CE Week #2: “The Parties Switch Places”
By Michael Barone
Just shy of a month ago, after the first votes were cast in Iowa and New Hampshire, it seemed that the Republican Party faced a fluid and fractious nomination contest, while the Democrats faced a clear-cut choice between two not particularly adversarial candidates. What a difference a few weeks can make.
Now it appears that John McCain is on an unobstructed flight path to the nomination, facing a few crosswinds but no serious navigation hazards, while the two leading Democrats, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, are on the collision course, with the winner taking on serious and possibly disabling damage. And this in a year when the standard metrics — the job performance rating of the president, judgments about the trajectory of the economy, trends in party identification — have seemed overwhelmingly favorable to the Democrats.
How did this happen? Some will give credit to providence, which saw to it that McCain — whose candidacy seemed terminal last July 1 — was able to duplicate, with lesser percentages, his 2000 victory in New Hampshire, then survive a defeat in his best 2000 state, Michigan, then squeeze out a 33 percent to 30 percent victory over Mike Huckabee in South Carolina and a 36 percent to 31 percent victory over Mitt Romney in Florida.
None of which would have been possible without a collapse in Rudy Giuliani’s support, which was as widely unpredicted as his earlier rise to the top of the polls. Or without the collapse of the candidacy of 2000 McCain supporter Fred Thompson, who led in polls as a noncandidate but lost the lead before he officially declared.
Even so, McCain now seems a prohibitive favorite for the Republican nomination. He leads in just about all the polls in the big states that vote on Super Tuesday, Feb. 5. Giuliani has bowed out, and Huckabee’s election night speech reiterated his respect for McCain. Romney alone has the potential to buy enough ads and possibly derail McCain this week. But big-time buys did not win for him in Iowa, New Hampshire or Florida.
In his victory speech, McCain was at pains to pay respect not only to his rivals, but to the concerns of his critics in conservative journals and talk radio. To his undisputed asset as the longtime and persistent advocate of the surge, which has produced such success in Iraq, he added a stern but seldom-before-voiced resolve to appoint judges who would interpret rather than make law. He was paying — for once, and for the time being anyway — heed to his critics at National Review and his boosters at The Weekly Standard. Memo to Rush Limbaugh: You have been heard.
And what were the Democrats up to when the Republicans were receiving the coordinates of a clear flight path? Heading straight toward each other. The Clinton campaign, defeated in Iowa and nearly in New Hampshire, scraping by in Nevada and expecting a clobbering in South Carolina, faced a choice between losing clean and winning ugly. What is amusing is that so many liberal commentators were surprised when the Clinton apparat, with the unhesitation of a shark, chose the latter option.
Bill Clinton and other Hillary Clinton surrogates got busy playing the race card against Barack Obama. They belittled his victory in South Carolina and profited from her victory in Florida — Democratic Party rules forbade candidates to compete — where elderly women, Latinos and Jews, all heavily pro-Clinton (or anti-Obama) constituencies, are heavily represented.
As they will be, to varying extents, in the Super Tuesday states, especially California. Extrapolating from all but one of the Florida results, Clinton will be the big winner there. The exception: Floridians making up their minds at the last minute were evenly split between Obama and Clinton.
Disgust over the Clintons’ tactics has been a staple of liberal magazines and blogs and evidently inspired Edward Kennedy’s endorsement of Obama. Political history mavens will recall that Kennedy, well after he had lost the 1980 nomination to Jimmy Carter, continued his campaign and bitter denunciations all the way to the national convention.
Will he urge such a course on Obama? Hillary Clinton may be content to win ugly. But she may find, as Carter did, that a crash on the runway is not an appealing spectacle.
Copyright 2008, Creators Syndicate Inc.
So reading this article there was nothing really new to talk about. It just went on about how the republicans pretty much have their nominee and Clinton and Obama were still at each others throats. Blah blah blah right? At the end of the article though it talks about how Hillary and Bill’s campaign are spinning their completely and, I thought, utterly devastating lose in South Carolina (haha) into a good thing. They “profited from her victory in Florida — Democratic Party rules forbade candidates to compete — where elderly women, Latinos and Jews, all heavily pro-Clinton (or anti-Obama) constituencies, are heavily represented.” Although party loyalty isn’t as big as it used to be, you’d think true democrats would look down on the fact that Hillary has still run in both states which front loaded (by frontloading I mean states which moved their primaries before the dates they were supposed to and as a result got all of their delegates taken away). She kind of broke the rules wouldn’t you say? Well anyways I don’t see how they are spinning a win in a state where she was the only candidate as a good thing. Hillary Clinton you beat out yourself, congratulations!
Well this just goes to show that you can never be too sure on how an election is going to turn out. But just as we had learned in our books, the earlier the primary/caucus the more influences it will have over who will be given the nomination. As we all have seen, nothing much has really changed on the Democratic side, it still is and always has been Obama vs. Hillary. So of course the first few primaries and caucuses went to one of the two. But, the more recent primaries and caucuses have been showing W’s for McCain, and as the election journey continues, McCain’s victory lead has only increased. This all goes back to when we learned that the sooner your primary the better. Since Washington is one of the later elections, what we do won’t really have all that much of an effect on who will be getting the presidential nomination. Unless after tomorrow (being Super Tuesday) the two Democrat nominees are tied, I don’t think anyone will pay much attention to little old Washington. But back to the main point of the article, it does seem that the roles of the two parties have switched, the Democrats have an unsure front runner while the Republicans seem to already have a candidate. But will tomorrow be the changing factor? Will Ron Paul have an amazing and unforeseen victory in all 22 states? Hey its politics, anything is possible.
The ole’ Switcharoo
This article discussed something I had completely forgotten: the ole’ switcharoo. How could I have forgotten! (Actually it is very easy for me to forget, but just go with my dramatization here.) Thompson, the new Ronald Reagan, became the frontrunner before he even declared his candidacy—and to become the poster child of the Republican Party. Wow, he doesn’t even seem to care all that much anymore and well, no one really seems to care about his nomination either. Rudy Giuliani, that national frontrunner in the early stages, huh, uhhhh where did he go again? Oh yea, he decided to skip the MAJOR states and go right to Florida. He’s a good example for future candidates of what not to do. Even surprisingly enough, Huckabee is pretty much done with too, I mean yea, he did win Iowa 34% to 25% (Romney) and McCain came in third with only 13% (tied with Thompson). Now Huckabee is a distant third in the delegate race, unless Super Tuesday changes all of that, and well I think he too will be out soon. Romney has been the only candidate that has slowly grown in popularity over the past couple years, hasn’t really had the peak that Giuliani, Thompson, Huckabee, and now McCain have experienced. (I know this connection is lame, but it will work.) But I think this is one time where we have seen and might see the “big Mo” actually not matter. Giuliani’s didn’t carry him to the primaries; Thompson’s didn’t last him through his decision to even run; Huckabee, well he’s just hanging out for other reasons. Honestly I would not be surprised if McCain suddenly fell on his face too; literally. This article really brought up the idea that the Republicans have sure-fire candidate, well I am extremely skeptical of saying McCain will have the nomination just because most of the Republican “poster-childs” have all failed, so yea. I think this year the later primaries will actually matter and this front-loading won’t provide any definite answer.
Danny Porter
The only complaint I have about this article is the author seems to be worried about the status of the democrats. I think it makes things interesting, and I think Obama will benefit from trying to stay positive. I also hope that the republicans nominate McCain, and once this happens they will realize they have just made a huge mistake. But some people think Romney could be worse, but personally I think there are going to have trouble no matter what. Now I think the democratic race is going to be really interesting, I hope Hillary’s campaign crashes and burns, soon. I would be really scared if Hillary got the nomination. Hopefully some people’s theory proves to be right and Obama will benefit from Hillary tending to be more negative lately and he is staying above it. One thing that Hillary has been really negative about has been the different primaries that Hillary has lost; also she has been pushing the race issue, which seems to be really unneeded. But it seems she is willing to do whatever it takes to win the nomination. I am hoping though that all the negative things Hillary has done will kill her campaign soon. This article does demonstrate how hard it is for experts to be able to tell what is going to happen as the presidential race proceeds.
So as per usual the article simply states that the rules are changing. Politicians are playing to get the most media attention so that they can play the people game. Hillary and Obama are in the midst of a battle for delegate votes. They are even fighting for smaller less important states because, at this point in the race, these races could prove to be the tie breaker in the end. Hillary’s campaign crew is spinning out-comes to show she has exceeded expectations and Obama’s campaign crew is showing that he meets expectations and has been victorious so far in the race.
The republicans however seem to be treading carefully. Whereas Obama and Clinton are
quite obviously head to head, the republicans seem to be avoiding the negative aspect that stems from the orchestra pit. If a candidate messes up just once than his chances of their campaign succeeding is very low.
As for Super Tuesday Hillary and Obama are very close in the race. Washington has been pulled into play as a state that could change the outcome of the race.
Through our discussion in class today about how Super Tuesday paned out it is kind of funny, I mean you can tell right now that these predictions we wrong. We talked about how it is usually the Democratic Party that has problems with having to many candidates and though maybe last week well all thought that we had a Republican shoe in we all can see now that there really is still three candidates that have a pretty good shot for the Republican Party nomination.
Also we see that the democrats sure have a close race. They have two candidates that are very close and that most likely will have their nomination decided by the super delegates (these are people who hold high stops in the party).
Also in this article towards the end we see that they start to talk about how if Hillary wants to win the nomination she may have to win in by playing dirty, and by doing that she may cause herself the actual election. I think that this could very well be true, if was in the 1980 election and that is how the republicans won the presidency. So if the democrats don’t figure it out I truly do believe they will be in for another 4 years of a republican president.
This article is pretty interesting in the sense that it seems like it was wrote and published sometime before super Tuesday, and here I am, writing a response to it the day after that event. It seems as though Barone couldn’t be more correct when he says that the parties have switched things up, because by the looks of things now, they sure have. I think I’d have to agree completely with this article because it seemed back in September or even October before much had happened that we would have a democrat in office next January. Well, the Republicans show that McCain is their best representative as it looks as though he will lead the way to the Republican nomination in August. The democrats just aren’t decisive enough to choose between the two major candidates, even though the numbers lean slightly Hillary’s way. She has Bill helping her along the way, which gives her the advantage of super delegates, and his advice as he had already won two candidacies in the past. It seems like the super delegates are getting some people worked up as though Obama won’t be able to make up those numbers Hillary having that lead. Keep in mind the super delegates are pretty much the party leaders in the national convention as they automatically have a slot. It’s possible that Hillary slight advantage of these super delegates might be enough to sway other delegates of independent candidates and those who have dropped out of the running to her support. I think that this frontloading of states and early primaries and caucuses will not do what they usually do, and some of these late, and smaller states are going to make the difference.
I think this article addresses something we can always count on to screw up election predictions: the human element. Poor judgment seems to have been the demise of all the candidates who have dropped out so far. Fred Thompson was lazy in his campaigning and didn’t seem to care about what he was doing. Giuliani counted too much on his early popularity to carry him through the first primaries which proved detrimental to his campaign (When does 48 million equal one?).
Maybe Hillary’s dirty tactics will be enough to put her in the league with the former GOP front runners. I think, at the very least, it will hurt her from maximizing her delegate count by having smaller wins in the upcoming primaries. Obama is just becoming more and more attractive when put next to Hillary.
So this Michael Barone guy must have some pretty good insight! Either that or he is one really good guesser! Our two “wonderful” political parties have definitely shaken things up. With the Republican Party having a true front-runner and the Democrats with Hilary and Obama going head-to-head, everything has gone topsy-turvy. McCain is certainly doing very well for himself and maybe better than he ever expected to. However, things may come back to haunt him like we discussed in class today and his only possible road block could end up being Huckabee. Obama and Hilary are continuing their on-going battle neck-in-neck with Hilary having a slight lead…for now! Even though both Barack and Clinton had major victories on Tuesday – Clinton winning New York, California and Massachusetts among others and Barack winning Illinois and Idaho – the super delegates pulled through for Clinton. We also discussed in class today how the super delegates aren’t necessarily ties down to a candidate, so they basically can change their minds multiple times. Personally, I think that would be hilarious! Also with this EXTREMELY close race on the Democratic side, the smaller states may count for more than they usually do which could also really scramble things up. The 2008 presidential race is definitely one for surprises!
Response to Nick
I am pretty sure that you don’t have to worry about Hillary’s campaign crashing and burning. With her low approval rating before even getting the nomination, let alone in office, I don’t think people are going to elect her. Also, going off of what you said, when one goes negative, they lose their support. As we saw and talked about in class, when Al Gore went negative at the debates, he lost a lot of support. He couldn’t find his happy medium at the debates until the last debate, where no one was listening any more. That, along with other reasons is why Al Gore didn’t win the presidency in 2000. I really hope the same fate comes to Hillary Clinton.
Response to Whitehead
As far as republicans really having any chance at winning the presidency, I really think they don’t. With Obama getting the democratic nomination, no matter who they put as the republican, I think seeing the big D for democrat and remembering how much everyone hated President Bush, the last republican will be enough to vote for Obama. Even though his name suggests he could be a terrorist, people are a little gunshy about the republican side of things .
Well the Republicans were searching for a front runner and now finally one seems to be appearing. Perhaps this isn’t to be credited all to McCain’s ideas, plans, or his charming good looks, but more so that Huckabee and Romney are splitting the conservative vote causing McCain to jump ahead. Like years in the past having multiple candidates splits American votes. I find that perhaps Huckabee, like Nadar in 2000 election, is stealing the votes away from Romney. We discussed how if McCain is elected he might put Huckabee as his Vice President, which could ultimately be linked back to why Huckabee is still running (to take Romney’s potential votes away). As for the Democratic side, we do have front runners, just too many. Hillary and Obama are neck and neck and the support of Edwards can be more important than ever at the end. It’s so close between the two they are even paying attention to Washington. However, Hillary does seem to have more support from the super delegates than Obama (which could be vital). And the frontloading (no delegates will be rewarded) this year has made the election even closer. States that would be a for sure aren’t being accounted for which in result could hurt one of the candidates. The popularity of a candidate or unpopularity of a candidate in these states seems to be playing in other states decisions whether they follow or the reverse effect.
-Caitlin Barschig
In class we’ve talked about momentum as a clear cut necessity if you want to take a party nomination (by momentum, I mean letting a win in one state propel you to a win in the next), but this election is so much different. I remember when we were sitting back after Huckabee’s Chuck Norris commercial thinking he had the nom sewn up. And back even further when Thompson had won before even entering the race? It just goes to show that there isn’t a clear cut system to politics. Sure money and momentum are important as we are seeing now with McCain, but I remember back at the beginning of first semester when McCain wasn’t even being mentioned in our class discussions. And on the democrats side we knew that it would come down to Hillary and Obama, but did we all think the race would last this long without a lone frontrunner? I just find it all really funny. The American electorate (voters) seem to be throwing curveball after curveball. Now with only four candidates running in the republican race, I think it’s safe to say that McCain has it. The Democrats however, are a little harder to pin down. I really think Obama will win (despite my wishes) but you can never say for certain with a race like this! Barack won in Iowa and South Carolina, but Hillary’s won her own key states too.
From a few discussions in class and things I had previously seen on the news, Super Tuesday (closest thing our nation has had to a national primary) was supposed to clear up any doubts and shore up the nomination for both parties. It did everything but that. McCain continued to show his dominance but Huckabee pulled another one of his magic tricks (definitely not complaining) and surprised many people by taking the south, which as we have talked about before, is a must if you want to win the presidency. As for the Democrats, their leads change just about every minute that ticks by. Anyways this “whole parties switching places” thing was one of the topics we discussed today in class. We learned today that in past elections the Republicans are usually the most organized and have there nominee figured out really early and the Democrats are the ones with several candidates later in the primaries. As of right now, the Democrats are looking pretty good to win the presidency. One of the big factors this year is the great increase in young voters who tend to lean Democrat. Not only that but there are many people who are dissatisfied with the Bush administration, therefore many people may go for “change” which is a big point that both Obama and Clinton are stressing. – Matt Powles
This article has nothing new to talk about really. We all know that John McCain is clearly the front runner for the Republican candidacy, with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton battling it out for the Democratic nomination. It’s still really interesting to see the impact Mike Huckabee continues to have on this race. He is taking away votes from Mitt Romney. The perfect example of this was on Super Tuesday and the state of West Virginia. All of the John McCain supporters threw their vote over to Mike Huckabee so Mitt Romney wouldn’t win and collect the delegates. Of course, what happens to good old Mitt? – Mike Huckabee wins the state of West Virginia, thanks to all the John McCain supports who they knew they weren’t going to win. On the Democratic side, the way things are going with the race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, it could come down to the super delegates. As the article states, in order for Hillary Clinton to win the Democratic nomination, she may have to play dirty and, in doing so, she might risk her election. As for me, I hope she does lose the Democratic nomination. I can’t stand Hillary Clinton. Please, Bill was enough at the White House.
Hmmm. So this article was interesting because it kind of broke down everything between the parties. This guy (the author) has some pretty good insight. Basically I think that McCain is WAY too old to be elected President. In our class discussions, it always comes up that McCain’s life-span is coming to an end here pretty soon! Not only is he approaching 80, his years in the service were respectable, but shortening to his life. That’s the bottom line; he’s not going to be here much longer…so if we’re going to elect him, I don’t think we really need to bother worrying about what he’ll do, we’ll need to focus more on whomever the Vice President is!!
But that’s definitely not the interesting part of the election…that’s for sure the Obama vs. Hillary race! It has been so close all the way through. The frustrating thing to me is how there are fewer delegates due to the punishment of frontloading, when in all reality, frontloading didn’t give states more say! Washington has become a vital state because of the close race and we have obviously waited! In class we discussed how Hillary has the super delegates of the Democratic party, which were created to lessen the chance of a radical liberal getting the nominated and losing miserably which has happened to the “blue” party a couple times. Unfortunately, this has caused her to be leading by what seems to be a lot in delegate count. So, if she has these super-delegates and there are fewer delegates as a consequence to front loading, does Obama stand a chance? Does he only really have a chance if he wins quite a few more delegates from each small state left (without the winner take all system) and if some super delegate change their vote before the national convention?
ps-I enjoyed the whole part that said “Hillary Clinton may be content to win ugly. But she may find, as Carter did, that a crash on the runway is not an appealing spectacle.”
Classy…real classy.
This article sounds like what Kautzman talked about how a person can get momentum off of a win and push them to win other states as well. John McCain won New Hampshire. It also may not work when you have a pretty close race like the democrats are having right now. It also sounds like when Kautzman talked about how the people will most likely vote with their pocket books. We all know that that favors the Democrats definitely. Its very interesting to me how Mitt Romney thinks that he is this political genius or this Barack Obama on a pedestal if you will and I don’t think he is anything amazing. He is just as worthy of the presidency as any of the other 5 hard working people that are going for it so. McCain did do very well in beating Huckabee in South Carolina and Romney in Florida. Part of the reason I feel that he won in Florida is because he is very old and a lot of old people live there so it might have been easier for them to vote for there own kind. I will never understand why Rudy supports McCain. It might be because he is now the larger front-runner and he wanted to get on the band wagon I am exactly sure. It seems weird that Fred Thompson supported McCain in 2000 but earlier this campaign was trying to beat McCain. What is up with that?
I’m confused. Yes, a few months ago we didn’t have a republican frontrunner. But we knew that the election would be between Obama and Hillary, and it still is right? So how is everything different than what it was a couple of months ago? Only the republican side has changed a lot. Also, sure McCain’s winning but he wouldn’t be winning if it wasn’t for Huckabee which tells me that republicans are still divided and no one is sure of what they want.
It doesn’t surprise me that Hillary chose to try and win dirty. Her and Bill Take so much crap it’s probably not any different than any other day in her life if she choses to tough it out. And that’s all I have to say about that.
It was apparent that this article wasn’t too informal because what was said we already knew practically. For the republicans, McCain had an unexpected jump to the front runner due to a few aspects including Rudy Giuliani’s collapse in the election and his unexpected support for McCain. The only thing I found funny about this article is how they were trying to spin it in favor of Hilary Clinton, meaning they were pretty bias. We already know her and Barack Obama are neck and neck for the democratic nomination. But when they began to talk about her recent victories they made it seem like she knew she was going to win: “where elderly women, Latinos and Jews, all heavily pro-Clinton (or anti-Obama) constituencies, are heavily represented”. This is just another strategy for the Clinton administration to help insure her victory for the democratic nomination. I guess what’s going to be a real surprise is the upcoming caucuses and primaries in Washington. Because of how the race is so far we have become a “swing-state” meaning we are more important now to the presidential election.
~Ryan
Well, Barone had a pretty good prediction. This is pretty much how Super Tuesday played out. It will be interesting to see what happens from this point on. The Democrats may never have a front runner for the rest of the primary season. Super Tuesday was supposed to “end” the race. It didn’t. It didn’t on the Republican side either. The Democratic nominee, like we talked about in class, I think will likely be decided by John Edwards’ brokering. Clinton and Obama are like 25 delegates within each other and will probably split the remainder of the delegates too. We also talked about how the Democrats might even pick John Edwards as the nominee, if all else fails. I don’t see this happening because Edwards has not been strong at all this year, even losing his home state of South Carolina. If he was the nominee, the Democrats probably won’t win the election.
I’m interested in seeing what happens to John McCain now. The media did attack him for his liberalness, but I think they did it too late to affect the outcome of Super Tuesday. McCain has momentum now, but the media is still attacking him on how he doesn’t fit the Republican mold. This might affect the outcome of the next few primaries, and if that’s the case, we might have a situation similar to the Democrats, where McCain and Romney (or Huckabee) will be neck and neck.
-Jason Wong
Response To Shauna:
So I can’t tell… do you support Hilary Clinton or are you one of those people who constantly insist on finding some reason to hate her whether she wins, loses or doesn’t even compete? No seriously, I can’t tell. Where I don’t condone playing dirty in sports or cheating on tests, I don’t believe there is a problem with the Clinton’s campaign strategy. Because this is neither sports nor tests, this is politics. And to get to the top sometimes you’ve got to get there by “winning ugly”. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do to get on top. What’s wrong with the Clintons using spin to make their situations seem more favorable? I mean, isn’t that what only every other politician does? Take unfavorable results or surprising updates and turn them into some shocker story about how their candidate is God’s gift to the green earth? Only what all the winners do… There’s nothing wrong with spin, it’s just good politicking.
This writer seems extremely biased. He pumps up McCain as the surprise front runner out of a seemingly highly competitive bunch covering the republicans. And then onto democrats… He mentions it’s a tight race and then bags on Hilary Clinton. Well, I have news for the author. As a writer you’re really not that creative because every writer out there bags on Hilary. How about someday someone write something really outrageous and support her?!
Well, Anthony, let me clear things up. It is still early in the race. There are quite a few states that still need to have primaries and caucuses. This article only knows of a few states that have voted. So, yes the Republicans are still divided. And yes, we did know that it would be between Hillary and Obama for the Democrats. This article was just comparing the extremely early polls and assumptions to now and how it changed. (Yes, most of the changes have been on the Republican side.) A few months ago, the republicans had so many choices that they could make a human chain around the U.S. Those possibilities (they weren’t really candidates having leaving so ridiculously soon) filtered out quickly and now the nomination seems clearer. They are still divided, but that’s okay. I do agree with your little bout about Clinton. It probably isn’t any different.
Besides Anthony’s questions, I also found some of the observations about Hillary interesting. “Although party loyalty isn’t as big as it used to be, you’d think true democrats would look down on the fact that Hillary has still run in both states which front loaded…She kind of broke the rules wouldn’t you say?” (Shauna Johnson). Shauna’s point is interesting. The ‘Democrats’ said no to the front-loaders. That was very clear, but Hillary ran in them. As a Democrat, shouldn’t she follow those precedents or guidelines set by the Democratic Party?
Another observation I noticed was Nick McMurray’s, “One thing that Hillary has been really negative about has been the different primaries that Hillary has lost; also she has been pushing the race issue, which seems to be really unneeded. But it seems she is willing to do whatever it takes to win the nomination.” Hillary does really want it. She is doing everything to gain the nomination. She’s “breaking the rules” and hitting low blows at Obama. This was very interesting to read and eye opening.
Reply to Nick McMurray. I liked Nick’s response to the article. I thought it was funny how wants the Clinton campaign to crash and burn, the ironic part is I want the same thing too. Hillary Clinton is a bad choice for president not because she is a women but because she is an ex presidents wife. It would make for an awkward situation in the white house. Unlike Nick I hope McCain does not get the nomination because he is old and about to die, but now, as we talked about in class, Mitt Romney dropped out so now the only real competition for McCain is Huckabee. It honestly looks like McCain will have no problems winning the candidacy. Now about Hillary being negative and Obama being positive, I don’t see that it has any effect on the outcome of the winner, because both candidates are still neck and neck in the race and it looks like it is going to come down to the last few states and their voters decision. Finally the first thing nick said was that he thought the author was unsure of the democratic status. I saw this throughout reading the article and I agree with the author is some ways, the Democratic race will come down to the wire, I am even unsure of the Democratic status.
Callie B, that was super duper refreshing. Completely “outrageous.” The same old same old Hillary’s a bitch story has definitely gone sour. The worst and most monotonous of these outcries are amongst my fellow classmates. In blogs and in class, I consistently see and overhear Hillary Clinton bashing. I feel like I have missed something. It’s not that I support her, because I don’t support her, I would just really like to know what the heck it was that she did to all of you. Something to explain all of the “She’s so gross,” “Can’t stand listening to her,” “Don’t want to even look at her,” “I seriously hate her,” comments would really be nice. I mean, you guys act like she is a related to Lucifer himself. So someone who “hates” Hillary Clinton please explain themselves if you get a chance to read this. Because like Callie said, “There’s nothing wrong with spin, it’s just good politicking.” Just in case you have missed it because your heads have been up your “donkeys”, your beloved Barack Hussein Obama has used the same tactics (just as all the rest). He’s not above playing dirty, and he’s not all that “different” from Hilary Clinton as most of us would like to believe. I recently saw this phrase advertised on the internet so I won’t take credit, but “He’s an Obamanation!” I thought it was cute.
Reply to Cody. Why is everyone wanting the Clinton campaign to crush and burn? What is so wrong about it? Why are they the hated? And why would the fact of her being married to Bill make an awkward situation inn the White House? He was a good president who certainly benefited our country a lot more than Bush has. Hilary may follow close to what Bill did and restore our country to how it was in Bill was in office. Hopefully she does not have a male Monica Lewinsky like Bill. And it is very interesting that you do not want McCain to get the nomination because he is “old and about to die.” Does his age really affect whether people will vote for him or not? If it does this election has a lot of problems on who to vote for. You have a black man, a woman, and a old man. Thats a tough decision. This Democratic race will come down to the wire. Hilary and Obama are neck and neck and will be like that until the end. It will be interesting to see the outcome of this race.
My response is to Stefanie, Callie and Shauna and their argument over Clinton. I am one of those people who talk down about Hillary really for no other reason than the fact that I just don’t like her. I listen to her speak and I do not believe her, and I do not think that I trust her whereas with Obama, he seems genuinely likeable. We have talked in class about how we as voters do tend to base a lot of our vote a candidate’s likeability. We’re not going to vote for jerks or people who seem untrustworthy. So yes, there are a lot of people who are talking smack about Hillary with nothing to back them up, but what does that really matter? Whether or not they are liked, when it comes down to the polls, is just as important as their politics. And as far as the whole spin issue, shining a positive light on something negative, you can’t really judge anyone for that, because it is what politics are all about. (Except I do agree with Shauna and thought it was kind of dodgy of Clinton to claim a victory in states where she competed with herself.)
Re: Eric’s comment about treading carefully
Eric brings up an important point when he mentions the orchestra pit–the Republicans are being very careful in their “clear flight paths” that the article mentions. The Democratic frontrunners are going head to head right now, and the Clinton campaign in particular is getting down and dirty. The mud-slinging has certainly begun on the Democratic side.
However, I don’t think that this is a bad thing for the Democrats. First, they are stealing a little bit of Republican theory–competition leads to better results in the end, survival of the fittest and all that. Second, having the slinging begin now, in February, means that the dirty laundry is being aired fairly early. This isn’t to say that the other side won’t have plenty of fodder for the finals, but it does cut down on the chances of October surprises. There have already been attacks against the competitors and not just their ideas, and by the time November rolls around “Obama has no experience” will sound pretty old.
But the Republicans haven’t had too much of this excepting Huckabee’s so-called slip-up against Romney. We haven’t really seen anything against McCain. Are there none to be thought up, or has the easygoing competition for the Republicans opened the door for some close-to-election-time mudslinging?
Response 2: Clinton debate. There is a big difference in hating and not liking. Mckena responded stating that, “I simply just don’t like her.” Well, you must not be the type I was addressing my initial response to. I’m speaking of all of you who threaten to move to Canada if she’s elected. I’m slightly confused that Hillary has made it this far considering her extremely high disapproval rating. Is it the women’s vote that is carrying her? Maybe some good ol’ party sabotage that has kept her neck and neck? Perhaps both. I’m sure there are some kind of polls somewhere that can confirm or disprove these speculations. Shauna was saying that you would think that Clinton’s running in states that the Democratic Party punished for frontloading would hinder her reputation with voters. One. Looking back on this article weeks later, obviously not. Two. I don’t think many people pay much attention to the parties because we have candidate-centered campaigns now instead of party-centered ones. This is why voters say things like, “I vote for the candidate, not the party.” Anyway, my other post still stands without explanation… Why are there so many Hillary haters? And to add to this question in this post, With so many Hillary haters, how is she still a competitor?