The 2008 presidential field at-a-glance

[AGDee]

Originally Posted by LeslieAGD

I'm surprised to hear you say you like her and most of her politics but won't vote for her because of her husband, the Bush Family, and polarization. Those are not exactly things she could control.

On a side note, the more I hear from/about Obama, the less I like him.

I'm not saying I won't vote for her in the Presidential election if she is the Democratic candidate, but not in the primary. My main beef with Obama is that he hasn't had any details about his plans. He has a lot of ideas, but no real plans for implementing them. I think that's part of his inexperience though. My preferred candidate is Edwards because I think he'd be less polarizing and more moderate than the others.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by LeslieAGD

I'm surprised to hear you say you like her and most of her politics but won't vote for her because of her husband, the Bush Family, and polarization. Those are not exactly things she could control.

On a side note, the more I hear from/about Obama, the less I like him.

Well, depending on how you look at it, her long term philandering husband is something she could have controlled. . .

Would you have put up with Bill's crap? Bill's especially public cheating on you for years with multiple women?

She had the option (and good reason) to no longer being related to him.

I also think her own actions make her a polarizing figure, so the idea that it's not in her control is a little weird.

And if everything else were equally appealing about two candidates, wouldn't it be better to choose the one who broke out of the inner establishment echo chamber?

(Now, I don't know if things ARE really equal, but I think the avoidance of the kind of dynasty crap we're seeing is a valid point.)

[skylark]

Congrats Geeky Penguin!

[nittanyalum]

Watching all the talking heads discuss the results... I love all the ruckus around Huckabee and how desperate they want the GOP field to remain a "3-man-race". They keep trying to make the question "What do you make of Huckabee's results?" really poignant and mysterious. Uhhhh, evangelical right, anyone? The hard right has no one else to vote for. I think it's great that he's staying in the race, keep draining the votes from the other two and keeping the splits alive. And ugh, just caught a glimpse of Rick Santorum standing behind Mitt Romney at some speech. One more reason for me to dislike Romney. I DETEST Santorum.

I just came home from a Super Tuesday Happy Hour watching party (it's 9:30, ya'll ) and Maya Soetoro-Ng (Barack's sister) was on hand to thank everyone who showed up. I think we violated a bunch of fire codes in that restaurant.

It was like the SuperBowl all over again.

[LeslieAGD]

What happens to pledged delegates when a candidate drops from the race (ie - Edwards had 26 and Thompson had 5)?
Do they disappear, get reallocated, something else...?

[scbelle]

Originally Posted by LeslieAGD

What happens to pledged delegates when a candidate drops from the race (ie - Edwards had 26 and Thompson had 5)?
Do they disappear, get reallocated, something else...?

I know that Edwards suspended his campaign, so technically, he can still EARN delegates, should he meet the threshold 15% of the vote. That might have been entirely possible in CA... I know early in the return, my friend in CA was lamenting the fact that Edwards was carrying 10% of the vote and wasn't even really in the race. What will most likely happen with his delegates is he will endorse a candidate and ask them to vote for the person he endorses. His delegates won't be bound to his request, though. A portion of his delegates will be reapportioned between Clinton and Obama based on the vote from the earlier states (IA, NH and SC). When a candidate drops out, their pledged delegates are usually released from obligation to vote for that candidate, so they are free to vote for another candidate.

[honeychile]

Does anyone else really get a little crazy over trying to figure out how each state & each party decides their delegate distribution? It seems so unfair to me that California, with such a high population is "winner takes all" (at least for the Democrats). According to Yahoo!, Clinton took 52% and Obama took 42% of the vote, yet Clinton took all the delegates.

Can anyone recommend a really good map or list for each state, and the delegate distribution?

[nittanyalum]

^^^Perhaps they were projecting forward to the actual presidential race where in the electoral college (in at least 48 of the states) it is winner-take-all -- maybe they were discussing how each candidate was performing in the state in the primary and projecting how much of the other candidates' votes they'll need to pull in order to get all of the state's delegates in the general election.

[skylark]

From C-span: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/files/e...CTION=POLITICS

They report that in Calif., Hillary got 42 delegates and Obama got 23. This is consistent with all the news coverage I've heard that has reported that ALL the democratic caucuses give proportional delegates -- no democratic caucus is winner take all.

[LeslieAGD]

Honestly, I hate all these friggin' websites! Every single one has different numbers concerning the delegates.

[KSig RC]

Originally Posted by LeslieAGD

Honestly, I hate all these friggin' websites! Every single one has different numbers concerning the delegates.

This is because they're estimating differently; vote tallies aren't final, and "superdelegates" aren't finalized at all, although some have intimated they will follow the popular vote, some have ties to Clinton/Obama, and some are likely to follow brokered deals at the DNC if Obama pulls off the remaining states (which are mostly Midwestern or have a large black population) and keeps things effectively deadlocked. Clinton has a large edge in superdelegates right now, but that could rapidly change.

I wouldn't worry about actual delegate counts at all, actually - they'll be fluid until the DNC, plus Michigan and Florida delegates are going to try to be seated (and no one knows what the hell will happen there), plus superdelegates have no structure to their votes. Absolutely no one will know or agree.

[skylark]

Originally Posted by KSig RC

This is because they're estimating differently; vote tallies aren't final, and "superdelegates" aren't finalized at all, although some have intimated they will follow the popular vote, some have ties to Clinton/Obama, and some are likely to follow brokered deals at the DNC if Obama pulls off the remaining states (which are mostly Midwestern or have a large black population) and keeps things effectively deadlocked. Clinton has a large edge in superdelegates right now, but that could rapidly change.

jinx, you owe me a coke :-)

[nittanyalum]

Originally Posted by skylark

jinx, you owe me a coke :-)

I love that ad with Carville and Frist.

[KSig RC]

Originally Posted by skylark at 6:21

jinx, you owe me a coke :-)

Originally Posted by KSig RC at 06:19

I am awesome

Looks like I beat you there by a few minutes - this means you owe me the Coke, shooter. Hey, I don't make the rules.