in charge: Anybody?

Guy in charge: Ok, Obama 35, Edwards 1, Clinton 0. Thanks for coming!

And another three states for Obama.  This is exciting.  Hillary is playing the Giuliani method of staking it all on Texas and Ohio.  In the mean time, Obama has pulled ahead delegate-wise, even counting the Stupid Delegates.  And counting only pledged delegates, Obama is up over 100 delegates--and he should gain more as they sort out the Potomac primary.  To gain a hundred delegates in Texas and Ohio, Hillary would need about two thirds of the vote.  She'd need to do better than she did in New York.

It was interesting digging through CNN's exit polls.  About the only groups that voted for Hillary en masse in Virginia were white women and Protestants who go to church only occasionally.  I really found interesting the responses to who would make a better commander in chief - 97% of Obama supporters said Obama, obviously, but a full 20% of Hillary supporters said Obama but voted for Hillary anyway!

As the proverbial devil's advocate, I'd just like to point out that the core of the democratic party still supports Hillary. They do so because she is an experienced politician, well connected and with good relationships in Washington. She has a VERY experienced staff and will be able to call upon her husband to act as ambassador abroad.

Obama, on the other hand, is a relatively untested junior senator. He is an amazing speaker and comes with messages of hope and a reputation and character for honesty and realism. Yet so did JKF. It may be a little ironic that while the nation looked favorably upon Kennedy, his campaign was largely propelled by a fallacy (that the soviets had built more missiles than we), his presidency was marked by naive foreign policy decisions (bay of pigs, massive influx of advisors to Vietnam to support an incompetent and arrogant dictator President Diem, and even the support of the emerging baathist party in Iraq) and it was only his death that finally paved the way for the civil rights legislation so linked to his era (and which he was unable, or unwilling, to pass while alive).

We might compare him to another newcomer idealist candidate who came after another corrupt and hated president, Jimmy Carter. Again, though carter was more consistently neutral and progressive on domestic issues, he failed to deal competently with any of the major crises of his presidency and his major achievement is the Camp David accords. It was under his presidency that we allowed the deposition of the Shaw of Iran and the setting up of Islamic extremists there and that we first started supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan.

To me, Hillary Clinton sure seems like a bad candidate on many levels. Yet by supporting Obama we must admit that we are taking an incredible leap of faith and that is what makes the bosses of the democratic party rightly nervous. In the end, the very freedom to inspire people and to cast off the Washington establishment may be freedom to commit errors for which the country will pay for in years to come.

"Increase transparency" is the big one for me.  Only someone who knows he's not part of the old guard, and in fact campaigns based on the fact that he's not part of the old guard, will really be able to look at the status quo and say "hey guys, did you realize this is a terribly inefficient/corrupt/stupid way to go about doing things?"  I really don't think Hillary would be able to do that - part of getting ahead in Washington is owing people favors, and once you've built up enough favors, suddenly you don't have the freedom to be completely transparent anymore because your own motives end up being things like "I owe the drug companies something because they gave me massive campaign donations."

I'm not saying that Obama will have to be spotless, but there's nothing like bringing in a new boss to show how poorly an office is being run.

Funny you should mention that.  I just finished reading this.  I disagree with the article.  There may be some sexism--but that doesn't explain Obama.  If it's just the patriarchy asserting itself, why Obama rather than Edwards?  And the media have been buying the "Obama is fluff" argument when it's pretty easy to look at his website and find pages and pages of specific policy proposals.

I do think there is a certain ideological split in the party.  Clinton is running on the identity politics side of things.  Obama is running a post-identity politics campaign.  I think there is a good chunk of the Democrats who would like to move past all lines that have divided people for decades.

As for me, I'd like to see Obama elected because I think he represents the future of the country.  I disagree with him on most of "the issues."  If Obama doesn't get the nomination, I could happily go with McCain.

To change the subject a bit,I just read a very interesting comparison of bills that have passed sponsored by Obama and Clinton:

http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian … adden.html

Last edited by Dan Galron (Feb 15, 2008 2:08 pm)

I really like the anecdote about the little girl.

On another note, has anyone seen the NYTimes article (probably ripped off somewhere else) talking about how Obama is an Apple and Clinton is a PC? I think the comparisons are actually a little insightful. Obama provides a nice comforting and sleek exterior that sacrifices function to keep good on form. Clinton is a well known crochety program that will do just about anything you want (abet imperfetly) as long as you know the right commands to say and levers to pull. Clinton is a known entity who's defects are laid bare for all to see, Obama is a well packaged product with possible untested flaws.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/04/techn … S-0108-HDR

Ben, you might be right on the probability of domestic mistakes front--but I think Obama is going to be less into old school protectionism than some of the other democrats.  He won't be a Republican on that front, but he seems to at least be willing to try out less conventional approaches.  Hillary?  Not as much.  She seems to be running on a not particularly updated program from the 90s.

Apparently it was rather cold in Wisconsin today.  The low temperature was enough to tip Iowa in the right direction.  There's a certain 70+ crowd that is less open to anybody who might rock the boat.