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By Catherine Lutz
$17.28
By Brenda Wineapple
$18.45
$35
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Gage Skidmore
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He may have lost to presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in both caucuses, but Ron Paul won a majority of the delegates in each state.
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AP / Eric Gay
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Not to rain on Rick Santorum’s parade, but Mitt Romney’s campaign was unusually on the level when it dismissed Santorum’s victories in the Deep South on Tuesday night.
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U.S. Army / Bradley C. Church
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Last week, delegates from dozens of countries traveled to Beirut to talk about Laos, where decades after the Vietnam War there are still an estimated 80 million unexploded bombs scattered across fields and forests.
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nytimes.com
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As you head to the polls Tuesday, keep this thought in mind: A voter in Wyoming is three and a half times more influential than a voter in Florida. Thanks to the Electoral College, it’s possible to become president with only 16 percent of the population’s support. Yay, Democracy!
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Flickr / Joe Crimmings Photography
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Now that he is assured of his party’s nomination, Barack Obama has asked the Democratic credentials committee to award full votes to delegates from Florida and Michigan. Those states held primaries in violation of party rules, and their disputed delegations became a major source of division between supporters of Hillary Clinton and of Obama.
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By Eugene Robinson — Crank up your iPods, everyone. Herewith, a musical guide to the endgame of the epic contest for the Democratic nomination.
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It was clear who sided with which candidate on Saturday in Washington after Democratic Party officials reached a decision on seating delegates from this winter’s Florida and Michigan primaries—cheers and angry jeers erupted when committee members explained that they would seat the delegates from both states with half-votes.
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By Joe Conason — When the Democratic Party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee meets Saturday to determine the status of the votes cast in the Michigan and Florida primaries, its members should try to look past self-serving campaign arguments and bumbling party leaders’ silly attempts to save face.
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By Eugene Robinson — Clinton wants only one thing—the presidency—and she wants it now, not later. If success means using the Florida and Michigan “issue” to tie the party in knots until the convention, so be it.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Hillary Clinton is talking as if the battle over seating disputed delegations from Florida and Michigan at the Democratic National Convention is the greatest crisis for democracy since the 2000 Florida recount.
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Flickr / midnightcomm
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Ron Paul has framed his campaign as a long-term fight for the soul of his party. To that end, Paul has continued to campaign against John McCain, even though he has no shot at the nomination, and his supporters are planning to publicly upstage the nominee at the Republican convention in September.
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By Eugene Robinson — Hillary Clinton has campaigned as if the Democratic nomination were hers by divine right. That’s why she is falling short—and that’s why she should be persuaded to quit now, before her majestic sense of entitlement splits the party along racial lines.
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AP photo / Carolyn Kaster
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By Bernard Weisberger — Throughout the primary campaign, Democrats have been explaining, equivocating and ultimately fretting over the role of superdelegates, but those unelected power brokers are themselves the result of previous party contortions. Perhaps the time has come for a new model.
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time.com
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Everyone from Tim Russert to Time magazine seems to have decided that there’s absolutely no way Hillary Clinton can get the nomination. What happened? Sure, her chances of winning enough pledged delegates are nearly impossible, but wasn’t that true after Pennsylvania? Wasn’t it true before Pennsylvania?
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The shamelessly liberal “Boston Legal” tackles the schism that has occurred in the Democratic Party and, one presumes, among the show’s viewers. This clip picks up in the middle of a debate about the legality of poaching pledged delegates.
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NBC political director Chuck Todd, basking in hypotheticals, repeatedly explains that, while it simply isn’t done, “if we called things like this ... you would say, ‘OK, the pledged delegate count is over.’ ” Guess which of the candidates featured this video on his YouTube channel?
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Florida has dropped plans to hold a revote because, in the words of the state party chair: “The consensus is clear: Florida doesn’t want to vote again.” That’s a setback for Hillary Clinton, who probably would have picked up delegates in the Sunshine State. Another revote proposal is stalling in Michigan, the other state with a disputed delegation.
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newsweek.com
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Hillary Clinton has returned to the subject of poaching pledged delegates, a topic that was raised and immediately lowered by her campaign earlier in the primary season. In a new interview in Newsweek, Clinton drops the hint: “Even elected and caucus delegates are not required to stay with whomever they are pledged to.”
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — There they go again. Democrats have contrived a nominating contest that even Rube Goldberg would have considered too convoluted, too dysfunctional and too improbable to name as his own.
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By Eugene Robinson — With arithmetic on his side, the Illinois senator still should be heavily favored to win the nomination. But he does have a problem: The world-class orator, attacked by opponents for being all talk and no walk, urgently needs to come up with a new speech.
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Truthdig
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The Political Wire has it from a couple of sources that Michigan, which along with Florida was stripped of its Democratic delegates, will hold caucuses in order to have a say about the party’s nominee. Also, Florida’s governor, a Republican, is pushing for a re-vote in his state.
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blog.reidreport.com
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John McCain has secured the Republican nomination with a projected sweep of the March 4th primaries. He was thought by many political insiders to be too independent to pull it off, but his march to the right appears to have been successful. It is fitting, therefore, that he is expected to visit the White House on Wednesday to further tie himself to George W. Bush.
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AP photo / Susan Walsh
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Nancy Pelosi, who is not only one of the highest-ranking members of the Democratic Party but the chair of its approaching national convention, has weighed in on two of the most controversial issues looming over the presidential nomination. Superdelegates, Pelosi said, should not overrule the will of the voters, and the disputed delegations from Michigan and Florida “can’t make the difference because then we would have no rules.”
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According to The New York Times and others, what was once an alarming possibility now appears likely: The Democratic nomination will probably be decided by superdelegates—those party bigwigs who exist to keep the will of the people in check. If that happens, expect to see the ugly side of politics out in the open. It’s already begun to surface.
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nytimes.com
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Clinton insiders talk a lot on the record about Hillary’s viability against John McCain, her confidence in Ohio and Texas and her determination to seat delegates from the uncontested Michigan and Florida primaries. But off the record, at least a few wonder if all that long-term thinking isn’t a bit premature for a campaign that is losing contests left and right.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The Democrats’ hopes of regaining the White House hinge on how the party proceeds in the coming weeks and months. If momentum or civility reigns, they’ve got a shot. But if back-room dealing and cheating prevail, don’t hold your breath.
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Hollywood bigwig Ari Emanuel knows a thing or two about superdelegates. His brother, Congressman Rahm Emanuel, is one. But, as Ari writes on the Huffington Post, “as much as I love and respect him, I don’t trust him and his fellow superdelegates to decide for me and the American people who should be the Democratic nominee—and, therefore, most likely the next president of the United States.”
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citizenship.typepad.com
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There’s an ugly possibility out there: The Democratic race could be so close it would be decided by the 796 super delegates (governors, members of Congress and the like) and not the people who voted and caucused. Party Chairman Howard Dean says he will do everything possible to avoid such a turn of events and Democratic strategists mostly agree that it would be a disaster for the party, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi defended the super delegate notion to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Thursday.
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jossip.com
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Somehow Barack Obama has managed a political hat trick. He appears to have won the most delegates on Super Tuesday, he certainly has the most money (Clinton loaned herself $5 million while Obama is on track to set more records), and yet somehow he’s also winning the expectations game.
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AP photo / Rick Bowmer
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Super Tuesday’s aftermath is certainly providing a good crash course in American electoral politics as the results are sorted out. The latest surprising twist involves Barack Obama’s camp claiming a slight lead over Hillary Clinton in the total number of delegates racked up. Officially, the final count has not been determined yet.
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Truthdigger of the Week: Medea Benjamin
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