Some more internals from the second wave of AP Wisconsin Democratic primary exit polls:
Among women: Barack Obama 51%, Hillary Clinton 49%. Among independents: Obama 63%, Clinton 34%. Among families with incomes under $50,000 per year: Obama 51%, Clinton 49%. Among union households: Clinton 50%, Obama 49%.
Update—You have to love this:
Whoever they voted for – Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama among the Democrats, John McCain and Mike Huckabee among the Republicans – there was a feeling by many in this region today that this election truly mattered, that Wisconsin was poised to play a role in the making of a president.
one thing that the Bush Regime has done:
remind people their votes count
(when they are counted)
Just won’t let that myth go, will you, Bob? Must be comforting for people like you but those of us in the real world can’t afford to wallow in our hallucinations.
Uh, [url=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/16/nyregion/16vote.html?_r=2&ref=nyregion&oref=slogin&oref=slogin]Bob[/url]?
[blockquote]Black voters are heavily represented in the 94th Election District in Harlem’s 70th Assembly District. Yet according to the unofficial results from the New York Democratic primary last week, not a single vote in the district was cast for Senator Barack Obama.
That anomaly was not unique. In fact, a review by The New York Times of the unofficial results reported on primary night found about 80 election districts among the city’s 6,106 where Mr. Obama supposedly did not receive even one vote, including cases where he ran a respectable race in a nearby district.[/blockquote]
Care to revise and extend your remarks?
#1 Bob – Since you want every vote to count, doubtless you are going to be demanding the Democrats seat at their convention, the Florida & Michigan delegates which Mrs Clinton won in those primaries?
wilfred,
i believe in playing by the rules (not a strength of the clinton machine)
Bob, your side lost. Twice. After winning twice. Get over it. Sheesh, you’d think you’d be used to it by now, Democrats have only won 6 of the last 15 presidential elections (those since WW2). Or go hang out with Mickey, I heard he doesn’t grasp how democracy works, either. In that sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. If you want to live in a one party state where your boys always win, move somewhere else (edited slightly).
#1: and in Broward they believe in counting votes till they get the right result.
Get used to it – President Obama.
In 2003, could you imagine?
It is a long time between now and November. Senator Obama will likely get the nominination unless it is stolen from him by the Clintonistas. I cannot see either of these candiates in power and fear for my country if it happens. Senator Clinton has been weakened not so much by the competition with Senator Obama for the nomination, rather most people are just tired of seeing and hearing her. Likewise, Obama fatigue is beginning to set in. I have some faith that there is still sufficient rationality present in the electorate to reject either or both Clinton and Obama in November.
“You lost, we won, get over it.”
Just what the liberals said at GC03, and what liberals in my own diocese said when passing an SSB resolution last fall.
You may not care that half of the country felt disenfranchised in 2000. That’s because you won. If you’d lost you’d be screaming bloody murder. But you won, so “get over it”. Is that all democracy is worth? Is it all just a game of winners and losers? That Bush won decisively in 2004 is not in question. But a shadow hung over him in 2000, something Republicans didn’t care one bit about. Because they had “won”. I guess that makes the majority of Americans, who voted for Gore (who did win the popular vote), “losers”. Thanks, that’s nice to know.
# 8: Yeah, like Presidents Kerry, Gore, Stevenson, Dewey etc.
This is the man who voted against preserving the lives of aborted babies born alive and for partial birth abortion.
He is as vacuous as he is inexperienced. Time and a couple terorist bombs will reveal this to those who don’t already know.
Gordian, Obama has made it clear he opposed that legislation because it did not have adequate provision for the health of the mother, and that he supports a ban generally if it has such provision.
Bush was vacuous and inexperienced, and a couple of terrorist planes showed him to be a stronger leader than anyone realized. You might give Obama the benefit of the doubt (If nothing else he is level headed under fire, as his response to Mrs. Clinton’s attacks shows, meanwhile Sen. Warner recently commented that he believes McCain to be a dangerous hothead, so let’s not judge this thing too quickly).
There seems to be a fine line between raising legitimate concerns about key national security issues, and using the threat of terrorism to scare the American people into voting a certain way. I don’t know where that line falls or on which side of it your comment lay.
#10, there’s this nifty document called the US Constitution, and it provides for something called the Electoral College. It, not I, made Gore the loser in 2000. Maybe you don’t like it, fine. But try to change it, don’t imply that someone cheated and won by fraud because they won according to rules in place for over two centuries.
Sometimes your side wins. Sometimes they don’t. That’s what democracy [b]IS[/b]. You don’t get to win all the time. Yes, I was bummed when Clinton won, but I didn’t keep whining about it. Some did, and it annoyed the heck out of me then, too. Why is the concept of peacful transfer of power between two aprties so difficult for some folks to grasp?
#10 Alta – A majority of American voters [i] did not [/i] vote for Albert Gore in 2000. He had a plurality of the popular vote, 48.4% to George W. Bush’s 47.9%. If you don’t like that, blame the Constitution, not Republicans or Mr Bush personally.
The last time we had a President elected by a majority was in 1988, when Mr. Bush [i] pere [/i] won. Both times in the 1990’s, Mr Clinton never received a majority. Did a “shadow” hang over him? (Well, yes, but not because of this!)
After the 2000 election, there were calls for a Constitutional amendment requiring direct popular election of the President. Curiously, these calls died out rather quickly. Maybe folks realized, a system that requires a broad base of support throughout the entire country, and not just in heavily urbanized areas, might be wisest after all.
andrew717,
thanks for updating us on this nifty document. could you let the current Regime in D.C. know about it – i suspect they might be interested in it (or not)
this is not about sides, andrew – it’s not about whining. it’s about who communities and countries work.
as Alta Californian said, it is fairly ironic that self-described conservatives chafe when this “tough luck, you lost” approach is applied to them. ok for other losers, not for themselves.
Bob, thanks for proving my point. Your side wins, it’s an Administration. Your side loses, it’s a Regime.
And as I said, there are annoying whiners on both sides. It just so happens that in this thread they’re all from the same one. If you don’t like the occasional loss, maybe democracy isn’t for you.
Also, may i point out, my point wasn’t “tough luck, you lost.” It’s that you lost twice [i][b]after winning twice[/i][/b]. Which proves that sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. It’s the price we pay for democracy folks. The knowledge that yeah, we lost this round, but instead of trying to overthrow the government we can try again next time. It’s a very, [b]very[/b] valuable and important thing, one which can be all too easily lost when we start thinking in terms like “I lost so they must have cheated and are therefor illegitimate.” Don’t beleive me, read about the last century of Republican Rome.
Wilfed, a plurality, I stand corrected. The point is, more Americans wanted a President Gore than wanted President Bush. The Electoral College functioned as it was supposed to. The election system in Florida did not. The closeness of the vote revealed electoral problems we didn’t know we had. It is those problems in Florida, the difficulty of the count, and the fact that the matter was decided by the Supreme Court that cast the cloud over Bush. That Gore won the popular vote only highlighted the problem. The only real precedent is Rutherford B. Hayes, who tied the electoral college, lost the popular vote, and the matter was decided in the House in a haze of shady dealing. The Constitution worked then, but Hayes spent four years being called “Rutherfraud”.
I personally don’t believe Gore “won”. I don’t think we’ll ever know what really happened in Florida, just as we may not ever know what really happened in Washington (where the result made Democrat Gregoire Governor). The system did not work properly, and the fact that you don’t care because your side “won” distresses me. The Constitution worked just fine, and prevented the anarchy that has overtaken places like Kenya, and I thank God for that. But Bob and I are allowed to want every vote counted properly and for a Florida debacle never to happen again.
Andrew, you’re right, which is why the Democrats haven’t tried to overthrow the government. We’re preparing to do it by peaceful means in November. I hope you remember your statement, and counsel your fellows to calm down if and when the Democrats do win again. Because they’re out there now saying it will be a disaster for the country. But this grand USA has survived Clinton and Bush, despite the dire prectictions of the partisans. And we’ll probably survive whoever is next.
I did for most of the 90s Alta, did it in November 2006 when we lsot congress, and I plan to again if your boys beat mine, should I need to. One argument I sometimes use to cheer people up is that it took Carter to get us Reagan. 🙂
But I do worry long term if the bile and refusal to accept defeat at the polls continues. Perhaps it’s the student of history in me, but I do fear a Gaius Marius or a Sulla emerging at some point. It can happen, and we must all be watchful to protect our democracy and our liberty. Not from sudden collapse, but slow rot. Corrosion of ideals and norms. Now, I must add that we’ve seen much of the current enviroment before, in the 1790’s and early 1800s. But that is also the time when Aaron Burr and others were toying with armed coups or with carving personal fiefdoms out of the country. It is the sense of politics as a zero sum game that started the ball rolling towards our civil war. I’m not saying there’s any real risk of one soon. But we should nevertheless be mindful.
#18 Alta – You said, “…you don’t care because your side won…â€
But Alta, I [i] do [/i] care. (Liberals – they’re always questioning your patriotism!)
Which is why we need to require all voters be properly registered, citizens, and to [b] show identification [/b] at the polls. What distresses me is that, 8 years after I left New Orleans (and told them I was leaving) I am still registered to vote there, and mysteriously now my vote is always tallied for the Democrat. The dead there have the same problem.
[blockquote](Liberals – they’re always questioning your patriotism!)[/blockquote]
You got a hearty laugh out of me there, thanks, I needed that.
I actually agree that some form of identification should be required. I was long shocked that it isn’t, until I encountered some of the arguments against it. For one it is tricky if your state doesn’t have a form of free ID. Here in California even a non-driving state ID card costs a small fee. The contention is that it becomes a de facto poll tax, and could put a hardship on some. I think some reasonable accomodation could be arrived at for the few people without ID’s. But libertarians who are trying to stay off the grid will always argue that it constitutes an unconstitutional national ID system and an invasion of privacy. You shouldn’t have to submit to government identification and potential tracking in order to vote, or so the argument goes.
By the way, how do you know your vote is tallied Democrat in New Orleans? How can you possibly know that? Unless you’re registered in a district that reports 100% Dem votes.
Andrew, you’re quite right. One of the reasons I like Obama is that he, at least rhetorically, is seeking a lessening of partisan tensions. Whether he can pull it off remains to be seen.
Alta, I’m hoping you’re right, though I worry about the messianic thing.