Could this be a shocking year for primary turnout? The local public radio station today said that the voter registration booths at University of Texas at Austin were a mob scene, with people clamoring to get their registrations in before our primary vote on March 4th. It's odd for we Texans to think of ourselves as ever mattering, but if multiple candidates in each party emerge with hopes alive after tonight, then Texas is going to matter. We're very excited about this possibility. Having a vote that matters outside of the local elections is a fresh, exciting thing for many of us. For me, it's like the first taste of a really expensive wine, though not quite at the level of your first orgasm in the presence of another person. (I'm not that much of a political junkie.)
What I don't get is who are all these Republicans voting for McCain? Everywhere I turn, I hear nothing but disparagement of him from his own party. The mainstream media types call him a maverick, but they collectively have what? 2,000 votes? Not enough to swing an election. McCain voters appear to finally, after all these years, be the official silent majority.
Both Senator Obama and Senator Clinton have outspent their Republican rivals three times over in the past two weeks alone. The total amount spent by candidates and special interest groups on advertising is over $169 million, which is an all-time record.
Okay, I totally get that to win, and to change things the way you think they should be changed, there needs to be recognition. But with the rising costs of campaigning, entrance to the political arena is becoming increasingly more difficult. We are all told growing up that any of us could be president someday, but with the prohibitive costs of running for an office, any office, that is not true.
We've heard increasing rhetoric about the change lately, and that's great, but what about all the ideas for change people have that don't have the means to run for office? As of now, it's not something that can be changed, but it's something to think about.
Chris Matthews on MSNBC just moments ago: "The polls have just closed in the state of Arkansas... and we're predicting Hillary Clinton to be the winner there."
At the end of his words, a pretty graphic flipped and spun into the middle of the screen showing an outline of the state and photo of Clinton with a checkmark at her side. In smaller text at the bottom "0%" -- as in, zero precincts reporting.
MSNBC is projecting Hillary Clinton to be the winner in Arkansas before a single vote has been counted and reported. Hasn't the media learned anything since Florida in 2000? I guess, at least this time, the network doesn't have to worry about a competitive network making the opposite call for a Republican.
Anecdotal evidence is coming in that turnout in Minnesota is massive. Minneapolis-St. Paul suburbs Eagan and Edina are both reporting severe traffic jams heading into the DFL caucus sites, and Robin Marty of Minnesota Monitor is reporting that turnout at her caucus site is three times normal.
More returns are coming in: Sen. John McCain has won the Republican primary in New Jersey, Illinois, and Connecticut, and Mitt Romney has won Massachusetts, the state in which he was governor from 2000-2004. Sen. Barack Obama has won Georgia and Illinois, and Sen. Hillary Clinton has won Oklahoma. So far, no big surprises.
With over five million registered voters in the state, Georgia has 103 total Democratic delegates and 72 total Republican delegates.
Barack Obama is not only the projected winner, he's winning big. So far, he's captured 65% of the vote; with 63% of Democratic voters female and 37% male. Interestingly, the largest percentage of voters (35%) in Georgia were between the ages of 45 and 59 years old.
Thus far, Obama has swept the black vote bringing in from 75% to 95% across the various age demographics - except when it comes to young people ages 18 to 29 years old. Maybe unsurprisingly, Obama has captured the support of both black and white voters in this age range.
On the Republican side, McCain is running 36% of the vote to Romney and Huckabee's 30% - the race is close. What I find most interesting about the Republican race in Georgia so far is that it's Huckabee who is garnering the lion's share of the young vote while Romney's sweeping the older American vote.
Georgia looks like it's all Obama this Super Tuesday.
For the last few days, the Internet has been buzzing with impassioned presidential endorsements by feminists, many of whom have been in or even leading the movement for decades and others who are the bright young voices of the present and the future. This extraordinary piece of cultural criticism by Robin Morgan is my personal favorite. Seems the women of America have found their voices concerning whom they do and don't support, thank you very much.
So where then does Andrew Sullivan (yes, the conservative -- though gay and HIV positive -- put those together with "conservative" for an amazing oxymoron) pundit get off in his thinly veiled misogynist attempt to instruct feminists on how to vote? Yes, the same Andrew Sullivan who acknowledged posting ads soliciting "bareback" sex and pled his right to privacy in such matters even while asserting that Roe v wade should be overturned. That Andrew Sullivan.
His punch line: One day, there will be a woman worth electing to the White House. But not this one. Fortunately, Echidne of the Snakes has written an outstanding analysis of Sullivan's warped attempt to retain his own gender's hegemony.
Here's an excerpt:
Because there is always something else that is more important than women. A war must be won before they can get the right to vote, or a depression must be fixed before women's concerns can be addressed, or a revolution must be finished first or an occupier must be vanquished, or something else equally important must take precedence. Women. Never. Come. First. I remember an interview with an Afghan man when the Taliban first came into power there. At first his daughters could go to school only in burqas and wearing gloves. Then they couldn't go to school at all. This educated man said that the time to worry about his daughters' education was to be later. First they needed to get the warring over. And so it goes. Always. In twenty years' time, when some future Andrew Sullivan gives you that very same excuse, remember this post.
Women have always tended to put others before themselves. But as those conflicting e-mails whizzing through cyberspace prove, women are thinking deeply about this election. Whatever reasons we might have for voting one way or another, let us not allow the Andrew Sullivans of the world to determine the worthiness of our decisions.
I just received my trusty New York Times Afternoon Alert saying that the Dow closed down today 2.93%. Now I don’t know much about the stocks, except that my entire happiness after 65 is relying on a robust market, but I do know that this is bad. With all focused on the war in Iraq, health care and immigration, the economy is starting to wail with tell-tale middle child syndrome symptoms. Have we forgotten about the impact that 7 years of ineptitude and gross overspending on “national security?” Of course, I am preaching to the choir here on Rewire about these issues, but it seems like the economy, as well as other former hot button issues like abortion, have gotten lost this year. This is not to say that “new” issues like the environment and same-sex marriage have aren’t 100% deserving of the attention they are getting by our candidates, but if we don’t focus on a wider range of issues (and the media is mostly to blame for the coverage they provide), these “forgotten” issues will begin to rear their ugly heads in much the same way that the Dow is today.
In some ways the Democratic primary in this hyperpolitical city feels like an Introduction to Women and Gender Studies classroom (fittingly enough for a city whose University helped pioneer this field in the 1970s and which continues to have a lively department). Namely, how does one balance/prioritize issues of gender, race and class, especially when these issues compete in a literal sense--embodied by Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and while he was in the race, John Edwards?
The problem--and there are, to be sure, worse problems in politics--is that Berkeley is full of people who have passionate lifelong commitments to all three of the social movements represented by the candidates. Though the contest might now be constructed, at the simplest level, as between the feminist movement and the civil rights movement, John Edwards' support of the labor movement resonated deeply in this community. So though on one level, many are ecstatic at the history-making nature of this race--whoever is ultimately the Democratic nominee will be precedent-making, and a tribute to the staying power of the social movements of the 1970s--many are also agonizing over for whom to vote.
Endless discussions, similar to those already reported on Rewire, are held among friends and acquaintances. "She's more experienced and ‘ready' ." "Yes, but he's more electable. He'll bring in the youth vote." "Yeah, but you can't count on the youth vote. She can better take the dirt the Right will throw at whoever is nominated," and so on.
The reality is that there are very slight differences between these candidates on matters of domestic policy. They are very close on most issues Californians hold dear--environmentalism, reproductive rights, support for labor, and education. Perhaps the one non-trivial difference is their respective health care plans (hers calls for a mandate for all who can to purchase coverage, his doesn't).
The main difference of course is their historic position on Iraq. And this seems to be pushing many Berkeleyites to Obama's corner. Obama signs outnumber Clinton signs in all the neighborhoods I've walked in the last week. If Obama indeed carries the city on the basis of foreign policy, it will hardly be surprising. Berkeley is a city noted for the intense involvement of its city government in national and even international issues, periodically voting, for example, against nuclear weapons. Most recently the City Council voted 8-1 to declare Marine recruiters were "unwelcome" in Berkeley (a move some Council members are now rethinking).
In such a thoroughly Democratic environment as Berkeley, and the surrounding Bay Area, one presumes that whoever wins the nomination will ultimately get the support of most voters. But some have concerns that Obama supporters have been more deeply critical of Clinton than vice versa. For example, Robert Scheer, a long time progressive journalist in California, in an article promoting Obama on the basis of his anti-Iraq stance, was devastating on Clinton's record, and finished his article by reluctantly admitting that "Hillary would probably be better than the Republicans." "Probably"?! No difference between her and McCain who wants to stay in Iraq indefinitely? Not to mention their differences on tax cuts and reproductive rights? This statement is frighteningly reminiscent of the Ralph Nader pronouncement that Gore and Bush were essentially the same. One hopes that political purity among some on the Left will not snatch defeat from the jaws of victory again.
