Gypsysavage’s Weblog

Have Pennsylvanians really changed anything in this race? Rounding up to a 10 delegates earned in a single digit ten-point victory, Clinton is still claiming this as an important win, a mandate to continue until the convention in August. She will also still try to keep Michigan and Florida on the ballot and attempt to give credence to the argument that Pennsylvania will be a battleground State that only she can win come November. If all else fails, the longer she stays in this race, the easier it will be to secure a VP nomination.

In the coming weeks, if not days, we will begin to hear very audible and serious calls for her to concede. Enter the Clinton supporters, championing her to stay on. This will be ugly, if not entertaining.

With record turnout at voting locations through PA today and after watching the candidates’ recycled sound bites flash on network news channels over and over again, I’ve turned my attention for the time being toward John McCain. Everything I’ve ever read about the man makes me like him, God forbid, and if it weren’t for his stance on the war, on which he rests his entire candidacy, I would consider him a wise choice for the presidency.

An old man, bitter, brooding, and often too candid about his economic ineptitude, he still represents to me a pragmatist, someone capable of running the highest office with integrity (as if that ever mattered to me), and competence.

His leftist leanings are appealing, and as someone who breaks rank at the behest of his own conscience (he never much cared to stick by his Republican brethren when it came to legislative reform), he strikes me as a wily statesman who can and will rumble with anyone for right reasons… which makes me wonder: what does he know about the war that I don’t? He’s spoken many times about the troubling and fateful implications of the military industrial complex as an American cultural problem (see, Why We Fight), and he’s been a victim of torture in a damnable war forty years ago, so why is he so adamant about this one?

And is he capable of winning this election? I’m sure. I’d like to think that if Obama wins this primary instead of Clinton, we just may have a constructive discourse on issues that have been ignored for far too long.

Well… it’s here. The closed primaries in Pennsylvania tomorrow may very well determine whom the Democratic Party sends to Denver in August. Clinton carries the elderly, who, unlike their younger counterparts, never fail to come out in droves and crush an election.

According to most polls, Clinton also carries white males making under $30,000 a year (many of whom do cling to their guns and bibles in the face of hard times, contrary to political gaffes), an enormous constituent in a state that has never played such a major roll in a primary.

Obama carries the youth, who have not failed to disappoint in a single election. But if he outflanks the steady barrage of political fire (from reactionary black reverends to pseudo-elitist, albeit truthful, remarks about white America), and earns his keep in Philadelphia and in other urban districts in eastern and central Pennsylvania, he may just narrow Clinton’s margin – or perhaps even overcome it – forcing her to face the music (in this case, Taps). He is also outspending Clinton in television advertisements by at least $6 million.

I would like to take a moment and vent: Clinton’s main argument for staying in the race was, according to her husband, to continue to discuss the issues and give people another choice to face off with McCain. That’s fine. However, almost two months after Bubba made his “let’s all chill out” remark, and after last week’s disappointing debate that showcased the bitter resentments of political backtalk and mudslinging and in which no real issues were discussed, we have had no discourse on healthcare, education, the economy, Iraq, or the constitutional issues now on the Supreme Court backburner like gun control.

Clinton herself said that the reason she is still in this race, unlike her opponent, is her “electability.” But she conceded yesterday that Obama “can win” this election . “I don’t see any contradiction at all. . . . He can be elected; I will be elected,” she said.

So what is the point, if Hillary loses this primary, or at the very least, wins it marginally by single digits, to continue running?

Let us look at the facts:

Obama: 1,635.5 pledged and projected delegates

Clinton: 1,474.5 pledged and projected delegates

Obama: 13,355,209 in popular votes

Clinton: 12,638,123 in popular votes*

At this point, I would not be surprised if Clinton continued to run despite a marginal victory in PA and in the face of fierce opposition from delegates (and after having lost the popular vote as well thus far). In an act of shear political piracy, she will attempt (yet again) to burgle votes from Florida and Michigan. These moves would entail a circus of a convention (although it would be interesting, to say the least, to see two opponents squaring off in Denver as it once used to be done in this country), but it also means that once the Democratic Party chooses its wounded and weary victor, it has weeks, not months, to maneuver against McCain, who will by that time have all the fodder to sling before he begins his final sprint toward Washington. The smell of blood is in the air.

*This excludes the projected numbers of votes in IA, NV, ME, and WA, which have not yet released their popular vote numbers, according to RealClearPolitics.com

Since Pennsylvanians realized their state was in fact an important primary so late in the race, the GOP has been hemorrhaging registered voters. Give it up to the dynamics of a race between a Caucasian woman and African American man, the rhetoric of change, or the disenfranchisement of Republicans living in a party that no longer adheres to the principals of state government and fiscal responsibility. Any one will do.

According to the Philly Inquirer, state Democrats gained 57,651 voters who were either already registered as GOP, Independent, or in another party, and 111,227 new voters since last November. No matter how you look at it, that number is huge. Only 10,754 Democratic voters jumped ship in that same period of time.

A political battleground in the general election, Pennsylvania is a microcosm of the country, swept up into something indefinable and new. I can’t put my finger on it, but I know that this election means more than any other I’ve lived through. I’m psyched to be alive right now.

It would take more than a complete shut-out of the remaining primaries for Clinton to win the Democratic nomination at this point. She would need to win the remaining dozen or so contests, including shepherding a majority of Pennsylvanian votes and the magical reincarnation of the Michigan and Florida primaries (they broke the rules, by the way, and I’ll be damned to suffer another Florida vote). She’s now beholden to the will of the superdelegates. Clinton’s checkmated mathematically, by the AP’s calculations, and must now rely solely on past favors and future promises, anathema to true democracy.

Superdelgates, like the electorate (in some circumstances), can jump ship and vote their conscience, which is what she’s relying on at this point in the race. No one superdelegate or party leader is calling for her resignation from the race at this point because they know the rules – and the consequences – of this race. Shamefully, courting endorsements and pledged votes are as much a part of the democratic process as is the act of checking off a contender’s name in a voting booth.

Clinton needs to reconsider her standing in this race. If she doesn’t, we’re in for a world of hurt.

The relatively even split of delegate votes between the Clinton and Obama camps means a democratic candidate may not be decided until the Denver Convention in August, according to most news sources.

If Super Delegates are a key deciding factor (most of whom are likely to throw their support toward Clinton, unless it were up to shear mathematics, in which Obama would win) and the decision comes down to the wire, I’m afraid the party will be weakened going into the November elections, no matter which candidate is chosen.

As quoted in the Philly Inquirer, Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean said, “The idea that we can afford to have a big fight at the convention and then win the race in the next eight weeks, I think, is not a good scenario.”

Sen. John McCain has until November to rally his base, but the longer we wait for a Democratic Nominee, the less time the Democratic Party will have to come together and defeat what is quickly becoming a very strong Republican nominee for President. Great googly-moogly.

CNN’s coverage of Super Tuesday, with its mural-sized flat screens and shots of pundits manning rows of laptops, looked more like a scene out of NORAD at Defcon 4 than a national network tallying delegates for the 2008 democratic and republican primaries. I laughed out loud at one point as Wolf Blitzer stood in front of the day’s projections – he seemed more like a weatherman in front of a blue-screen blathering about the destruction of a hurricane.

Networks even employed alarming hyperbole; at one point, I heard an anchorwoman say, “And when we return, we’ll look at the aftermath of Super Tuesday.” Excuse me? Is this a primary or another blundered response to a national emergency?

I think I have to go with Obama on February 10th in the Maine caucus. His relatively short tenure in politics and “lack of experience” do not give me pause. In fact, I see it as an advantage. First, he doesn’t have a laundry list of Senate votes that could be picked apart and scrutinized like John Kerry’s, who had a contradictory voting record twenty years long. There are no swift boats gunning for him, and he’s playing the race card well; a democratic candidate who happens to be black, and not a black candidate. Besides, what experience did golden boy G.W. have before being picked by the Supreme Court to ruin the country? Oil companies, record executions, and a professional baseball team? Read the rest of this entry »