In 1964, the Republican Party nominated Barry Goldwater, who appealed to activists, but was a weak general election candidate. In the long run, the Goldwater movement infused the GOP with energy that helped the party in later election cycles.
What if the Republicans approach the 2012 elections the way they approached the 1964 election? Instead of nominating a strong candidate for the general election the GOP goes with someone like Ron Paul, Michelle Bachmann or Sarah Palin.
What if Obama decided to be the VP nominee in 2012 and had his delegates nominate Hillary Rodham Clinton?
Ok. Sometimes the media is just funny. Well, funny to watch. Maybe not funny to be on the other end of a media swarm.
That's exactly where one Hillary delegate -- Bonnie Grabenhofer of Aurora -- found herself this morning at the Illinois Delegation Breakfast. Carol Marin said to the media around her, "There's a Hillary delegate." One video camera was immediately thrust in her face. Not two minutes afterward, Bonnie is surrounded by media, lights, cameras and microphones all less than a foot from her face.
And she handled it with unusual aplomb! I'll admit I wasn't part of the swarm. I can't speak to what she said. But I watched as she dealt with a situation usually reserved for high powered politicians with dignity. And everyone was impressed -- especially the media in my surroundings.
poor hillary. she just can't get a break. she's coming to hammond, indiana tomorrow, but she's calling illinois women to help fill the hammond civic center.
mrs. bored, a longtime democratic activist, received a robocall from hillary clinton "herself." but you can understand why. first, washington high school rejected the clinton campaign's request to hold a rally there (in south bend). then 25 indiana legislators, including it's hispanic member, endorsed barack obama. many of them are from northwest indiana, where hillary is struggling to fill the auditorium.
we find out today that the question really is, do you want wisconsin to vote red or blue this november? a survey usa poll shows barack would beat john mccain in wisconsin while mccain would win the state if hillary was the nominee (barack 52% to 42% mccain; mccain 49% to 42% hillary). so what happens tomorrow is a harbinger of things to come november.
but this isn't on the minds of anyone up here. we are just really focused on turning out barack voters, and winning wisconsin. in many ways, things become very mechanical at this time before an election: make sure all your volunteers are scheduled for election day, get everything ready for them for tomorrow, and reminding your supporters to vote tomorrow.
it started raining in the middle of the night, and the day ended with it snowing up here in milwaukee. the hillary rally that i was going to catch got postponed (due to weather) and the obama campaign canceled appearances by barack, governors sebelius and napolitano (video) -- although we didn't cancel any of the canvassing events on tap. nor did any of the surrogates that came up from illinois get cancelled. we saw preachers come up, state senators, alderman moore (who stayed overnight) and others. it was the chicago storm. nothing was gonna keep people away.
this morning, we learned that the office i am working out of knocked on 6,000 doors and generated 2,000 votes for barack. that's not a return rate of one-third, although our success in these precincts (called wards in milwaukee) has been phenomenal. our universe through saturday was 312 precincts (ok, wards) with a total of 65,000+ voters. as of today, we only had eight precincts where we had contact packets remaining. we had been that successful in getting to people's doors.
With all the talk of superdelegates deciding the race between Clinton and Obama, I thought I'd take a look and see which way our Illinois superdelegates are turning:
(I thought it would be worth getting a sense of where the PSB readership is on the Presidential race (and the poll on the right side of the home page is pretty stale and moldy at this point). - promoted by Jim in Chicago)
I know many of us are sad about Edwards dropping out of the presidential race. Is it overly dramatic to say that I am heartbroken??? Maybe. But, I thought this might be a good time to put a quick post up with a poll question.
As of today, who would you vote for in the democratic primary if your ONLY choices were Hillary and Barack?
I know these are not your only choices but I think this may be an interesting poll nonetheless.
With hopes of wringing some Democratic presidential convention delegates out of Barack Obama's home state, officials for Hillary Clinton's campaign said today they will bring paid staff into Illinois starting next week en route to the Feb. 5 primary.
Though the numbers of paid workers aren't known at this point pending the results of this weekend's Nevada caucuses and the work going on for the South Carolina Democratic primary, their jobs are to try to buttress a volunteer force of congressional district leaders who helped organize the Clinton campaign's delegate slates.
Looking at the ballot for February 5, I noticed something for the first time. Delegates.
This is probably the first presidential primary I'm voting in. I've always been good about general elections, but not so good with primaries. And, I have a question for the more politically knowledgeable, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
ok, we're not in 2004 anymore. well, maybe. hillary clinton, the prohibitive front runner for the democratic presidential nomination just met the voters. her penchant for a different message (or slogan) a week didn't help. but third??? so hillary has a new label: loser. she's never lost an election before (bill had lost twice before he ran for president) -- but she has now.
hillaryland has been pooh-poohing the electoral magnetism of obama since he got into the race. now they just look stupid. if hillaryland had done their research -- you know, research how obama has won (and lost), and not just look for gossipy sludge to throw around -- they would have been prepared for this. republicans will just overwhelm her in the fall.
obama has a history of driving turnout -- of driving turnout dramatically. deb shore, a progressive who ran at large odds against the chicago democratic machine (and won!) in 2006, continually blamed barack obama for the extraordinary number of signatures that she had to collect to get on the primary ballot. in 2000, turnout in the democratic presidential primary was 809,667. in 2004, 25,481 more democrats voted in the heated us senate primary than in the presidential primary, with a total of 1,242,996 voting for senate. while kerry was winning illinois by 2,891,550 votes, barack obama won 3,597,456 votes. and it's not just turnout, but voter registration that obama drove in 2004. voter registration in illinois soared (and not just in the fall) to 7.5 million voters. aside from obama, no democratic campaign had an incentive to drive voter registration in illinois. but obama has always campaigned in the harold washington tradition.
consistent reports out of iowa and new hampshire call the democratic primaries there a virtual tie. one assumes that what they mean is that these races are polling within the statistical margin of error, with who leads the specific poll dependent on the screen the pollster uses to determine who will vote. we have witnessed a dramatic fall of hillary clinton from her perch.
yet this was widely predicted by those who opposed hillary. hillary's lead in the polls, people observed, was based largely -- if not solely -- on her tremendous advantage in name recognition. hillary was universally known by the electorate. people had opinions about her, and they felt secure in their opinions about her. if pushed, which pollsters are paid to do, democrats had no problem saying they would vote for hillary. the question always was, what will they do when all the campaigns started communicating on a mass scale with voters. those who opposed hillary's candidacy consistently predicted that their candidates' support numbers would rise and hillary's would fall.
hillary's supporters consistently predicted that democrats universally loved hillary, and that the people who supported other candidates were in a small minority. hillary's opponents would come home, they predicted. hillary would run the table. they were wrong.
trying to get all the old stuff off my desk before the new year. i have a couple of videos to upload from yearlykos, the first of which is this one, the complete presidential forum at yearlykos.
to me, this seemed the most relaxed and humorous debate of the ones i've seen.
it's in mp4 format, which you can apparently download and play on your video ipod from the google page...
This is why I don't trust many politicians, especially Hillary Clinton:
Bush just lies outright. Clinton is just trying to have it both ways. Either way, both assume the American Public is stupid. Although I often agree, this is not the viewpoint I want in my elected leaders.
It's good to see Edwards show some spine. I wish all the Democratic candidates would show some fighting spirit. It might be a good indication of how they would stand up to Republicans. I'm quite tired of the sniping, the surrogates, and the background quotes. To get all jock-ish for a second, I'd like our Democrats to man-up, grow some balls, and start swinging. Fight like it means something and you're running for the President of the United States, not the President of the Suburban Social Club.
And, BTW, this goes for our scared of their shadow "leaders" in the Legislative Branch. Stop enabling Bush and the Republicans. Stop playing not to lose. Your lack of willingness to stand up for the Constitution, the will of the people who put you in the majority, and the damn law is just utterly and completely revolting.
After our recent Northside DFA forum on global warming (which was a big success, BTW), I felt motivated to try to compare the presidential candidate's positions on this issue. I found a GREAT website from the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) where you can see the candidates responses to their questionnaires:
I did a side-by-side comparison of the Dem candidate's answers, below are the ones I thought were the most interesting. I included answers by Edwards, Richardson, Obama and Clinton. I would have included Kucinich but he did not fill out the questionnaire.
Once again I really, really like what Edwards has to say. Yes, his cheerleading at the start of the war is extremely troubling. But all of the candidates have given me reasons to mistrust them, so at very least I'd like to go with the one that SAYS what I most agree with. Because if they can't even SAY it, then how are they going to do it? And I think that it is clear that the ambitious nature of Edwards health care proposal combined with his vigorous campaign is what made Hilary come out with an almost identical one -- so that no one could use it as a point against her. If Edwards had not done that, I doubt she would have done anything even close to what she finally did. So if for no other reason than his ability to pull the "frontrunner" -- and it really makes me choke to call Hilary that -- in a more progressive, populist direction, I think Edwards is worth supporting.
I have just seen the column by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann in last Tuesday's NY Post http://www.nypost.co.... They very effectively make the point that fundraising ain't what it used to be.
For the fourth straight week, Illinois Senator Barack Obama (D) has gained ground and he has finally caught New York Senator Hillary Clinton in the race for the Democratic Presidential nomination. It's now Obama 32% Clinton 32% and former North Carolina Senator John Edwards holding steady at 17%. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson is a distant fourth at 3%. Senators Chris Dodd and Joe Biden each attract 1% support. So does General Wesley Clark.
There's an interesting editorial in today's Trib by Larycia Hawkins, a fellow in the Governing America in a Global Era program at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia:
Thanks to Biden's loquaciousness, Americans, both black and white, can breathe a collective sigh of relief. It's now official: The Obama campaign boils down to blackness.
Okay. His critics are right, he is light on experience. But so was George Bush. And to reduce Obama to his skin color is... well, ignorant. If Obama were white he'd still be a stand out, he just might not be getting as much attention this soon.
Garrison Keillor appeared in today's Tribune with an elegant rant. I must say I agree. I hadn't had it pointed out to me quite this way, but we worked hard to take the back the house and the senate. There is a lot of work we sent them there to do.
For six years, Congress has been a herd of buffalo dozing by the waterhole, and now something else is about to happen, a public inquiry into the arrogance, corruption and incompetence of the Current Occupant and his cronies and minions, a truly remarkable story. So let it happen, and spare us the celebrity politics for another six months, please.
I'd like to make it clear to the people who run the Democratic Party that I will not support Hillary Clinton for president:
From Molly Ivins: Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone. This is not a Dick Morris election. Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges.
And now a year later in the WaPo Hillary announces - LIKE IT'S A GOOD THING - she won't use public funds!!!:
By opting out of the system, Clinton will be able to spend as much money as she can raise, both for the primaries and for the general election, rather than being forced to abide by strict spending limits imposed by the Federal Election Commission on candidates who accept public financing.
