March 4th Primaries

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2 July 2009

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Mar 4 at 10:10pm by Jagwire X

Republicans & Democrats

Well today is the day. Well not THE day. But it’s the day that will most likely decide who the presidential contenders are.

At this point John McCain is already the presumptive nominee for the GOP. Not too surprising there – another militaristic rich white guy is what Republican constituents think this country needs. I think not.

Meanwhile on the Democrats side of the fence we seem to have all sort of craziness going on. The nomination is down to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Either way it’s historical precedent. There are reports of voters overwhelming caucuses and claims by the Clinton camp that Obama supporters are illegally obtaining caucus packets in the several Texas caucus precincts. I don’t know the ground rules for caucuses and I probably should but I am to understand that to some degree it’s a first come first server sort of deal where the packets are concerned. Then there are allegation about the Clinton campaign regularly claiming caucus irregularities with the Obama campaign to the point that it seem to have become a tactic of the Clinton campaign.

There are also reports in Ohio of precincts closing down early because they have run out of ballots because a large number of people wanted to vote on paper. I can understand that. Otherwise in Ohio the only real problems seem to be the winter weather making it difficult for people to get out and vote.

So right now the democratic nomination could go either way. From what I see in the various media Obama is ahead by a small but significant margin. Now just to make things interesting the Democratic Party does not use a winner takes all approach to the votes in the primary – it’s proportional. So even if Clinton wins in Ohio it doesn’t mean she gets all the delegate – if she wins 60% of the vote she gets 60% of the delegates and Obama gets the remaining 40%. So this primary could remain close until the very end. Superdelegates are another story – they can vote for whoever they like and can be persuaded by the nominees (or even the voters) to vote one way or the other. It’s all very exciting and tomorrow morning we may well have a better idea of who is likely to be the next president of the United States.

For the record I prefer Obama to Clinton but, as I said before, either way it’s historical precedent. And I frankly just don’t want another rich white guy to be president. That is hardly representative of a country that is comprised of so many non-rich, non-whites and non-guys. Not to mention people who just are fed up with politics as usual. Being a politician shouldn’t be a career option – it should be a duty.

For those interested in hard numbers you can check CNN (they also have a lot of information about how the primary process works) or look a the latest Daily Kos post.