Monday Muse; February 5th, March 4th…June 3rd?

March 17th, 2008

Politics Remains In The Foreground

Good news for Michigan, bad news for Florida, good news for Hillary Clinton. Michigan will likely be holding a new primary on June 3rd, according to new draft legislation. The last stumbling block will be the state legislators, who are expected to approve the 12 million dollar contest. Of course, the DNC could always deny the primary, but that seems unlikely. Now that Puerto Rico has moved their contest from a June 7th caucus to a June 1st primary, Montana, South Dakota, and Michigan will finish off the nominating season with a dramatic 3-primary day that will, inevitably, be known as Super Tuesday Three if the candidates are still competing. Michigan would have 126 pledged delegates, and South Dakota and Montana will have 23 and 24 respectively.

Florida has apparently discovered that a mail-in primary is illegal under state law, and as such probably will not have one. The current suggestion is to seat Florida with only half of its delegates, as is suggested by Clinton Supporter and Floridian senator Bill Nelson. The problem with that, of course, is that it disenfranchises all those who chose not to vote because they knew the primary wouldn’t count.

Race To The Finish

Barack Obama plans to make a big speech in Pittsburgh on the topic of race. The Muse is predicting that this will hurt his electoral chances, as he has avoided the subject of race this entire campaign and bringing it in might make people begin to equate him to an Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson. Then again, it could be a political move like Clinton’s crying that gets the world to listen to his rhetoric under the pretext of it being another news story.

Delegate Corrections

Iowa recently held its convention, which proved that pledged delegates you win aren’t actually pledged. Obama had originally won Iowa 16 to 15 (for clinton) to 14 (for Edwards). In the convention, he came out winning 25 to 14 (clinton) to 6 (for edwards), with 8 Edwards delegates and one Clinton delegate switching over to him. California also finally finished counting the votes, which they had to do meticulously and by hand, and found out that Obama had 5 more delegates than initially projected. Texas also finalized their caucus results, which ended up yielding a 98-94 win in the state for Obama. After all of these delegate finalizations, the updated delegate total is 1628 for Obama and 1493 for Clinton. Among pledged delegates, it is 1415 for Obama and 1245 for Clinton, or 52.6% to 46.3% percentage-wise.

Denounced, Rejected, and Repudiated

Barack Obama has written an opinion piece in the Huffington post on his church, denouncing his pastor, Reverend Wright, for his comments in 2001 (”God DAMN America, it’s in the bible.”) This has become the number one story in the media, who question the patriotism of somebody who would be associated with Wright.

John Sidneylectable McCain

Many thought that Clinton’s prolonged run for president would hurt the Democratic party and it seems to be doing just that. At the start of the campaign, a generic Democrat would beat a generic Republican 52%-33%, and all Democrats led McCain by double-digits. As late as two weeks ago, it seemed apparent that Obama would wipe the floor with McCain, while Clinton would at least have a chance against him. While her attacks against Obama have actually hurt her own chances against McCain, against whom she now trails nationally, they’ve also hurt Obama’s chances against McCain. A few weeks ago, Obama and Clinton both led McCain in Florida, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, now they both trail McCain in all those states.

And that’s the Muse.

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