Two weeks ago, OpenLeft initiated an effort to “diversify its front page” by publishing a series of posts which it described as being on the topic feminist and womanist perspectives on Hillary Clinton’s withdrawal from the race — and why this matters to progressives. After an excellent start with a post by Melissa McEwan, the experiment has failed. While OpenLeft maybe have “diversified” its front page by publishing the works of women (and African American women), it did so at the expense of the “feminist/womanist [FW] perspective.” Rather than FW perspectives, readers were treated to what can be most charitably collectively described as “Obama-ists” perspectives from women who identify as feminists. All three posts subsequent to McEwan’s were either dismissive of, or hostile to, anything that can be described as an “F/W perspective”.  Read more 

We were told that most people are not against a woman becoming president - just not “that” woman, Hillary Clinton, and this is seen as OK - a choice.

Yet when many people express the opinion that they are not against a black becoming president - just not “that” black, Brack Obama, this is pounced on - as racist.

Obama and most Democrats/Liberals used to be very critical of Bush’s throwing out any part of the Constitution he wanted to that did not serve his political purposes.

Yet BO had no problem with throwing the FOURTH AMENDMENT under the bus, and except for a few strong, intelligent supporters, most swallowed hard and found excuse after excuse for his treating the Constitution just like Bush - especially the MSM.  Read more 

Environmentalists, social activists, feminists, atheists, political junkies… our modern Swifts and Voltaires. George Carlin blended anger and satire to blissful perfection, Grist Magazine is doing it for environmentalism, and Melissa McEwan does it for sexism and racism at Shakesville.

As the Obama euphoria fades, expect much more of this, from 23/6:

The Reader’s Guide to Maureen Dowd  Read more 

It has been kindly pointed out to me that there is an error (in good faith, based on not checking the facts on another post and/or misreading the post) in my last post on flags. I feel obliged to correct this with another post, because I feel the content of my post still stands even after the factual error has been corrected.

Hillary Clinton did not participate in the attempt at adding a flag-burning amendment to the Constitution. She instead attempted to defuse it by proposing a non-amendment that very narrowly fit the Constitution as interpreted generally by the courts. Consequently, this paragraph,  Read more 

There are reasons to prefer Clinton to Obama. There are easily arguable reasons to be angry that Clinton is not presently likely to be a Presidential candidate in the general election. You can even make a case for not voting for Barack Obama. You can make an even better case for not voting at all.

But there are a few moderately popular reasons for preferring Clinton to Obama that disturb me. A variant of one of these is present in this post at The Confluence.  Read more 

(reposted from a comment on Avedon’s blog)

How can leverage be built, or used, without the threat of a negative outcome?

If votes from Clinton supporters are desired, doesn’t someone have to ask for them?

Doesn’t someone have to stop insulting them by continually saying their opinions are invalid, that their power is either illusory or unimportant, or that they are delusional for wanting to wield that power in the first place?

Since there are no third parties worth even that much of a damn to consistently field downticket candidates in every state, how else should Clinton supporters — who have been called everything from bitches, dried-up divorcees, to racists — behave, but to offer their votes to the McCain campaign if their policy concerns are not discussed with respect?  Read more 

The “Magic Number” is still 2025, or 2209. But its not 2118.

That’s because, in violation of the DNC charter, a secret meeting was held, and secret votes were taken — violations of specific Charter “sunshine rules” provisions. A deal was struck among Obama supporters on the committee to completely ignore what is known as the “fair reflection” rule (see note below), and to treat the constituency groups that had provided Hillary Clinton with considerable margins in two states (Hispanic/Latino voters, older voters, women, Jewish voters in Florida, older voters, working class voters, rural voters, and women in Michigan) as “half voters”.  Read more 

At CNN home page http://www.cnn.com/
Vote button is on lower right.

“Do you agree with Sen. Hillary Clinton that the press has ignored sexism in the campaign?”

GOP and Obama geeks dominate CNN, as usual, with these following astoundingly head-up-their-*#@! results:

Yes 42% 29581
No 58% 41631
Total Votes: 71212

Can you hear us now? Count the votes already cast for Hillary in Florida and Michigan. Stop with the misogyny already and nominate the strongest and best candidate to go against McCain.

Today I have heard several radio commentators/hosts remark on how tired Obama is getting, of course, being sympathetic [it’s all her fault it’s gone on so long], but I wonder.

One even mentioned BO saying he’d been in 57 states and then, repeating 57 states again. Now that’s tired! And there is that habit he has of running home to rest even before the ballots are counted in states he lost.  Read more 

In the ongoing saga of WKJM, today’s edition tries to answer the question, why did Hillary win Ohio and does it have anything to do with why she’ll win Indiana and Kentucky? Not one to bury the lede, let me say that WKJM’s answer is that there are a whole bunch of racists in those states.  Read more 

Mighty Corrente Building Manager Lambert brought something up in the comments to this post by bringiton that I thought deserved its own, entirely new thread. Maybe; it’s part of the “What To Do With The OFB” issue that I think is a fairly important matter.

Anyway, Lambert quoth:

How about they go fuck themselves?  Read more 

It’s become a political cliché in this election season that Obama and his campaign have been largely about process issues (“politics, not policy”) and that there is a large segment of the Democratic Party that is surprisingly passionate about process issues and see in Obama a way to bring process issues to the fore. This attitude towards process issues stretches back to the Dean campaign. Whether this attitude is justified is another matter, but it’s becoming clear that it’s not an issue that is likely to win a general election, and that the Obama campaign’s focus on meta issues has been at the expense of issues that matter to another important voting bloc, and this might even cost him a nomination that for a time seemed to be practically his.  Read more 

In what is being heralded as one of the most momentous and politically astute moves of this extended primary campaign, Hillary Clinton’s Communication Director, Howard Wolfson, has signaled that the Clinton Campaign will be withdrawing from the North Carolina contest and focusing all of their efforts on the other May 6th primary in the state of Indiana.  Read more 

Ouch!

(caution: rant zone ahead)

Last night I finished up six days in Wonderland.

You see, last week I agreed to allow Part 4 of my “Sexism and Misogyny” series to be serialized at FDL. That was a mistake. Part 4 was really just one big fat footnote to the rest of the series, that explained a nice big chunk in the variance in the levels of evidence of sexism. The only reason it wasn’t a footnote is because it took too long to explain that while the variance was related to the percentage of black voters in the electorate, the cause of the variance was the “shift” in the white vote that occurs in conjunction with the increase in the percentage of the black vote.

Now, even my eyes glazed over while writing that last sentence, so I’m assuming that most of yours did too while reading it.  Read more 

Now that the brouhaha over the words of Reverend Wright has been completely done away with by Barack Obama’s speech, his supporters are once again clamoring for Hillary Clinton to get out of the race. We are told the only way she can win is if she manages to have a ‘coup by superdelegates.’ Those of you who are fans of the rules will note that such a coup is wholly permissible (as long as there is no associated violence).

There are many on the blogs who deem it unseemly that the will of the people would be ignored by these superdelegates (unless, say, that superdelegate was a governor from a southwestern state whose voters didn’t vote for the bloggers’ candidate of choice ). The question is what will they be looking at when making their decisions about what is best for the Democratic Party. Undoubtedly, the superdelegates will take the will of the people into account, but that is not all. Here I will focus on something else they will consider - who has the best chance of beating McCain in the Electoral College at the end of the year.

To do this I first look at the current state of polling in head to head match-ups between McCain and the two Democrats. The following two maps are drawn based on the current match-ups. These were created using 270toWin.com’s interactive map feature. The polling data used in this analysis were also found at 270toWin.com. A complete listing of this polling data is given in a table at the end of this post. The states are colored in only if the polls show a difference between the two (Clinton vs. McCain or Obama vs. McCain) of five percentage points or greater. It is certainly possible that changes of more than 5 percentage points could occur before November, but that is what I chose to use as a point for comparison.

Clinton vs. McCain

Obama vs. McCain

As can be seen, more states have aligned themselves with a candidate in the Clinton vs. McCain contest than for Obama vs. McCain. Clinton holds a >5% lead over McCain in 16 states (and the District of Columbia) which are worth a total of 215 electoral votes, while McCain leads (>5%) Clinton in 24 states worth 212 electoral votes. This leaves 10 states and 111 electoral votes ‘up for grabs.’ For Obama the lead (>5%) is in 15 states (plus DC), worth 180 electoral votes, with McCain leading (>5%) in 21 states worth 189 electoral votes. Thus they have 14 states and 169 electoral votes ‘in-play.’  Read more 

Michigan Messenger

Sen. Hillary Clinton came to Michigan Wednesday and publicly urged Sen. Barack Obama to get on board plans for a proposed do-over Democratic primary.

Clinton visited the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees building in downtown Detroit in a last-minute appearance designed to pressure Obama and state lawmakers who have said they don’t think the do-over proposal, which calls for a privately funded state-run primary on June 3, can or should pass the Legislature.

“I believe the families of Michigan are just as important as the families of any of any other state,” The Detroit News quoted Clinton saying during her visit.  Read more 

Xavier and Judy report that Clinton will be in Detroit tomorrow. I don’t get it, I would think she would be living in Pennsylvania.

When is she going to do the roof top bbq at the big E?

On the Chanting Obama Protesters…

It looks as though at a recent campaign event for Senator Clinton some Obama supporters were chanting “Hillary go home” or some such.

First off, let me say that the Obama supporters were completely within their Constitutional rights as the right to express one’s ideas publicly (especially one’s political ideas) is one of the founding pillars of this democracy. I realize that each side wants to make sure the best candidate wins the nomination (and of course each side thinks that its candidate is the best candidate) and is fighting to make sure that happens.  Read more 

REGIONAL COMPARISONS & BEST AND WORST STATES

The individual state cross tables from the SUSA 50 state general election poll demonstrate how the gender gap determines the winner in a very large number of states. But there is considerable variation between states themselves and within regions. Much of the variation appears to be related to other factors, such as race and racism, and how liberal/conservative a state is.  Read more 

Susie thinks that voter disenfrachisment is the most important issue. Chris Friend says that Democrats have given up the high ground. Kirk Wentzel calls for a do over. Daddy Democrat suggests that Obama would win a revote in Michigan. Will Bunch and Booman think it is important that Clinton broke her pledge not to put her name in the MI ballot.

[Welcome, Pollster.com readers!]

Misogyny, sexism, and the gender gap are alive and well in the American electorate.

Overall, men prefer McCain over either Democrat, while women prefer either Democrat over McCain. But the gender gap widens considerably when a woman is running. When McCain is matched with Obama, the gap is 13.9% (comprising 7% of voters), but when it is McCain versus Clinton, the gap nearly doubles to 26.9% (comprising 13.5% of voters.)

The expansion of the gender gap is due almost entirely to changes in how men vote. Only a few more women (1.6%, comprising 0.9% of all voters) prefer Clinton when matched with McCain than when Obama is matched with McCain—women pretty much stick with the Democrat regardless of whether its Clinton or Obama.

 Read more 

UPDATE: I’ve created some new tables that show how much of the undecided vote the candidates need to win each state.

The lastest SUSA national poll provides a lot of food for thought in terms of how the general election campaign will shape up. While the polls both predict close electoral college victories for Clinton and Obama, there is a big difference between “too close to call” states (margin 3% or less), “swing” state (margin 4-6%), “battleground” states (margins 7-12%), and fairly “safe” states (margins 13% or more).  Read more 

go to the polls in high numbers to vote for Hillary Clinton.

Women in Ohio made up 59% of the vote and Clinton won them 57-41% (she also won men).

Women in Texas made up 57% of the vote and Clinton won them 55-44%.

Of course, now I fully expect the claws will come out.

thanks, cd!

Why is the democratic primary still going on?

This question occurred to me while I read a post by Mike Lux at Open Left declaring Hillary Clinton’s candidacy dead. Because while Obama is certainly the frontrunner at this point, I don’t think Clinton’s candidacy is dead, at least not until Tuesday. Maybe not even then.  Read more