<p>Among Obama supporters:</p>
<p>Clinton 66%
McCain 21%
Don’t know 13%</p>
<p>Overall, Clinton gets 76% of Democratic voters in an Clinton/McCain matchup. Obama only gets 67% of Democratic voters, losing a third to McCain/Don’t Know.</p>
<p>This poll must, of course, be wrong because it suggests Obama is the more “polarizing” of the two candidates. I’m pretty sure I heard on TV that Clinton is more “polarizing” and Obama is the “unifier”, right?</p>
<p>I’m not sure what percentage of the remaining undeclared superdelegates are running for office this year, and I’m too lazy to look it up, but if Hillary significantly trims the margin in NC and continues winning impressively elsewhere, catches up in the popular vote without having to include Michigan, and southern democrats running for office continue to distance themselves from Obama in response to republican attack ads, some supers may just move to Hillary out of the number one principle they understand: self-preservation. It seems as if the only people who truly can’t stand her anymore are the left of her own party. However, I think there are still a lot of publicly undeclared supers who are party hacks who are just waiting to twist the knife.</p>
<p>farmdad:</p>
<p>I don’t think Democratic Party poobahs even understand self-preservation. They have lost so badly so often for so long it’s become a way of life.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yeah, that Travis Childers race in Mississippi has been a riot to watch this week. First, the Repub links him to Obama/Wright in a TV commercial. Next day the Dem Childers runs his TV ads saying he’s never even met Obama and don’t you dare link me to him.</p>
<p>I don’t mean self-preservation of the party by the poobahs. I agree that’s a foreign concept. I mean self-preservation of their own hides by those running for office.</p>
<p>oops. didn’t see the bottom of your post. Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m talking about.</p>
<p>The problem is that Dean has gerry-rigged the DNC (and therefore many of the superdelegates) so that there is undue influence from die-hard Republican states that wouldn’t elect a Democrat as dog-catcher. So, even winning local elections is a foreign concept to many of these SuperDelegates.</p>
<p>Their idea of running a politcal campaign is wearing their Dukakis buttons and talking about new welfare programs.</p>
<p>The good news in all this is that, once the Clinton moderates have left the Democratic Party, somebody is going to move to the center and put together a majority political force in this country. It may be the Republicans. Or, there may finally be the critcal mass of ex-Dems and country-club ex-Rebs to do it. Somebody will fill the vacuum. The high ground in the middle won’t go unoccupied for long.</p>
<p>The Dems could have had it.</p>
<p>docmom - </p>
<p>I read the entire transcript of Wright’s speech and will put some of the linquistics quotes into a larger context here:</p>
<p>"African and African-American children have a different way of learning.</p>
<p>They are right brained, subject oriented in their learning style. Right brain that means creative and intuitive. Subject oriented means they learn from a subject, not an object. They learn from a person. Some of you are old enough, I see your hair color, to remember when the NAACP won that tremendous desegregation case back in 1954 and when the schools were desegregated. They were never integrated. When they were desegregated in Philadelphia, several of the white teachers in my school freaked out. Why? Because black kids wouldn’t stay in their place. Over there behind the desk, black kids climbed up all on them.</p>
<p>Because they learn from a subject, not from an object. Tell me a story. They have a different way of learning. Those same children who have difficulty reading from an object and who are labeled EMH, DMH and ADD. Those children can say every word from every song on every hip hop radio station half of who’s words the average adult here tonight cannot understand. Why? Because they come from a right-brained creative oral culture like the (greos) in Africa who can go for two or three days as oral repositories of a people’s history and like the oral tradition which passed down the first five book in our Jewish bible, our Christian Bible, our Hebrew bible long before there was a written Hebrew script or alphabet. And repeat incredulously long passages like Psalm 119 using mnemonic devices using eight line stanzas. Each stanza starting with a different letter of the alphabet. That is a different way of learning. It’s not deficient, it is just different…"</p>
<p>I’ve also been reading up on Dr. Janice Hale, who was apparently in the audience during the speech. Read some book reviews, her homepage, her vitae, etc. If you are a professional educator then you most likely have lots more background on some of this stuff than I do, and understanding of what you read and hear is usually influenced by background info as much if not more so than the actual words spoken/written. So you may well know a lot of things that were not apparent in the speech itself. My apologies for implying otherwise.</p>
<p>As far as Dr. Liberman’s opinion, I’m sure he is coming from a linquistics background and not an education academic background, and quite often subject area academics differ considerably from education academics on some of these issues. But I am making an effort to investigate.</p>
<p>(for ex, with my math rant, the mathematics professors I know have very different and opposing positions on educational issues from the math educators, K-12, that I know, but it’s probably best not to go there)</p>
<p>Well the real question is did Wright hurt Obama this week?</p>
<p>According to one poll, Hillary is now in striking distance for the win in NC…5 more days…will Obama who said I can no more distance myselffrom Rev. Wright than I could my white grandmother be able now to hold onto the state…and if he does win by a slim margin, does that mean Hillary has the ability?</p>
<p>BTW anyone here about the FL protests at the DNC demanding that they are accounted for?</p>
<p>So he claims an entire race has a differnt learning style because their brains are different or they did not have books 150 years ago? I don’ think that’s a road he even wants to start down.</p>
<p>If I recall correctly Howard Dean on Meet the Press this past Sunday said he expected the FL and MI delegates to be seated, but it would be up to the rules committee to decide on how it will occur.</p>
<p>doctormom, parochial schools with standards, positive expectations, and families who support their children’s education have no difficulty teaching African-American children of all SES levels to read from books and learn multiplication tables.</p>
<p>docmom -</p>
<p>The problem with my girls was never their having problems with math. All three of my kids are high achievers in math. The problem is that the NCTM assumes that because they are girls that they will have trouble learning math in a tradional way, so the school uses a watered down “fuzzy math” approach. First off, nobody learns what they need to this way, and second, the high ability kids are not only frustrated from what I call “baby pablum math”, they are not being given the skills they need to progress to the higher level math, like calculus.</p>
<p>Indeed, all my kids have always gotten straight As in math, which is why teachers couldn’t understand my complaints that the math class was too easy and inappropriate and the right skill set was not being taught. As it stands now, D2 (who got at 35 math ACT) is double majoring in math and physics in college, but it took years of arguing with school administrators to get the tough math curriculum necessary to pursue that goal.</p>
<p>But you are spot on about the music and the arts. All three kids took piano from age 3 (susuki method), the math/physics major studied ballet for 10 years, and my S has been singing in choir since age 7. Not only did he make All State Choir this year (3d in a row), he placed 1st at district in Calculus, and 3d at state in Calculus.</p>
<p>I am a strong believer in “the Mozart effect”, even though some psychologists pooh pooh it. Worked for us!</p>
<p>He apologized for the American Catholic Church. Something seems to be specifically wrong here. Read what J. Kozol thinks of parochial schools. He credits them for a great deal of the good work done in the most shamefully segregated school sysytem in the US, the Bronx. The Harlem River is a greater divide than the Mason Dixon Line. Not a Catholic but I would guess that the bad apples are less than 1%, not excusable but not bad for a country that has 3 million people behind bars.</p>
<p>I heard on the radio today that Northwestern University was supposed to give Rev Wright an honorary diploma shortly and that they rescinded this invitation. Does anyone know why they were giving him this honor?</p>
<p>The Pope was apologizing for the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests. It had nothing to do with nuns hitting people with rulers in catholic schools. Like Tina Fey said, when you got out you knew the capital of Vermont!</p>
<p>Actually, there are very few if any nuns in catholic schools any more. I think that’s one reason the education there now is not as good as it used to be. At my catholic high school the nun who taught me math had a PHD in math…and not math education either. She was awesome.</p>
<p>I spent 13 years in catholic school and graduated in 1970. I don’t ever remember anyone getting hit with a ruler.</p>
<p>doctorMom / mercymom:</p>
<p>do we need a teaching method for blacks, one for whites, one for Indians from India, one for American indians, one for philipino Americans, and possible one for philipinos from oversea ?</p>
<p>I don’t think so. At least not for math, and I doubt it for reading, but that would depend on the age the child entered the american/english school system (linquistic issues perhaps the older they were). The valedictorian of one of our hs was a Vietnamese immigrant who spoke no english when she started 9th grade.</p>
<p>When my girls were in public school they had kids in their classes who were from places like Iran, Pakistan, Egypt, Hong Kong, and India. I won’t count Switzerland, as it’s euro, but they were there too. A veritable UN. Everybody learned.</p>
<p>Luckily for the girls, their hs finally got a new teacher for trig/calculus who was a muslim from Iran. He was a dissertation short of a phd in math, and an awesome teacher. It was one of his girl students who beat my S at the state calc test. First place went to a Chinese kid.</p>
<p>What exactly is it that people don’t like about NCLB?</p>
<p>Our school system clustered the ESL kids at one elem, one middle and one hs. The Vietnamese girl I mentioned went to the ESL hs. It had a regular attendance zone too, so only a small % were ESL, and she wasn’t the only one to reach the val spot.</p>
<p>My girls elem was a cluster for GT, but also for deaf and handicapped. They had sign lanquage on the bus and at assemblies, and lots of wheelchair kids. It was quite a mix. I think that’s part of the reason D1 is going into audiology.</p>
<p>Dr Mom says: When I was a student, the parochial schools used physical abuse to teach the students. Nuns smacking nuckles with rulers, etc. We all know how the Catholic Church educates. Even the current Pope on his recent visit apologized for the Catholic Church.</p>
<p>Please don’t generalize about parochial schools. I went to Catholic school from 1961 to 1975. I honestly never saw anyone smacked with a ruler or physcially abused in any other way by a nun, priest or teacher.</p>
<p>Your statement that ‘We all know how the Cathoic Church educates.’ is offensive to me. I credit the Catholic schools that I attended with many positive studying habits, especially disciplining myself to study 12 hours at a stretch in law school. I could not get that from my parents, as neither attended college and my father did not attend high school.</p>
<p>Its been said here previously, the Pope has apologized for the ongoing sexual abuse by priests to children.</p>
<p>'sok doctormom and thanks for responding so graciously.</p>
<p>i-dad</p>
<p>I want you to know something.I’ve read all your comments and agree with you wholeheartedly.I live in KS. the hub of Obama’s red-state caucus coup . I mean 7,000 voters handed him a 48% share of delegates which accounted for more than Clinton’s in some primary states.DNC to earth Kansas is not going to turn blue this year or any year! Oh and by the way Obama will never take Missouri (you know that pesky little swing state). Hillary won 111 of 115 counties! An anti-affirmative action initiative will be on the ballot. I can hear all the charges now oh those racist white people!</p>
<p>My husband is so fed up with the democratic party he said he’ll vote for McCain and leave the party. My kid’s first presidential election and she said she’s so bummed because there is no way she can vote for Obama. She’s in Jersey and she’d vote for Hillary but we know Dean is going to work out his insurgent loser rage by propping Obama up until the moment he rams him through.</p>
<p>Today there was a very illuminating piece in the National Journal by Ron Brownstein in which he said the floor for a democrat with working class voters is greater than 38% and closer to 48% the better. Kerry got 38% and blew it.I’m with I-dad in swearing off tv news. Just reprehensible how derrilict they are in informing people.</p>
<p>So Obama supporters can have a ball and when he loses this deal blame the Clintons. Afterall is this guy up for taking responsibilty for anything? If you think I have an ounce of loyalty to a party that considers me -a white old woman-(even though I’m 5 years older than Obama) irrelevant you’ve got another thing coming. As for my old husband(incidentally he’s well educated so who would have thought he could support Clinton) he’s going to vote for someone with some experience and spine. If Clinton is not the candidate that leaves McCain.</p>