<p>mini: I think you’re right that overriding delegate counts has negative consequences attached to it, but I don’t think it’s clear yet that it will definitively not happen.</p>
<p>“If the superdelegates don’t support the winner of the pledged delegate count, they will lose the support of young people and African-Americans for a generation.”</p>
<p>completely agree with this</p>
<p>In addition to the reason set forth by Mini, and quoted above in post 22, here is another assesment why Obama will be the nominee:</p>
<p>[Wonder</a> Land - WSJ.com](<a href=“http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120899521565139921.html?mod=todays_columnists]Wonder”>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120899521565139921.html?mod=todays_columnists)</p>
<p>In spite of whatever form of logic you ascribe to these reasons, it could still result in a Democratic loss in the general election, as per this paragraph from the WSJ analysis:</p>
<p>“Former Sen. Nunn is sometimes mentioned as a possible running mate for Sen. Obama. In a better world, Sam Nunn (or a David Boren) would have been the party’s candidate for president. Such candidacies remain impossible under the iron law of Democratic primary politics: No centrist can secure the party’s nomination in a primary system dominated by left-liberal activists. The iron law produces candidacies such as McGovern (1972), Mondale ('84), Dukakis ('88), Gore ('00) or Kerry ('04), who pay so many left-liberal obeisances to win in the primaries that they cannot attract sufficient moderates at the margins to win the general election.”</p>
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<p>No, there is a mathematical formula…google super delegates. Sure it’s unlikely but for you to claim that it’s virtually impossible is BS.</p>
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<p>Would that be with or without the votes from Florida and Michigan.</p>
<p>This primary has been rigged by the DNC. The Democrats have ZERO chance of winning in November and will, in all likelihood, suffer massive losses in downticket races. </p>
<p>Study electoral results for Democratic candidates with women voters sitting on their hands or switching parties to vote for the Republican candidates.</p>
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<p>I hope that they will bear in mind the consequences for a woman’s right to choose. Justice Stevens won’t last another 8 years or perhaps even four years.</p>
<p>ETA: And if women are supporting Hillary’s continued campaign in the belief that they’re trying to get a woman elected president, consider Bill’s role in the campaign:</p>
<p>
[He’s</a> Back - WSJ.com](<a href=“http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB120917154479246575.html]He’s”>http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB120917154479246575.html)</p>
<p>They have had 21 debates. I find that the debates have gotten very boring. It is more exciting to watch the NBA playoffs.</p>
<p>Hillary is witch and if the DNC gives her the nomination, there will be h*ll to pay. Blacks have been the consistent base of the Democratic Party since 1964. I certainly would not be going to the polls in November.</p>
<p>“No, there is a mathematical formula…google super delegates. Sure it’s unlikely but for you to claim that it’s virtually impossible is BS.”</p>
<p>I think it is far more likely that Huckabee is the Republican nominee (McCain blows either a heart gasket or a political one) than Hillary is the Democratic one.</p>
<p>@chocoholic</p>
<p>I would love to take Hillary or Obama in Ld debate. I think the worst Lders in our league could still go to town on Hillary and Obama. </p>
<p>In the 1ar against Obama: “1. vacuous, we never know what “change” so this allows moving advocacy which leads to infinite abuse; 2. no brightline which means you can’t evaluate the AC because you never know what threshold needs to be crossed to show violation of stand.”</p>
<p>Against Hillary: “Uh, Mrs. Clinton, you have to have a case, you can’t just quote Bill’s case…(no prima facie, rejection on face)”</p>
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<p>And given all the above, imagine what he’ll do, flailing around in all that “uncharted water” once he’s first spouse. You think he can’t control his mouth now—just wait. Hillary will not be able to control Bill. He is the former two term President, the one with “the experience”, and you can bet that he will never let her or the American public forget that. His ego will simply not take a back seat. </p>
<p>So what will his role be? WWBD (What Will Bill Do)? I’ve asked it before on this forum, and it was greeted with fluff answers and jokes. But we should all be seriously asking this question—I’m amazed that the media and The Obama campaign have not brought this issue up. Who will really be President? Will he be a member of her cabinet? Ambassador to the U.N.? Attorney General? (or right—I forgot—disbarred:rolleyes:). Really, I want to know.</p>
<p>“If the superdelegates don’t support the winner of the pledged delegate count, they will lose the support of young people and African-Americans for a generation.”</p>
<p>While African-Americans may sit out this election if Hillary gets the nomination, it is unlikely that they will go Republican in large numbers in future elections when Hillary is not a candidate. And young people get older, so the impact on them in a generation is irrelevent. In 4 years there will be a new cohort of young people to either get excited about a candidate or play video games.</p>
<p>A generation is probably 20 years or more. This can have an impact on 4 or 5 presidential elections. I have not seen the enthusiasm of younger people involved in the process that I see now, during my adult lifetime. I thought Caroline Kennedy’s piece in the New York Times in February said it very well. Also, I don’t see anyone on the horizon in four years for young people to get excited about.</p>
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<p>If the Democratic Party cared about that any of that, they would base their strategies around winning national elections.</p>
<p>There is no electoral college strategy for a candidate who can’t carry Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania and who isn’t even beating McCain in Massachussetts.</p>
<p>There is no electoral college strategy for a candidate who based on African American voters, latte liberals, and college students who, in state after state, loses every county but the college towns and inner city precints.</p>
<p>There is no electoral college strategy for Democrats when their bedrock base (women) is prepared to walk away from a party perceived to have rigged the nominating process.</p>
<p>Of course, this is no surprise. The Democratic Party entire tradition in recent decades has been nominating candidates who lose and lose spectacularly after being painted as “out of touch”. Do we really need to review the list? The Democrats have only elected one President in the last 32 years. Yet, the same parade of losers (Howard Dean, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Donna Brazille, et al) is being allowed to rig the nominating process to ensure another candidate who can be turned into a cartoon character and go down to a flaming Dukakis-like defeat.</p>
<p>And for the record, Obama doesn’t not have a record of pro-choice votes. He has record of voting “present” on abortion bills. Solid pro-choice Democrats do not vote “present” on abortion bills, either in the big leagues of the US Senate or in the minor leagues of a state legislature.</p>
<p>What does it matter who the dems nominate - McCain is the best candidate compared to either of them.</p>
<p>It just amazes me that anyone in this country WANTS bigger government, more federal control over decisions which should belong to the states, higher taxes, liberal judges who legislate from the bench (rather than upholding the legislators role to do that), and a Liberal social agenda (to the point of adding all sorts of amendments to the Constitution).</p>
<p>Obama and Hillary both are waaaaay to the left on the political spectrum. McCain would do a much better job of developing policies which are good for the WHOLE country, as oppsed to catering to a more extreme faction.</p>
<p>I just hope that, come November, voters realize, “McCain is a candidate I can live with. He won’t do anything too extreme either way”.</p>
<p>Yes, McCain is a conservative in the “That government which governs least governs best”, and “Government closest to the people [states, munincipalities] governs best” philosophy. Other than that he is a pragmatist who would make his decsions based on what is best for America - not because of a certain political agenda. He has demonstrated this already many times.</p>
<p>What are the odds that Americans will come to understand what a good deal they’d be getting w/ McCain?</p>
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<li>- And mini, don’t bother bringing up that “100 years in Iraq” thing - McCain will get the troops out as fast as possible, just like anyone else. He’s just straight enough to say, "We’ll do what is necessary to reach the best outcome possible).</li>
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<p>Interesteddad, you are wrong. The lies spread by the Clinton campaign about Obama are one reason that Obama has not to trust her in a one-on-one debate. Please get the facts straight. From Max Follmer of the Huffington Post in January:</p>
<p>Hoping to put to rest once and for all the claim that he was not a strong enough supporter of abortion rights during his tenure in the Illinois State Senate, a quartet of pro-choice activists defended Barack Obama on Monday, saying the Hillary Clinton campaign had been distorting his record to score political points.</p>
<p>In the days leading up to the Jan. 8 New Hampshire primary, the Clinton campaign sent out a mailer to Granite State households saying Obama “was unwilling to stand up for choice” because he voted “present” seven times on anti-abortion rights bills in the Illinois legislature.</p>
<p>On Monday, Planned Parenthood Chicago President Steve Trombley defended Obama, saying the “present” votes were part of a strategy devised by his group to protect vulnerable Democrats, and that Obama was always prepared to vote against the anti-abortion rights bills.</p>
<p>“We feel an obligation to defend Barack’s record related to abortion issues in Illinois,” Trumbley said. “Barack Obama has a 100 percent voting record from Planned Parenthood.”</p>
<p>Pam Sutherland, the President of Illinois Planned Parenthood, explained that her organization had approached Obama to participate in the “present” votes strategy.</p>
<p>Voting “present” is a legislative maneuver in Illinois employed by lawmakers to register opposition to a proposal, without being on the record with a “yes” or “no” vote. Lawmakers like the maneuver because it is difficult to use against a candidate in a future campaign ad.</p>
<p>“Sen. Obama was key to that “present” vote strategy,” Sutherland said. “We specifically asked him to vote “present” because he was so respected among his fellow Democrats.” </p>
<p>Sutherland said the goal was to get a few prominent members of the Democratic caucus to adopt their strategy so more cautious Democrats would follow suit.</p>
<p>“What’s good about this strategy is it actually worked,” Sutherland said.</p>
<p>Voting Record:
Sen. Obama received the following scores on NARAL Pro-Choice America’s Congressional Record on Choice. </p>
<p>2007: 100 percent
2006: 100 percent
2005: 100 percent</p>
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<p>It is not wise to extrapolate from voting behavior in primaries to voting behavior in November. While it is possible that McCain would beat Obama in Ohio, it is equally possible that he would beat Hillary there, too. This is true for some other states as well. But it boggles the mind that Hillary supporters in MA would defect to him if Obama were the Democratic nominee. And that is also true of some other states.</p>
<p>Am I the only one who listened to the Compassion Forum last weekend? Obama and Clinton articulated their positions on abortion; they turned out to be pretty similar, though Obama won applause for suggesting that the gap between pro-choice and anti-abortion advocates could be narrowed but ultimately, there would remain a gap. Both talked of fetuses as “potential life;” both talked of wanting to make abortion safe, available, but rare.</p>
<p>On a tangent:
Each was asked questions by pre-selected members of the audience, all of whom had ties with some religious group or another (mostly Christian, but also one or two representatives of Jewish groups). Clinton went first and acquitted herself fairly well, in my opinion. As usual, she was articulate and utterly fluent. But she seemed to be in campaign mode, stretching out her answer (and thus ending up answering fewer questions) and repeating herself as if wanting to make sure that everyone got her message. Obama seemed more like he was answering the questions that were posed and addressing the audience in front of him rather than the general public. His answers were sometimes a bit halting, as if he was weighing his words carefully in response to the question just posed. He did not seem, like Hillary, to use the questions as a springboard for a campaign speech. So his answers were more narrowly directed to the questions and shorter. He answered more, and garnered more applause.
But this is a matter of stylistics more than anything else. On substance, they were very similar.</p>
<p>bz said
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<p>Let me clarify so you won’t be so amazed. “bigger government” charges are just false. The size of government actually grew under Reagan, then decreased under Clinton. </p>
<p>“more federal control of decisions which should belong to the states” How about Terri Shiavo? Bush actually flew to DC from Texas in order to get involved with that. The Bush administration, assisted by Senator Frist, et.al. tried their best to interfere with the decision by the State of Florida. How about No Child Left Behind? How about the federal government essentialy taking over the National Guard of all fifty states? That old canard about Republicans honoring the rights of the states is just a tired old myth.</p>
<p>“higher taxes” raises the question, Higher than what? Just allowing the Bush tax cuts will only restore the same level of taxes on the very rich that we used to have. And given the fact that we’re spending billions a month on this tragic war, how could we continue to expect the middle and lower strata to pay for the war and supply the troops, while the super rich have no sacrifice at all?</p>
<p>“liberal judges” and “liberal social agenda” would be a welcome relief as far as many of us are concerned. I’m tired of judges giving the Bush administration the benefit of the doubt when doubts were put to rest about 5 years ago. When Scalia and his ilk deny the right of a worker to sue for descrimination based on the expiration of the statute of limitations, because the employer was able to successfully hide the descrimination for long enough to skirt past the statute, we need a different type of justice. In fact, we need a little justice back in our society, period.</p>
<p>As far as judges go, how about we restore the third branch of government for starters? These Bush signing statements different so dramatically from any predecessor’s, that they become a way of nullifying the legislative branch. It used to be that signing statements explained the exectuve branch’s view of a law. Now the signing statements overturn the law by claiming it violates the exec branch and therefore doesn’t apply. Period.</p>
<p>No, no, no. Obama does not need to debate HRC again, 21 debates are enough. HRC wants more debates because 1. She has no money <she was=“” several=“” mil=“” in=“” the=“” hole=“” april=“” and=“” apparently=“” got=“” just=“” above=“” water=“” with=“” donations=“” after=“” pa=“” win=“”> and she needs the free air-time a debate would give her. 2. She wants to continue to bruise Obama, damaging him as the nominee against McCain, so she can run in '12.</she></p>
<p>No democrat has won the presidential nomination since reconstruction without carrying the black vote. </p>
<p>The black vote is the democrat’s largest and most reliable voting block, and to lose that spells doom.</p>
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<p>Prepare to have your mind boggled. Not only will Massachusetts Hillary supporters sit on their hands in November, I expect a major effort to throw John Kerry out of office. Massachusetts Democrats outside of the Starbucks crowd in Cambridge are mad as hell at elected officials ignoring the overwhelming preference of Massachusetts voters.</p>
<p>And, don’t even get me started on Ted “Swim Like Hell and Deny Everything” Kennedy. He has made a career of backing losing Democratic nominees.</p>
<p>Gov Patrick better start looking over his shoulder, too. His approval ratings are now down to 41%.</p>