2008 Primaries Thread

wtf comments

"Hillary Rodham...Smith.... would not be elected to anything. She is just not that good of a politician on her own. This is not taking into account her marxist-neoconservative ideology for a moment which certainly would not help either."

marxist neoconservative?

Irving Kristol?

Allan Bloom?

you can figure this one out shakey

Edwards staying in the race helps Obama. Anti-CW, I suppose, but it's true.

Anti-CW, I suppose, but it's true.

i'd take exception to both poles of that sentence, potentially. i think the CW is that no one knows where edwards supporters go, and that it's right. sure, he could be spoiling hillary's great white victory party in the South. but is an obama nomination conditioned upon his winning a couple of red state primaries via the black vote (an argument that echoes with the new hillary campaign line that obama is the 'black candidate' a la jesse and al before him rather than the consensus political star like her hubby that he appeared to be after iowa) rather than the big pieces in the delegate pie? i don't think so. maybe a few people in NY and CA and IL are for Edwards because he's the conservative-seeming union man, but those folks tend to go with the party standard-bearer and have already realized who's the loser and who's the winner in that race this time around, and thus I think they've already realigned to Hillary as reflected in polls. to the extent people in those states are still sticking with edwards at this point, though, i think there's a decent chance it's for ideological reasons - they're for the angrier leftmost dude. which isn't to say they'd realign automatically to obama. a fair number of people on the left seem to distrust him on ideological or attitudinal or even constitutional (not the document) grounds (david brooks in the times today mentioned people who reject candidates because they remind them of someone they didn't like in high school). and hillary might pick off some of them with her aura-of-inevitability pivoting towards attacking bush more vocally, and her hillary=change and no-difference-on-iraq neutralizing. but i don't think you can just assume that she would win a majority of his supporters.

i think there are a fair number of people who are for edwards because of his hair because he's a compromise in a sense between the other two - he talks left and is demographically right, he's young but not that young, he's not 'of washington', but he's not 'inexperienced' either, he's not old news like hillary, but is less of a 'risk' than obama. if he's gone, these people could resign themselves to hillary, or take a chance on obama, and i wouldn't want to call which one. or maybe i'm naive, and these democrats just like white people.

guys, Obama wants to be a game-changing map-changer like Reagan who turned a whole generation/demographic onto his party by personality alone, he must be a secret neocon wingnut, amirite?

yeah that reaction was lols, but still kind of expected. like positively invoking reagan IN ANY WAY wasn't gonna provoke the kneejerks. It's also smacks of more obama seed-planting for the GE before the primary's over.

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Huckabee_gave_speech_to_white_supremacists_0118.html

"is you is or is you ain't my constituency?"

romney won nevada. haha!

no surprise there - it's a caucus and they've got a coupla mormons out there. the real questions here are 1) can huckabee beat mccain in SC or come close, and 2) what happens in FL. if McCain's stll in solid 1st going into 2/5, this thing's over. if Huck or Romney are still threatening, we could be in it for the long haul. if romney manages to win FL, there's a chance momentum would swing enough mccain people his way that he could come out king on super tuesday, but that might be a stretch.

I want Rudy to be strong in FL and Thompson to make a good showing in SC so that nobody drops out and the GOP race stays crazy wide open for weeks

huckabee beat mccain in SC

S.C. is huge for McCain. He's never won a closed-primary of GOP voters, I don't think, so a win here today would give him huge momentum on Super Tuesday. So GO HUCKABEE.

http://www.brendancalling.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/huckabee.jpg

I want Rudy to be strong in FL and Thompson to make a good showing in SC so that nobody drops out and the GOP race stays crazy wide open for weeks

-- dmr, Saturday, 19 January 2008 19:10 (37 minutes ago) Link

seconded

holy shit NV caucuses getting crazy

The Guiliani "At Least We Beat Duncan Hunter" Express chugs along.

CNN calling NV for Clinton

CNN projecting small Hillary win in Nevada. Obama takes the rural counties where no one lives.

Boo.

Who won the radioactive mutant vote in the nuclear testing counties?

kucinich duh

so what does this mean for obama? does his whole candidacy come down to sc?

no its still up in the air till super tues, rite?

idk :/

If Obama loses SC he's just gonna keep losing.

Does Thompson drop out if comes in 3rd in SC, or hang on pathetically til Super Tues.

am i wrong or does it feel like obama's outlook has taken a dramatic turn for the worse since new hampshire? would a well-timed pre-super tuesday dropout from edwards be enough to reverse the tides?

yeah it might. edwards being in it just helps Hilary at this point.

If Obama loses SC he's just gonna keep losing.

pretty much agree w/ this, without some sort of concrete momentum shift he can't compete on 2/5

am i wrong or does it feel like obama's outlook has taken a dramatic turn for the worse since new hampshire? would a well-timed pre-super tuesday dropout from edwards be enough to reverse the tides?

Yes, Obama's lost a lot of pizzaz since N.H. However, his strong showing in Iowa and N.H. convinced many African-Americans that he can win, so that migth help in in S.Ca. and beyond. But if he doesn't win S.Ca., it's going to be a very -- very -- uphill battle for him. It probably already is.

And it's debatable who Edwards' continued candidacy hurts the most: Obama or Clinton. See linked article above.

fuck i didn't realize that edwards only has about 5%. its not exactly like he hasn't been paying attention to NV either, iirc, so what happpens now? is this deflating enough for him to consider an early exit?

xpost

i guess what i'm asking is, if these results hold true, is edwards still on pace to pull in enough delegates to play kingmaker somewhere down the road or does this loss change the big picture for him?

fucking NV

obama's been v. anti-casino in IL so i'm kind of not surprised

i guess what i'm asking is, if these results hold true, is edwards still on pace to pull in enough delegates to play kingmaker somewhere down the road or does this loss change the big picture for him?

Edwards' delegates won't mean anything unless Obama turns things around (starting with S.Ca.).

is this deflating enough for him to consider an early exit?

apparently not, they're saying they're in till the end

http://tpmelectioncentral.com/2008/01/edwards_on_nevada_loss_im_in_this_until_the_end_for_the_sake_of_middle_class.php

yeah, delegates or not, his goal is to stick around as long as possible and make himself a pain in the ass to try to leverage what support/influence he has into a job issue promises from the winner

btw, why is bill bennett on my television? is there some sort of welfare program for disgraced neocons going on?

why is bill bennett on my television?

He was probably hanging out in Vegas this weekend anyway.

he already stole the joke from us, the fat fuck

lol @ mitt's entrance music in vegas - "a little less conversation." you know, from Ocean's Eleven.

I wonder if Ron Paul coming in 2nd will cause pundits to write off Nevada as an aberrant state.

are we really going to get stuck with clinton? it seems so wrong

I wonder if Ron Paul coming in 2nd will cause pundits to write off Nevada as an aberrant state.

i don't think anyone's surprised that a state with a lot of rural western wackos would throw a little extra ron paul's way

Does Nevada have a big Mormon population, being next to Utah and all?

Delegate-wise, the only thing that's putting Clinton far ahead of Obama is superdelegates. Otherwise, they're neck and neck. Unfortunately, the actual delegate counts haven't mattered in years.

I'd actually feel bad for Giuliani were it not for the fact that if elected he'd destroy the world.