This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
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I was out of the house when it was live, but I just finished watching it off the Tivo. I’m sure by now all sorts of other people have said this, but WOW… did that get vicious. Clinton and Obama were at each other’s throats… especially in the first half. The antipathy between the two of them was palpable.
I wonder who will end up benefitting in the end. I actually think Edwards came off sort of as the adult just for not being quite so negative (although he got a few good barbs in against both of them as well). But I’m not sure that will matter at this point.
Of Clinton and Obama, I personally think Obama came off better… but I like Obama better, and also have a definite dislike of Clinton. So I’m not sure my view accurately represents anything. I’m sure most Clinton supporters thought she did better and most Obama supporters thought he did better. The question is if this sways anybody who hadn’t made up their mind yet.
Just a few days until South Carolina. Obama is ahead in the polls at the moment, but Clinton has been gaining on him. Obama needs to win this to keep things in play. A loss here will hurt him badly on Super Tuesday. It quite possibly would make Hillary “inevitable” again. If Obama wins South Carolina by a decent margin then Super Tuesday will be a major competitive battle and there will be the possibility of the nomination continuing to be a battle for a bit longer.
Of course, the most fun scenario is a brokered convention, and for that we need Edwards to stay in until the end, and get there with a decent number of delegates… enough to keep either of the others from being over 50%… So we really need for Edwards to manage to get some delegates out of South Carolina too. :-)
OK, I know most of the Republican candidates didn’t even “play” in Nevada. But, and I hadn’t realized this earlier, but then I saw a comment about it on MyDD.
Take a look at the Official Results now with 100% reporting. Ron Paul came in second to Romney. OK, fine, it was a distant second. But he broke 10% with his 14%. And not only beat Guiliani (who he has beaten in most of the states so far) but also beat McCain, Huckabee and the rest.
Interesting.
But in the end meaningless. :-)
OK, these include preliminary delegate counts as of when I pulled the data from CNN a few minutes ago. If Michigan is any guide, some of these numbers may change further before tomorrow’s update. If so, I’ll post again. But as of right now…
Democrats: The annoying thing here is just looking at what is happening with delegates, and comparing it to what I am hearing the anchors say on CNN. On CNN it is all about the “Big win for Clinton” in Nevada. But what do delegates look like? Clinton and Obama both got 14. A tie. And, because 50/50 is a smaller lead than Hillary had before today in delegates, that means in terms of percentage of delegates, Clinton actually dropped and Obama gained… now, not by much… this wasn’t a huge number of delegates, and Clinton is still WAY ahead in the overall delegate count, and is over the magical 50% mark still. But the end result of the delegates allocated so far tonight? Obama narrows Clinton’s lead (a little bit). But is that the way it is spun? Of course not. Not even close.
Republicans: Again the media narrative is a bit off from what is actually happening with the delegates. Now, I was out earlier and by the time I got home Nevada was old news, and all the talk was about McCain winning South Carolina and pretty much nothing about Nevada. Of course, earlier in the day Romney had won Nevada. On balance (at least as of when I am posting this) McCain got 23 delegates today and Romney got 18. So this is definately a McCain day overall. And so when the media keeps saying that this was a big win for McCain, they are absolutely right. But some of them are starting to call McCain a front runner, etc. Excuse me? Yes, today was a blow for Romney. Romney went from 53% of the delegates down to 46%. McCain now has indeed jumped ahead of Huckabee, but at 24%, he is still WAY BEHIND Romney. Now, we do of course have to look at momentum and where the next few states will go. And this will help McCain’s momentum. On the Republican side the next state is Florida on the 29th. Right now the Polls there are basically showing a four way dead heat between Guiliani, McCain, Huckabee and Romney. This will probably give McCain a boost that puts him in the lead in Florida… which if it happens probably WILL boost McCain into a commanding position, and may well kill off Guiliani… but that is not where we are YET. Right now we have Romney with a strong lead, and McCain in second. But yes, McCain was one of tonight’s winners. The other was Paul, who also had a big positive move forward in percent of delegates, moving from 2% to 4%… on the verge of catching Thompson.
Anyway… very interesting results. I’ll update the charts again tomorrow if the delegate counts change at all.
Next up… South Carolina for the Democrats a week from now. At the moment Obama has a decent lead in the polls, but Hillary seems to be closing the gap in the newest few polls. If Nevada gives her any kind of bump, then it might be neck and neck. The big question, does Obama manage to get a win here? And if he does, can he capture enough delegates to actually further close the gap with Clinton in the delegate count? Can he push her below the 50% threshold? Can he get enough momentum going into Super Duper Tuesday to be competitive? Or will Super Duper Tuesday just be the day Clinton wraps this up?
In any case… this is all very exciting still. I wish Clinton would drop under 50% though. As long as she is way up there, all she has to do is keep up the pace and she wins outright. On the Republican side Romney is ahead, but under 50%… which means that if the current pace keeps up, we still don’t have a winner… which means brokered convention, which would be awesome. But we still have a long way to go before that. McCain could easily take the lead after Florida. So exciting!
Great stuff.
Mitt picked up a couple more delegates in Michigan since my update yesterday. They just keep coming. :-)
Yesterday when I posted the post-Michigan results, while the winner had been declared, all the counts actually were not in yet, so the delegate counts were actually still in flux. When I made my post the CNN page where I get this data had Romney getting 10 delegates and McCain 8. By the time things were fully settled (and by when I did tonight’s update) the revised estimates based on the full results had Romney getting 22 delegates, McCain only getting 5 and Huckabee getting 1. This gives Romney a much bigger win than that early incomplete estimate gave. Today’s revised graphs show this:
We can see that at this point Romney has really opened up a big lead in delegates. With his lower Michigan delegate count, McCain now barely moves ahead and no longer appears to be “about to catch Huckabee”.
At this point both Romney on the Republican side, and Clinton on the Democratic side have more than 50% of the delegates awarded so far. Which are pretty strong leads.
Now, of course, only a small percentage of the total number of delegates has been allocated at this point. (4% of delegates on the Republican side, 9% of delegates on the Democratic side) These “big leads” can be erased by the results in only one big state, let alone the flood of delegates coming up on February 5th. So things are really still completely up in the air.
But it is very interesting to see how the media narrative is so very different than looking at the delegate counts.
On the Democratic side, Hillary has had a strong lead from the beginning. Obama has been catching up a bit, but Clinton is still WAY ahead.
On the Republican side, despite the wins by Huckabee and McCain, aside from two days, Romney has been significantly ahead the entire time.
Of course that brings up back to the small number of delegates awarded so far, and how fast this can all change.
Bring on Saturday for Nevada and the South Carolina Republicans. A bunch more delegates. And perhaps more changes.
I really want to see both frontrunners drop below 50% of the delegates. That’s when things are interesting, when nobody has more than 50%. So we need big wins by people other than Clinton and Romney to make that happen. Nevada Dems… could happen… it is neck and neck. Nevada Repubs… eh… we’ll see… Romney could take this. South Carolina Repubs… probably McCain or Huckabee, probably not Romney. All of that is based on limited recent poll data though… and with the low attendance expected in Nevada, it all kind of depends on who bothers to show up… so they really all could go in unpredictable directions.
Anyway… we’ll see in a few days.
Oh yeah… I’ve also adjusted all the graphs so the data points reflect the time of day I take the “sample” from the CNN page rather than showing all the data points at 00:00 UTC.
I have updated the Delegate Graphs.
On the Democratic side there were no delegates awarded from Michigan. However CNN (where I get this data) updated their numbers based on more superdelegates declaring their support for Obama and Clinton… and Richardson’s delegates going away.. and for some reason Edwards actually losing one delegate too:
Clinton still retains a commanding (over 50%) lead in delegates already committed. But as a percentage, she has pretty much been holding steady. So has Edwards. Obama is gaining.
On the Republican side, there were indeed delegates awarded today. Romney got 10 and McCain got 8:
Aside from the two days between Iowa and Wyoming, Romney has been ahead the whole time. With his win in Michigan tonight he increases his lead somewhat. He’s got about 45% of the delegates so far and has stayed about there through the last couple of states. Huckabee hasn’t gotten any new delegates since Iowa, so his percentage has been dropping. McCain has been rising and is just short of catching Huckabee at the moment.
Next up… Saturday gets us Nevada for both parties, and South Carolina for the Republicans.
Nevada on the Dem side… three way race between Obama, Clinton and Edwards… could go ANY way.
Nevada on the R side… who knows… only one poll so far, also looks very up in the air… McCain, Giuliani, Romney and Huckabee could all do OK.
South Carolina on the R side… looks like Huckabee vs McCain if you look at the most recent polls. With McCain ahead in all the recent polls.
So… craziness on both sides.
Bring on Saturday. This is so much fun.
[Edited 04:44 UTC to update totals gained by Republicans in Michigan with later figures.]
[Edited 17:34 UTC to revert to the totals and graphs I originally posted with… I shouldn’t have changed it in the first place… history revisionism and all… in any case, all delegates from Michigan had not yet been allocated at the time of my post, so there will be a further update tomorrow… in a new post, not this one.]
Just a couple thoughts on the Republican debate in South Carolina.
First of all, Tivo guide data for live events sucks. I’d forgotten to pad the ending, and they ran over by a few minutes, so I missed the end of the debate at first. They did replay it overnight, but the guide data did not say that. So I ended up staying up late enough to verify that it was starting, then just setting the Tivo to record enough that it would catch the end. Anyway, I finished watching the debate after I woke up.
Two real points though.
#1) Fred Thompson woke up. All of a sudden he was actually there, engaged, and actually stealing the show. There have been how many debates now with him in them? And in all of those he barely registered. Now he was in there and aggressive. He went after Huckabee, but he also was just much better overall. It was an amazing difference. Maybe he is just finally getting comfortable with this running for president thing? Maybe he’s getting serious because South Carolina is very soon and that is where he intends to make his stand. Dunno. But it was a big change. He was actually impressive. If he’d been like this when he first started his campaign, this race might look very different right now.
#2) Ron Paul was in good shape too. He for the most part refrained from his goofiest stuff and stuck to the stuff that while way outside of the mainstream, at least doesn’t make him sound completely crazy. He did an “meh” job parrying the question about the 9/11 Truthers. Those aren’t his views, he doesn’t support those views, but he can’t control what other people think. Fine. But it really doesn’t go far enough. Part of a President’s job IS to sway and influence other people’s opinions. In the Libertarian view definitely NOT by the power of government, but certainly with the power of words and ideas. It is not enough to say one doesn’t agree with the truthers, one should flat out say they are idiots with a questionable grasp on reality, and implore them to take another look at the clear facts. Now, having said that, I see no issue with continuing to take their money, or the money of people with any number of deplorable positions. If they want to give money to someone who doesn’t agree with them, that is their own stupidity and one should take advantage of it. Of course, that is most likely a big reason Paul won’t outright say they are idiots… there is a source of cash there that would possibly cut off. And that is a shame. Also though, the question itself was a misfire. The question SHOULD have been about the newsletters. The Truther question has been asked and answered many times. The newsletter, although it has been simmering for many weeks, only got widespread attention in the last week. Based on the weak responses he has given elsewhere, I think Paul would have given the same sort of “right, but not strong enough” sort of response as he gave to the truther question. Which just isn’t good enough. He really needs to do better. He did manage to swing me back to where I could probably vote for him though. Most of this debate performance was right on track.
#3) As for the rest of the pack, while I know neither of the two I mentioned are in very serious contention right now, nobody in the rest of the group really stood out for me at all. They all gave their standard sort of performances I thought. I’d avoided commentary on the debate though until I finished watching it, so I’m sure when I go looking I’ll find out that everybody thinks Romney won it or something strange like that. Oh well!
I was going to wait until I saw a “100% reporting” number, but I guess 99% will do. On this week’s Curmudgeon’s Corner I predicted that while I didn’t know where he would place exactly, that Ron Paul would beat Rudy Guiliani in New Hamphshire. With 99% reporting on CNNs Tally Page the final was 20,387 for Guiliani and 18,276 for Ron Paul.
I guess the Paulites just didn’t get enough turnout to manage it, and Giuliani did OK enough on his last couple debates to reverse his slide in the state.
Also, the revelations about Ron Paul’s newsletter a couple decades ago can’t have helped, although that was new news while the voting was going on. And despite Paul’s disavowal of the content that was published under his name, I think he has reached his high water mark. This stuff has hurt him. And failure to break 10% in the first two states will dampen a lot of the enthusiasm of his big supporters. He may go a bit longer because he has the cash to do so, but I’m not sure how much longer.
And I think the stuff from the newsletters, disavowal or not, has enough people shaken that the support for pushing him to go ahead and run third party will falter. Paul has gathered a lot of strength, but his flaw has always been a failure to distance himself from the complete kooks that are drawn to him… and to fail to just know when to push some things and when to just shut the hell up… IE: The anti-war humble foreign policy stuff – Good… the government should leave us all alone stuff – Good… the limited federal government and federalism stuff – Good… the follow the constitution stuff – Good… the Federal Reserve is evil and lets go back to the gold standard stuff… just drop it, not going to happen, not a winning issue, just makes people think you are crazy…
I desperately want a good Libertarian oriented candidate who leans strongly in that direction… but yet makes some reasonable concessions to reality and distances himself from the crazies and nutjobs… and of course isn’t one himself. Paul isn’t that candidate.
I still agree more closely with Paul than any other candidate running on quite a large spectrum of issues. But he is not a candidate who will be able to move any of these ideas any further than he already has due to a lot of these fatal flaws he has.
Having said that, I still give him credit for pushing this kind of thing further than anybody else in recent years.
But I’m thinking his time is almost done.
If I were to vote in the Republican primary or caucus here in Washington state, or if Ron Paul ends up on the ballot in November would I vote for him??? A month ago I definitely would have. Today would I? Dunno. I’d have to think about it more carefully. I’m guessing a lot of folks who like(d) Ron Paul are having similar thoughts these days.
Just saw this posting by Brendan Loy. It points out that of course in delegates determined by the primary it was actually a tie, 9 Clinton, 9 Obama, 4 Edwards… but if you add in the votes of the 5 superdelegates (known before the primary) it becomes 12 Obama, 11 Clinton, 4 Edwards.
Oops. We’ll have to change all those headlines now, right? Oh, guess not. Oh well.
Hillary Clinton did not win New Hampshire
(Brendan Loy, Irish Trojan)
If the convention were held today, New Hampshire’s turn in the roll call would go something like this: “Mr. Speaker, the great state of New Hampshire, the Granite State, proud home of the first-in-the-nation primary, led by our great Democratic governor, John Lynch; New Hampshire, home of the 2007 Canadian-American League champion Nashua Pride baseball team and the 2006-2007 AHL Atlantic Division champion Manchester Monarchs hockey team; New Hampshire, whose state motto ‘live free or die’ was once again embodied last year when we became the first state to legalize same-sex unions without a court order or a threatened court order; New Hampshire, which cast its four electoral votes for John Kerry in 2004, and will once again proudly support a Democrat for president in 2008; Mr. Speaker, New Hampshire casts 12 votes for Barack Obama, 11 votes for Hillary Clinton, and 4 votes for John Edwards!”
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