AT THE TOP: ROVE HIRED BY FOX…WHY DID IT TAKE THIS LONG?
In Congress, I will be your full time advocate and deliver results by creating good jobs, attracting investments, making health care affordable and accessible, and protecting families from predatory lenders.
I have delivered results because I am a full time advocate for my constituents. I understand the problems of working families and pledge to keep fighting for them.”
In Cleveland, U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich's opponents in the March 4 Democratic primary reported varying amounts. Former U.N. worker Barbara Anne Ferris led fundraising for the year with $33,964 and spent all but $6,547 of it. North Olmsted Mayor Thomas O'Grady raised $28,000 and still had most of it on hand. Others, including Cleveland city councilman
Joe Cimperman had not yet reported. He will have a problem as soon as that money becomes an issue.
That too is a problem as the Cimperman reports are well massaged avoiding the usual “Red Flags”!
Ohio 10th Open Secrets ReportsJoseph Cimperman (D) $227,599
Rosemary Palmer (D) $133,306
Barbara Anne Ferris (D) $33,964
Thomas E. O'Grady (D) $28,300
James Peter Trakas (R) $0
Kucinich had not filed as of late Thursday. His last reporting showed only about $33,000 in the bank.
Money, the general atmosphere, The Cleveland Plain Dealer and Cimperman’s “Business” contacts are mounting as serious an attack on Dennis as we have seen in recent years. The time span until the March 4 primary is brief. Workers are sufficient in number, dollars are not. Questions regarding Ohio’s election processes making their way through the courts with ACLU in a very strange position will not, cannot be given the attention necessary. Resources will not permit opening a battlefront.
It is hoped that a Televised Cleveland press Club Debate can be encouraged. I am sure the other candidates would not welcome that proposition.
URGENT!
The Congressional Campaign Site
http://www.kucinich.us/For the moment contributions are needed, letters to the Editor (
Cleveland Plain Dealer) in support of Dennis are needed.
Cleveland.com: The Plain DealerTo submit a letter, please fill out the form below. Letters may also be mailed to Letters to the Editor, The Plain Dealer, 1801 Superior Ave., Cleveland ...
Anyone with contacts in the
Ohio 10th Congressional
District is encouraged to make them immeadiately urging support of
Dennis.
Assessment of the impact of likely voter turnout for the March 4 Primary will be on going and will have to become a major concern/activity after “Potomac Tuesday”. It is a grave concern!
Was PD Editorial Written with Straight Face?Cleveland Leader - Cleveland,OH,USAThe thrust was that Kucinich said he campaigned on the weekends so that it didn’t affect his Congressional work. So here’s proof he’s a liar. ...
POST SUPER TUESDAY ANALYSIS AND RELATED MATTERS.
Spinning Right Along To The Potomac And Talk Of Super Delegates. That’s What Happens When”Super Tuesday” Isn’t So Super.
Key for both parties could be next Tuesday's Potomac Primary in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia. But before that, this weekend features caucuses in Washington and Kansas (Republicans only) and Louisiana (Democratic primary, Republican caucuses). On Sunday, Maine Democrats will caucus.
Republican John McCain emerged as his party's front-runner leading into the 21 states that had Republican contests on Super Tuesday. A dominant Super Tuesday showing would not technically allow McCain to nail down his party's nomination, but it would launch him into successive contests with momentum and a greater aura of inevitability.
Conversely, if any of the other GOP contenders do well enough Tuesday to carry on, states that decided to hold their primaries later, like Wisconsin on Feb. 19, could become sudden showdowns.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is trying to hold onto the mantle of the true conservative in the GOP field, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee stayed in to see how he'd do on Super Tuesday, and Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, has shown no signs of giving up. Paul finished a close third behind McCain in last week's Maine caucuses that Romney easily won.
Neither Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., nor Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., emerged from Tuesday's contests as the clear Democratic front-runner, moving the spin ground to “the nominating campaign might not be settled until March 4”, when four states, anchored by Ohio and Texas, hold primaries. Obama believes he has an advantage in next week's Potomac Primary, setting up a Wisconsin showdown a week later and potentially denying Clinton a significant victory for nearly a month.
WASHINGTON - Consider this the beginning of a long hard slog. The grand spectacle of Super Tuesday's coast-to-coast nominating contests marks a turning point in the Democratic presidential contest from euphoric election night victories to painstaking delegate counting. Now it's time for spreadsheets green eye shades, coffee and cigarettes.
In early results, Hillary Rodham Clinton won primaries in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts. Barack Obama was the victor in Georgia, Delaware, Alabama and Illinois. Altogether, 22 states were in play but neither candidate emerged with enough delegates to secure the nomination. That was no surprise.
Preliminary exit polls of voters in primary states showed Obama encroaching on Clinton's traditional support. Clinton had only a slight edge among women and with whites, two areas where she has generally dominated Obama. Clinton was getting strong support from Hispanics, an increasingly important voting bloc. But Obama led among men — including white men, a group with whom he has struggled for votes in most previous contests.
Those results augur well for Obama in contests in coming weeks.
The campaigns, like sports teams that have clinched a playoff spot, already have been preparing for the matches ahead. Obama has been advertising in states with primaries and caucuses over the next seven days. Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia, all of which hold primaries on Feb. 12, play to Obama's strengths with black voters and upscale, educated voters.
Clinton strategists are looking over the horizon into March and April when Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania hold primaries.
Time could work against Clinton, however. Obama raised $32 million to her $13.5 million in January — a financial edge that will help him organize and advertise in the upcoming battlegrounds. On Tuesday, her campaign called for four debates between now and March 4, a sign that she wants to supplement her financial disadvantage with free media.
After a month of early contests — from Iowa to New Hampshire to Nevada to South Carolina — the two candidates have essentially divided the electorate into two component parts. He gets young voters, educated voters, and black voters. She gets women, working-class voters and Hispanics.
Both candidates have worked hard to win over supporters of John Edwards, who dropped out of the presidential race last Wednesday after a third-place finish in South Carolina. They've spent a combined $20 million on advertising in Super Tuesday states. And whoever cuts into the other's base will gain an advantage.
Obama seemed to benefit from Edwards' departure, expanding his support among white voters from one in four in the South Carolina primary to better than two out of five in Georgia. "She has ceiling issues, and the people who aren't for her we think are very available to us," Obama campaign manager David Plouffe told reporters Tuesday.
But Clinton had reason to cheer as well. She beat Obama in Massachusetts despite Obama's strength among highly educated voters and opponents of the war and high-profile endorsements from the state's political power troika — U.S. Sens. Edward Kennedy, John Kerry and Gov. Deval Patrick.
A new direction for the country seemed to be on the minds of Democratic voters. Half of them said they favored a candidate who could cause needed change and seven out of 10 of them voted for Obama. About one-fifth of voters preferred a candidate with experience and Clinton won nearly all of them.
As usual, Obama had a decisive lead with blacks, with about eight in 10 favoring him, the early national figures showed. But Clinton was getting support from nearly six in 10 Hispanics, a group that could be pivotal in states such as California.
The two candidates, each a U.S. senator, won their home states on Tuesday — Obama in Illinois, Clinton in New York. The 22 states holding contests, as well as American Samoa, offer 1,681 Democratic delegates. A total of 2,025 delegates are needed to secure the Democratic nomination. .California is the day's biggest prize, with 370 delegates at stake. New Jersey, another state in Tuesday's mix, has 107 delegates.
With voting under way, Clinton led Obama in the hunt for delegates, 261 to 202, on the strength of so-called super delegates. Those are members of Congress and other party leaders not chosen in state presidential contests. Obama had 31 delegates in early voting Tuesday, while Clinton had 21.
Clinton aides said Tuesday that Obama might win more delegates on Tuesday than Clinton, but that they would emerge from the voting with more delegates overall.
Democrats award delegates proportionally in every state. That means the second-place finisher who gets at least 15 percent of the vote also will win delegates. Indeed, even if a candidate wins the popular vote in a state by a wide margin, the edge on delegates could be significantly smaller.
Obama entered Super Tuesday propelled by a solid victory in South Carolina on Jan. 26, the endorsement of Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and a banner fundraising month in January. Both sides have downplayed Super Tuesday expectations. The Clinton camp has pointed to his rise in the polls; Obama's campaign has cited her longtime strength and name recognition in several of the contested states.
But it's the long term that matters.
"They're both going to get a chance to recover if they lose something and get a chance to consolidate if they keep winning," California-based Democratic strategist Bill Carrick said. "The delegate count is going to be so close that this is going to go on for a while."
And A real Danger For Our Party
Avoiding A Convention Train WreckBecause remember that these folks are in the wings!One thing that's clear after last night, we've got a tough and potentially ugly delegate fight ahead of us for the Democratic nomination. Not only might the unaccountable and
undemocratic superdelegates come into play, but the prospect looms of a bitter intra-party battle to seat the Michigan and Florida delegates. The DNC, Governor Dean, and the state parties need to do some serious thinking – starting now – on how to avoid a situation where backroom deals determine the nominee and his or her legitimacy is called into question.
As most people know, the Michigan and Florida delegates aren't supposed to be counted towards determining the nominee, a penalty for unilaterally moving their elections up in the primary season against the party's wishes. The candidates agreed not to campaign in the states, and in fact, only Hillary Clinton appeared on the ballot in Michigan. Once she won both states, her campaign predictably began to argue that these delegates should be counted. This could force the Obama campaign into the unenviable position of looking like they are trying to block voters in two swing states. It's a train wreck waiting to happen – perhaps to be played out before the national media in Denver.
The question is: what can be done to preempt this?
I know that there is a Credentials Committee, and a Rules Committee, and probably even a Committee for the Selection of the Credentials and Rules Committees. I know
the delegate process is laid out and explained in the bylaws. But certainly the DNC never anticipated this situation and it calls for a creative and immediate mending of the process.
One proposal is that both Florida and Michigan be permitted to caucus later this spring. It goes without saying that the Clinton forces would reject this. But if the DNC, Governor Dean, state parties, and other prominent Democrats like Jimmy Carter, John Edwards, Joe Biden, Bill Richardson,
Jesse Jackson, Walter Mondale, Gary Hart, etc. – all called for a fair contest with the candidates competing head-to-head – how long would the Clintons put up a fight? They would move from looking like the defenders of Michigan and Florida voters (the niche they are currently attempting to carve out), to looking like they are once again attempting to "game" the system.
At the very least people need to be reminded that everyone agreed to the earlier decision to strip the states of their delegates – including the Clinton campaign. This fight is not the responsibility of the Obama campaign. It was a party decision, agreed to by all of the candidates, and the party needs to stand by it or come up with a better solution. Seating delegates that Clinton won during a sideshow is unacceptable.
http://www.cnn.com/POLITICSThe Democrat Delegate CountdownThe Republican Delegate Countdown“Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney are done. John McCain will be the Republican nominee -- he's the only one with a reasonable path to the nomination.” –Howard Dean-
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/02/06/a_party_divided_may_be_blessing___or_curse___for_democratsDissecting Party Primaries (Click Here To Go To Video)
THE FAIR AND BALANCED
