Election Returns: Network streams to watch
Live Internet coverage of today’s North Carolina and Indiana primaries:
- You can follow Debi Jones by going to my Live Feed page or directly to her Qik page, where she’ll be streaming live from her Nokia N95.
Debi is planning to visit the Obama HQ in Wilmington in the morning, then head up to Raleigh Obama HQ and the polls.
- Newsgang Live will have a special show tomorrow night after the polls close in North Carolina and Indiana. Most Indiana polls close at 6pm Central, but 12 close at 7 pm Eastern, 4pm Pacific. Early voting has been heavy (nearly 168,000 ballots cast), and those ballots will be counted tomorrow, so there should be some indicator of early results shortly after the polls close. North Carolina polls close at 7:30PM ET, 4:30PM PDT.
- The NewsGang Live Simulcast is here. Use this channel if you want to lurk, chat and listen in without calling in to talk.
- BlogHer will have an open thread, hosted by political editor Erin Kotecki Vest (aka QueenofSpain). I will link it up as soon as they post it. The discussion is live now.
- Momocrats will also be hosting an open thread here.
My one recommendation: Stay away from the mainstream, who will be furiously spinning and calling results in time to get the speeches on TV before the East Coast goes to bed. You’re better off with the real-time returns — follow the LA Times Twitter Feed. Click here and then click “follow”.
Better commentary, facts, and yes, even punditry and predictions will be on the channels I listed above, with this promise: No pretense of objectivity — you’ll get people like me who are totally in Obama’s camp, others who are totally in Clinton’s camp, and lots of in-the-middle perspectives. Here’s the other thing: The wisdom of the network matters more than the party lines they spin over and over again on the mainstream nets.
Get your glass of wine and celebrate the next round of primaries with us. See ya there.
Technorati Tags: twitter, newsgang, qik, citizen reporting, commentary, election returns, primary
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State of the Race 5/1/2008
Full results, along with the delegate breakdown by state for the upcoming primaries.
Technorati Tags: Obama, Clinton, Democrats, delegates, stateoftherace
The Swiftboat is out of gas
Evan Bayh really has nothing to worry about with regard to his concerns that the GOP will try to swiftboat Barack Obama. We have seen a veritable swiftboating frenzy in the past 72 hours, thanks to our corporate media pundits.
I’m sure Senator Bayh knows this already, but let’s review it again. Swiftboating is done right before a crucial election when there isn’t really enough time to undo the harm that’s done via campaign ads and obsessive media pundits.
If we were to consider the past few weeks of media frenzies (and I’d just as soon not), it’s clear the swiftboating has been attempted. Do you REALLY think the Republicans will be able to revive that bitter Reverend Wright dead horse six months from now?
If it doesn’t work now, why would it work then?
On the other hand, Senators Clinton and McCain have some ‘splainin’ to do around the idea of a ‘gas holiday’. Here’s what Senator Obama has to say:
Technorati Tags: bayh, GOP, swiftboat, tactics, primaries, reality
Democratic Primary: This is Survivor, not Deal or No Deal
Let’s be clear here. For all of the constant yammering about electoral votes in primary races, daily tracking polls that move one way or the other consistent with the whims of the media stream that day, uncounted states and superdelegates, the Democratic primary race is all about endurance.
We’re not here to open 47 cases and wait for the banker’s call before deciding whether the last 9 have the million bucks. That’s the game show George Bush played last week.
Survivor: Democrats is the name of this race. When Chris Wilson over at Slate makes the absurd call for Barack Obama to withdraw from the primary race despite having won the greatest number of primaries, having a solid delegate lead, raising the most money, closing the superdelegate gap, and acting as the driving force behind the new voter registrations of one million new Democrats, I can only ask: “Whose crack are you smoking?“
Somewhere in this silly post there’s a vague argument that Obama should withdraw for the sake of party unity because he would have a better chance in 2012. Or something. There’s more than a small whiff of bait in the tone mixed with some sarcasm, which would at least give credibility to the idea that I’m the sucker who has gulped it down. Guilty as charged, with the defense that some poor fool out there might actually take it seriously.
Think about that for a minute. I don’t know how anyone else would feel, but I’d hardly be willing to put my support behind someone who quit when they were 10 feet from the finish line. That’s like holding the immunity idol but not playing it because of some strange trust in one of the other players. Imagine telling a marathon runner to stop when the finish line is just around the corner because, hey, he’s young and can win next year but the woman behind him has worked soooo hard and wants it soooo much that he should let her win. How insulting and patronizing!
Imagine it:
November comes around. Hillary wins. She’s inaugurated. The next day she’s on the phone, that red phone, to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
“Mahmoud, I know you have the nukes. I know you can control Iraq. I know you can win. But I’m asking you to step down, and give me the nukes. Because I want them sooooo very much. If I can’t have them, I will obliterate you.”
As reports leak out of this conversation, a Slate blogger calls for Ahmadinejad to step down for the good of the world.
Yeah, right.
Note to Chris Wilson: Come on back to earth, that crack must’ve been laced with a heavy dose of illusion. The Democrats will survive this primary season, they’ll have a great convention, and Hillary Clinton will do her part to smooth ruffled feathers, as will Barack Obama. So relax, breathe, and enjoy the road to Denver. He or she who plays the smart game wins.
Bonus: Here’s a hidden treasure clue for the media pundits smoking up my living room tonight…listen to me now….are you ready?
Jeremiah Wright isn’t running for office. He’s interesting (even to me), but irrelevant. Calm down.
Photo Credits:
Technorati Tags: slate, chris wilson, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Survivor, DealorNoDeal
Proof of Clinton’s Push Polling
This is something that needs to stop, and stop now. From Jasmine in NC, as posted on the Obama blog:
I just had the MOST disturbing political survey call. I live in Apex, NC the call starts off asking if you will do a political survey and then it asks several benign questions about affiliation and voting record…..then it asked how favorably you view each candidate, THEN when it sounds like a true survey, it asked about 7 question stating “facts” about Obama like he only passed two laws while in the senate and names two insignificant things and would you be more or less likely to vote for him, then he was only in the senate 18 months then running for president would you be less or more likely to vote, then he says he wants to do something about Afghanistan but didn’t even attend the committee he chaired, does this make you more or less likely to vote…..as I’m telling the hired man on the other end for a legitimate survey company that this better get less bias or I’m saying good night….. he says that the Clinton questions are coming up too, they are just paid to ask the questions as an independent company. The Clinton questions were things like she traveled to 80 countries and has foreign policy experience are you more or less likely to vote for her, needless to say all the Clinton questions were positive, another was about her offering health care to everyone while Obama claims that he will but will not, are you more or less likely to vote for her, she will do this and that for North Carolina education are you more or less likely to vote for her…….at the end I asked the man who paid for the “survey” he said that he could not say,……I told him that was ok it was pretty obvious.
OMG why can’t they be up front, if they want to make soliciting calls make them don’t be manipulative and frame them as a survey! Considering this was so much miss information stated as fact! Wow it must be illegal; is there a not slander law in politics? I must say if I was not well informed and knew that the questions were false or misstated it would have been a shocking moment of wow I did not know that about Obama….and it would have been VERY effective cause it was stated as fact from a neutral party.
This kind of polling is an insidious form of voter suppression, it’s underhanded, and it’s Republican. Here’s another account of the kinds of push polls they’re conducting.
Hillary Clinton has conducted push polls here in California as well, though she claims no knowledge of it. Her campaign conveniently “forgot” to follow up on the question with an answer when it was put to them back in February, and now her campaign is doing it again.
Question: Is this what we want to replace what we have? A pseudo-republican?
Not this time.
Technorati Tags: push polls, clinton, north carolina, voter suppression
Not this time
On March 18, 2008, Barack Obama gave a speech. And in the speech, he said this:
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle — as we did in the O.J. trial — or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina, or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
You’re going to hear story upon story today about how Hillary Clinton is gaining traction among people that Barack Obama cannot reach, which is nothing more than code for “they won’t vote for a black man.”
You’re going to hear spin about how Pennsylvania puts the Clinton campaign back into play, caused a surge in fundraising, is making donors sit up and take notice.
You’re going to hear about how Barack Obama, while in preschool, collaborated with violent, unrepentant, anti-American underground Chicago types.
You’re going to hear about how we should be trapped in the politics of fear, encouraged to adopt the Bush doctrine of ‘obliterating’ those we disagree with, called to reject the new for the old.
You’ll have a choice. The racists aren’t going to go away. The hatemongers aren’t going to go away. They will ‘attack race as a spectacle’. Hillary Clinton will participate. Richard Mellon Scaife’s endorsement was a dog whistle to the packs in North Carolina, calling them forth to endeavor to destroy Barack Obama’s campaign. He won’t change who he is.
The question isn’t about whether he’s black or has a neighbor that associated with two people pardoned by Bill Clinton. It all depends on how we answer.
Is it
Today, serious efforts to swiftboat Barack Obama in advance of the Indiana and North Carolina primaries begin. I say, “not this time.”
Technorati Tags: election, primaries, democrats, clinton, racism, swiftboat
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