“‘Sen. Obama will fight for better wages, real health care reform, stronger retirement security, fair trade and an end to the outsourcing of good jobs,’ said Hoffa. ‘He understands the importance of giving workers a voice at work and will fight for strong unions to help rebuild America’s middle class.’” The Teamsters, 1.4 million strong, back Barack Obama, as does the 65,000-member International Brotherhood of Boilermakers. (The Change to Win labor consortium may follow suit tomorrow, although four of its seven member unions already back the Senator.) Meanwhile, Sen. Obama picked up four more superdelegates today: Ron Kind of WI (who said he’d follow his district), Lloyd Doggett of TX, and Dana Redd and Donald Norcross of NJ. (Redd had previously backed Clinton, meaning today’s superdelegate swing was 5.) Update: Change to Win backs Obama, although the three unions not already supporting the Senator abstained from voting: “[T]he three unions released the federation to work for Obama in the upcoming primaries and caucuses.“
Month: February 2008
No ship that small has a cloaking device…
“‘It’s very deep, like in a forest on the darkest night,’ said Shawn-Yu Lin, a scientist who helped create the material at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. ‘Nothing comes back to you. It’s very, very, very dark.‘” Dick Cheney’s soul? Tonight’s lunar eclipse? No, a great leap forward in “transformational optics”…and invisibility cloaks. The “paper-thin material…absorbs 99.955 percent of the light that hits it, making it by far the darkest substance ever made — about 30 times as dark as the government’s current standard for blackest black.”
Losing Ugly.
As I noted last night, the delegate math would now appear to be out of reach for Sen. Clinton. But, from setting up an anti-Obama 527 to launching a new website aimed at changing the rules to the candidate’s “new” “time to get real” speech, the Clinton campaign looks to go down swinging. In related news, John McCain says pass the popcorn. Update: That 527 has its first ad ready to go in Ohio.
You play with matches…
Some comic-book cautionary tales for the day: Rorschach sets fire to a would-be pursuer in a new still from Zack Snyder’s Watchmen, which has wrapped shooting. And Dark Horizons offers a first glimpse at how Aaron Eckhart will look as Harvey Dent…after the incident.
Mahalo, Hawaii.
“It is the place where I feel if things get too hectic, I can come back and get centered, and it will always be in my heart, and I hope if we are successful, I would come to Hawaii. Certainly it would be my preference over Crawford, Texas.” And No. 10: Sen. Obama crushes Hillary Clinton in the home state of his youth, 76%-24%.
Wisco is Disco.
No. 9, No. 9, No. 9…Sen. Barack Obama wins Wisconsin, the land of Feingold and the La Follettes, going away (58%-41%), and eats even deeper into Sen. Clinton’s core constituencies.
Next up, two debates, then the line in the sand: March 4, Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island, and Vermont. These are huge and crucial states, and they will dictate how much longer Sen. Obama has to face a debilitating two-front war. But, I might as well come clean. I’ve been saying this elsewhere since the Potomac primaries, and now I’ll go ahead and say it here: The math is virtually inexorable now, and Sen. Clinton has lost. Her campaign even conceded thus a week ago. It’s now just a question of how badly she and her campaign wants Obama to bleed before she drops out. (To his credit, Mitt Romney got out early so as not to hamstring his party’s candidate in the general. Sadly, I doubt we can expect the same of Sen. Clinton.)
This is not to say Ohioans, Texans, Rhode Islanders, and Vermonters, to say nothing of Pennsylvanians, Kentuckians, North Carolinians, etc., should now become complacent. Far from it — now’s the time to redouble our efforts, and end this race, sooner rather than later. The tide has turned, and, to quote my former employer (who would tell Sen. Clinton the same), “When your opponent is drowning, throw the son of a bitch an anvil.” All that being said, I just don’t see Sen. Clinton coming back at this point. And, if she somehow finds a way to wrest the nomination from Obama, it’ll have been by dragging the Democratic party so deeply through the mud of asinine smears and obvious half-truths that the nomination will be worthless. It is time for her to go.
It’s late, I’m still waiting for the Hawaii results, and I’m still pretty peeved about Clinton’s ridiculous plagiarism gambit. But, If you’ll forgive the lapse into LotR metaphors, the treason of Saruman, once the noblest and wisest of our order, is almost subdued. The Battle for Middle-Earth is only beginning.
Penn no better in Penn.
More signs of post-Feb. 5 incompetence from the Clinton camp. Just as they only recently “discovered” the rules in Texas, they somehow didn’t manage to file a full slate of delegates in Pennsylvania, despite having the backing of the state’s Democratic machine and despite Clinton supporter Gov. Ed Rendell giving the campaign an extension to do so. “It appears Clinton came up 10 or 11 candidates short across a number of congressional districts, including two in Philadelphia. That’s close to 10 percent of the 103 delegates to be decided by voters. It appears the shortage would’ve been double that if Rendell hadn’t extended last week’s candidate filing deadline by a day and a half, ostensibly due to bad weather.”
Cuba Libre.
“To my close compatriots…I say that I will not aspire to nor accept — I repeat, I will not aspire to nor accept — the office of President of the Council of State or Commander in Chief.” After nearly fifty years in power, Fidel Castro steps down in Cuba. Hopefully, this will encourage our leaders to begin advocating a more reasonable and sane policy towards our neighbor in the Caribbean.
Of Cheeseheads and Aloha.
If you’re a reader hailing from Wisconsin or Hawaii today, please consider voting for Barack Obama.
Second-Class Citizens.
“‘Superdelegates are not second-class delegates,’ says Joel Ferguson, who will be a superdelegate if Michigan is seated. ‘The real second-class delegates are the delegates that are picked in red-state caucuses that are never going to vote Democratic.‘” More bad news for non-Clinton-voting states: You’re not only insignificant to Mark Penn, a Clinton campaign co-chair thinks you’re second-class. Also, to the 2004 red-states of Ohio and definitely Texas, I’m afraid this pretty clearly includes you as well. Sorry, but, as always, please vote Democratic regardless.