This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon
|
Just a couple. I thought McCain hurt himself here. In the one big mixup with Romney, I thought he was clearly on the wrong side, trying to push a point that was somewhat unfair. There are plenty of things to hit Romney on. This was not the thing. Otherwise he just repeated a lot of things he’s said many time before (including the same jokes, gag). Romney didn’t look much better though.
I was once again somewhat impressed by Huckabee. I don’t agree with him on much, but he actually seemed thoughtful, serious and adult… which I couldn’t say for either McCain or Romney.
And of course Paul… despite his flaws, which are many, he continues to be the one candidate I agree with on the most issues. His approach toward the proper role of government is much closer to mine than anyone else in either party. Yes, I disagree with him on a few things, but at a far lower percentage than any other candidate. I really long for a serious candidates that shares these basic libertarian values, but is actually a strong candidate in other ways too, in terms of character and political savvy and experience and such. I agree with him on 90% of the issues. But can I imagine actually having him, as a person, as president? No. I have real trouble with that. Which leaves me conflicted. In 2004 I declined to vote for the Libertarian party candidate as they were a total nutjob (much more so than Paul). In this case I so much WANT to vote for the person who most closely represents my views… and that would be Paul. But individual policies aside, can I actually say Paul would be the best president of the people running? Even of the Republicans running? No, I’m not sure I can say that. Not that I have to worry about him winning, but if by some strange quirk of fate Ron Paul were actually to win the presidency, I think he’d be completely and totally overwhelmed and out of his league the day he was sworn in.
But I still feel tempted to support him, because he DOES represent many of my views better than anybody else. By FAR.
Sigh.
I think I’ve decided that statements I have to sign about being either a Republican or a Democrat aside, when we get to the Washington State Caucus, I *will* attend one of the two caucuses. Either the Republican Caucus to vote for Ron Paul, or the Democratic Caucus to vote for Obama.
Right now I am still somewhat conflicted on which direction to go.
I will decide after I know the Super Tuesday results.
Honestly though, I hope Ron Paul makes it easy for me and drops out after Super Tuesday makes it mathematically impossible for him to win the nomination. (It might not seal the deal on the #1 spot, but it might seal the fate of Paul.)
In that case I could caucus for Obama without feeling guilty about not voting for the person I agree with most closely on the issues. Why I would vote for Obama when I disagree with him on many issues will probably need to be the subject of another post at another time though.
Of course, the fact that I am somewhat hoping for Paul to drop out so I can feel good about voting for Obama should probably tell me something in and of itself about who I *really* want to vote for. And I guess it does. But I still feel somewhat conflicted here.
For now though, on this debate, I think Huckabee and Paul were actually the most compelling, but that won’t end up mattering, because it is really McCain vs Romney now. I stand by my McCain prediction. He’s got a seemingly huge lead right now in so many states it is a major uphill battle for Romney. I think this debate might hurt McCain and help Romney a bit though.
Hard to say though. I cheated and read a little bit of blog commentary before writing this post though (I usually try to write my own opinion before being tainted by the opinions of others) and there seem to be a decent number of people thinking Romney knows it is over and was phoning it in and hurt his cause here. That’s not what I saw. But we’ll see if there is any bump in the polls over the next few days I guess.
And tomorrow is the Clinton vs Obama debate. Obama really needs to crush on that to close the gap with Clinton in the polls in so many states. But he really sucks at debates. They should just let the two of them give side by side 20 minute speeches. Then he’d crush. At a debate? We’ll see if he can manage to hold his own. Clinton does much better in the debate format usually.
NOOOOO!!!!! This means no brokered convention. One way or another, either Obama or Clinton will be the nominee coming into the convention.
I guess there is still the odd chance that the winner will be determined by Florida and Michigan being in or out, or by superdelegates changing their minds at the last minute…
But for the most part, this means either Clinton or Obama will be over 50%, and that will be that.
The big news is of course that McCain pulled out a narrow victory… but Florida is a winner take all state, so it made a HUGE difference in delegates. Winner take all is a whole different ballgame than when the states allocate proportionately.
McCain now takes the delegate lead by a decent margin, now having 47% of the delegates awarded so far compared to Romney’s 36%. Before today it was Romney 49% to McCain 26%. Big difference. Despite the media narrative that changed several times, Romney had been ahead in delegates this whole time except for a couple of days between Iowa and Wyoming when Huckabee was ahead. Now McCain has the lead and the momentum.
Of course, once again, Super Tuesday will allocate far more delegates than have been allocated so far. Everything could change once again. But the national polls are showing McCain with a substantial lead… and with 20 states in play, the national polls are actually instructive for once. Pollster now has results up for 12 Super Tuesday states. Most of them don’t have enough polls for trend lines, but by my reckoning McCain is ahead in at least 7 of those 12 states. If he gets some additional momentum out of Florida, and Guiliani dropping out and endorsing him as is now expected… and captures a bunch of winner takes all states… he could come out of Super Tuesday with a commanding and perhaps insurmountable lead… Romney has some serious work to do in the next week to keep this competitive. If he does so, there are also a few states where Huckabee is ahead. If he manages to capture several of those… and enough delegates to keep either McCain or Romney from reaching 50%… then we may still be in for a nice fight all the way to the convention… Having said that, I think we’re going to come out of next Tuesday with a huge McCain lead and it may effectively be over. We shall see.
Oh yeah, the Dems. Despite what Hillary might wish, there were no delegates awarded in Florida tonight. CNN did adjust the superdelegate count slightly though, so the updated graph is above. The gap between Clinton and Obama narrows further. The trend over the last few months has been clear, with Obama slowly catching up. The question is if there is enough time for him to actually catch up. In terms of delagates left to be allocated, there is certainly enough, but is there TIME. Super Tuesday is only a week away. Looking at Pollster again now that they have all these new states… of the 12 states with polls… Clinton is ahead in 9… now, this is based on VERY limited polling, and there are still 8 states with no polls represented here… this may not reflect movements after Obama’s South Carolina win. But never the less, Obama has a LOT of ground to make up here… now, unlike the Republican side there isn’t a winner take all nonsense happening here… and with proportional delegate selection, Obama can get lots of delegates even in states he does not win. So chances are even if Clinton wins most states, things will still be competitive… but if she comes out of next Tuesday with a substantial delegate lead, the momentum could make it just the beginning of the end for Obama. A lot depends on how much ground Obama can gain in all of these states over the next week.
On both sides, the debates this week will be quite important. This will be an intense week for all involved.
And once again, the whole world will change after Super Tuesday, and we’ll have to reevaluate everything. There is the potential on both sides for one candidate to open a huge lead and even if things aren’t mathematically wrapped up, become “inevitable”. There is also the potential to come out of next Tuesday with both sides in the situation with two leaders not that far apart in delegates, with a third candidate with enough delegates to play kingmaker.
And wouldn’t that be fun.
There we go. After Obama’s big win we can see that the lines moved… a little bit…
Actually, even though it wasn’t by a huge amount, this is the first time you can see the Hillary line make a move that didn’t seem trivial. She dropped from having 54.8% of the delegates yesterday to having 51.9% of them now. Now, that is still more than 50%, but it is dropping.
Obama went from having 31.9% to having 34.3%.
For the Dems, next stop is Super Tuesday. So far there have been 443 delegates determined. On Super Tuesday there will be almost 1700 determined. In other words, aside from “momentum” factors, what has happened so far isn’t worth all that much. So all those percentage lines may well make sudden step-change moves on that day rather than the sort of gradual stuff we have seen so far with Clinton basically holding steady, Obama slowly gaining, and Edwards gradually dropping. There will be nothing gradual about Super Tuesday. We will come out of it, and things will have just changed.
And the next 10 days… they will be intense.
In the mean time… Republicans on Tuesday in Florida.
And a meaningless Democratic Primary in Florida too… except it may show if Obama gets any kind of bounce out of South Carolina. And of course, Hillary wants to change the decision about seating the Florida delegates. If she has her way, it may matter after all.
Now that’s a margin. With 99% reporting as I write this, Obama got more than DOUBLE the number of votes that Hillary did. That is big. This will get some momentum going into Super Duper Tuesday. It is mathematically impossible for us to exit Super Tuesday with an absolute majority in anybody’s hands in this race. It is possible however for somebody to get a commanding lead and momentum at that point. I hope that doesn’t happen though. It is VERY possible at this point that we come out of February 5th with the game still not over.
As of the last polls I have seen, Clinton is still ahead in all the big Super Tuesday states. We’ll see if that starts changing in the next 10 days. I think this win is big enough, and the distaste at the tone of the Clintons in the last week or so may well start to change that.
We shall see.
But this result is EXACTLY what was needed to make this a big battle and continue things forward. The only thing that would have made it more so is if Edwards had done better today. But one can’t have everything.
At the very least Edwards has promised not to get out of the race. To go all the way to the convention. And that is exactly what is needed to enable the brokered convention scenario. So, for the moment, GO EDWARDS! :-)
Having said all that, Obama really is inspiring. As much as I may or may not agree with him on many issues, just listening to him makes me want to vote for him. And I still stand by my pre-Iowa predictions. He will win the Democratic nomination. McCain will get the Republicans. And then Obama will win in the general election. That is not only my prediction, but the more things go on, the more I feel like any other outcome will just make me massively depressed.
(Assuming of course Ron Paul doesn’t make a come from behind win. :-)
CNN just declared Clinton for 2nd place. Damn. Edwards in 2nd would have been really exciting.
Not like we don’t have enough excitement. This race in both parties has been awesome so far.
I just keep rooting for the scenarios that will keep it all going as long as humanly possible.
Projection as soon as the polls closed on CNN. Hillary fighting for second with Edwards. Apparently first place wasn’t even close. Just as the polls predicted. Unlike New Hampshire.
Some relatively minor updates in advance of the South Carolina results. A few more superdelegates getting counted, and Kucinich, Hunter and Thompson get their delegate counts zeroed.
This is really annoying. Yesterday I spent a lot of time talking about CNN taking a bunch of superdelegates away from various candidates, hurting Romney more than anybody else. Guess what. Today CNN put them all back. The totals are exactly where they were two days ago. Whatever happened yesterday? Doesn’t look like it was a real change in the opinions of superdelegates. Doesn’t look like it was a change in CNN’s methodology either. What does it look like? Someone at CNN just screwed up and accidentally posted something that didn’t include a bunch of delegates. They then realized their mistake and changed it back. Doh! And now my graphs will have that dip forever. Grrr…
Anyway, updated graphs…
I wasn’t expecting another meaningful update to my Delegate Graphs until the Democratic South Carolina Primary this weekend (unless they zeroed the Thompson or Hunter delegates), but between yesterday and today CNN updated a bunch of their delegate totals… basically taking delegates away from folks. I have only been tracking the totals, not all the state by state breakdowns, so I can’t tell EXACTLY what changed unfortunately… but I think what is going on is simply that CNN has taken some of the superdelegates (called unpledged delegates on the republican side) who they had previously placed in one person or another’s column and put them back into the undecided category, presumably because the latest CNN survey of those delegates showed that change in preference.
Anyway, here are the updated charts:
On the Democratic side the change was pretty minor. Clinton lost eight delegates, dropping from 210 to 202. Obama lost seven delegates, dropping from 123 to 116. Edwards lost one, going from 52 to 51. In terms of percentages, this helped Hillary and Edwards, and hurt Obama. But these were minor adjustments.
The change on the Republican side is much more dramatic. A *lot* of delegates that had been previously allocated to one candidate or another are now no longer in anybody’s column. And it hurt one candidate very badly. That candidate would be Romney. CNN’s estimates of his delegate support dropped from 72 to 48, losing 24… a full third of his delegates. McCain lost 5. Huckabee lost 1. In terms of percentages, this hurt Romney badly. Everybody else’s percentages went up.
Now, of course all this points out that these delegate totals are ESTIMATES. As mentioned, I think the big factor in these changes is superdelegates. CNN has to somehow determine which columns to put these people in. I’m using CNN’s estimates, but there are a number of other places also giving delegate totals… and they all have somewhat different numbers. Because they use different methodologies to determine how to count these “free” delegates. Some only count them if they have made a public declaration of their preferences. Some count them just if their public statement seem to favor one candidate or another. Etc. I’m not sure exactly what CNN’s methods are though. I do wish I knew if this change in the Romney total is due to an actual exodus of delegates who had previously been for him, or if it is just a change in CNN’s methodology. But I don’t know that.
Oh, and the other source of potential flux in some of these numbers is of course that the states that have caucuses rather than primaries usually have a multi-stage process. With the initial precinct caucus actually electing delegates to later county caucuses, who then elect delegates to an even later state caucus, who then finally elect delegates to the national convention. So the “delegate totals” reported for caucus states have to make assumptions that at each stage the delegates will do what they originally were pledged to do and not change their minds, etc.
For that matter, while there is strong tradition and pressure against it and it is unlikely, there is apparently nothing that would actually prevent the delegates at the national conventions from changing their minds and voting for Bugs Bunny rather than whoever they were pledged for originally… even on the first ballot. Remember, in all of this there is *NO* direct connection between the voters voting and what actually happens at the convention. The primaries and caucuses end up selecting actual human beings called delegates who then go to the convention and vote. It isn’t automatic. Delegates are people, not robots, and can do that human thing called changing their minds.
So anyway, my graphs are based on whatever the CNN methodology is for determining these delegate counts, and for whatever reason they took away a crapload of Romney delegates today from their totals, making the Republican delegate race look a lot closer than it did yesterday.
Now, again, I don’t know if that is a REAL change, or just a change in CNN’s methodology.
However, even with a change this big, it will be dwarfed by the number of delegates up for grabs on February 5th… and between now and then everybody is all amount momentum anyway, and everybody is considering McCain the frontrunner even though he has less delegates, etc… so… looking in detail at these things at this point is really only for delegate race junkies like me. :-)
|
|