Since Senator Obama is still having issues with electability, he’s decided to try to go back to groups he threw under the bus and see if he can get enough votes to shove him to the 50% line.

First, there is this series of telling polls by Rasmussen Reports.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows the race for the White House is tied with Barack Obama and John McCain each attracting 44% of the vote. However, when “leaners” are included, it’s McCain 47% and Obama 46%.

source: 

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/daily_presidential_tracking_poll

This is because they also find:

It’s worth noting that there are far more uncommitted voters at this point in Election 2008 than there were four years ago. The Election 2004 Presidential Tracking Poll showed that 92% of voters were committed to either President Bush or Senator Kerry on July 24, 2004. Only 8% were uncommitted.

This year, 37% of the uncommitted voters plan to vote for a Democratic Congressional candidate while 22% say they’ll vote for the GOP. But, when asked which way they’re leaning in the race for the White House, 26% say McCain and 19% say Obama. Twenty percent (20%) say they still prefer a third-party candidate.

and this:

The first nationwide survey since Barack Obama returned from his highly publicized travels in Europe and the Middle East finds that the trip had little or no impact on the U.S. presidential race.

and this:

Sixty-nine percent (69%) of the nation’s voters say they’ve seen news coverage of the McCain campaign commercial that includes images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and suggests that Barack Obama is a celebrity just like them. Of those, just 22% say the ad was racist while 63% say it was not.

However, Obama’s comment that his Republican opponent will try to scare people because Obama does not look like all the other presidents on dollar bills was seen as racist by 53%. Thirty-eight percent (38%) disagree.

So, now we see another flip by the Obama campaign. I guess he’s decided that some of the voters he threw under the bus during the primary are necessary for an Obama win.  He wants to seat the Florida and Michigan Delegation restored to one vote.

Obama Asks Panel to Restore Votes

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE  AUG. 4, 2008

Senator Barack Obama has asked the credentials committee of the Democratic Party to give full voting rights to delegates from Florida and Michigan at the national convention in Denver.
The request is likely to be granted because it comes from Mr. Obama, the all-but-certain nominee, who now controls the party apparatus.
After Florida and Michigan held early primaries in violation of party rules, the party punished them by saying their delegations would not be seated at the convention. In May, the rules committee agreed to let the delegates have half a vote each.
Mr. Obama’s request is likely to cause consternation among party officials, who have struggled to maintain some authority over the primary calendar. Restoring full voting rights will essentially be giving a green light to other states to ignore the primary calendar next election.
The credentials committee is scheduled to meet Aug. 24, the day before the convention begins

I know I’m a cynic, but something tells me this move is not to restore the democratic party to its one man-one vote principle.  They must have had time to restack the deck in these states and now feel secure enough to let them vote.  Could this be part of the negotiations with Hillary?  I would love to figure out what went in to this complete reversal.  I’m sure he must feel secure in the nomination if he’s agreeing to this change at this point.

The bigger question, however, goes to Howard Dean and Donna Brazile and all those folks that were pushing the rules like they’d been handed down on stone tablets to Charlton Heston on movie set,  how are you going to spin this?

I’ve spent the last day watching a hurricane develop south of me.  If you look at the sky above my house you’ll see mostly blue sky.  However there are some very low lying clouds with a hint of darkness spinning back towards the Southeast.  These little spinning clouds are harbingers of something bigger picking up steam just out of sight of the little kathouse in the ninth ward.  I’m wondering if folks in Colorado see something similar around Denver.

• Paris Hilton’s Republican mother, Kathy Hilton, goes medieval on John McCain.
• AP: Obama will give full vote to Florida and Michigan delegates.
• NY Magazine’s John Heilemann: GOP insiders admit racist subtext to McCain’s negative ads, noting for example, it was no coincidence the “troops” ad used footage of Obama dribbling a basketball because they want to paint him as a “Allen Iverson” stereotype – a spoiled, tatooed celebrity. Asked if they would have used footage of Obama on a golf course instead, the GOP insider laughed and said, “Of course not.” Money quote:

“But Weaver, Murphy, and McKinnon [former aides who wanted to run McCain as a "maverick reformist"] are no longer guiding McCain. Instead, the motor behind his operation now is Steve Schmidt, the shaven-headed strategist who earned his bones running Karl Rove’s war room in 2004, Frenchifying and de-war-heroizing John Kerry. What Schmidt and his associates have apparently concluded is that McCain’s weaknesses—on the election’s most salient issues and as a candidate—are so pronounced and Obama’s vulnerabilities so glaring that the low road is their guy’s best, and maybe only, route to the White House. They’ve concluded, in other words, that even if McCain may not be able to win the election in any affirmative sense, he might still wind up behind the big desk if he and his people can strip the bark off Obama with sufficiently vicious force.”

• McCain aides have recently been trying to pump up McCain’s bona fides on civil rights, perhaps to inoculate the campaign from its racially divisive tactics. Rick Davis recently claimed on the Today Show that McCain has always been a champion of equal rights for all, but as this post outlines in detail, the assertion conflicts with the reality of McCain’s record.
• Major Obama event scheduled in Indiana for Wednesday triggers rumors of Bayh as the Veep choice. MSNBC’s First Read is now also picking up on the potential significance of the Indiana visit (although Chuck Todd said on MTP he expects to see Obama and Biden together at another event this week).
• WaPo essay: McCain’s Problem isn’t His Tactics, It’s GOP Ideas.
• Washington Independent: McCain scoffs at reporter’s question about critics challenging the accuracy and tone of his ads.
• Newsweek cover story: The South is going through difficult change, which may present opportunities for a change candidate like Obama.

• NY Times profiles Obama’s views on the relevance of race and economic factors in the context of hiring, school admissions, etc.
• NY Times on McCain’s failure to use or understand the Internet or related devices and applications. Critics say it’s important to have a president who understands such a critical part of our daily lives – 73% of Americans use the Internet. McCain supporters argue he can have “staff” (or his wife) use the Internet for him. They also argue that because he has been on the Senate Commerce Committee, he understands the issues. This ignores the fact that he’s been on the wrong side of Internet growth-related legislative initiatives since the early 90s.
• Politico has a similar story on McCain’s “tech deficit” as a political liability.
• The Romney Risk Factor. Private equity sector is concerned that if Romney is picked as McCain’s Veep, they’ll get tarnished as “job-cutting fat cats” due to Romney’s past history as a private equity CEO who made a fortune while cutting off heads at his firm and company’s in which his firm invested.

I of course have been keeping up on the election battle, specifically the democratic nomination process. It seems that this campaign is the most complicated primary I have witnessed in my lifetime. In the beginning of this campaign Obama was a fringe candidate. The two major democratic party contenders were Edwards and Clinton. The assumed winner for most people was Clinton. The fix was in from the start. Clinton was lauded by the press who kissed her ass every which way. Obama was largely untouched by the press very early on, hell, Richardson get more coverage than him early on.

Obama ran a killer campaign, much like Howard Dean did in 2004. Based on a vast grassroots base of large numbers contributing small amounts he amassed a massive war chest, solely on his professed dedication to ending the iraq war. So he managed to lose it all over a gaffe which was most likely made to look a lot worse than it was. The “Dean Scream” was not really a scream, but more of a cheer or battle cry. Its effects deserve to be put under scrutiny in its’ own blog, how this one clip of media universally caused all United Statesians to decide that this individual was not only unelectable, but that he would never win…now. Obama’sstory is similar to Dean’s in the fact that their support comes from a wide grassroots base. This large number of people contributing relatively small amounts is the reason for his bulging war chest. The key contrast between these two campaigns is that Dean started out on top, Obama started on the bottom. I do not claim to know the psychology behind what media does or does not do, in fact I would be more likely to ascribe media’s actions to the directives of their corporate overseers. A media outlet does not tell people the news, it parrots the agenda of its’ corporate overlords. So maybe this latest sensationalist push that arrived with the 2000 elections and was exacerbated by 911 is causing all the networks to turn in to fox news, but the media is hardly to blame for the democratic clusterfuck.

So whenever anyone talks to me about the campaign I always talk about the primaries. Most people don’t know the deal with Michigan and Florida. See it goes like this: there are all kinds of things in our country that are fucked up because of federalism. Federalism is great for a lot of things, local controls are better in so many things, but this antiquated notion that each state is its’ own…well…state can pose blocks to progress. And I’m not talking about electric sidewalks or even higher high defintion  tv screens, I’m talking about real progress. Such as the movement for civil rights that began with  Brown vs. Board of Education overturning Plessy/Jim Crow. Federalism or “states rights”(as if a state can have fucking rights, the whole point of rights is to limit the state, so an individual can be guaranteed liberty) was used to delay the end of de jure oppression.

So these states sometimes want to be far more important than they really are. So the presidential nomination process, is all this bullshit anywhere in our constitution? No this is all the result of parties, these processes are the sole jurisdiction of the national parties.

So Democrats want a person to be nominated, they  want their party to decide who it is. This is done by appointing delegates that will vote for certain candidates. So each state has delegates that are awarded to the region or state based on how important they are to the democratic campaign, and what they’ve done for them in the past. So even before we’ve even held an election we already understand that certain states are given more power than others, not because of their requisite populations, but instead based on a system of patronage. The 2 only possible presidential candidates will be decided by the people who kissed the parties ass the most not on any basis of political equality. All decided in some party leader’s office…A “smoke filled room” if you will. So when you vote all of these appointed delegates will take it under advisement and vote however they were going to in the first place.

And thats just one state. In every state across the country the ass kissers are set up to receive their awards of political power at the expense of the general populace. But who will vote first? Well logically we’d all vote on the same fucking day, be done with it and have a nominee. Not in party politics though, what we’ve done is set up a fragile system where the state legislatures decide when their primaries are taking place. And as we all noticed in the coverage of Iowa, South Carolina, etc. is sooooooo important to the nomination process. Is it really right that a bunch of corn farmers and rednecks that fly the confederate flag on their capitol building have more political power to decide who will eventually rule our country than anyone else? Sorry if i’m stereotyping south carolina and Iowa, but its to make a point. At the point where one person’s vote is more important than another, we have ceased to be a democracy, we have failed to uphold the 14th amendment and the american experiment is over, ended in failure. So what states do so that they can be uber politically powerful, like corn farmers and racist rednecks, is move their primaries farther ahead. They leapfrog iowa and south carolina, and then the legislatures of south carolina and iowa fire right back. Pretty soon we’re all holding primaries 20 years before the election and most of the nominees are dead from old age by the time the campaign rolls around.

So in the most recent primary the states of Michigan and Florida moved their primaries ahead, threatening to create yet another race to the bottom of who could be AS important as a bunch of corn farmers and kkk descendants. So the democratic party responded, saying “we’re going to prevent a race to the bottom by not allowing the states that have moved their primaries ahead to be as important as the rest of the country that doesn’t farm corn or fly confederate flags on their capitol building. This was an action by the party to forestall the inevitable disintegration of such a fucked up institution as party primaries are. Its also justified if you investigate how humans cling to things that have been around, simply because they’ve been around for awhile. Although the electoral college, the existence of a senate, or party primaries are easily identifiable to a toddler as quote “retarded”, we “adults” have a much more nuanced view of it…But seriously, in my opinion the duopoly of the national parties, or what I like to call “the yes or no party system” should be abolished. How to do this precisely I do not know, but i go in to the dangers of multi-party systems such as modern italy or the weimar. The main criticism of democracies that do not have a 2 party system is that the democracy is fragile, but thats the fucking point. I want legislators to be so busy trying to keep their tiny factionalized parties afloat rather than figure new wars to start and new ways to fuck us out of our constitutional rights. I want a weak government, I believe that was the framer’s intent, and although I may disagree with framer’s intent on many issues. On this one I think they hit the nail on the head.

How does this relate to our current clusterfuck? Right now the nomination process is going to come down to whether or not the Michigan and Florida delegates will be seated. Two lawyers will argue with each other in front of our robed ubermenschen and they will all make our decision for us. Freedom from choice, another sweet american freedom!

So why an I one of the only people(at least as far as I can see from reading the media) that thinks having judges and lawyers decide who rules us is not only fucked up, but is prima facie an abrogation of our constitutional rights? Who decided who our president was in 2000? few lawyers and what 16 judges? or 14? or 12? i can’t remember I think appellates have 3, but i digress…

The nomination battle is going to come down to what some judge in the democratic party thinks should happen, and do you think they’re going to make that decision based on objectivity and logic? Fuck no! They’re going to make it based on who they want to get the nomination. Rawls was right about this, decisions like this should be made behind the veil of ignorance. If clinton and obama didnt’ have any idea who would get more delegates from michigan and florida, what would they want? What would we want as people if we didn’t know who it would benefit? Wouldn’t we try to make it as even as possible? as close to a real meritocracy as possible? Instead its a the cramming of agendas down throats, its the same thing the bush administration did: whatever the fuck it wanted to.

Now its one thing to see this problem ahead of time like the democratic party did and declare they woudlnt’ count the delegates from that state, because they violated the party bylaws and got greedy trying to be as equal as corn farmers and confederates. It is completely another to go campaign in that state as Clinton did, when Clinton campaigned in states that the delegates were not going to be counted from, it is not her undying loyalty to making every vote count that is driving her, it is her undying ambition that says she has a better chance of winning if she can get thsoe delegates. So she campaigned, in my opinion it made her uniquely dirtier than other presidential candidates(because all politicians are dirty) and as soon as I feel that way I can’t even vote for her if she wins the primary.

In my opinion clinton knows she has a snowball’s chance in hell of winning this nomination, she is solely in this campaign to punish Barack Obama for usurping her “place in line”. She wants to hang on and weaken him for the battle with McCain, not for some ulterior motive of running for election in 2012, but just because she is not used to not getting what she wants. So she will punish the individual responsible. I feel Clinton is similar to the Smiler in Transmetropolitan, whereas Bush is similar to The Beast in said publication. He is the same old same old with a new coat of paint, war, war, war, and war. She represents an empty ambitious vessel that will do anything to gain victory. Obama it seems to me is a wildcard, his campaign change and whatever, its marketing. The thing I love about Obama is he isn’t afraid. Obama doesn’t wear a flag lapel pin. Nuff said. Fuck i guess not nuff said, some people construe that to mean he must hate america(god i love that phrase “hate america” so mccarthyist). To me it says he doesn’t just fall in lockstep, he isn’t afraid to abide by his convictions. And putting a lapel pin on doesn’t excuse one from being responsible to actually adhering to the guidelines of our government as set out by the declaration of independence and the constitution. Everyone putting on the flag lapel pin is emblematic, not of unity or fucking nationalism , but autocracy. It represents the passage of the patriot act when nobody even know what the fuck was in it, it is emblematic of the authorization to use military force which relinquishedthe power of war making to the president, a clear violation of the war powers act. This flag lapel pin is emblematic of fucking idiots who think Iraq had something to do with 911. I cannot even address these people without becoming spitting mad, the obvious racism and lack of intelligence is so glaring, just like I said, same old fucking thing with a new coat of paint, but we all went for it.

So if you’re reading this today(the day it was published[which most likely you're not, because probably only gonna get like 1 or 2 hits on this thing today]) then think about that tomorrow, when the media applauds whatever decision the douchebags made. Remember that your voice didn’t matter , or at the very least didnt’ matter as much as democratic ass kissers, corn farmers, or confederates.

Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean (above, singing for his metal band, The Dean Scream) said in a letter today that he would not manipulate party rules to allow Michigan and Florida’s delegates to be seated at the Democratic National Convention, an announcement which will be a disappointment to the Clinton campaign. Sen. Clinton “won” both Michigan and Florida which were stripped of their delegates and therefore she didn’t receive any tangible benefits. Both states were penalized after moving their primaries up and now are calling for their delegates to be seated. Candidates were asked to remove their names from the ballot in Michigan by the DNC (Clinton was the only major candidate who left theirs on) and were barred from campaigning in Florida (Clinton had “fundraisers” there instead and arrived to celebrate victory the moment the polls closed).

The Democratic Governor of Michigan, Jennifer Granholm, and the Republican Governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, released a joint statement pleading for the seating of their delegates:

The right to vote is at the very foundation of our democracy. This primary season, voters have turned out in record numbers to exercise that right, and it is reprehensible that anyone would seek to silence the voices of 5,163,271 Americans. It is intolerable that the national political parties have denied the citizens of Michigan and Florida their votes and voices at their respective national conventions.

However, I would imagine that they left some key interests out of that statement. For Granholm it would be something along the lines of, “I am a Clinton supporter and realize that it is nearly mathmatically impossible for her to win via pledged delegates so PLEASE seat the delegates from Michigan even though there was only one candidate on the ballot.” Crist I’m sure wanted to add, “Please seat our delegates in the interest of prolonging the Democratic nomination process so McCain will have a huge head start, get elected, and essentially be Dubya’s third term.”

While I do feel that they should have delegates at the convention, they must be seated within the legal confines of the Democratic Party. Thankfully, Howard Dean agrees and released a statement today saying that they can either appeal to the Convention Credentials Committee to seat their delegates as is or submit for a re-vote. However, the former option is unlikely as the Credentials Committee currently doesn’t have enough members for quorum and is highly unlikely to get members who would be willing to just hand over the delegates to Sen. Clinton in what were clearly unfair elections. I believe Howard Dean said it best himself:

The Democratic Nominee will be determined in accordance with party rules, and out of respect for the presidential campaigns and the states that did not violate party rules, we are not going to change the rules in the middle of the game.

Read the rest of the statement here.

Dean Statement on Florida and Michigan – [The Democratic Party]
Fla. and Mich. Governors: Give Us Our Delegates – [New York Times]