Can Chris Matthews’ Tears Beat Hillary’s?
Chris Matthews in a surprising feat of sincerity, self awareness, and humility publicly admitted that Obama’s speech after losing New Hampshire made him cry. Largely because of the quality of the speech and it’s message for hope but also because he felt sympathy for Obama’s so-called defeat that night. So many pundits are making such a big deal over Hillary’s ‘crying’ which involved the shedding of no tears but I think the tears of hope and joy and solidarity from the likes of Chris Matthews have far more honour and meaning than the non-existent tears of frustration and exhaustion that allegedly swung New Hampshire to Hillary.
So here we are a day from the Michigan primary and no one seems to care, unless you’re a Republican. The Democratic race, the far more interesting and inspiring race, is a total mess in this state due to primary politics so I won’t bother covering it in great detail unless something interesting comes out of it. As for the Republican race it’s no surprise at all that Michigan is all about the economy. They’ve been kicked where it hurts and then kicked again while they’re down for far too long for much else to be relevant to them except perhaps the war as that’s the only source of employment for so many in that state. They currently have one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation, 7.4% to the national average of 5%. But I believe they would be against the war as the military would take them with or without a war, so given the choice who would want their friends, neighbours, or relatives fighting and dying in a war because they couldn’t find any other job when they could just as easily serve in peacetime?
This state could be problematic for McCain as he hasn’t been very strong against the war. Romney seems to have shot himself in the foot by downplaying the importance of Michigan – that’s just what voters love to hear, that they aren’t important. Way to garner support there, Mitt. I think Huckabee could do well given his economic stance however I’m not sure his arguments about trade with China and tax policy will translate well to the common voter. Polls say its Romney and McCain fighting for first with Romney slightly ahead. But if there’s anything New Hampshire reminded us of is that you can’t trust the polls to tell you the whole story. Romney may mitigate his problems though as he has outspent McCain and Huckabee combined by a factor of 5. Let me say that again, Romney has spent five times as much in Michigan than McCain and Huckabee combined. I think that bears repeating because if he does carry Michigan that and his recent strong talking points regarding their economy will be the reason. Romney’s going so far as to pull advertising from other states to refocus his resources on Michigan. He insists it’s not important but his actions say otherwise – why not just have your words match your actions rather than insult the people you’re spending the most money on?
So how will Michigan play out for the GOP? I’ll let CNN give you the background on the mechanics of it, straight from their website: “There is no party registration in Michigan, and registered voters can cast their ballots in any primary. Since national party penalties have meant that most of the Democratic presidential field are not on the ballot — and none of the major candidates will be campaigning in the state — Democrats and independents may play a far greater role in Tuesday’s GOP primary than they usually would.”
So with the Democratic race essentially a choice between Clinton and a protest vote I suspect many could cross the isle and go vote for McCain as he is well liked by both Democrats and Independents. So among Republican voters I see Huckabee doing well but McCain could well take this thing largely because of the mess the Democratic race has become in that state. McCain’s economic stance is also strong, he wants Michigan to be a leader in new green technologies to reduce the money going into oil and potentially supporting the very terrorists Michigan’s unemployed are being forced to fight in order to find work. It’s a pretty tight argument that, if successful, would solve Michigan’s 2 primary concerns.
If it is a race between McCain and Romney than it’s a race between strong policy and money; I hope policy wins, lest we have an auction.
Update:Just because the Democratic race in Michigan is a dog’s breakfast doesn’t mean the Democratic candidates aren’t still at it in South Carolina though. Bill Clinton came out with a list of 80 so-called personal attacks on his wife made by the Obama campaign. I believe one of them included playing a Jay-Z song in Iowa, but I won’t even bother dignifying that accusation with further comment except to say that background music is hardly worthy of debate. Personally I would like to see this list as I have some difficulty believing it, essentially since Bill’s previous attack on Obama came from a misquote. I must admit to being discouraged by the in-fighting in the Democratic party however I still notice that Obama has taken the high road almost every time. Does debate between candidates strengthen the party? Yes. Does in-fighting? No. Is this in-fighting? Maybe. Who’s responsible? Well thus far most of it seems to be coming from the Clinton camp. They seem to think any time Obama clarifies his position or corrects a misquote or provides context for something that he’s somehow going on the offensive. I’ll admit I haven’t been following the events of the last few days very carefully, I’ve been playing Lego Star Wars and spending time with my family, but around the New Hampshire primary, both before and after, Obama was going out of his way and taking his time to be respectful of the other candidates despite how low their attacks may have sunken. I refuse to believe after putting such an effort to bring manners, honour, and respect back to politics that Obama would give up on it so quickly, it simply isn’t a believable premise. What’s the one quote that everyone thinks of first when you say Obama? “We can disagree without being disagreeable”. Keep the faith Barack. Please.
I can’t also help but note that Bill is campaigning pretty hard for Hillary while Obama doesn’t seem to need his wife to get his message out for him. Although she did come out to comment on the fairy tale comment saying Barack Obama is the right candidate “not because of the color of his skin, but because of the quality and consistency of his character“. The fact is they seem to be tossing some of the more outrageous and unsubstantiated claims to Bill hoping the electorate will buy it without much question because he was a very popular president. Poor Bill.
In regards to New Hampshire, things may not be as they seem. As Khan said, “Oh no…the game’s not over”. Two requests for recounts, from Kucinich on the Democratic side and from some nobody Albert Howard on the Republican side, have been approved. Results from optical readers seemed to follow a different trend than votes that were hand-counted and now, hopefully, we’re going to find out why. Could it be junky software? Rigging? A conspiracy? Miscommunication? Perhaps. Although the pragmatist in me wishes to point out that areas with the money to afford automated vote counting machines may have different demographics let’s say than areas that don’t have that kind of money to burn. The recounts will begin on Wednesday January 16th; I daresay these may be more worth following than the Michigan primary at least on the Democratic side of the fence. Could you imagine if there was a significant discrepancy? Let’s say a potential error favoured Hillary erroneously, wouldn’t that throw her completely out of the race and make Dennis Kucinich, of all people, our savior? It’s something to think about. Either way I think the granting of the recount speaks volumes about the importance of Kucinich’s involvement in this race. Gravel needs to wake up and smell the defeat but Kucinich is serving an important role and I am glad he’s kept at it.
But what is the true likelihood of some malfunction or malfeasance? Well, let’s look at the machines. The company that made them is Premier Election Systems. Never heard of them? There’s a very good reason, it’s the new name of Diebold. That’s right, in a move I suspect largely motivated by a lack of confidence over their machines the company changed names but it seems their problems follow them care of the good people at The Huffington Post who have a long memory. Ohio’s secretary of state recently reviewed this company’s voting machines and found problems in all models, although admittedly fever in the kind used in New Hampshire. But seriously, who in New Hampshire thought it was a good idea to trust something as sacred as a vote to a machine with known problems? Sigh. Alright, let’s break this down. The servers are easily hacked; the memory cards easily tampered with, a single vote can be scanned and counted repeatedly with no errors cropping up, the type of paper or ink could cause a ballot to be misread, and each machine needs to be calibrated - a process in which many mistakes can be made.
How much of a difference could this make? Well Ron Paul’s people ran over the numbers and discovered that John McCain received nearly 3% more votes at polling stations in which the votes were counted by hand than those with a machine. Given that this survey favours another candidate I’m willing to take them at their word. A 3% possible margin of error. Interesting. Hardly a deal breaker to the top 2 Republicans that night as it would effect neither of their standings but the order of the rest of the candidates could be altered. But wait, on the Democratic side of things Clinton supposedly beat Obama by 2%, well within the 2.8% margin of error the Ron Paul people believe they have discovered. How very interesting indeed.
Alright, rigged or faulty I believe if the results are substantially different a crime has occurred so let’s look at it like a crime: who stands to gain from it? Romney had more votes from the machine count, as did Hillary. Oh and Obama suffered a loss of votes at the hands of the machines, if the averages are to be believed. How very interesting indeed. Isn’t it interesting how the machines would favour those with greater access such as Clinton and Romney over the more radical outsiders like Obama and McCain?
But before you break out the pitchforks and torches and start talking of revolution remember that large cities use the machines while small towns use hand counts, it is entirely plausible that the different issues faced by each produced different voting trends. We don’t all always fit on a Bell curve afterall.
I’d also like to take a moment to publicly call the Clinton camp stupid for even bothering to mention a speech being removed from a website. Or for being too stupid, or thinking the American electorate too stupid, to grasp that you can be against a war and still vote to approve funding for the troops. You can be against a war but still support the troops and thinking in total black-and-white that if you’re against a war you can in good conscience send the troops off to fight in their underwear with muskets smacks of the same kind of with-us-or-against-us Sith-like absolutes that Bush, Cheney, and Rove work in. When you accept that as a premise you stifle healthy debate and marginalize the moderates. Hasn’t 7 years of that nonsense been enough?
