Hillary Gets Offensive on Superdelegates

We’ve been saying all along don’t count Hillary out — she’s still got the best machine and believes the Presidency is hers by fiat. But now that she’s on the ropes, on the verge of receiving a knockout blow she’s fighting back. Remember, the most dangerous animal is a cornered one. And Hillary’s definitely in a corner.

A new domain http://www.delegatehub.com/ has been registered on Feb 14 — take a look at who registered it:

Administrative Contact :
Hillary Clinton for President
p497z8kq2yn@networksolutionsprivateregistration.com
ATTN: DELEGATEHUB.COM
c/o Network Solutions
P.O. Box 447
Herndon, VA 20172-0447
Phone: 570-708-8780
Record expires on 14-Feb-2009
Record created on 14-Feb-2008
Database last updated on 16-Feb-2008

The website itself claims “Paid for by Hillary Clinton for President”.

The site is a battle over superdelegates — one we’ve written about several times. Basically, Hillary can lose the primaries and still be the nominee, due to backroom deals. Search what we’ve written about before for a full primer on superdelegates.

But on to what the website says:

FACT: There is a clear path to an overall delegate majority (pledged + automatic) for Hillary Clinton after all states have voted — with or without Florida and Michigan.

Contrary to the Obama campaigns claims that the race is over, all voters should have their say before a candidate declares victory and tries to circumvent the democratic process. The race is currently a virtual tie, with the campaigns now separated by a small handful of delegates, barely 1% of all the delegates to the Democratic Convention.

That’s debatable. She’s in a must-win in Texas and Ohio or it’s basically over. And calling them “automatic” instead of what they are — superdelegates — is a nice slight-of-hand. Superdelegates are not voted on in primaries, they’re privileged Democratic members who can nullify the will of the people.

Democrats have 4,049 delegates, and CNN reports Obama has 1,319 delegates, Hillary 1,250. It’s likely neither can get the majority required before the convention, thus the battle over superdelegates (who will decide the nomination). Don’t be surprised for Howard Dean to try and broker a deal — Hillary takes the Presidency, Obama the VP (“For the good of the party”). He’ll try and sell it by saying Obama is a young guy, and after eight years he’ll be in a solid position to run again.

FACT: Florida and Michigan should count, both in the interest of fundamental fairness and honoring the spirit of the Democrats’ 50-state strategy.

An important part of the debate over delegates is the role of Florida and Michigan. Hillary Clinton believes that the voices of 600,000 Michigan primary voters and 1.75 million Florida primary voters should be heard at the Democratic convention.

Hillary’s beginning to sound like Al Gore — trying to change the rules after the fact to benefit her, all the while claiming it’s about “making every vote count”. We didn’t like what the Democratic party did to Michigan and Florida, but that’s the rules, and everyone has to follow them. Anything else at this point would be fundamentally unfair. The states knew the rules before they moved their primaries, and accepted the result.

Elections have rules, and you have to follow them. The time to challenge the rules was before the election, not after.

Of course, if Obama won those states, we’re sure Hillary would be just as vocal about getting those delegates seated as well, for fairness. Yeah, right.

Obama Leads Nationallly for First Time

Rasmussen Reports latest poll has Obama leading Hillary 46-41 for the first time.

Is Hillary in trouble? We’ll see. She’ll fight back with the best and biggest machine politics has ever seen, and don’t forget Bill. Hillary believes the Presidency is hers by fiat; the most dangerous animal is one backed into a corner.

Get your popcorn.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows—for the first time ever—Barack Obama leading Hillary Clinton in the race for the Democratic Presidential Nomination. Today’s results show Obama earning support from 46% of Likely Democratic Primary Voters while Clinton attracts 41% (see recent daily numbers). Prior to Obama’s Primary and Caucus victories last Saturday, Clinton enjoyed a six percentage point lead.

Primary Updates – Democratic Superdelegates and Where Conservatives Go From Here

The Republican race is over. Huckabee should step aside as no point remains in staying in the race — even Ron Paul quit over the weekend. It’s a done deal (and has been for a while). But if you didn’t catch Romney’s speech where he dropped out, you should read the transcript. The only question is — where was this guy all along? (Laura Ingraham reported he wrote the speech himself, so perhaps it was poor advice/speech writing during the campaign) Perhaps Romney had bad advisers, but the flip-flops and nasty attacks turned away a lot of voters.

Additionally, Romney had (has) a tough time convincing people he really is a true conservative — count us in the skeptical group. He was liberal as a governor, and just seemed to flip when he needed to. But is he a conservative governing in a liberal state, or a liberal running as a conservative? Nobody knows for sure.

But now, he’s got a few years to work on his convictions. If he wants to be taken seriously next time, he’s got to work on his conservative credentials. Stay involved in the RNC and some conservative groups (joining up with Newt wouldn’t hurt either) and work as a conservative. If Romney thinks he can vacation for the next four years and pop up claiming to be the true conservative, it simply won’t work.

For Conservative voters as well, they need to be involved NOW. Don’t wait four years and then complain where are the conservative candidates? By the time the primaries come around, it’s too late — the major candidates are already chosen. Some voters vote for minor or third party candidates to “send a message” to the party they need to shift, but anyone watching politics for the last few decades understands the futility of that strategy — it hasn’t worked in the past, didn’t work this year, and will fail in the future.

Paul’s (or any other minor/third-party) token movement will never shift the party — if you’ve watched politics for a few decades, you’ve seen this before and it always amounts to zip; this time is no different. The revolution isn’t over, there never was one. Sorry guys — you’ve underestimated the inertia in politics, and the huge motivation for the parties NOT to change.

It’s time for Conservatives to begin working for the elections in 2012 and beyond. Change doesn’t come during primaries, by then it’s too late. For Conservatives, please do not disappear, but continue to work inside the party to effect change, and realize we’re Conservatives, NOT Republicans. When Republicans are conservative, we’ll support them, but when they’re wrong, we will point out their wrongness and work for constructive change.

If you’re a Conservative looking for somewhere to go, try Newt Gingrich’s group. He’s working for real change (on both sides of the aisle with a platform the vast majority of Americans can support), and understands the Republican party will have to be lead to Conservatism, they won’t be leading. Visit http://americansolutions.com and look for “The Platform of the American People”.

And that’s it for Republicans and our plea for Conservatives to remain involved — if you don’t stay involved, don’t expect 2012 to be any different.

The Democrats are still going strong. It’s 50-50 Obama/Clinton and at this point it’s almost guaranteed the race lasts until the convention. For either to win now, they’d have to get about 3/4 of the remaining delegates, and with even support so far, unless a quantum shift occurs, this battle will be decided at the convention.

More than likely, it will be Democratic Superdelegates who determine who the Democratic nominee is. It’s likely neither will have a majority by convention time, and with hundreds of Superdelegates available, it’s those people (not the voters) who will ultimately choose the Democratic nominee. (For a primer on Superdelegates, see our article Why change is hard).

How the voters react to their choice being reversed (if it is) will be interesting.

Senate Democratic Leadership Stalls Stimulus Package

Senate Leadership (Harry the-war-is-lost Reid) brought the stimulus bill to a vote he knew would fail. Why would he do such a ridiculous thing? He’s trying to put the Republicans in a bad position in an election year. But the Republicans called his bluff, and he’s left holding a pair of deuces.

Both sides are to blame. Reid would not allow amendments or debate, insisting on an all-or-nothing vote on his billions of spending additions to the stimulus bill. Republicans (feeling slighted) refused to go along with all the additional spending. But most of the blame is Reid’s — he knew the bill would fail, and thus the stimulus package is delayed.

Romney Suspends Campaign at CPAC

Romney announced he’s quitting the race at CPAC. We thought as much a few days ago when he said he was in it until the convention; we thought there’d be one more final flip-flop in a campaign of mega flip-flops.

“If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror,” Romney will say at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.

“This is not an easy decision for me. I hate to lose. My family, my friends and our supporters… many of you right here in this room… have given a great deal to get me where I have a shot at becoming President. If this were only about me, I would go on. But I entered this race because I love America, and because I love America, I feel I must now stand aside, for our party and for our country,” Romney said.

We’ll wait for the official text of the speech, but if this is what he’s saying, it’s a class act. We never liked Romney as a candidate, but if he learns not to flip-flop and continues speaking like this, perhaps Romney II might have a chance.

Lane County Budget Problems – Ignored by Commissioners

Lane County, Oregon is back in the news, this time with the “doomsday” budget scenario. Of course, they knew about the loss of Federal funds a long time ago, and as we wrote which is more likely, Commissioners actually work to solve the problem, or ignore the situation?

We have our answer: they did nothing, and once again complain about lack of funding. Of course, during all this time we’ve documented all the new hires in the County, and here’s what they’re hiring as of Feb 6, 2008 (http://www.co.lane.or.us/jobs/):

• 208-014 DESIGN ENGINEER OR DESIGN ENGINEERING SUPERVISOR $56,680 – $85,030 annually
• 207-121 MENTAL HEALTH MEDICAL OFFICER (Official Title: MANAGER) $122,117-$169,312/annually
• 208-007 Program Manager $62,005-$92,997/annually
• 208-009 Sr. System Network Analyst (Working Title: PROJECT MANAGER) $49,254-$68,203/annually

And that’s just MANAGEMENT at about $400,00 per year. Gee, what have they been working on for the last year or so? It sure wasn’t solving the budget problem.

Seated at a round table in a business building at Lane Community College, the five commissioners spent almost all of the four-hour meeting on this worst-case scenario: forwarding a budget proposal to committee that does without $20 million in federal timber money for the general fund.

Without that money, the commissioners couldn’t find funding even for their own priorities — popular programs including nutrition for women, infants and children; animal services; and the Lane County OSU Extension Service, which provides agricultural and other programs.

What about CITIZEN priorities? As usual, the cuts will hit public safety hard.

If only those people would give us more money, we could fund OUR priorities. Gee, maybe if we cut what THEY want, we’ll get more money and can do what WE want….

Lane County citizens, be prepared, another tax proposal to fix this mess the Commissioners have ignored will be coming soon to a ballot near you.

Ann Coulter Endorses … Hillary?

In cased you missed it, Ann Coulter said on Hannity and Colmes she would support Hillary over McCain, stating McCain is more liberal than Hillary. But is that true? Look what ABC News has to say:

… controversial pundit Ann Coulter — who supports Mitt Romney for president — said she would back Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, over Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

“She’s more conservative that he is,” she said.

Factually, it’s a ludicrous claim. On judges, abortion, same sex marriage, taxes, health care, the war in Iraq, and on and on .. he’s demonstrably more conservative.

Clinton’s 2006 vote ratings from liberal groups: Americans for Democratic Action – 95%; ACLU – 83%; League of Conservation Voters – 71%.

Her 2006 ratings from conservative groups: National Taxpayers Union – 17%; Americans Conservative Union – 6%; Club for Growth – 8%; Family Research Council – 0%.

McCain’s liberal group ratings: ADA – 15%; ACLU – 33%; LCV – 29%.

And conservative group: NTU – 88%; ACU – 65%; CFG – 76%; FRC – 62%.

We have no idea what criteria Coulter used for her comparison, but for any reasonable comparison (as ABC points out), McCain is much more conservative than Hillary (both Coulter and Hannity are Romney supporters).

McCain isn’t the ideal president, but such bizarre rants against McCain don’t make sense. We have disagreements with McCain to be sure, but at least we know where he stands. If you’re supporting Romney, we just have one question – do you honestly know what he believes? He’s flip-flopped on abortion, gay-rights and so much else, do you really know what you’re voting for?

Republican Debate Fact-Check

When watching a debate, the candidates spin so much it’s hard to tell who is lying and who’s not. Citing so many reports and publications, how do you begin to check the validity of claims to get to the truth? One website does some of the work for you, and reports their analysis to determine who is right and who is just plain wrong.

From Factcheck.org about the last Republican debate (a summary of a few issues only, read the article for full analysis):

* Romney complained that McCain used “the wrong data” about job creation to support his assertion that Massachusetts had ranked 47th among the 50 states while Romney was governor. Romney was wrong; McCain was correct.

* Romney said his hundreds of millions of dollars in “fee increases” merely caught up with years of inflation and weren’t tax increases in disguise. Independent budget experts contradict him on that.

* Ron Paul repeated his claim that defending the U.S. “empire” is costing “a trillion dollars a year.” But the dubious figure includes costs such as the entire Veterans Affairs budget. Paul also claimed “nobody” is talking about cutting spending, even as his rivals did so 14 times during the same debate.

Politicians stretching the truth certainly isn’t new (although some are better than others), but there’s a difference between citing studies making yourself look good and deliberately misstating facts in an attempt to deceive voters (hoping nobody notices). Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to verify the claims yourself as the material cited can be hard to track down.

Factcheck.org is a non-partisan group which seems to pick on all the candidates when they make errors. But the best part is their linking to all the reports mentioned so you can read for yourself and come to your own conclusions – without having to track down all the data yourself. In the last Republican debate, factcheck.org lists the reports some of the candidates cited to prove their point, and you can read them for yourself and decide if the candidate spoke truthfully or not.

Politicians are out for one thing: votes, and don’t seem to mind distorting the truth to get them. Before you vote, check out the “facts” from the last debate – some candidates did better than others.

Don’t believe anything they say – check it out for yourself.