Hillary wins Pennsylvania!

11 comments April 22nd, 2008

MSNBC has declared Clinton the winner, but the likely margin remains unclear.

UPDATE: THIS GUY says it’s still impossible for Hillary to catch Barack Obama.

Has Obama forced Clinton to spend herself into the poorhouse?

1 comment April 22nd, 2008

While we still don’t know the outcome of today’s balloting in Pennsylvania, it might be that Barack Obama has won a crucial victory in terms of money.

Moments ago, political pundit Howard Fineman offered a keen insight on MSNBC.  He said Obama has forced Hillary Clinton’s campaign to spend itself broke in Pennsylvania.

Fineman says Hillary’s big money raisers “are tapped out,” leaving her only the Internet as a source of funds  for campaigning in the upcoming primaries in North Carolina and Indiana.

But the Internet is Obama’s turf, and Hillary likely won’t do well raising money online unless her victory tonight is substantial, which is uncertain at this writing.

Serves ‘em right

10 comments April 22nd, 2008

ABC’s nightly newcast TOOK A BATH in the ratings last week after the network’s scandalously poor handling of the Democratic presidential debate.

Idiots.

Senator Clinton, what was that about co-equal branches of government?

1 comment April 22nd, 2008

In a speech last week at the Associated Press annual meeting in Washington,  Hillary Clinton said that she will, if elected president, “restore respect for our co-equal branches of government.”

I can only wonder if any of the eminent news executives in the audience recognized that Clinton was wrong about this “co-equal” stuff.

(To be fair to Clinton, it should be noted that her rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama, has made the same mistake.)

The notion that the Constitution created three co-equal branches of government is an article of faith among most Americans.  It’s popularly viewed as the provision that gives us our system of checks and balances. But it’s not true.

Clinton, like Obama and most of the other politicians who play the co-equal card, intend to argue against any presumption that the presidency is pre-eminent.

But the fact is that the Founding Fathers did not create a system of co-equal branches of government. Rather, they intended for the legislative branch to be dominant, as is evidenced in the Federalist Papers and even in some of the arguments against ratification of the Constitution from people who wanted co-equal branches and regretted that they weren’t getting them.

Historian Garry Wills presents a convincing case against the “co-equal” theory — and against various other popular myths about the Constitution — in his wonderful book “A Necessary Evil,” which was published in 1999.

In that same year, Wills addressed the “co-equal” issue in THIS LECTURE  at Harvard University. (Scroll down to pages 14 through 17 for the salient parts.)

Why is there a Confederate flag behind Bush and the pope in this photo?

2 comments April 22nd, 2008

Seems kind of weird at first, doesn’t it?

Here’s the deal:

At the welcoming ceremonies last week on the South Lawn of the White House, the flags of all 50 states were arrayed in the background. Among them was the flag of Mississippi, which includes a symbol of the glorious Confederacy, a sentimental reminder of those good old days of slavery.

Almost all the polls show Clinton winning today’s Pennsylvania primary, but…

2 comments April 22nd, 2008

From Taegan Goddards POLITICAL INSIDER, we get this roundup of the latest polls in Pennsylvania:

• Zogby: Clinton +10
• SurveyUSA: Clinton +6
• Suffolk: Clinton +10
• Quinnipiac: Clinton +7
• Strategic Vision: Clinton +7
• American Research Group: Clinton +13
• Mason-Dixon: Clinton +5
• Public Policy Polling: Obama +3

My own guess parallels the Mason-Dixon numbers.  I figure Clinton will win by a relatively slim margin.

But I’m fascinated by the last poll on that list, the one that has Obama up by 3 percentage points. The sample size in that survey (2,338 likely voters) is much larger than the others, and the stated margin of error (2 percentage points) is much smaller.

So, the question arises: Will there be a stunning upset in today’s balloting? If so, Hillary will have to drop out of the race. But then, she’ll probably have to drop out eventually in any event.

UPDATE (1 PM CDT): By mid-day, VOTER TURNOUT was said to be extremely heavy all across the state.