It's all about the pledged delegates.
The Clinton campaign won three states on Tuesday, and has taken full advantage of the bragging rights they've earned, but the real story is the delegates. The Clinton campaign was down by more than 150 delegates, and they're still down by more than 150 delegates. Looking ahead, the rest of the primary calendar consists of Pennsylvania plus nine States That Don't Matter.* Even if the Clinton campaign wins an Ohio-grade win in the Keystone State, that won't make up for all the delegates the Obama campaign will pick up in the States That Don't Matter. When the primary season is over, the Obama campaign will still have anywhere from 200 to 300 more delegates than the Clinton campaign.
For all the talk about the superdelegates, it's the pledged delegates (and the voters they represent) that tell the real story. All those voters represent political power, and the mass of pledged delegates exerts its own political gravity. When the voting is done, the superdelegates are going to find themselves drawn into the orbits of the pledged delegates like meteors drawn into the gravity well of a large planet. When that happens, the greater mass of pledged delegates that make up Planet Obama will exert the greater political gravity, and the majority of the superdelegates will find themselves drawn into its orbit. As a result, by the time the party meets in Denver, Planet Obama will already have gained a critical mass of superdelegates, and the nomination will follow.
So don't worry about talk of the superdelegates overturning the results of the primaries. They will be unable to resist the superior gravity of Planet Obama.
*A State That Doesn't Matter is defined as any "small" state where Obama's superior ground game results in a landslide victory.
Markos Moulitsas Zuniga at the blog Daily Kos writes a post at http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/4/154515/5935/857/449684 warning Obama supporters against what he calls "irrational exuberance". Kos points out that Hillary has been the frontrunner so far, with lots of institutional support and the "aura of inevitability". Despite the Obama surge, Hillary is still ahead. Kos writes:
"Clinton is going to win the day. The key is to limit her margin of victory and keep it close enough for Obama to catch up later in the month and into March and April. But if Obama supporters build themselves up to the point they actually think they can win tomorrow (by citing bogus polls by Zogby, for example, and cherry picking the best of the other polls), then anything but a victory will be a demoralizing letdown."
Wise words, my friends. The Obama campaign is raising money hand over fist, far outstripping Hillary. After Tsunami Tuesday, all the primaries are leaning Obama's way. and he's got the momentum to win them, and the nomination with them.
Bear this in mind if, as Kos predicts, Hillary wins most of the states and delegates today. This is a marathon, not a sprint, and Barack Obama will beat Hillary Clinton in a marathon.
John Cole is a disgruntled former Republican who blogs at http://www.balloon-juice.com/. Although he still considers himself a conservative, he has had his fill of the GOP over the last three years, and is determined to vote Democratic this year; and now that the primaries have reduced the Democratic field to two candidates, he leans toward Barack Obama. However, like many others, he questions whether Obama's calls for unity reflect a naive view of the modern GOP. For that reason, he has taken to calling the Obama campaign the Magical Unity Pony ("pony" being blog shorthand for wishful thinking). Those Obama supporters who frequent his website have proudly adopted the name.
I took a ride on the Magical Unity Pony on Saturday. In the morning, I went up from Newport to Attleboro to take part in a visibility event there with Joan from Attleboro and her band of local Obamaniacs. Four of us stood on a street corner in downtown Attleboro for an hour and a half, keeping the candidate's name in the minds of passing Attleborovians.
Then it was off to New Bedford for a stint at the local Obama field office at 30 Centre Street. For an hour and a half I was busy creating colorful handmade signs. We got an unexpected chance to use them when word reached us around 3:30 that the Clinton campaign was staging a visibility event just a few blocks away from the field office at the intersection of routes 6 and 18. Well, we couldn't let that go unanswered, so about twenty of us snatched up signs and hurried over, taking up positions across the street from the Clinton people. Half an hour of chants and waving signs and honking car horns later, we trooped back to the field office to be on hand for a surprise visit from Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick. Patrick is one of the top three elected officials in Massachusetts to publicly endorse Obama (the other two being Senator John Kerry and Senator Edward Kennedy). Cameramen from the local news stations were on hand (one of whom also covered the visibility event) to watch as Governor Patrick greeted various campaign workers before being introduced by the mayor of New Bedford and other local officials. Patrick gave a short speech praising Obama and his campaign, and those of us who were working to get him elected.
After that, it was time for me to return home, and I drove past Patrick as he was being interviewed by a cluster of media people. But I'll be returning to New Bedford every day until the Super Tuesday primary is over, because I just can't resist a field office at the height of campaign season.
The Star Trek franchise was born in an era very different from the early 21st century. It was the dawn of the space age, and while President Kennedy was giving the speech that would launch the Apollo Project, a television writer-producer in Los Angeles named Gene Roddenberry was working out an idea for a science fiction series that he called Star Trek. The two projects went forward at the same time, independently but concurrently, and both of them drew on the same idealistic vision.
It's hard for us in 2008 to remember what it was like living in those days. Even the baby boomers among us who lived through that time have to make a conscious effort to remember how it felt. Alongside the tensions of the Cold War and the ever-present threat of nuclear armageddon, highlighted by the harrowing Cuban Missile Crisis, there was also a sense of extraordinary wonder and optimism as the decades-old dream of space travel was actually being realized, suddenly, startlingly.
Certainly there was fear, but the temptation to give in to that fear and turn away from the traditional American ideal of liberty had been resisted, and the 1960s saw the flowering (literally) of a new age of personal expression. Star Trek drew on that feeling of expanding possibilities, and made it explicit through the metaphor of space exploration. Every American who felt that the restrictions of the past had given way to new possibilities could see his own beliefs made manifest in the starship Enterprise's mission to explore strange new worlds and seek out new forms of life and new civilizations.
Star Trek was a product of its times, just as exercises in paranoia such as Lost and 24 are the product of our time. That, as much as anything else, explains why the Star Trek franchise has fallen on hard times. A work of fiction born out of the age of JFK is going to find itself out of sync in the age of GWB, an age of paranoia, lawlessness, fearmongering, warmongering, and torture.
The age of GWB is coming to a close, however, and a new age is on the horizon. When John F. Kennedy's brother and daughter endorsed Barack Obama, they were letting America know that a new age of hope was coming, an age akin to that of JFK's own. We who still find inspiration in Gene Roddenberry's vision of tomorrow know a kindred spirit when we see one, and that's why we have gathered together beneath the banner of Barack Obama.
Every day I bring my dog Klea (that's her pic) and her little brother Louis to the local dog park here in Newport, RI. Every now and then we meet the elderly owner of a peke named Gilbert. Gilbert's owner is a Democrat, and sometimes we talk politics.
When the presidential race started, Gilbert's owner supported Richardson, while I supported Dodd. When they dropped out of the race, she switched to Edwards while I found myself wavering between Edwards and Obama before eventually deciding on the latter. Edwards dropping out has left her undecided between Obama and Hillary. She says she may not make up her mind between them until she's standing in the voting booth. What we both agree on is that either one would make a better president than any of the Republicans.
Visibility events, such as the upcoming event Friday evening at Attleboro Train Station (see http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/4rhvv) are based on the disturbing but empirically demonstrated fact that you can influence someone's vote simply by showing them the candidate's name often enough. This is particularly effective with what are known as "low-information voters", people who know practically nothing about the candidates, but are still politically involved enough to go to the polls on election day and choose one of them. Another factor that influences the decision-making process of the low-information voter is which candidate's name is at the top of the ballot, but that is beyond the power of the campaign to affect. What the campaign can do, and will do, is put the candidate's name in front of potential voters as often as possible; hence, the visibility event.
A visibility event consists of people standing around in crowded areas holding up signs with the candidate's name on them. Passers-bye will see the signs and read the candidate's name, and a little memory node will form in their minds. That little memory node will get a nudge every subsequent time they see the candidate's name, and grow a little bigger. If the memory node gets enough nudges, the person will see the candidate's name in the voting booth, and the memory node will be big enough to cause them to vote for the candidate. As I say, this is disturbing, but it has been empirically verified.
So, go ahead and do some visibility. Do it every chance you get. Keep a sign handy with the candidate's name on it, and whenever you've got a spare hour, go out to the most crowded spot you can find and hold the sign up. This works. Heaven help us, this actually works.
Tabling is a simple yet effective form of neighborhood outreach. You pick place where people are likely to congregate -- a pedestrian concourse, a shopping center, or if you can manage it, inside a shopping mall, and set up a table. You can hand out literature, sign people up for the campaign, even register them to vote. Tabling helps to accomplish three things: first, it keeps the candidate's name in the public eye; second, it helps to expand the campaign; and third, it strengthens your ties to your community. Tabling is also an activity that a campaigner can organize on his own, independent of the campaign organization.
Setting up a table is fairly simple. You just need a small, portable table (a card table would be ideal), one or two chairs, some clipboards & sign-up sheets, and some campaign literature (a fact sheet about the candidate, and an issue sheet, say). If you've got some buttons, bumper stickers, or even lawn signs to hand out, that would be a plus. Also, something to draw the attention of passers-bye, like balloons or a spinny toy, would help.
You can table for an hour or two a day, and once a week at a particular location. And the more locations you can table at, the better, because you're more likely to reach a different assortment of people at each location. And it goes without saying that how you look and act reflects on the campaign, so it's always a good idea to look your best and be on your best behavior.
Tabling gives you a chance to get out of the house, and also gives you a chance to meet the neighbors. It's good for the campaign, and it's good for you.
That's the question facing every Obama supporter here in Rhode Island. Not until March 4 will we have a chance to actually cast an actual vote for Senator Obama. What do we do in the meantime?
One answer is to look north to Massachusetts. The Bay State is taking part in Super-Duper-Guper-Bluper Tuesday, the February 5 kinda-sorta-almost national primary. It's only (checks calendar) eleven days away, and your fellow Massachusetts Obamaniacs need help canvassing and phonebanking. In fact, there's a fellow named John Bowes in Fall River who plans to do some canvassing there tomorrow (the event is listed at http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/4rm3q). I've signed up, and if you've never canvassed before and you want to find out what it's like, you should too.
Hope to see you there.
Hello there. My name (okay, pseudonym) is Johnny Pez. I'm 45 years old, coming up on my 10th wedding anniversary, and I've lived in Newport for eleven years. You can visit my non-Obama blog at http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/ and my MySpace page at http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=193885304.
I'm very impressed with Senator Obama, and with the organization he's building. In fact, I'm so impressed that I'm going to try to help him build it. You can never start organizing too early, so I've decided to plunge in right away. I've sent friend requests to as many other Newport residents as I've been able to locate here, and if I can manage to create a critical mass (I figure three ought to do it) I'll try to organize a local Newport for Obama group, both here at MyBarackObama and out in the real world. I'll be using this blog to report on my progress (if any) as well as post whatever thoughts I happen to have concerning the presidential campaign.
I'll have comments enabled, so anyone who wants to respond, even with a simple "hi there", should feel free to do so.
