Clinton: Still No Congratulations For Obama

Interesting piece of article on CNN earlier. Now with Obama getting the delegate lead even when you factor in the super delegate votes, you certainly should not expect any congratulations now until the race is done.

EL PASO, Texas (CNN) – For the second election night in a row, Hillary Clinton failed to acknowledge or congratulate Barack Obama after he won the day in dominating fashion.

On Tuesday in El Paso, hours after Virginia had been called for Obama, she stuck to her “Texas campaign kickoff” message and did not stray from an energetic, Lone Star-themed stump speech. She did mention Obama by name, only to chide his health care plan.

On Saturday night in Richmond, Virginia, Clinton spoke to a crowd of thousands at the state’s annual Jefferson-Jackson dinner, but she ignored Obama’s quartet of blowout primary and caucus wins that day as well (Obama also won the Maine caucuses the next day).

The courtesy of conceding a primary or caucus loss — and then congratulating your opponent — is by no means required. But it has become standard practice during campaign season.

Clinton congratulated Obama and John Edwards after their first and second place finishes in the Iowa caucuses. Obama returned the favor in New Hampshire, saying Clinton “did an outstanding job.” That courtesy continued through the early states.

But as the race has shifted to a delegate chase with dozens of states in play around the country, the notion of congratulating one’s opponent seems, for Clinton, to have fallen by the wayside.


– CNN Political Producer Peter Hamby

Key Dates to look out for: State (Delegates)

March 4: Ohio (161) and Texas (228) Primaries
April 22: Pennsylvania (188)
May 6: North Carolina (134)

Those are the last four states left with triple digit delegates left and with the total difference still barely in double digits, I expect March 4 to be crucial. Obama needs to make inroads in Texas and certainly this momentum will help.

To think it is February 13th now and people expected this race to be over after over a month ago following Iowa and New Hampshire. How crucial would Florida and Michigan primaries be, had they not decided to defy party rules and push their primaries before the February 5th deadline… The world will never know.

Updated: Super Duper Tuesday

Barack Obama leads in the delegates that have been voted by ACTUAL VOTERS!!

The only reason Hilary Clinton is leading is because of the Superdelegates where she has an extra 87 delegates to boost her. What can you do when the system is designed to favor those who are in it and makes it very difficult for any one from outside to come in.

Super Duper Tuesday

(paraphrased from an email sent to a friend overseas summarizing Super Tuesday)

So the night started off interestingly early with Obama picking up Georgia with like 88% of the black vote and he only lost the white vote like 60-40. Clinton quickly replied with wins in new Jersey and new York both by 15 points. Obama won his state by 32 points. Obama picked up quality wins in Missouri, Connecticut and Kansas but Clinton has California, Massachusetts and Arizona to battle back.

I really hate the Super Delegate system where the party establishment has votes on who to give the delegates (look at attached picture below). Based on total voting delegates only! Clinton has a lead of 475 to 451 (only up by 24 delegates) but if you add super delegates 668 to 557 (lead goes up to 111)*. Gives Hilary quite the boost.

So the democratic race goes on with states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas still to vote all of them have triple digit delegates so we’ll see.

*note: numbers subject to change as more districts report numbers.

For the republicans, McCain kind of kicked butt but Huckabee surprised me picking up several states (WVA, TEN, ARK, ALA)… they are talking about a McCain / Huckabee ticket which is quite scary for America…

Super Tuesday – Weekend Polling

I apologize for the brevity of my diary; however, I think the results speak for themselves. Zogby has some pretty surprising results in his latest polls, which are to be released tomorrow.

Both parties have staged tight, seesawing battles for the nominations for November’s presidential election. Clinton, the New York senator, and Obama split the first four Democratic contests — Obama won Iowa and South Carolina, while Clinton won New Hampshire and Nevada.

In California, the poll found Obama led Clinton by 45 percent to 41 percent, with a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points. Clinton held statistically insignificant 1-point leads on Obama in New Jersey and Missouri, well within the margin of error of 3.4 percentage points in both surveys.

It would be an extraordinary feat to see Obama come within 1 point of Hillary in New Jersey, considering that it’s her backyard. Hillary also had a huge lead in Missouri just over a week ago, but now it seems that it has evaporated into thin air.

Furthermore, Obama appears to be consolidating his lead in Georgia.

Obama, an Illinois senator who would be the first black U.S. president, has a comfortable 20-point lead in Georgia fueled by a more than 3-to-1 advantage over Clinton among black voters.

From the polling results, we can ascertain that this race is precipitously shifting in favor of Obama.


Update: Many people are criticizing Zogby and some of their criticisms may be fair. however, the Field Poll will be coming out tomorrow and it will also show that the race in California is a dead heat, thus corroborating the results of Zogby’s poll that shows a dramatic shift towards Obama.

Taken from Daily Kos.