I like it when Joe Klein is corrected

5 comments March 6th, 2008

That’s why I like THIS.

UPDATE: For another example of Joe Klein’s sloppy, inaccurate work, check THIS.

Whom does Hillary think she’s kidding?

4 comments March 6th, 2008

OK, class, listen up.

Some of you think Hillary Clinton gained the upper hand in the Democratic presidential race with her primary-election victories Tuesday in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island, right?

Some of you think she’s taken the momentum away from Barack Obama, right?

Some of you even think the nomination is now well within her reach, right?

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

In my book, Obama’s still the odds-on favorite to capture the nomination.  For starters, he leads Clinton in states won (25-13), delegates won (by about 134) and popular votes (by about 600,000). Her chances of closing those gaps are slim-to-none, even if  do-over primaries are held in Michigan and Florida.

For another thing, the latest match-up polls show that Obama would beat John McCain by twice the margin Clinton would.

As for Hillary’s claim that she’s done better than Obama in most of the big states so far and therefore is better suited to take on McCain in November, only a political ignoramus could fail to see the hole in that argument. 

Take California, the biggest state of all, for example.  Obama lost to Clinton in the Golden State primary, but that doesn’t mean he’d lose to McCain there in the general. On the contrary, he would be a prohibitive favorite to win California and almost certainly would get the votes of most of Hillary’s erstwhile supporters in the process.

Understand this: Most Clinton and Obama voters in the primaries will end up voting for the party’s nominee in November. The big-state argument advanced by Hillary’s handlers presupposes that people who voted for her rather than him in the primaries won’t vote for him in the general election, which is utter nonsense. That’s the same as saying that McCain is the second choice of most of Hillary’s primary-election voters.  No way.

For more details on Clinton’s dim prospects, check the excellent summaries HERE and HERE.

UPDATE: And now we have the NEWS that Obama raised a whopping $55 million in February — $20 million more than Clinton raked in and $41 million more than McCain raised. 
 

When are McCain, Clinton and Obama going to address the pothole problem?

4 comments March 6th, 2008

That phone ringing in the White House at 3 a.m. might well be me calling to find out when the president or somebody is going to fix the potholes that dot American streets and roads by the tens of millions.

Why isn’t this an issue in the presidential race? The problem is much more widespread than I had suspected.  Even the City of Honolulu in Hawaii is facing a $70 million tab to fix its potholes.  Hawaii?  I had always thought that potholes required winter weather to develop.  Not so, apparently.

If either John McCain or Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama would simply promise voters that something will be done about these street craters, he or she would win in a landslide.

I write this in anger, of course, because my car is in a repair shop this morning and will cost me $400 to fix.