I’ve seen a lot of people automatically assuming that Obama with win with minority voters, but that is not realistic. Minority voters are moved by the same things as everyone else – who represents my views. Bill Clinton is well respected among minority voters, and John Edwards won them when he ran. You don’t see minority voters flocking to vote for Alan Keyes when he’s running against a white candidate. The media keeps making assumptions, and keeps getting it wrong.

The single uniting and overwhelming issue of this race is the Shrubbery. People are looking for the anti-Shrub candidate. Beyond that every normal issue is in play: the war, the economy, health care. Individuals will make their choice based on whoever is closest to their view on the most issues, and the mix is individual.

Iowa and New Hampshire were easy because they are relatively homogeneous states, but it gets really complicated from this point forward because of all of the changes taking place in the individual states. Many of the states coming up are closed primaries, so the independents are on the sidelines.

Not that the 2% noise is out of the way, the real primary begins, and the candidates need local support. Howard Dean had the system in place, the current people don’t.

If you pay attention to the substance of what the candidates and their supporters in Iowa and New Hampshire were saying, it seems more likely than not that Barack Obama will pick up the lion’s share of support from Dodd, Richardson, and Edwards as those campaigns fold or falter. Here and there Hillary may still win a share of some states, but it seems to me Barack is likely to do at least as well and perhaps better — conceivably, even much better — with rank and file Democratic primary voters.

That might leave the “super delegates” as a deciding force at the convention itself. In that mix, however, although anything could happen many of them will be motivated by self-interest in backing the candidate most like to generate an excited, popular groundswell at the polls.

There again, so far as I can tell, Obama has higher positives and lower negatives. I do not see HC lowering her negatives if she goes nasty against Obama. And I don’t see her beating Obama in a lot of places unless she does.

Hence, short of some horrible mistake or event, I think this is one that Obama will win, but it might have to take is all the way down to the convention itself. Picking a nominee won’t take as long as it did in 1924, but it might be a great entertainment.

I, however, still voted for Bill Richardson. HIllary’s a big girl now.

Sadly though, the truth i it’s mostly the public to blame. They allowed to media to get away with it, then most just wanted to hear how great everything was and forget the bad stuff, or wanted to hear that everyone else was having a real bad time so they didn’t feel too bad… And the rest only wanted to know who had the biggest tits and does she own a gun? LOL (Or whose baby Britney was having this week.)

People only care now about truth because they are dimly becoming aware that they are being screwed too and it’s not just *someone else’s problem*!

BTW, you are one of the few punters I’ve seen who called the two primaries pretty well. Well done. Amazing what a bit of common sense will do, eh? 😉 Too bad it seems to be in rather short supply.

Cheers! 🙂

Huckabee was a surprise, but nothing else has been.

If Richardson has really decided to drop out, I’ll miss him, because he was the last of the really experienced people to be in the race, and the one with the most foreign policy experience.

I’m really tired of this high school homeroom crap.

I for one am delighted, not with the specific winners, but with the fact that the rest of the nation may actually get a chance to influence the parties’ candidate choices. Well, I won’t, of course, because my primary isn’t until March 4. But at least SuperMegaExtraHyperTuesday (2/5) voters may have some influence.

In 2004, by the time of my Democratic primary, Howard Dean was already out of the running. By the time of my state Democratic convention, I had a choice of being a Kerry delegate (which is what I chose to do) or “making a statement” with another candidate already effectively eliminated. I’m sorry, but it’s not democracy if large numbers of qualified, registered voters have no influence on the outcome due to extrinsic matters such as different primary dates in various states.

I am convinced that if anything “defeated” Al Gore (other than raw election theft, of course), it was media scripts… stiffness, “ozone,” sighing, etc. In every case, the depictions required by the scripts were on some fundamental level untrue… but the way in which the so-called mainstream media imposed its scripts on Gore left far too many voters with completely undeserved negative impressions. The mainstream corporate media has a lot to answer for in the distortion of representative democracy in our country.