Now what?

Last night's results have truly made an interesting mess of things for the Democrats. Not only will the race continue on to Pennsylvania, but unless Obama wins the Keystone state I would expect that this race plays out through the end of the "scheduled" season in Puerto Rico.

Of course that leaves the issue of what to do about Florida and Michigan. As you all know I have been working the idea of a revote for the last couple of months, and it would now seem that the rest of the world is starting to catch on to the idea. However, it is crucial that this be held and run by the party and not by the state apparatus. The reason for this is that the state process would be at the mercy of Republican control and would give them the opportunity to also highlight the fact that the Democrats just cost the state 10 million dollars that the state of Florida doesn't have.

Clear results in Florida and Michigan would lend legitimacy to either campaign that prevailed in that Obama could add huge important swing states and Hillary could make her argument that she wins where she thinks it counts.

Tuesday Blues

As a lot of you have figured out I have cast my lot with Barack Obama... That being said, I have a rather miserable feeling about how things are going to shake out for the March 4th primaries.

The late polling out of Ohio is showing Obama's trend flat lining just short of the promised land and while he has closed a 23 point lead to single digits in the Buckeye state, it would appear that Obama's winning streak will come to a halt. What's worse is that the late polls out of Texas seem to be showing similar modeling with Hillary settling a point or two either behind or in the lead.

The good news in Texas is that there are still a large number of undecideds, who may still break Obama's way, and frankly from looking at some of the models it seems like her demo's really show up for her in numbers that they aren't going to show for Obama (which hasn't been the case yet).

Either way, the rhetoric out of the Clinton camp is very clear, unfortunately they are going to keep this going through Pennsylvania and beyond thus opting for a "nuclear" strategy in the Democratic party.

Will Tuesday be the End?

I for one find myself hoping that the nomination process comes to a halt after Tuesday's voting in VT, RI, OH, and TX and that we finally have a clear field for the Democratic nominee to make their run at the White House.

However, while this may be what I am hoping for, it is far more likely that the Clinton campaign will make some sort of argument that because Obama didn't win everything by the same 15 points he did 2 weeks ago, that the electorate is having second thoughts. The problem is that Obama was trailing be more than 20 points in TX and OH a month ago and the story really is how much momentum he has brought with him. In overcoming the huge disadvantage he had in these states he will most likely win the majority of the delegates up for grabs, and with Hillary needing more than 80% of the remaining delegates at that point to break even it will be time for her to suspend her campaign.

The question is, will she be like the great candidates who see when it is time to step aside much like Ted Williams or Joe DiMaggio who saw that he could still hang in there but didn't want to do so if it meant diminishing himself, or like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens who felt that winning at any cost is so important they are even willing to lie to themselves about how far one should really go before taking a bow and walking off the field.

Intrade Being Gamed?

I was just looking at the buying and selling of political futures going on over on Intrade and it is very interesting to see where it looks like people are trying to fudge the reporting numbers.

If you look at the most recent trades for Obama in Ohio you see where someone offered 50% less than the current asking price to make the average asking price look lower. In the same you race you can pull up Hillary and see where someone is offering to sell her futures at 4x the current asking price, thus making it look like there has been a spike in pricing.

Since the state races are traded far less vigorously then the national race these types of little games can actually have an effect (as witnessed in the fluctuations in pricing in that particular race today).

MLBtv.com Embraces Silverlight

MLBtv.com, which has always been an industry leader in subscription content on the internet (that which isn't porn) and it is interesting to note that their new media player for 2008 is designed using Microsoft Silverlight. Silverlight provides a flash compatible experience but leveraging windows media's VC-1 technology in addition to legacy WMV playback. Most importantly it is MAC and PC compliant and is really what pushed Flash to embrace H.264 over its own native encoding format.

Saturday Night Live

Just caught the opening for SNL and they have once again managed to pander to the Clinton campaign... One question that comes to mind is how that little scene at the desk can't be seen as anything other than a campaign plug. Unlike other pols who have taken on a turn on SNL, Hillary wasn't written in to any skit and was instead just sitting at a desk and was set up as giving an "editorial reply" to the debate... What a joke!

While I am bitching let me also say I don't enjoy Fred Armison's impression of Obama. While they can do what they will to kind of make him look like similar, his impression of Obama is dopey and sells him as being a real intellectual lightweight when sitting next to Hillary, which anyone who has watched the debates would tell you is definitely not the case.

Battle Royale

Back when I was a kid we used to watch wrestling. My brother Robbie was the first to get the bug, first going to Florida Championship matches at the Miami Beach Convention Center. Ultimately though he convinced me, and I still remember my first WWF event in Pennsylvania featuring Rocky Johnson, SD Jones, The Iron Sheik, Nikolai Volkov, The Samoans, and Sergeant Slaughter. Today, it seems like we are heading towards what they call the Battle Royale in which all the wrestlers are in the ring at once and are each gradually eliminated through allegiances and ganging up by the other wrestlers against each individual guy. The current campaign is slowly turning into just such an event. In this case you have one tag team (Bush and McCain) and 2 solo wrestlers (Obama and Clinton) who are all battling it out.

Bush has every reason to help McCain and so for the foreseeable future he and McCain figure to focus in on similar themes against whomever McCain decides to take on in the moment. Obama and Clinton both know that they will not be able to go at this together and so they will have to take out each other while the tag team gets to sit back and take its shots when it can.

Once one of our solo wrestlers are out of the ring the tag team will take on whomever is left. Now the twist in this type of match is that miraculously the tag team guys never end up winning. Eventually one of them picks up a chair and accidentally knocks his partner out of the ring or goes over the top rope trying to complete a tough two man kill and I think that is what we will see here.

Eventually, McCain will have to throw Bush out of the ring. Bush's negative number is just to high and approval to low to be enough of a help to McCain to be worthy of hanging on to.

Super Delegate Reform Proposal

I really do hope the super delegate system is thoroughly revised after this season and here is what I propose (if we really have to have them)....

Super delegates should only be based on the current members of the House and Senate, Sitting Governors and the parties leader in each house of a state's legislature. This would work out to about 370-420 votes based on the size of the majorities in the House and Senate and the number of Governors while weighting the system more towards states and districts that are represented by Democrats. Supers would be compelled to vote the same way as their district/state with the ability to be released by a voted majority of all the super delegates (to allow for the Murphy scenario of the presumed candidate falling apart).

Super Delegates from Abroad

I am all for people being able to continue to vote and support their choice of candidate even if they are living abroad. However, I was shocked to learn that the party actually allocates 2 super delegates for this group as well.

This year the 2 gentlemen live in Canada (where they have been since the 1970's) and while they have split their allegiances by each going for a different candidate, thus being a wash, should either of these guys really have more say in the nomination then anyone else by making them super delegates?

The chart below shows the current breakdown of super delegates for each candidate. While Hillary Clinton continues to hold a lead of about 64 votes, it is stunning to note where her lead comes from.

While Clinton surrogates like Geraldine Ferraro have tried to argue that the super delegates are elected by the people and represent a truer feel for what the people want, it is clear that Clinton's lead is only due to super delegates who fall under the DNC or DPL (party leader) designation.

While some of these people may have run for office once upon a time, the truth is that none of them represent the elected will of anyone. In fact, if you review the list you actually find people who are on the Clinton campaign payroll (like Terry McAuliffe) who didn't even have the judgment to see that if you are going to work for a candidate you should not also be a super delegate.

Superdelegates by Position (w/o Michigan and Florida)

Candidate	Clinton		Obama
Gov.	10		11
Sen.	12		10
Rep.	73		66
DPL	18		8
DNC	126		79
Add-Ons	0		1
Total	239		175
Last Updated: 2/25/2008

CNN, AP, and Kingston

I am hoping that Keith Olbermann can find a way to name CNN, AP, and Rep Jack Kingston his worst people in the world...or at least group them in as one entry. Over the weekend all three managed to find ways to create or further questions about the patriotism of Barack Obama.

On Friday night Kingston criticized Obama for not putting his hand on his heart during the pledge and not wearing a flag pin on his lapel. First of all Kingston wasn't wearing a flag pin himself. Secondly, it was the Star Spangled Banner that was playing and there is no protocol for doing that during the anthem (look around at the football or baseball game next time) and even though some choose to do it, this is hardly a patriotism marker. Then you get the AP going down the road of the previous internet garbage again.

But it is CNN who takes the cake. Last night they actually had a poll on their site asking people if Obama was patriotic enough to be President.

Ferraro Go Home!

The New York Times was clearly desperate for an outside contribution for its editorial pages today. Not only did they give a huge amount of ink to Geraldine Ferraro to write an editorial on behalf of the Clinton campaign, but in doing so they also managed to inadvertently show just what is wrong with the whole team Clinton.

Ferraro's piece is the campaign's justification for why the super delegates should go against the will of the people in the primaries and how the super delegates are all knowing beings who have saved the Democratic party from itself. Ferraro roots her argument in the 1980 DNC claiming that Kennedy's attempt to wrestle the nomination from a sinking sitting Jimmy Carter was destructive to the party and led to the Hunt Commission on which she served. She goes on to explain that the feeling was that the party leaders felt the only way to insure that all of the party leaders would lock into line at the convention was if they all got more responsibility and power at the convention. The former VP nominee goes on to say that she feels that the 1984 convention which produced the longest platform in history was a tremendous success because it incorporated everyone and had nothing to do with why the party got trounced in the fall.

Where to start here...The 1980 convention was in chaos because though I love Jimmy his administration was in a similar state. While I don't necessarily like the idea of a free for all I can say that I watched in 1980 and the people who jumped ship did so because they saw that Carter was going to be in real trouble in the fall. The 1984 platform was more like Frank Costanza's list of grievances on Festivus and set the standard from its successors, which not so coincidentally enough is why people ignore the platform and write them off as jokes.

The most troubling issue though is her complete disregard for the entire primary process. She states that these involve so few people that those that do show up should be discounted to account for those who don't. Ferraro's argument that Florida and Michigan should count runs counter to her argument, especially since she turns around and says they should not be penalized for the bad judgments of the state party leaders (who are super delegates in most cases) that resulted in the primaries moving up in the first place.

Hillary's Phony Fits of Rage

Did you catch the press conference HRC held on Saturday to express her "outrage" at mailers sent out by the Obama campaign about her health care policy and tying her to NAFTA?

Well in case you missed it, let me save you the trouble of hunting it down by sharing the fact that the mailers are actually several weeks old and she knew about them and complained about them in Wisconsin as well. The only difference is now she is apparently listening to the members of her campaign (thinking Mark Penn) who have told her that by going out and acting like she is really pissed that somehow this will snap everyone into place behind her.

Now fast forward to today HRC want on a rant in which she basically tried again to paint all of Obama's rhetoric and the people following it as being naive and delusional and unable to see what is really possible since they are all lacking her real wold experience and understanding.

While I have tried to not let me preferences color my posts to frequently I have to say I find this all to be really insulting. As someone who has followed events and studied policy and history since before I could even read I challenge the assertion that I can't tell the difference between reality and fantasy... after all, I can see the difference between a health plan that has a chance because it doesn't include attempts at mandates that have doomed proposals in the past. I can also see that taking a greater position of communication with countries we have had issues with will not only lead to a reduction in potential conflict, but also allow for greater opportunities for cooperation and growth with friends and traditional foes alike.

The Long Road Ahead

I don't usually put a lot of stock in the words of the chatting class, but one thing that I did hear fairly unanimously over the weekend are the newly revised expectations for Hillary on March 4th.

As you may recall, it was just a week ago when her own campaign stated they were staking here whole campaign on winning both Texas and Ohio. Only a funny thing happened in the last week or so, the quirky primacaucus rules and the polls in Texas started trending heavily for Obama, while Ohio seemed to be showing that it might just hold out and give her a narrow victory (although all the numbers were from before he started campaigning heavily in the buckeye state).

The new expectation being talked up is that Hillary wins Ohio and proclaims herself reinvigorated just like Mondale in Georgia in 1984. However, it will be interesting to see if she can truly hold on in Ohio and if so, will the press really fall for this bill of goods.

More on the Times and McCain

I grew up a huge fan of the Miami Dolphins which meant I got to watch Larry Czonka blast through the line and leave a huge hole in his wake.

Similarly, it seems the lack of any real beef behind the NY Time's thinly veiled claim that McCain "was having an affair with that woman Ms. Iseman" (to reuse a phrase) has blasted a hole through the attention span of the media. While everyone was busy trying to figure out the salacious details with the "female lobbyist" who have missed the underlying issue in the Times and the much more direct article in the Washington Post that covered McCain's longterm and very cozy relationship with lobbyists in DC. In fact if you look at McCain's statement he refers to her as a friend and he goes on to say that he has lots of friends who represent many issues in Washington.

McCain has been a part of the Washington scene for 26 years. As we all know he began his crusade for finance reform only after getting smacked down as part of the Keating 5. However, what most people don't know is that a large portion of his campaign staff and its closest advisers are in fact these same lobbyists that he is allegedly trying to keep out.

McCain Offers Curious Tale

A major theme of John McCain's denial that he had an affair with a female lobbyist is that he has never done anything improper in all the time that he has been in public service.

Too bad that he was reprimanded by the senate ethics committee for his involvement as part of the Keating 5. Also, even if you leave the allegations of hanky panky at the door, the idea that he accepted plane rides from someone who had active business in front of him as chairman and that they were asking him to act on their behalf is more troubling than the more sexy headline about what McCain and the lobbyist were doing.

I could care less about McCain's sex life. I have known to0 many people I like who have had affairs and to0 many I don't who were faithful and loyal spouses to judge anyone by that stick. However, the underlying issues here is that McCain's image is one he has built in the media out of air through empty rhetoric rather than one built one reality.

Obama and Public Financing

John McCain seems to be gaining some traction on the question of if Obama will abide by an alleged pledge to only use public financing in the general election campaign.

Now, Obama has not ruled out doing Public Financing, however what he has said was that he would only commit to Public Financing if both sides agree to prevent 527 money from getting into the mix when he said both candidates would need to:

"commit to discouraging cheating by their supporters; to refusing fundraising help to outside groups; and to limited their own parties to legal forms of involvement."

McCain has called this double speak, but in light of the 250 million dollars that Ari Fleischer is sitting on and the Swift Boating of 2004 it is clear that it is McCain who speaks with a forked tongue.

In the end this is a great symbol. Obama is willing to use public financing only, but wants to use the voices and microdonations of the people only if need to counteract the less than honest intentions of McCain who wants to use public financing so he can capitalize on his 527 Swift Boating buddies to do the dirty work for him.

I said it before and I will say it again.... Keating 5!

Good Cup of Joe

For the last few weeks the HRC campaign has taken to saying the media has been too soft on the Obama campaign as a whole and the candidate in particular. I am not one to usually cite Joe Scarborough for keen political thought and insight by virtue of the fact that he and I are on opposite ends of the spectrum. However, he brought up an excellent point this morning...

How would Obama and his campaign been treated in the media if they had lost 10 straight contests?

HRC has been granted a huge number of second and third chances in this campaign that no other candidate would have been granted. Rudy got crucified for his Florida strategy that failed miserably.

Given the current state of things it will be interesting to see if the media lets Clinton push the bar further back should she stumble or not get the sweep she needs and perhaps even more interesting will be the question of if the media gives Obama a chance to recover if she does carry the day.

Taking All Comers

Now that HRC and John McCain are both going on the attack against Obama it should be interesting to see how he and his campaign hold up. Clearly, if he survives the onslaught of the next few weeks and is at least competitive on March 4 he will have shown that he can take the best from 2 national campaigns at the same time. If he is splits or sweeps the day regardless of margin, then the Clinton campaign is going to have to think long and hard about the political price of going further.

Plagiarism?

Since my academic career is way behind me I feel very safe in confiding with you all that as a student I was guilty of plagiarism at several points through my academic career. Those of you who have known me for a long time may not find that shocking but this does I feel give me some latitude to speak as one who has been guilty of this offense in the past.

Now, I know that I am given to quoting people without crediting them all the time. Sometimes these are famous well known expressions that the public know about and other times it is passing along something I heard along the way. At no point do I intend to convince everyone that I am smarter then they think I am by the comments that I use. In fact the main reason why I do this is to make a point and sometimes other people have already come up with the best way to say it and so why fight city hall. I say this because I think this latest attempt to make an issue out of Obama's use of Gov. Patrick's wording is perhaps the most ridiculous of these flailing punches to date.

Not only are Obama and Patrick very good friends for more than 15 years, but they actually share a lot of the same political team. In comparing this to Joe Biden in 1988, what gets conveniently left on the curb is that Biden was caught taking wholesale statements and themes from a British politician with whom he had no relationship whatsoever.

While I usually quote my mother when I say "no enemies only customers" or my dad with his "the man with the gold makes the rules" or Roger Grimsby's more cynical "the fucking you get not being worth the fucking you get" but I certainly don't do this every time. Besides they aren't even the originator of those words but crediting them or not does not make me a plagiarist today.