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March 30, 2008
March 12, 2008
Yes We Can!
February 20, 2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yq0tMYPDJQ&feature=related
Barack Obama, the most intelligent and best candidate ever to run for president in the United States, continues to win. Here’s a recent AP news article describing the Hawai‘i and Wisconsin races: Obama Scores 10th Straight Victory
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Feb 20, 8:26 AM (ET)
By DAVID ESPO
(AP) Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., speaks at a rally Tuesday, Feb. 19,…
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WASHINGTON (AP) – Barack Obama added Wisconsin and Hawaii to a primary season winning streak that now totals 10 and has put Hillary Rodham Clinton into a virtual must-win scenario in Democratic contests coming early next month in Texas and Ohio.
The former first lady now looks to a debate Thursday in Austin, Texas, to stall Obama’s momentum and reinvigorate her campaign.
“The change we seek is still months and miles away,” Obama told a boisterous crowd in Houston in a speech Tuesday night in which he also pledged to end the war in Iraq in his first year in office.
“I opposed this war in 2002. I will bring this war to an end in 2009. It is time to bring our troops home,” he declared.
Sen. John McCain, the Republican front-runner, won a pair of primaries, in Wisconsin and Washington, to continue his march toward certain nomination.
In a race growing increasingly negative, Obama cut deeply into Clinton’s political bedrock in Wisconsin, splitting the support of white women almost evenly with her. According to polling place interviews, he also ran well among working class voters in the blue collar battleground that was prelude to primaries in the larger industrial states of Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Clinton made no mention of her defeat, and showed no sign of surrender in an appearance in Youngstown, Ohio.
“Both Senator Obama and I would make history,” the New York senator said. “But only one of us is ready on day one to be commander in chief, ready to manage our economy, and ready to defeat the Republicans. Only one of us has spent 35 years being a doer, a fighter and a champion for those who need a voice.”
In a clear sign of their relative standing in the race, most cable television networks abruptly cut away from coverage of Clinton’s rally when Obama began to speak in Texas.
(AP) Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.,speaks at a rally Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2008,…
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McCain easily won the Republican primary in Wisconsin with 55 percent of the vote, dispatching former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and edging closer to the 1,191 delegates he needs to clinch the GOP nomination at the party convention in St. Paul, Minn. next summer. The Arizona senator also won the primary in Washington, where 19 delegates were at stake, with 49 percent of the vote in incomplete results.
In scarcely veiled criticism of Obama, the Republican nominee-in-waiting said, “I will fight every moment of every day in this campaign to make sure that Americans are not deceived by an eloquent but empty call for change.”
McCain stepped up his criticism of Obama on Wednesday, suggesting the Democrat doesn’t have the experience or judgment on foreign policy and defense matters needed in a president.
“There are a lot of national security challenges and I know how to handle them. Senator Obama wants to bomb Pakistan without talking to the Pakistanis. I think that’s dangerous,” McCain said in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”"I think that’s an important factor – experience and judgment. Ready to serve and no on the job training.”
McCain’s nomination has been assured since Super Tuesday three weeks ago, as first one, then another of his former rivals has dropped out and the party establishment has closed ranks behind him.
(AP) Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., makes a campaign stop at in…
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Not so in the Democratic race, where Obama and Clinton campaign seven days a week, he the strongest black presidential candidate in history, she bidding to become the first woman to sit in the White House.
Ohio and Texas vote next on March 4 – 370 convention delegates in all – and even some of Clinton’s supporters concede she must win one, and possibly both, to remain competitive. Two smaller states, Vermont and Rhode Island, also have primaries that day.
With the votes counted in all but one of Wisconsin’s 3,570 precincts, Obama won 58 percent of the vote to 41 percent for Clinton.
With 100 percent of the vote counted in Hawaii, Obama had 76 percent to Clinton’s 24 percent.
Wisconsin offered 74 national convention delegates. There were 20 delegates at stake in Hawaii, where Obama spent much of his youth.
(AP) Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., reacts as she makes a campaign…
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Washington Democrats voted in a primary, too, but their delegates were picked earlier in the month in caucuses won by Obama.
The Illinois senator’s Wisconsin victory left him with 1,303 delegates in The Associated Press’ count, compared with 1,233 for Clinton, a margin that masks his 145-delegate lead among those picked in primaries or caucuses. It takes 2,025 to win the nomination at the party’s national convention in Denver. Allocation of the 20 Hawaii delegates was not being calculated until later Wednesday.
Obama’s victory came after a week in which Clinton and her aides tried to knock him off stride. They criticized him in television commercials and accused him of plagiarism for using words first uttered by Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, a friend. He shrugged off the advertising volley, and said that while he should have given Patrick credit, the controversy didn’t amount to much.
The voters seemed not to care.
Wisconsin independents cast about one-quarter of the ballots in the race between Obama and Clinton, and roughly 15 percent of the electorate were first-time voters, the survey at polling places said. Obama has run strongly among independents in earlier primaries, and among younger voters, and cited their support as evidence that he would make a stronger general election candidate in the fall.
(AP) Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., greets the crowd before speaking at a…
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Obama began the evening with eight straight primary and caucus victories, a remarkable run that has propelled him past Clinton in the overall delegate race and enabled him to chip away at her advantage among elected officials within the party who will have convention votes as superdelegates.
The economy and trade were key issues in the race, and seven in 10 voters said international trade has resulted in lost jobs in Wisconsin. Fewer than one in five said trade has created more jobs than it has lost.
The Democrats’ focus on trade was certain to intensify, with primaries in Ohio in two weeks and in Pennsylvania on April 22.
Obama’s campaign has already distributed mass mailings critical of Clinton on the issue in Ohio. “Bad trade deals like NAFTA hit Ohio harder than most states. Only Barack Obama consistently opposed NAFTA,” it said.
Clinton’s aides initially signaled she would virtually concede Wisconsin, and the former first lady spent less time in the state than Obama.
(AP) Republican presidential hopeful, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., waves to the crowd as he arrives with…
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Even so, she ran a television ad that accused her rival of ducking a debate in the state and added that she had the only health care plan that would cover all Americans and the only economic plan to stop home foreclosures. “Maybe he’d prefer to give speeches than have to answer questions” the commercial said.
Obama countered with an ad of his own, saying his health care plan would cover more people.
Unlike the Democratic race, McCain was assured of the Republican nomination and concentrated on turning his primary campaign into a general election candidacy.
In one sign of progress in unifying the party, he split the conservative vote with Huckabee in Wisconsin.
Huckabee parried occasional suggestions – none of them by McCain – that he quit the race. In a move that was unorthodox if not unprecedented for a presidential contender, he left the country in recent days to make a paid speech in the Grand Cayman Islands.
McCain picked up endorsements in the days before the primary from former President George H.W. Bush and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a campaign dropout who urged his 280 delegates to swing behind the party’s nominee-to-be
(http://apnews.excite.com/article/20080220/D8UU2MD80.html).
Experiencing the Highs of Performance
January 9, 2008
I’m saddened by Obama’s second place finish in New Hampshire. Well now we know for sure, if we weren’t convinced by the stats already, that he needs the age 35 and under voters to turn out in large numbers in order to win the party ticket.
“With 96 percent of the New Hampshire vote tabulated before counters shut down for the night, Clinton had 39 percent, Obama 36 percent and Edwards 17 percent. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson trailed with 5 percent.
On the Republican side, McCain had 37 percent, Romney 32 percent, Huckabee 11 percent, Giuliani 9 percent and Rep. Ron Paul 8 percent. Thompson got 1 percent” (http://apnews.excite.com/article/20080109/D8U2ES381.html).
On to brighter news, I have a reading of Love and Life coming up on Friday, January 18th, starting promptly at 5pm since the library closes at 5:45pm. It will be in Atlanta at the College Park Library, which is located at 3647 Main Street, College Park, GA 30337. So if you’re in Atlanta and read this blog, please come by and support my work. Oh and I want to share a spur of the moment post with you that I did last night on Bestloverinparadise, my alternate blog:
Wow, I feel great; I performed “Thank You,” “The Cure” and “Love” tonight at The 5 Spot’s open-mic show. It was a priceless experience. I am also now a feature writer for the Atlanta division of Not For Tourists. Things are going really well; perhaps best of all, it was great seeing and hanging out with Jeanne, Abby, and Julian. I got a really great, warm and uplifting hug from Jeanne before I left; she’s great. I love her. She’s also hella smart. My fellow musicians and poets were also excellent. Wow, life is great. It’s nights like these that make me want to keep loving and living in the best way that I can.
Yeah, so I’m doing my best to keep this vibe going. Enjoy your time.
Barack Obama Prevails Again
January 4, 2008
As much as I am an ardent supporter of this great American leader, I was somewhat stunned at how handily Barack Obama won the Iowa caucus:
DES MOINES, Iowa – Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee won the Iowa caucuses last night as the candidates move on to New Hampshire.
On the Democratic side, Obama scored 38 percent of the vote with John Edwards second with 30 and Hillary Clinton third with 29. Obama won 16 delgates with Clinton getting 15 and Edwards 14. Overall, Clinton leads with 175 delegates, including superdelegates, followed by Obama with 75 and Edwards with 46.
For the Republicans, Huckabee won with 34 percent, with 25 percent for Mitt Romney, 13 percent each for Fred Thompson and John McCain, 10 percent for Ron Paul and 3 percent for Rudy Giuliani. Huckabee scored 30 delegates and Romney got 7.
After the caucuses, Democrats Joe Biden and Chris Dodd dropped out of the race.
Obama, 46 and a first-term senator from Illinois, told a raucous victory rally his triumph showed that in “big cities and small towns, you came together to say, ‘We are one nation, we are one people and our time for change has come’” (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080104/ap_on_el_pr/caucus_rdp;_ylt=AuK.wOg1ZREjj50ujAoYVFxB5494).
It’s great to know that Obama has the momentum going into New Hampshire. I love what Barack Obama’s continued victories say about him as a human being and us as a nation.
