4 posts tagged “primaries”

In Kentucky and West Virginia polls have shown that large numbers of voters stated that race was a big issue in their choice of candidates.  Most of those voters voted for Senator Hillary Clinton.  These two states are the big wins that she is waving before the world as the reason she is still running and the reason she is a better candidate for president. 

For the past few days I have listened to commentary about this issue and I have tried to keep an open mind.  The problem is that no matter how you cut it, if you say race is the main decision for why you are going to pick the candidate you are going to pick and you pick Senator Clinton over Senator Obama, what does that make you? 

I understand that this same phenomenon exists with Senator Obama who has completely stolen the African American vote from Senator Clinton and her clan, but the African American voting block is a small one and has not been used by Senator Obama as the reason he should be elected.

There is an obvious truth that is being avoided.  A few people in the media have carefully hinted to it and online it is much of the political conversation this week.  What is this truth?  The demographic that has kept Senator Clinton in the race over the past few weeks and that is what she says shows she is a better candidate is the racist Caucasian vote.  

The fact that both candidates have large blocks of their support that support them solely because of their race is a huge indicator of what is going on in the Democratic Party.  The party is divided along the lines of race and has large segments of it’s base tied up in racist populations and subcultures.

I am thankful that Senator Obama has spoken out against such things, but it is hard to believe with his church history and a certain Mr. Wright as a friend.  On the other hand, Senator Clinton seems happy to have the support of the newly discovered racist left wing voters.  This is a far cry from the past politics of her previous campaigns and her husband’s.

If Senator Clinton wishes to have a future in politics, keeping in mind that a much of her support in the past has come from African American voters, she needs to stand against this sort of thing publicly.  She needs to stand before the world and say, “I would rather loose than win off of a racist vote.”  Those kind of steps would do the whole country a bit of good.  Senator Obama could do with a little more of that ideology in his camp also.

The thing is, if the rest of her campaign is going to focus on her wins in states that said they voter for her because of race and on a win she achieved in a state where Senator Obama was not even on the ballot, God help us all if she somehow ends up being the candidate for the Democrats. 

If that terrible day arrives, she may as well shave her head and campaign wearing swastika arm bands.  She will immediately become the poster child for racism, particularly against African Americans.  The Lord only knows what will become of her party.

Healing and unifying the country cannot begin with you, if your support base is a base of racist people. 

I bet John McCain is glad he gave up on his attempts to stop Martin Luther King Day.

Yesterday Senator Hillary Clinton lost in one primary and barely squeezed out a win in another.  What this means is that her winning the popular vote just moved from incredibly impossible to a little more incredibly impossible.  This also moved her chances of winning over the remaining super-delegates highly unlikely.  Why are we still seeing all of this again?

Can we put an end to this finally.  I am ready to see Senator Obama limp into his contest with the lost Senator McCain.  I say Sen. Obama is limping (and probably bloody in a metaphoric sense) because of the terrible fight he has been in.  I say Sen. McCain is missing because, well, he’s missing.  He has been hiding out most of this time occasionally surfacing to say stupid things (I suppose Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama had plenty of friends, family, and supporters to handle that for them)

Senator Clinton was deep in the rhetoric over the past few days and not quite as deep in the money.  I think she is in deep trouble as of this weeks events.

Of course this vote took place on the same day all the economists teamed up to say the “Gas Tax Holiday” that her and Sen. McCain have been pushing is a stupid idea.  That means it probably did not have much time to settle in with yesterday’s voters, but by next week it will be deep in the psyche of all of us who own televisions or read newspapers.

Sen. Clinton has vowed to go on, like a good captain, strong, teary eyed, and holding the wheel as the ship sinks. 

Now, more statistics are starting to show up that clearly show that if Sen. Clinton does not win the popular vote and cannot get the super-delegates to vote her in as the candidate of choice they will refuse to vote for Sen. Obama, and may even vote for Sen. McCain.

Here’s a newsflash Hillary Clinton supporters:  It is so close to impossible for her to win at this point that I think Sen. Obama could shoot several of the super-delegates that are supporting in front of the media and still squeeze out a victory over Sen. Clinton.

But, from the standpoint of a spectator who does not belong to either party this is great.  The two Democratic gladiators are going to pummel each other before the winner gets thrown to the lions.  What could possibly be as exciting?

Then you have Rush Limbaugh who has been rallying Republicans to come together and vote in the Democrat’s primaries just to cause chaos.  Add this all to the chaos of any appearances of Former President Bill Clinton and the sheer excitement of an appearance of a certain Mr. Wright and you have excellent reality television.  What greater pursuit is there than sitting and watching other individuals go through excruciating and taxing circumstances just for our entertainment.

This is all fine and dandy until we come back to reality and realize we are all going to be stuck with one of these three for the next four years.  Then suddenly we realize that  we are all the next cast of the reality show that will be for the rest of the world to watch.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

The polls have been drifting in the direction of Senator Hillary Clinton, but she has another problem, the superdelegates have been drifting Senator Barack Obama’s way.

Just as the polls began to reflect the past few weeks of bad press that Sen. Obama seemed to be a magnet for, another perceived Clinton family ally, Former Democratic National Committee chairman Joe Andrew, publicly switched his support in Democratic primary from Sen. Clinton to Sen. Obama.

In looking at and listening to the various polls over the past few days, I began to wonder;  “What if the entire situation completely reverses and Sen. Clinton manages to pull of the popular vote and Sen. Obama overturns the popular vote with the votes of the ever so mysterious “superdelegates?  Is there the potential for as much of a collapse of the Democratic Party?” 

In looking at the passion (often communicated as anger or rudeness) of the more vocal of Sen. Clinton’s supporters, I would have to say at least as much potential. 

The truth is that such a landslide of a turn in the popular vote is not as likely as the current polls suggest as they reflect the shift that took place with all of the bad press Se. Obama picked up during the Pennsylvania primary but none of the events surrounding the reemergence of a certain friend of his named Mr. Wright.

The problem with these polls is that in most cases it takes time to collect and compile the data and by the time this data is presented to the public it is a week or two behind.  In a race where things are happening so fast and the public opinion is shifting so fast the polls have rarely reflected what was going on in the week we are seeing the results.   That is why the results have been so surprising every time we have heard them.    These polls are sort of a crystal ball that can see into the past, but cannot see the present and in reality have little bearing on the future.

I suspect that Sen. Obama’s speech this week, completely distancing and in reality divorcing himself from a certain Mr. Wright (I refuse to honor this man with the title “reverend”) probably helped him in the public view particularly with his rare showing of emotion, but with this election year, who knows. 

The truth is however, that if Sen. Obama keeps eroding Sen. Clinton’s superdelegate support, her miraculous resurgence will be reduced to a blip on the radar screen of history. 

I have found it intriguing that right about the time Sen. Clinton started to make a comeback some of her seemingly guaranteed superdelegate supporters suddenly began shifting their support to Sen. Obama.  What is going on behind the scenes with the Washington insiders that we are not hearing about?  I am left wondering with many questions:

Is there something about Sen. Obama’s electability that the insiders can see that the rest of us cannot? 

Is Sen. Obama’s camp making some sort of deal behind the scenes that we are not hearing about? 

Is Sen. Obama more clearly the better choice for some reason that is not yet clear to the general population? 

Is there some terrible problem with Sen. Clinton that the general public does not yet know about? 

Are the scare tactics and public attacks on those who have defected or threatened to defect to the Obama camp starting to “turn off” her supporters?

The next two or three primaries probably really are the big ones.  I know that every primary for the past two or three months has been billed as “the big one,” but Sen. Obama could put away Sen. Clinton’s chances by simply winning those states and getting some major superdelegate supporters.  Sen. Clinton, on the other hand, could build a huge case for her statements that Sen. Obama is not electable by winning several states in a row as soon as some bad press came out about him. 

By next Tuesday, when we will be watching the next primaries, the effects of Sen. Obama’s speech on Monday will have settled in.  Was it strong enough and soon enough to stop his eroding popularity, or did it have little effect.  That is the biggest indicator that we will all see next week.

If you want to know where we really stand as a country on the candidates today just wait a week or two and look at the polling results.  Of course, by then, those results may not matter much, but at least your will know.

The Reverend (I use the term against my better judgment) Jeremiah Right cannot really expect anyone of any sense to take him seriously after this week. I have been pondering the events of the past week and cannot imagine this man to believe that he is somehow a representative of God any more than people who crash airplanes into buildings.

As this weekends events progressed, the media blitz undertaken by Mr. Jeremiah Right (I will not be using the titles Reverend or Pastor from this point on) were clearly a sign of self-serving as opposed to service to the God represented in the Bible.

His message (other than to express the fact he is bitter with Senator Barack Obama, the Caucasian race, and America as a whole) is on that only represents a certain culture. By culture, I am not speaking of African Americans, I am speaking of a subculture of this people group or a particular segment of that group. Although he may find himself surrounded by this subculture where he resides and may be able to find pockets of these individuals littered here and there throughout the country, this is definitely not a representation of the views of African Americans throughout the nation or the “African American Church”; whatever that is.

I find it quite presumptuous to assume that because you are around several churches like this and have been to some in other places that all or most of predominantly African American churches hold these beliefs or conform to his stereotypes of how a church would act.

It is coming clear over the past couple of days that there are people who have had contact with this man recently who feel that his motive for all of this was revenge on Senator Barack Obama.

I applaud Sen. Obama’s loyalty but also have to question his judgment in knowing when a person is not the type of person you need feeding into your life. I do believe that he probably did not hear the particular sermons that were repeated over and over on the television as the church is in one state and the senator works in another. That being the case, he probably was not the most regular of attendees at church on Sundays. The problem is that this person can flip out like this and in almost twenty years in a close relationship you do not notice.

Mr. Wright has publicly embarrassed a person who stood by him despite the fact that it could ruin his career, much (if not most) of the African American race and those of mixed racial makeup, and many believers in the Christ who now have to spend time again trying to explain that Christians are not all crazy simply because one who is crazy has gotten a lot of air time.

Mr. Wright had the nerve to disguise his evil intention of attacking the man that he previously felt God had called him to mentor as a call for unity and a message of God. This is one of the most egregious acts ever performed.

I am still undecided about any of the three candidates I feel we are stuck with, but I think the nation as a whole has an obligation to take action against this man. People should not give airtime to this man. He is getting a lot of press and getting ready to release a book soon which means a lot of people want to read it simply to see what this crazy man has to say. Resist the urge and don’t buy a copy! Wait until you can find it in a thrift store. Do not support this man and his message of spite by giving him your money. If a station or group gives him airtime, send a letter or email expressing your disgust.

I have personally decided to stop using the title “reverend” for this man as I consider that to be a show of respect for a person and I do not find him worthy of that sort of respect.

Finally, if you are a believer, who believes in what he has done this week, look at James 4:6 which states in part that “…God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.” This weekend’s events were clearly about hurt pride and a selfish attempt to hurt an individual that God put under his mentoring wing. African American, Caucasian, Chinese, or otherwise, this is not acceptable to the God of the Bible. If the underlying motivation of a message is evil, the entire message is usually tainted with evil and cannot be trusted.

Mr. Wright may hit on a truth here and there, but even a broken clock is right twice a day.