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I finished this a week ago, but am just getting around to posting about it. It was time for a non-fiction book. I had read Obama’s first book back in late April / early May. It was good. But it was mainly about Obama’s youth and search for his roots, etc. This second book is actually about his thoughts on politics. I had wanted to finish reading it before the Washington caucuses, but I didn’t make it. Then I wanted to make it by Super Tuesday. I didn’t make that either. Nor did I make it before the Patomic primaries. But I did finish before Wisconsin. Go me! Anyway, this was another good book. It did not give super deep insight into specific policies. He has actually been more specific in recent speeches. This was more about his general political philosophy. A lot of the moving beyond left and right, being pragmatic and looking for solutions that work, etc. I still have a fundamental difference that I struggle with which I have mentioned before. I think he will be a good president in the sense of leadership and tone and changing overall perceptions, etc. But on policy there is probably little I agree with him. Fundamentally, Obama is indeed a believer that government is a good thing, a potential source of solutions, whereas I see it as a necessary evil, to be used only when there is no other choice, and then only reluctantly and in the most limited form possible. And this is independent of “what works”. There may be many cases where a government program would be the most effective way to achieve a goal that I agree with… but being effective does not make it the RIGHT way to solve the problem. Sometimes the right way to solve a problem is not the most efficient way. Sometimes a solution will solve a problem, but do it in a way that requires things that are just wrong to happen in order to make it happen. And then how do you balance that? And sometimes you just have to live with a problem, because the only effective solutions would require doing unacceptable things. It is all about the classic “do the ends justify the means” question. Sigh. Anyway, if you take as a given that government is not inherently a bad thing, which unfortunately both major parties these days do, then I think the way Obama reasons is very reasonable. He shows a great deal of open mindedness to consider the views of those who disagree with him. And I think this is by far the most critical aspect of Obama that makes him appealing to me, and to many people. And at the same time greatly frightens the left wing of the Democratic party. The political debate for almost 16 years now has been typified on both sides by the increasing view that the people on the other side are not reasonable people with differing opinions, but rather the people on the other side are stupid, malicious and evil. There was not healthy respectful debate on issues, but rather vilification of those who disagree. This is horribly unhealthy. Throughout his book, Obama time after time shows respect and understanding of Republican positions on various issues. He talks about some areas where Republicans over the years have done things right and Democrats got it wrong. He talks about various individiuals on the other side of the isle with respect. Not agreement. But respect. He has positive words for Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush and a variety of others. He off course has a lot of positive words for a lot of Democrats as well. But it is not black and white. It s not we are good, they are evil. And there is room for compromise and working together. And this is a very positive thing. It may drive a few aspects of the Democratic party crazy. Those folks who are saying “No! We need to fight!” And in the end, it may end up being somewhat naive. You of course need two to tango, and unless there are partners on the other side that are also willing to work together, it won’t happen. And of course, when you compromise, you end up with something that isn’t quite what either side wants. Fundamentally, I’m quite fine with that. I am scared of a world where the left wing Democrats get everything they want just as much as I am of a world where the right wing Republicans get everything they want. We’ve kind of seen the right wing Republican world these last few years. We need to come back to the middle, not swing the pendulum all the way to the other side. Having said that, despite all the centrist talk, looking at actual policies and such, Obama is VERY liberal. Way too liberal for me on most issues. I am hoping though that combined with his openness toward working with the other side, and the plain realities of how difficult it is to get ANYTHING done in Washington, than what an Obama presidency would actually produce would be closer to the center than the left. And so would be capable of undoing a lot of the damage of the last administration, but without producing TOO MUCH new damage. I just want to end this though by quoting one passage in the book that made me laugh out loud. It is part of the story of Obama’s first meeting with President George W Bush:
And yes, that Alan Keyes *is* a piece of work. Something that even George W. Bush and Barack Obama can agree on with confidence. Some minor fireworks. But for the most part just a lot more of the same. Nothing new here. No big breakout for Clinton, which she needed. She did nail that last question, while Obama flubbed it. But she needed more than that. I don’t think this will give her the bounce she needs or stop the Obama momentum. I think at times when you looked at Hillary’s face it seemed like she knows that is the case. That last question echoed strongly (intentionally I’m sure) the way she answered the question in New Hampshire where she cried. I looked at that back then and said that I felt like she KNEW it was over. I think that again… of course she then came back, contrary to all polls even, and won in New Hampshire. So maybe that last question will help her. But this was not the home run she needed. She’s got one more chance in the Ohio debate. Or Obama has to make a huge mistake. She is still leading in both Ohio and Texas. But the gap just keeps shrinking. We’re now down to 12.6% in Ohio and 2.8% in Texas. (According to pollster.com‘s poll of polls of course.) So last night I check my schedule before heading to sleep. I notice a meeting at 16:45 UTC, which is considerably earlier that I have been in the habit of getting to work lately… although really, a 17:00 UTC start time would be a good start time for me, and I should aim at that, but really I am at 18:00 UTC and often am a little later than that… in any case though, this was way early for me. But I made a note of it and even though it was already after 10 UTC by the time I was heading to bed, I set my alarm appropriately. Of course, in the morning having had only five or so hours of sleep, I hit snooze one or two times too many… and I’d forgotten I had to let the dog out in the morning… but I still got to the car running less than five minutes behind pace to get there on time. If I made up a little time on the road, I’d be late, but only a couple of minutes late… But then I realized that it had gotten cold over night, and the windscreen and all the windows had a nice layer of ice on it, and although by that point I’d already driven 20 or 30 feet down the road, I really couldn’t see a damn thing, and needed to stop and make sure I could see before driving further. Which cost another five minutes. Once I got started I still wasn’t making up time. I was going to get to our parking lot 7 minutes late, and then adding in the 3 minutes or so to get to the meeting room, I’d be 10 minutes late. And this was for a 15 minute meeting. Oops. So as the moment passed when the meeting was supposed to start I call my boss’s boss, who was also supposed to be at the meeting, and whose cell number I happened to have on my phone. He was having breakfast. He was not at the meeting. He had basically told them they were crazy, and talk to him later in the day. Or something like that. He wasn’t sure if they had actually moved the meeting, but he had something later on HIS calendar. Anyway, I get to work, run to the meeting, and sure enough there is an empty conference room with the lights out. A few minutes later I get back to my desk, get synced with the calendar, and sure enough, about two hours after the last time I had my laptop connected to the work network (and thus syncing my calendar) the meeting had been moved from 16:45 UTC to 20:00 UTC. Oh well, I now have some extra time to catch up on things. Of course, I lost some of it by making this post, and will lose a few more minutes by going and grabbing some breakfast, but hey, this is an hour I wouldn’t usually be here anyway. Lesson learned: If you check your calendar late at night and notice an early morning meeting, before going to sleep, connect to the network even if you weren’t going to anyway to get an updated calendar and make sure it has not been rescheduled. Worst case, it hasn’t been. Best case, you get to sleep more.
The graph now includes the rest of the results from Tuesday’s contests that didn’t make it for my update yesterday. We now stand at Obama 50.8%, Clinton 48.2%, Edwards 1.0%. That means the gap between Obama and Clinton is now 2.7% compared to 2.4% yesterday and 2.0% the day before. In raw delegate terms that is 69 delegates compared to 62 yesterday and 49 the day before. We’re at 1319 to 1250 to 26. It takes 2025 to win. We still have a little ways to go. There were no delegate updates today on the Republican side. We now have a couple week gap before the big events on March 4th. In the meantime, we may have some superdelegate adjustments, but absent major unexpected events I don’t expect anything really to change on these charts until then. So perhaps there will be some blog posts on other things? Nah, don’t be silly. :-) By the way, for anybody who might have been wondering, Brandy’s mom had her surgery yesterday, it was successful, and she’s recovering nicely, although it will be a couple of weeks until she is allowed to drive and such, which is one of the reasons Brandy and Amy are staying as long as they are. I was feeling a little like a wuss most of yesterday, because yesterday, even though I was somewhat feeling it, I decided to hedge in my predictions and instead of just saying, it is over, Obama is going to win; I gave the three scenarios depending on if Clinton won two, one or zero of Texas and Ohio. I did say I that if I had to bet, I’d bet on her losing both. Obama is rapidly closing the gaps in both states. But I gave voice to the other two possibilities. Specifically, I said that if she won ONE of the two states we would have an interesting extension going on to Pennsylvania and beyond, continuing to fight. But… Bill Clinton: Texas Could Be Hillary’s Last Stand
(via Huffington Post) Now… the ABC folks seem to be reading slightly more into Bill’s statement than is actually there, getting confused about his negation. They say he said that a loss in Ohio or Texas would “doom her candidacy”. But what he actually said that if she wins both he thinks she will be the nominee and that if “you” don’t deliver then she can’t be the nominee. He was speaking to people in Texas. So he may have specifically meant Texas, not Texas or Ohio. Or he may have meant a collective you meaning both states. It is unclear. ABC seemed to assume he meant the latter, and that a loss in EITHER state will be the end. Given the really bizzare way delegates are allocated in Texas, Hillary would have to do more than break even in popular vote just to break even, and to actually make a significant dent in the delegate gap would have to win by absolutely enormous margins. I really don’t think she can “win” Texas. If Bill is saying she needs BOTH Ohio and Texas, and his statements reflect at all what she is saying, then I think she is done. She still has a shot at Ohio, but I think Texas is done. Of course… we have two debates between now and then. And all it takes is one stupid foot in moth moment by Obama, or one good hit from Hillary that knocks him off his balance, and the trends in the polls could change overnight… But I think Obama has to make a mistake for that to happen. Debates are his weakest area though. OK, so I started this post thinking I’d be making the unequivocal “Obama is going to win this” statement, but here at the end I find myself hedging again. There are still ways Hillary could make a comeback. They are just getting less and less likely. And then of course, she could play a Huckabee, saying she’ll stay in it until and unless Obama has the magic number, and even then, she’ll fight to change the minds of superdelegates, and maybe even pledged delegates, and take this right through to the convention. She *could* do that. But I think if Bill is out there saying they need to win both states (or even just Texas) or she probably can’t be the nominee… then that means they have already decided that if March 4th doesn’t do what they want, then they will be out of there. And of course, I already predicted that Obama would come out ahead in the end. And I still think that is the final outcome. And I really would bet right now that it will be over after March 4th. So, what the hell, lets go out on a limb. The out on a limb prediction is that Clinton pulls out of the race within 48 hours of the polls closing on the March 4th primaries. Just watch though, now that I’ve said that, Obama will make HUGE mistakes in both of the next two debates, his poll numbers will plummet, Clinton will win the March 4th states with overwhelming margins, then ride that wave through the rest of the primaries, regaining a pledged delgate lead and making the superdelegates non-issses and Obama will drop out after Pennsylvania. Hmmm… that does seem unlikely, doesn’t it. Oh well, we’ll see soon enough. I’ll be watching the polls in Ohio and Texas very carefully over the next few days. That will tell us a lot. Also, I am anxious to get this over with, so we can start tracking general election polls on a state by state basis and making electoral college predictions… I already have in my head the graph I want to make if none of the big places like pollster do it first. Did I mention I like graphs? I was kind of annoyed that CNN (and Fox) cut away from live coverage before there were any results from Hawaii, but thats life I guess. And since I have a few more things to do tonight too, I figured this is a good time to put out my delegate update. Note that even aside from Hawaii, not all the delegates have been allocated yet for Wisconsin either, so expect another update tomorrow. But as of when I took my “readings” off the CNN website about half an hour ago, here is where things stood:
Bottom line, Obama won by a greater margin than the overall delegate ratio before today, so the gap between Obama and Clinton widens. But given how many delegates we already have, it is harder and harder to move the lines. The gap between the candidates widened from 1.96% yesterday to 2.42% today. We now have Obama 50.7%, Clinton 48.3%, Edwards 1.0%. Yes, this is still close. Yes, a series of Clinton wins might narrow the gap again. But momentum does matter. And Obama’s win today was a big win. Including lots of demographics that were supposedly Hillary’s strengths. And the gaps in the next two big states are narrowing. On Saturday I noted that with the pollster.com average for Ohio had Clinton up by 17.3%. Today, four days later… that gap is down to 14.1%. In Texas the gap Saturday was 6.5%. Today it is 4.7%. And we still have two weeks until those primaries. And frankly, looking at those charts, the slope in recent days may be even greater than the conservative trend lines indicate. It might be a little rash to predict today that Obama will win a clean sweep on March 4th… Rhode Island, Vermont, Texas and Ohio… especially since there are no polls at all yet in the two little states, and he is still behind in both of the big states… but looking at tonight’s results and the whole positive press spinning from the 9 wins in a row (10 unless Clinton pulls out a surprise in Hawaii later tonight), and the rapid upward trend in the polls in those states… I’d say absent a major unforced error by Obama, he’ll definitely win Texas and he could quite possibly win Ohio too. Either way, he will keep it close enough that Clinton will not be able to make any real dent in the current delegate gap. Obama is ahead now. He will be ahead after March 4th. And I don’t think Clinton will have damped his momentum much. Then the question will be if Hillary really does want to force this all the way to the convention, or if she will take a deep breath and for “the good of the party” decide to pack it in and become a leader in the Senate while Obama takes the nomination. My prediction at the moment… If she actually does end up losing both Ohio and Texas, she will take a day or so to assess the situation, then she will end her campaign. She will want to fight on, but she will decide to cut her losses, as otherwise she would be just prolonging what would almost certainly be a losing battle in the end. Right now if I had to make a bet, I’d actually bet on this. Is she manages to win one of the two states (probably Ohio) then she is still on the ropes, but will decide to push through at least another month to Pennsylvania. If she wins Ohio, it will solidify her current lead in Pennsylvania. This is the most interesting scenario, and potentially has us looking at the seven states with contests in MAY to see what happens. For sheer political junkie fun, this is the dream scenerio. If she manages to actually win BOTH Ohio and Texas (I don’t think this will happen) then suddenly she is the front runner again, even if she is still behind in delegates, because she’d probably win Pennsylvania and might open a gap that Obama would find hard to close again. I think in both the first and the last scenario the superdelegate issue ends up going away because there is a clear leader and the superdelegates will fall in line behind them. In the middle situation… all bets are off. But like I said, right now, I’m feeling the Obamamentum, and so is the press. Hillary needs to do some major work in both Ohio and Texas to save her leads in those states from disappearing in the next two weeks.
And on the Republican side, McCain increases the gap between him and Romney and Huckabee as he slowly creeps closer to the finish line. 273 delegates to go. Since I was confused about that envelope thing, I actually went to the real life polling place Tuesday. They couldn’t find my name on the rolls because, duh, I was on the absentee ballot list instead. But they told me the missing middle envelope thing wouldn’t matter (which I thought was likely, but wasn’t sure) so I was able to just put my absentee ballot in the box thing. Now, what was really interesting though was that the place was EMPTY. About 10 poll workers. And *NO* voters. When I was there I was the ONLY one there. They seemed happy to see someone. Now, admittedly, most people probably voted by mail. And on the Democratic side it is a completely meaningless race. On the Republican side I think my particular neighborhood is probably sparsely populated. And it is almost meaningless on the Republican side too. But if this kind of low turnout is representative (which it may not be) then it may be the case that the results are very susceptible to who managed to still get out some vote. Which still leaves me hoping for that fun and exciting Huckabee upset. :-) |
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