Friday, February 15, 2008
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Meet the Democratic Party Super Delegates. A complete list.
This is not a very spooky group. Some interesting characters, mostly former or current members of congress and people who show up to Central Committee meetings. You could be a super delegates, just go to your monthly county meetings and raise your hand once in a while.
By the way neither Obama or Clinton will have enough delegates no mattter what happens between now and then. The SD's will vote for the "people's choice", because they don't want to piss off half the party and risk loosing what should be a slam dunk election.
The Democratic candidate will be Barack Obama and Barack will have a 75% chance to beat McCain. Barack will have more money, more popular support on the issues, an excited base, the capacity to turn many red states purple like Virginia. Even if Barack doesn't win in the purple states he'll force McCain to expend resources where as in most years he wouldn't have to defend so much territory, the final clincher is demographics. Obama's major concern right now should be making sure the states have enough voting materials for all the voters that are going to show up. Obama should get about 15-18 million voters for about every 10 million McCain voters. Watch Ohio, take the total number of Obama and Clinton voters, and compare that to the GOP turnout, it's the best predictive poll we have. The Clinton voters will comeback in November to vote for Barack at a much more robust rate then will the Huckabee and Romney voters, because the Democrats like all their major candidates, while the GOP is totally fractured. Yes, I expect the majority of GOP voters to come back, but it's ridiculous to expect that they won't suffer major attrition.
All indications point to a landslide, so long as Barack doesn't defeat himself and the GOP related 527 arrows fall like teflon coated real political capital. Obama has the closest thing to a mandate currently of all American politicians. I expect the GOP to go at Obama like they did with Harold Ford. The anti-Obama forces will play every card in the deck, but if McCain holds true to his supposed ethical code, he won't hit too far bellow the belt, (we'll see.) What's different about the internet era of politics, is that voters are becoming much more savvy towards attacks. Gutter politics still work, no doubt, but more people have caught on to how the system works, voters who support Obama in part support him because he stands in opposition to cynical, tired, negative politics.
If elections are about voters embracing the future and moving on from the past, then you could have no two more dichotomous figures then Obama and McCain. I respect McCain, he's only wrong 82% of the time, and as I've mentioned before McCain has seeded victory to the Democrats on Campaign Finance Reform/Ethics, Global Warming's existence, McCain is rational about the immigration issue, he knows supply side economics is not stimulative, McCain believes in the international rule of law and rejects torture, McCain is willing to be practical and find common ground on virtually any issue.
I could never treat John McCain like some Republicans treated John Kerry, McCain deserves our respect for how he is trying to drag the GOP by the ears into the 21st century, and we can also respectfully choose Obama because of his immense capacity to be great and the fact that he's preferable to McCain on every issue. Obama has only the fear mongers to defeat now, don't be one of them. Help the Obama cause to what ever extent you can, remember it's been eight long years of bad policy and unacceptable ethics, you don't want to be kicking yourself later if the GOP pulls a NY Giants over New England in the Super Bowl. The next president could end up appointing three justices to The Supreme Court. This is a crucial election.
