Before getting into the results from Super Tuesday, I hope my readers can handle once again being completely underwhelmed. Rather than pretend I understand what the results mean, and would rather let others sort it out.
Politically, the day after Super Tuesday was a Wednesday of confusion. For many in the South, it was a day of tragedy. The impressive victories notched by Mike Huckabee were overshadowed by tornadoes that left 22 dead in Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee.
We spend so much time worrying about nuts and bolts and delegates and electoral votes that we run the risk of losing sight of what elections are all about…human beings that too often have their quality of life wrecked through no fault of their own or any other human being. I personally want government to do very little, but at moments like this a President needs to be a CEO, an analyst, and a consoler in chief. Assessing the situation from a cold detached standpoint is important, but so is just giving people hugs.
I hope that the tornado tragedy does not get lost in the shuffle, but I am under no illusion that this story will fade under an avalanche of polls and focus groups.
As for the raw numbers, they are a complete mish mosh to me. McCain seems to be in good position.
As for Super Tuesday, it is all a blur to me. I ran myself into the ground in Phoenix. The Superbowl festivities were amazing, and now my body is paying the price. Some people are too proud to take Western medicine. I am not one of them. As I told my friends, my body at 26 is not my body at 26, and the long season plus playoffs finally took its toll. Like many NFL players, I will skip going to the Pro Bowl in Hawaii so I can recuperate an extra week during the offseason. I just can’t do the “2 a days” anymore. Keep in mind that for the athletes, 2 a days refer to twice daily workouts. For me they mean watching a pair of games back to back, rather than just one. Sitting around for 6 hours is simply more strenuous than doing so for 3 hours.
After dropping off my cameras to get my Superbowl film developed, I staggered to my polling place to vote. It was only one block from my home, but I was literally too weak to walk. I drove, voted, came home, and crashed.
From what my exhausted eyes can observe, John McCain seems to be in good position for the republicans. The big shock of the night was Mike Huckabee. Not since General Sherman’s march to the sea has such an impressive string of Southern victories been notched. Yet in a cruel twist of fate, the states he won were mostly proportional representation, so a 2 point win usually means only one or two more delegates. The states John McCain won were winner take all, so a one vote win gives him plenty of delegates.
Mitt Romney got his clock cleaned, and is probably not happy that Huckabee stayed in the race. Yet in all fairness, Huckabee was not pulling 15% in the South. He was polling over 30%. I am supporting McCain, but am still saddened by Rudy Giuliani dropping out.
I honestly did not know how I was going to vote until I was in the booth. I was either going to vote for Giuliani or McCain. The debate is to vote for the most viable candidate that matches my views, or to go with my heart. However, in this case Giuliani was no longer in the race, and had endorsed McCain himself. My worry was that if I voted for Giuliani, and McCain lost to Romney, I would be hurt twice.
There is something about John McCain that makes me want to apologize if I don’t vote for him. Some say his past heroism does not matter, but yes, it most certainly does matter.
I backed McCain in 2000, and like 8 years ago, Super Tuesday this time was also on Mardi Gras. As I staggered through the French Quarter, I felt bad that I did not bring my absentee ballot with me. Even though I was having a blast hanging off the balcony of the Cats Meow with a glowstick in my mouth and a pair of 19 year olds singing “Pour some sugar on me,” to me, I still wanted to vote afterwards. I backed George W. Bush in the general election with complete enthusiasm, but felt bad that I did not vote for McCain when it counted. It was the first and only time since I turned 18 that I have not voted.
I could not let John McCain down twice. He has given too much to America for me to not back him. Besides, republicans always nominate the guy next in line. If he picks Giuliani as Vice President, all is well. Giuliani can then run again. However, this was McCain’s last chance. I voted for him, and did not look back.
The democrats are an even bigger mess. Obama won more states than Hillary, but the delegates are so convoluted that either one can claim victory. Bill Clinton lost in New Hampshire in 1992, and declared it a win. Hillary does not need to actually win. She just needs to say she won. A closer look tells a strange story on both sides.
There was no home field advantage for John McCain. He only won his home state of Arizona by 13 points. Mitt Romney only won his home state of Massachussetts by 10 points. Yes he also claims Michigan and Utah, but he can claim them all if he wants.He led Massachusetts. Hillary only won New York by 14 points, and New Jersey by 10. Yes, wins are wins, but this is a fairly unimpressive showing that she will claim is a landslide. Obama won Illinois by 32 points, and Huckabee cruised in Arkansas by about 40 points. Those are big wins.
Hillary and McCain won primaries, while Romney and Obama racked up wins in caucuses. Each side will claim their method is better.
The biggest surprise was North Dakota, which gave Ron Paul 21% of the vote in their caucuses. And I thought sensible people lived there.
I still maintain that there is no way Hillary will lose the democratic nomination. Yes, I said this about the Superbowl, but those games are decided based on merit.
Outside of John McCain, I am not sure this campaign is about merit at all. Hillary Clinton has 35 years of supposedly doing things, and Barack Obama offers some of the finest platitudes that a man lacking substance can offer. As comedian Chris Rock thunders, “Speaks well is not a compliment.”
The process truly is broken, and even if I was healthy, I would not be willing to offer analysis to a process that does not deserve it.
On a macro level, I pray for the loved ones of the 22 tornado victims. On a micro level, I just want to get healthy. I have 7 months to recover, and then the 2008 football season will begin. Hillary has already announced that she supports whoever is the favorite.
eric
Hi Eric! We met a few weeks ago. :)
I agree with much of what you wrote, but I have to go a few steps further.
Okay, McCain is a war hero. That does not mean he is presidential material. It is a different skill to be a war hero, versus a war general. He has given a great deal to this country, but i am very concerned about his choices for foreign policy advisers. Please note that Brent Scowcroft is one of his advisers – an old school “Paleocon.” he is part of the waspy/antisemitic wing of the Republican party. This troubles me. Alexander Haig, Colin Powell, James Woolsey – all are McCain advisers, and all are part of the problem.
Romney is an unknown, really, and you cannot quite trust his stance on the issues. But is he better than McCain? I don’t know. It seems irrelevant, because he appears DOA at this point, anyway.
Then there are the Dems. Let’s not mince words here. Obama is far worse than Hillary. Far worse. You look at his links – to the Nation of Islam and a racist black church. You look at how George Soros was who enabled him to have a caree to begin with. You look to how he castigated Hillary for voting to declare the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terror group, and how he said he would attack Pakistan. Then you see his foreign policy advisers, so many of them rabid antizionists. Robert Malley, Brzezinski…it does not get worse than that.
So I believe that Obama is the worst choice out there, by a scary margin. Hillary is bad, but she is a known quantity of bad. I fear that Obama represents the Dhimmi Carter wing of the Democratic party, which is horrifying.
So we are left with the likely choices of Hillary v. McCain, or Obama v. McCain. In either choice, I will be voting for McCain, but not necessarily happily. Rudy endorsed McCain, but remember that there are many reasons for political endorsements, including the fact that McCain was endorsed when he was already a front runner. It’s only natural that perhaps Rudy would like a job in a McCain administration. McCain’s stance on immigration, torture, and his advisers are very deeply troubling to me.
But the Democrats are so over the top bad, it is incomprehensible. I am sickened at this thought that “if only we stop being mean to jihadists, they won’t hate us.” This is the line of thinking that blames America for 9/11 as “blowback,” and that basically seeks total appeasement as a solution. This is the ultimate stance of the Democrats today. It is the ultimate “post-modern” perspective, we are as bad as the terrorists, we bring it on. It’s appalling, and sadly, despite their proclamations, blaming the victims will not bring about ‘peace.’
” Hillary does not need to actually win. She just needs to say she won. ”
Yea, its the ” we’re all winners” mentallity. But she wants to be the one who hands out the prizes
Twice now she has cried right before a major event, displaying her ability to be sensitive in light of emotional situations. Which I think is something taught to her by hollywood proffesionals.
If she claims that she is a winner and will not admitt to the fact that she has seen some serious competition this tuesday , will she readily admitt when an enemy has posed a threat to our country ?
“The biggest surprise was North Dakota, which gave Ron Paul 21% of the vote in their caucuses. And I thought sensible people lived there.”
LOL! If they were sensible they wouldn’t live in North Dakota! LOL!
Just kidding.
McCain has pulled so far ahead with delegates that Romeny would be well served to just drop it now. It’s all over. The McCain/Huckbee ticket should be anounced soon.
Meanwhile, the fight drags on betwen Obama and Hillary, still well within each other’s reach.
“If she claims that she is a winner and will not admitt to the fact that she has seen some serious competition this tuesday , will she readily admitt when an enemy has posed a threat to our country?”
LOL! Maybe she’ll just be matire enough not to overreact to the “threat.” WOuldn’t that be a “change”!
JMJ
[…] After | Barack v. McCain | Stormy Super Tuesday | Staying Home is Not an Option | Ask the Whigs | Tragedy and Confusion Wednesday | May I Offer McCain Some Advice? | Talk Radio Emerges As Real Super Tuesday Winner […]
Having been through my share of tornadoes growing up in Mississippi, I can tell you the last thing we ever thought about was what the president was going to do for us. Most of the time, we bit our tongues as even state and local politicians crawled out of the weeds to act like they knew what we were going through.
Times sure have changed.
As for McCain’s heorism, I have to disagree with you. Being a war hero is not a qualification and it should buy you no credit toward national office. What it is good for is helping determine character. In other words, we don’t owe John McCain the presidency based on his POW experience. For that, we owe him respect and gratitude–rewards not negotiable. If he deserves our votes as conservatives, he needs to have been a loyal conservative. I know you’ll disagree, but I’m convinced he hasn’t been.
I’m afraid I can’t fall in line on this one, Eric. I wish I could.
I hadnt turned on the tube yet previous to my first post.
I had no idea how bad the devastation from thed tornados was.
Lets all drop a note in Gods box.
Micky;
“will she readily admitt when an enemy has posed a threat to our country?”
JMJ;
LOL! Maybe she’ll just be matire enough not to overreact to the “threat.” WOuldn’t that be a “change”!
Yea right . you dont get it, do you ?
If she is as negligent as her husband was I would call that a “lack” of reaction.
We could all be wearing turbans and burkas and Hillary would still declare herself a winner.
Thats the kind of “change” we dont need
This anti-McCain thing is just insane. Are the conservatives so intrangigently and uncompromisingly ideological that they can’t support the GOP candidate because he broke with the establishment a few times??? Really? What do you anti-McCain cons want? Shall we just clone Bush? Shall we just build a neo-con robot and let it run the country? I just don’t get it. And do you anti-McCainers really think that another Bush-type could even win a national electional this year??? Really???
Wierd.
JMJ
I’m still recovering from a long hard day of committing democracy. I am an elections inspector in my county and I was in charge of 13 precincts, which kept be rather busy from 5:30 am to 10:00 pm and I’m still not fully up to speed on what occurred nationally or, like eric, my friend, functioning on a full tank.
What I am seeing is that on the Republican side there seems to be a lot of strong feelings for or against a particular candidate. People who like McCain, for example, are strongly opposed to Romney, or others can’t stand McCain. On the Dem side, however, I am seeing people who obviously favor Obama or Clinton, but who don’t have a whole lot of a problem with the other candidate. Whether this will be an issue of party cohesiveness down the road in the general election for the Repubs that the Dems don’t have, I’m not sure. Time will tell.
After having worked yesterday, and after having been an election worker for several years now, I can say that democracy works. In our county we have paper ballots that are marked with a special pen and then fed into a scanner, so we have the best of both worlds — a paper ballot that is retained and an electronic tallying that speeds the results. Out of 13 precincts we had one machine that didn’t work at start-up and took about 90 minutes to fix but voters were able to use the back-up system, several other minor glitches during the day that were easily resolved, and one voter who tried to get one of my precinct workers arrested because she didn’t want to have to vote a provisional ballot (there was a discrepancy that we couldn’t solve so the voter is allowed to cast a provisional ballot and have the elections dept. deal with the discrepancy later). Even that got resolved peacefully and no one went to jail.
If anyone is interested in more details I’m happy to provide them, but I have to say, the 60 or so people who worked for me yesterday worked very hard for very little pay, and I’m proud to have been a part of the process.
The biggest issue we had from Non-Partisan voters who in California can request a Dem or an American Independent ballot (but not any other party). Lots of Non-Partisan Obama supporters were requesting Dem ballots and some precincts in a neighboring county ran out of Dem ballots. Lots of Republicans were also trying to get Democratic ballots, which they can’t do, but no one seemed to want a Republican ballot. Not even Non-Partisans who might be expected to want to vote for McCain were asking for Repub ballots. Perhaps that was because they knew they couldn’t have one, but who knows.
Greg, Kudos for investing your time in the election process! Having been to a number of polling places over the years, I can’t image working one – so I am taking the easy way out with absentee ballots!
You mentioned the Dems don’t seem as passionate one way or the other between the candidates – likely because they are selling the same story – universal health care vs health care for everyone…troops out in 12 months vs 16 months (or so), focus on education, minority rights, women’s issues, tax the business owners and wealthy vs tax those who make over 200K…and a promise of CHANGE. They are catering to an audience who is looking at today ande tomorrow, not next year. They are catering to constructive thinkers. On the other hand, McCain, Romney, and Huckabee have platforms that require critical thought, and if one glosses over some fine print, he may miss the bigger picture and choose to go with the other…and because the Reps have such a history of tradition, they don’t want someone who bucks it too often or handily… maybe we should let the ClintonObama or Obama Clinton ticket take it this year…then we can shut up the race baiters like Jesse and the turd girl punk.
Sharpton…mind went dead
“maybe we should let the ClintonObama or Obama Clinton ticket take it this year…then we can shut up the race baiters like Jesse and the turd girl punk.”
How brilliant. It’s like getting back to the school yard all those years ago! hey you dweeby geekazoid!
Pathetic.
I know a blogger that has for a long time now contended that both the Dems and the Reps want to lose the ’08’s. It does make you sorta wonder…
http://lazyiguana.blogspot.com/
JMJ
You put the Iguana up there ?
The guy is an intellectual bumm. He sounds like a pubescent teen high on roids and jenkem.
Sorry. The guy is hardly any kind of medium for considerable thought.
Holding my nose as tight as I can. Anybody know where I can get a gas mask?
“We could all be wearing turbans and burkas…Thats the kind of “change” we don’t need.” applies to both dems. (thanx for quote Micky)
“McCain’s stance on immigration, torture, and his advisers (Juan Hernandez) are very deeply troubling to me.” and me. (Thanx toRed Tulips)The only thing worse than McCain is Hillary or Obama.
I’m afraid (very afraid) that Mr. “Old Guard” McCain can’t win against either dem. He has slapped his party (and the voters) too many times.
Hey Eagle, I think when you wrote about the democraps, “They are catering to an audience who is looking at today ande tomorrow, not next year. They are catering to constructive thinkers.” You must have meant they ARE NOT catering to constructive thinkers…otherwise, your argument is nuts.
I didn’t mean to suggest that the Dems are not passionate about their candidates. They are, but largely for reasons other than the substantive positions on the issues. There are policy differences between Clinton and Obama, for sure, but there are other reasons for their passion, e.g., one is a woman and one is African American, and at the end of the day in November the Clinton and Obama camps will be united whoever the nominee is. I hear Anne Coulter saying she will vote for Hillary before she votes for McCain, and lots of other cons and neo-cons saying things like that, but I don’t hear any Obama people saying they’ll vote for Huckabee if Clinton gets the nomination, or Clinton people jumping to Romney if Obama does.
Eagle6 said, “Maybe we should let the ClintonObama or Obama Clinton ticket take it this year…”. Works for me, but the rest of your argument doesn’t fly. There are just as many constructive thinkers — and just as many polyannas — who are liberals as there are conservatives.
Greg, There is certainly a mix of different people in each party, but as a rule, the Dems have more minorities, lesser educated voters, and women than do the Reps. Conversely, there are more business owners in the republican party. Educators and scientists have done studies that show that education promotes constructive thinking. It is logical that more constructive thinkers are in the republican party. Having said the above, there must be something about pipe smoking and beards, because college professors, as a rule, don’t fit into this category.
JMJ – your comment about the BHO/HRC or HRC/BHO ticket, “pathetic” missed the mark. Lest anyone misunderstand my comment, it was tongue-in-cheek. I hope to be making more than 200K in a couple years and would rather give my money to the church than to the government. The latter comment coupled with my professor comment, were also tongue-in-cheek. It’s no fun having to explain these things…
Eagle 6;
“It’s no fun having to explain these things…”
We play chess, they play checkers.
Romney just announced that he’s dropping out of the race at the CPAC.
LOL!
There’s goes the last “conservative.”
JMJ
We know jersey. I’ll bet we all have TVs
But once again you’re talking out of both sides of your head again.
You just said this about McCain. Labeling him a con that broke from the establishment. :
“This anti-McCain thing is just insane. Are the conservatives so intrangigently and uncompromisingly ideological that they can’t support the GOP candidate because he broke with the establishment a few times??? ”
And then you say Mit was the last conservative.
Your craving for attention is mind boggling.
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the – Web Reconnaissance for 02/07/2008 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often.
Sorry Micky, but neo-conservatism is dead. Find another wrong ideology to embrace.
JMJ
What does that have to do with your insecurities and ability to speak out of one hole at a time ?
And where did you ever get the impression that I was a neo con.
Just because I want to kick the crap out my enemy instead of hugging him till he defacates makes me a neo con ? Or implies I embrace it ?
I’m for legalized pot. Does that make me one of you ?
NOT !
LOL!
JMJ
Ahh yes. The smug ole LOL when you have nothing intelligent left to say.
Micky – thanks for the support and the chuckle
:-)