“Hillary Clinton won big victories Tuesday night in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island. But she’s now even further behind in the race for the Democratic nomination. How could that be? Math. It’s relentless.” Seemingly a rarity among pundits at the moment, Newsweek‘s Jonathan Alter does the post-Tuesday math, and makes the case I outlined yesterday: the race for the Democratic nomination is over, and Barack Obama has won. “I’ve asked several prominent uncommitted superdelegates if there’s any chance they would reverse the will of Democratic voters. They all say no…The Clintonites can spin to their heart’s content about how big March 4 was for them. How close the race is. How they’ve got the Big Mo now. Tell it to Slate’s Delegate Calculator. Again.“
Tag: Rhode Island
All O’s X’s live in Texas. | Ohio Assemble!
Election Day: If you live in Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island, or Vermont, please consider voting (and caucusing) for Barack Obama today. Even notwithstanding all of the Clinton campaign’s bad behavior of late, it’s time to focus on Sen. McCain and the Bush-Cheney Republicans.
Going down swinging.
Four days out from Zero Hour and as per the kitchen sink strategy, the Clinton campaign attempts a few more sad gambits to stay alive in the race…
Granted, I’m a partisan. But I really don’t see any of these working to Sen. Clinton’s advantage. In fact, they just make her and her campaign look that much more petty. (See also the newest playing of the gender card: “‘Every so often I just wish that it were a little more of an even playing field,’ she said, ‘but, you know, I play on whatever field is out there.’” Aw, it’s hard out here for the wife of a popular, two-term ex-president!) Update: In the meantime, Sen. Obama has picked up four more supers.
Update 2: Let’s see…what else does the Clinton campaign have under the kitchen sink? How ’bout some misleading mailers? (Gasp! Tough mailers? Shame on you, Hillary Clinton!) In any case, one claims “Barack Obama voted against protecting American families from predatory credit card interest rates of more than 30 percent.” As Obama said in a previous debate, he opposed the bill because “thought 30 percent potentially was too high of a ceiling. So we had had no hearings on that bill. It had not gone through the Banking Committee.” (Lest we forget, Sen. Clinton actually voted for the lender-friendly bankruptcy bill in 2001.) The other basically suggests Obama is a corporate stooge on the payroll of the energy companies. Left unsaid: Sen. Clinton has taken more donations from the energy industry.
The Party of Lincoln no longer.
“‘It’s not my party anymore,’ Chafee, who represented Rhode Island from 1999 until 2007, told The Providence Journal in an article published Saturday.” As seen over at Now This, former RI Senator Lincoln Chafee has left the GOP. Well, there’s something to be said for a moment of clarity, even when too little, too late. But, really, Senator, where were you when we needed you?
Northern Exposure?
“Historically, the major parties in America have yoked together the most disparate groups for long periods. The New Deal Democrats were a party of Northern liberals and Southern segregationists. But once Lyndon Johnson committed the Democrats to civil rights for African Americans, the white South up and left — a process that took 40 years to complete but that left the Democrats struggling to assemble congressional and presidential majorities and that converted the Republicans into a party where Southern values were dominant. Now the non-Southern bastions of Republicanism may themselves up and leave the GOP, seeing it as no longer theirs.” The American Prospect‘s Harold Meyerson sees potential for a realignment of northern moderates come Tuesday. Well, let’s hope. Chafee looks like toast (and he’s acting like it, too), but there are still a lot of undecideds — between 15 and 20% — in that Rhode Island race. And, lest we forget, our very own president, much as he’d like us to think otherwise, is a scion of the North as well.
Chafee Safe?
In somewhat unhappy news for prospects of a Senate takeover in November, GOP moderate Lincoln Chafee withstands a primary challenge from his right, in the form of Cranston mayor Steve Laffey, 54-46%. Still, Democrat (and son of Chafee’s father’s roommate at Yale) Sheldon Whitehouse is effectively tied with Chafee in recent polls, so the damage from a bruising primary race may still pay dividends for the Dems.
The Party of Lincoln?
“It is no secret that I have serious questions about this Administration’s policies in the Middle East.” Desperate to shore up his maverick cred before the GOP primary next week, Sen. Lincoln Chafee puts a hold on the GOP’s planned Bolton coronation. (Of course, the UN would never have had to put up with Bolton in the first place were it not for Chafee’s capitulation last year.)
Get the Lead out.
A (belated) follow-up: Last year, I posted here about the efforts by major chemical companies to bury Deceit & Denial, the recent work by public health historians David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, which found that said companies knowingly obfuscated, downplayed, and generally lied about the fact that some of their products caused cancer. A few weeks ago, the other shoe dropped, when — relying on the documents unearthed by Rosner & Markowitz — a Rhode Island jury found lead paint manufacturers guilty of “public nuisance.” “The verdict on the issue of liability paves the way for a potential damage award of millions of dollars in cleanup and mitigation costs.” And, since then, California has reinstated a class-action case against the lead paint industry, and insurance companies are looking to drop the policies of lead paint manufacturers, since they “didn’t disclose the dangers of lead paint when they purchased their policies.”
A Crisis of Conscience.
“In heavily Democratic Rhode Island, he has been a Republican since birth; his parents named him Lincoln after the first Republican president. He says he is waiting for the moderate wing of the party to rise again; in the meantime, he was asked if he went to bed at night wondering how he could remain a Republican. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I don’t deny that.’” Also in the NYT, GOP moderate Lincoln Chafee contemplates pulling a Jeffords. Although he says he’s sticking with his party for now, Chafee has already declared he won’t be voting for Dubya this election cycle…and it seems doubtful that this White House will take kindly to such a decision.