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The line that spoke to me most came from Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin:
“I think we need more of Main Street Wasilla in Washington, so that these people, these middle-class, hard-working people are heard in Washington.”
Contrast this to the line that almost made me cry with laughter:
“I go down Union Street, and speak to folks in Home Depot…”
On to the serious stuff, I think Palin nailed this debate. She spoke in a way that showed that she’s far outside Washington circles, using some very homely expressions such as “doggone it”, “ya”, “Say it ain’t so Joe”, and she sounded nowhere near as rehearsed as Joe Biden, plus Governor Palin didn’t rely on her notes almost every sentence. Certainly, she looked at notes (although hers were clearly in dot point form, whereas Biden’s can’t possibly have been) yet she spent the majority of her time making eye contact with the camera.
The great Australian State of Western Australia goes to the polls today to either re-elect the current Premier of Western Australia, Mr. Alan Carpenter, or to elect the Opposition into Government.
This election is going to be watched with close attention all across Australia, namely because it’s the first time that a Labor State Government may lose power in more than a decade. This election could result in a shift in political climate if the Liberals win, because they will now hold a position higher than Lord Mayor of Brisbane, the highest position held by a Liberal ever since the Liberals lost federal government in November last year.
The Greens are doing fairly well in the polls, but polls aren’t terribly reliable, and I’m taking the polls in WA with at least a jar of salt. The Greens stand against many of the activities that actually give WA money to run the State, such as mining and drilling, and WA is currently doing enough of both to not only run WA, but to subsidise the less-wealthy States such as Victoria and New South Wales.
WA is the only State wise enough to go to an election, although the only reason it’s going to an election this week is because the previous Liberal leader resigned, due to an overwhelming media campaign after he rather creepily sniffed womens’ seats after they’d gotten up. An election is a good idea, however WA isn’t the State I would have chosen the first election to have been in. I would have chosen NSW.
New South Wales would have been my first choice. I say this because NSW has a government allegedly entrenched in corruption, of which the Treasurer was yesterday fired, the Premier yesterday resigned, the Deputy Premier retires next Monday, and the Education Minister doesn’t look too clean either. All of this, and the NSW electorate doesn’t get to decide who will lead the State from now on, the Australian Labor Party (NSW Division) does, and it’s not looking like they have much to choose from. That’s not a fair and equitable democracy. Bring on an election!
Andrew Bolt, as usual, has a concise analysis.
Don’t screw with West “By God” Virginia, Obama.
Hillary Clinton, declaring “this race isn’t over yet,” beat Barack Obama by a decisive margin in the West Virginia Democratic primary Tuesday.
Early returns indicated Clinton was beating Obama by better than 2-to-1. She is capturing almost every demographic group, and doing particularly well among the large group of white, working-class voters in the state.
West Virginia offers just 28 pledged delegates, and so Clinton’s victory Tuesday, which was widely expected, will have little impact on the overall trajectory of the race. Obama, leading Clinton by a wide margin in total delegates, has already started turning his campaign toward the general election.
But the Clinton win prolongs the race and fuels the New York senator’s argument that she is able to carry groups that will be important to Democrats in November.
“We know from the Bible that faith can move mountains, and my friends, the faith of the Mountain State has moved me,” Clinton said at her primary rally in Charleston, W. Va. “I am more determined than ever to carry on this campaign until everyone has had a chance to make their voices heard … This continues to be a hard-fought race from one end of our country to the other.”
West Virginia returns showed Clinton with 65 percent and Obama with 27 percent, with 64 percent of precincts reporting.
Cheers of “It’s not over! It’s not over!” broke out at Clinton’s state headquarters in Charleston after the race was called.
Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe told FOX News before polls closed that he doesn’t see it as inevitable that Obama will become the Democratic nominee.
“Hillary Clinton is in this to the end, she’ll win this nomination,” he said in the evening, before introducing Clinton to a raucous audience.
Exit polls highlighted the demographic divide between the coalitions of Clinton and Obama, but with little diversity in the state, Clinton also scored well among Obama’s traditional support groups.
Among her typical backers — white voters, women, seniors and non-college educated, Clinton polled above 65 percent in each group.
Obama campaigned lightly in West Virginia and repeatedly said Clinton would probably win both that state and Kentucky, which holds its primary next Tuesday.
“There is no question that Senator Clinton is going to win by huge margins in the upcoming primaries in West Virginia today and Kentucky next week,” the campaign said in a memo Tuesday.
It reminded voters that Obama won neighboring Virginia by double digits in February and that the Illinois senator has racked up nearly as many superdelegates in the past week as there are pledged delegates at stake in West Virginia.
As Clinton and her supporters gathered in Charleston Tuesday, Obama spoke at an economic town hall meeting in Missouri, without mentioning Clinton once during his prepared remarks. He mentioned President Bush eight times and John McCain five times.
“This is our moment to turn the page on the divisions and distractions that pass for politics in Washington,” Obama said.
Obama’s decision to spend Tuesday night in Missouri reflects the shift in focus the campaign has made toward November since one week ago, when he won the North Carolina primary by double digits and held Clinton to a narrow victory in Indiana.
Obama is now looking to Oregon, which votes May 20 along with Kentucky, to nudge him toward the finish line. Polls show him ahead in Oregon, and he campaigned there over the weekend.
Obama began Tuesday with 1,875.5 delegates, to 1,697 for Clinton. It takes 2,025 to win. Clinton had picked up 16 of the 28 delegates in West Virginia, compared to seven for Obama, with five outstanding.
Since his North Carolina win, nearly 30 superdelegates — party officials and insiders who are not obligated by election results to support any candidate — have swung to Obama.
Clinton took criticism last week for defending her presence in the race by raising her ability to attract white voters, during an interview with USA Today.
*But according to exit polls, one in five voters said race was an important factor in their decision.
McAuliffe said the final days of the Democratic race, though, are not about race. He said they are mostly about the economy and the Iraq war. Indeed, a majority of West Virginia voters surveyed in exit polls said the economy was the top issue.
* Who made it so, Obama? Your slick both sides of the net, campaign did…..Stick to tennis, young man…You are NOT Presidential material. Condi Rice is. Colin Powell is. You aren’t!.
Bits and Pieces:
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the embattled pastor of presidential candidate Barack Obama, gave a 45-minute sermon on Sunday that included a reference to his “public crucifixion” for past comments from the pulpit.
Wright also was the subject of political dispute on the campaign trail, as Republican John McCain criticized some of Wrights earlier remarks that have recently surfaced, and Obama taking a swipe at McCain.
McCain has been fighting the North Carolina GOP over an ad set to air Monday that links Obama and Wright, saying the ad is unfair. But on Sunday, McCain made the most confident steps so far on the subject, criticizing Wright over comments he made comparing Marines to Roman soldiers who killed Jesus, and comparing Al Qaeda flags to the AMerican flag.
Of the Roman comparison, McCain said, “It’s beyond belief. And then of course saying that Al Qaeda and the American flag were the same flags. So I can understand, I can understand why people are upset about this. I can understand why Americans, when viewing these kinds of comments, are angry and upset.”
Obama campaign spokesman Hari Sevugnan said McCain had “broken his word to the American people” in his criticism of Wright, according to a statement from the campaign.
“By sinking to a level that he specifically said he’d avoid, John McCain has broken his word to the American people and rendered hollow his promise of a respectful campaign. With each passing day, John McCain acts more and more like someone who’s spent twenty-six years learning the divisive, distracting tactics of Washington. That’s not the change that the American people are looking for,” Sevugnan said.
John McCain, if you want to win this election, you must step up your game. The Leftist’s in this one…are quite good. If one likes Leftist’s that is.
UPDATE:
He also defended Obama and lashed out at the newsmedia for running excerpts of his heated sermons, media pundits and those who have tried to connect him to Islam because of his full name — Barack Hussein Obama.
“Please run and tell my stuck up stupid friends that Arabic is a language, not a religion,” said Wright. “Its not a religion stop trying to scare people like you are giving him a religious name.”
Rev. Wright, pray (no pun intended) tell, WHAT exactly is the predominate “religion” of the “Arabics”? His Mommy and Daddy gave Hussein Obama that name, Just as the Kennedy’s named one of their sons, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. That name he used with pride. Is Obama not proud?
Seems to me Rev. Wright you are a smartass racist…hiding behind your color, are you not proud of your color?
The only one “stuck on stupid”, Rev. Wright, is you.
On the Democratic side, Clinton was stopped cold — but still has yet to be finished off by Obama. Now we can expect months more of infighting. As the Democrats raise tens of millions to destroy themselves, McCain can only sit back and smile. With Obama the likely nominee, we can also expect to hear more from, and about, his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Reporters no doubt are scanning Rev. Wright’s massive corpus of texts and DVDs for more hate speech. Even before the Wright controversy, the Democratic vote had been split heavily along racial lines — whites for Clinton, blacks for Obama — in certain states, including the all-important Ohio. That’s not a good sign for a party that’s supposed to be a model of racial transcendence.Clinton will weaken Obama for months to come. There is no reason to believe the former front-runner will quit the Democratic race soon, even though Obama has an all-but-insurmountable delegate lead.
Clinton has momentum and should win sizably in Pennsylvania later this month. Millions want to vote for her in the remaining primaries. By convention time, she could even end up with a slight lead in the aggregate popular vote.
Clinton has also so far won all the big states that will be in play in the general election. She knows the superdelegates were created precisely for a year like this, and so will argue that these Democratic pros are there to check the exuberance of a liberal electorate that might actually nominate someone untested like Obama. Had Clinton run under Republican primary rules, her wins would have already sealed for her the nomination.
The Tizona Group 