The Bane of the Democrats

Is Hillary Rodham Clinton.

She is pushing, and pushing, and pushing that Michigan and Florida be counted. There is one problem, and I find this upsetting: Obama and Clinton AGREED, yes AGREED not to campaign in Florida and Michigan because they broke party rules.

Clinton AGREED to this, but now for her own personal gain and to no benefit of the party she is absolutely hurting the party in every conceivable way. She agreed not to campaign in those two states, but now that she “won” the states she wants them to be counted. And by “win” I mean being the only big name on the ballot in Florida with an upstart no one knew in Obama as the opponent and her being the ONLY person on the ballot in Michigan.

The more Clinton talks the more she stirs the emotions of the voters in Florida and Michigan and the worse Obama looks even though it’s not his fault. He simply complied with the request of the party, as did Hillary.

But Hillary is a victim of double talk on this. She’s changing her tune and it makes her sound good. But it hurts the party in the long run.

Note to Mrs. Clinton: do the Dems’ a favor and stop. Double talk again and downplay the votes of Michigan and Florida. Howard Dean’s plan has always been to seat the delegates after a candidate has been selected, but guess what? He can’t do that with you in the race.

This hurts the Democrats chances in November as Obama is in Florida trying to appease voters. He’s going to need that state in November against McCain, but the Republicans will have a field day there if this doesn’t get resolved soon.

Hillary, please think of your party and concede defeat.

Superdelegates, please end this.

It’s only going to get worse.

Call it

It’s time to call it. The democratic primaries are essentially over unless Hillary Clinton pulls off the comeback of the.. well… I can’t think of a time frame large enough so I’ll say the greatest comeback ever in any contest ever.

It’s that bad… seriously.

There are six left and Obama is favored in three and Clinton is favored in three. Numbers say Obama just needs about 160 delegates to clinch while Clinton needs 370 or so.

Unless she absolutely dominated the rest of the election and the remaining superdelegates felt sorry for her and went for her anyway, there’s no way she can win. There really isn’t.

So, it’s time for Mrs. Clinton to pack it up and call it the end. It’s over, and it’s officially time to concentrate on the general election.

Forget ‘Bitter.’

I decided to skip watching that little debate between Clinton and Obama today, okay so maybe I just wanted to watch my San Jose Sharks in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, but really… I’m getting tired of all the talk about Obama being and elitist and calling people bitter.

I just don’t understand how it makes him bitter. I really don’t.

Maybe I’m wrong, so maybe someone could tell me… but I don’t get it.

I’ll relate it to this: I’d call Red Sox fans bitter… or okay, they were bitter before they won these two World Series recently. They’d always mess up somehow against the Yankees and watch the Yankees pull it off, at least most of the time.

Red Sox fans were bitter, it was one of the reason they hated the Yankees.

Actually, it’s more like common sense. People get bitter when they’re struggling. It happens, nothing to be ashamed of. I don’t understand how that made Obama elitist.

Me thinks Clinton is getting a bit on the desperate side.

And maybe I’m not a politico… but I’m just getting tired of this getting dragged on, and on, and on. I just want Obama to wrap this up so I can concentrate on this national election.

Sure, I’ll fire up Google News and read about the latest happenings, but I’m not going to follow every detail like I did around Super Tuesday.

Oh, and Go Sharks. If you don’t like hockey you should really watch just one playoff game. They really are something special.

Uh oh Hillary?

Hillary Clinton will say that she’s winning and leading for the nomination and all that. She’s happy and touting her victories in California, New York, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. On the surface, you might say Clinton is the front runner.

But… wait. Clinton was ahead by about 20 points nationally just a couple months ago. But now? Obama and her are in a basic dead heat, especially since Obama won a whopping 13 states last night. In the delegates both candidates are also in a dead heat.

Ok, maybe you still give Clinton the edge and possibly the momentum for blunting Obama’s comeback. I mean, she did win California and New York. She also won by double digits in both.

Thing is… she just donated $5 million to her own campaign. Obama just got $32 million in the month of January alone. There’s still a long way to go and one candidate clearly has more money than the other at this point.

Not only is she potentially running out of money, but now MSNBC reported that Hillary’s staff is working for FREE. Yes, free. That’s not good, as you might imagine. Politico.com reports that sources close to Obama say he’s on pace for $30 million in February.

Uh oh Hillary?

But you gotta wonder. Hillary was favored by so much just a couple weeks ago, and now they’re even. She could’ve went for the jugular, but now she’ll have to slowly grind it out. This reminds me of a sporting event or a game or a match or whatever you term it. The underdog is hanging around and hanging around and is being allowed to hang around by the favorites.

Obama is taking advantage of his opportunities and Clinton isn’t.

And now we’re entering the fourth quarter of the conference finals with a tie.

Who’s gonna make it to the championship?

Initial reactions to Super Tuesday.

It’s safe to say that Sen. McCain has wrapped up the Republican nomination. With Romney and Huckabee dueling it out over second place McCain continues to garner states and keep his front runner status. As we continue with the states I’m sure McCain will continue to take states despite not being amazingly popular with conservatives.

However, there might be a problem with him during the General Election. He failed to get any of the southern states. Huckabee essentially sweeped those while Romney took a lot of the northern states, including Alaska.

On the Democrat side, it’s essentially a tie. Though, it’s an impressive tie for Obama. He was way back in the polls a month ago and now he’s neck and neck with Clinton and won more states than her.

It’s been a long and exciting Super Tuesday, but tomorrow morning we’ll get on the delegate counts.

Just a side note: My condolences to the families and friends of the victims of the tornados in the south. Hopefully they can get aid as soon as possible.

Obama v. Clinton

Last night we finally got to see Obama and Clinton go at it alone one on one, and well… they were pretty nice to each other. They both played it safe and didn’t go after each other too hard, but there were some things that stood out.

When asked how she could be an agent for change if the country has been headed by a Clinton or Bush for the past twenty plus years she responded with a non-answer. To her credit it was an entertaining non-answer, but a non-answer nonetheless. In case you didn’t catch it, she said something to the effect of: ‘a Clinton had to clean up after the first Bush and maybe it’s time for another Clinton to clean up after a Bush.’

I found it funny that both candidates talked about the rich not needing tax cuts and such things when some of Hollywood’s biggest players were in the audience.

I do believe that Obama is the better candidate of the two, if you had to choose one. He clobbered her when talking about the Iraq war and she did well talking about her health car plan… but… it just doesn’t make sense to me. Let’s see, she wants to mandate health care so that if you can’t afford it you’ll be slapped (most likely gently) with a penalty if you do not have it. So, she’s telling me that I have to worry about finding a way to afford health care if I don’t have enough money to sign up cause I might get hit with a penalty.

Obama’s plan just makes more sense. Lower prices so everyone can get it. I mean, who doesn’t want health care? Is there really anyone who doesn’t want health care and wants to struggle when a medical emergency comes there way? I don’t think so. Look at consumer products. At $600 both the iPhone and PS3 didn’t sell amazingly well, and when the prices dropped to $400 people bought it in droves.

Super Tuesday will be interesting though, and it’s coming up fast.

Now for some other musings:

Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo! and create some actual competition for Google. Yahoo’s stocks have fallen and well, this just seems to good to be true. It would definitely raise questions for Microsoft about buying too much and having too much power and all that, but I’m curious to see what a Yahoo MSN would be like… or Yahoo Live or whatever they want to call it.

Motorola has been struggling for a while now. You can only be carried by the Razr for so long. Silly Motorola, it’s time to hit the drawing board and think of some new phones and designs that don’t milk the Razr. Nokia is clearly the leader of the world but needs to do more in America. They could possibly open up new Nokia Stores and advertise those sweet N series phones they have. The new one, the N 82, is more feature-packed that even the iPhone.

Countdown to Super Tuesday

The nationwide state-by-state voting for the Democratic and Republican Primaries takes place in a little less than a week now, and things are getting just a bit more exciting ’round these here United States.

Firstly, Edwards and Giuliani are out. Giuliani gave his endorsement to Sen. McCain of Arizona while Edwards… well… hasn’t endorsed anyone yet, but it’s hard to see him endorse Sen. Clinton when they’re so different. Oh, and he’s attacked her the most compared to the rest of the Democratic nominees.

An Edwards endorsement for Sen. Obama makes sense as well, especially after Obama took time in his speech today to talk about poverty (something Edwards was centralizing his campaign on).

It’ll be tough for Obama, however. According to the likes of CNN.com and MSNBC.com, Clinton leads in New York and California, which happen to be the two states on Super Tuesday with the most delegates.

I’m excited to see whether the endorsement of the Three Kennedy’s and the debate tomorrow can shift Obama in those two states. It’ll definitely be an interesting couple of days.

On the Republican side it’s essentially between McCain and Romney. McCain will likely take it all unless Romney, or even Huckabee, can pull off some upsets and take back some of the momentum. Although, if McCain wins the nomination there’s a potential problem he could face in the national election. The following sentence:

“I was on the front lines with my friends saying we not only can’t withdraw but we’ve got to have additional troops over there in order for us to have a chance to succeed.”

McCain said that at the GOP debate tonight. And, well, that’s not a very good thing to say when it seems like most of the country is very against the war. Oh, and most importantly want the troops back in the states as soon as possible.

I urge anyone and everyone voting on Super Tuesday to pay attention this weekend. The Super Bowl is on Sunday and people will get a bit distracted with all the Super Bowl Parties and whatnot, but there still are primary elections on Tuesday and they will shape the nomination races in both parties.

Democratic Debates and Pakistan

Debating Democrats

On Tuesday the Democrats were at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA  with another debate in which many people were expecting fireworks. Prior to the debate Senator Barack Obama said he’d be getting more aggressive with Senator Hillary Clinton and did he deliver.

Not only did he deliver, but Senator John Edwards seemed to be the most aggressive one on stage on Tuesday night. Although he seemed to be going too far at times, sometimes going after her character itself. It was important for Clinton to get attacked a bit that night, and especially important for Obama and Edwards, but as Governor Bill Richardson put it, it seemed like they were just attacking her character and she may have won some sympathy votes.

As for who won the debate, I believe Obama had the best performance. He attacked Clinton but didn’t attack her too much, which he needed to do to show that he can stand up when he needs to. Clinton stumbled when confronted with the issue about drivers licenses for illegal immigrants, which is a horrible idea by the way.

I really do wish that Joe Biden  had a better chance of being the Democratic nominee, but it doesn’t look good. Though he should be considered by everyone in about sixty four days, I heard at least three times someone say “I agree with Joe,” or “Joe is right.” He really hit the head with one specific thing though…

Pakistan is the biggest threat to the United States… not Iran.

Joe Biden hit the head when he said that. Iran does not have nuclear weapons yet, while Pakistan does. Pakistan really is out of control. There have been multiple bombings there that have been linked to the Taliban and even Al Qaeda. Now, please tell me. What’s a bigger threat? Iran wanting nuclear weapons or Pakistan having nuclear weapons while unstable. On MSNBC.com they reported that there might be a state of emergency in Pakistan. It really doesn’t come close. Hopefully the media catches on to what Biden said and digs into that story a bit deeper.

Keep your eye out on the news. Pakistan seems to be falling apart.