To celebrate today’s primaries in Michigan, I hereby present presidential election open thread number two.
Reflections on the Miracle of Democracy at Work in the Greatest Nation on Earth
Michigan thread
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491 Comments
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Flash, surely Huckabee would be the dream candidate?
That’s a fair point Chris but I suspect the thinking is: in the end the Republicans would surely never choose Huck so the real choice is McCain v Romney, and of those 2, Romney is by far preferable, as many Democrats admire McCain and know he could win.
Online results:
http://www.politico.com/miprimaries/mimap-popup.html
Thanks Michael @ 202
-I know it’s very early but with 0.09% counted I’m confidently calling it for Clinton on the Dem side!
“Uncommitted” is polling well for the Dems too.
http://edition.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/state/#MI
CNN has already called Romney the projected winner.
And 35% of the Democrats who weren’t voting for Romney specifically went out of their way to lodge an anti-Hillary vote. It will be interesting to see what the Dems turnout is.
3 Primaries/caucuses – 3 different Rep winners. There is no clear front-runner. The Dems are in a similar position though Hillary is, in my view, just nudging ahead of the field. Having said that, Michigan is really an irrelevance. McCain will be happy with his strong second place and move on to the important battles over the next couple of weeks. Romney will heave a sigh of relief and enjoy what will probably be his only victory.
If Romney can’t crack 40% in his home state that a pretty poor result even if he’s technically the winner. Leaves the Repubs just as stuck as ever, which is all to the good.
Now $2.84 McCain for the nomination. Gift odds. It might drift out some more, but will come in when the focus moves to the bigger primaries, and then keep shortening, because he must surely emerge from the Republican chaos as the best candidate in the end.
Romney may yet crack 40% (as CNN is showing him at the moment) but it won’t matter. This is as good as it gets for Mitt.
Ferny-Unless he can get the Utah primary brought forwards.
You will notice also that Romney plurality is based entirely on the Detroit area counties. McCain is carrying most of the outstate counties. The small-town conservative Republicans actually prefer the allegedly more liberal McCain. That’s because they know Romney’s a phony.
I thought Rudy’s performance was a cracker never looked like slipping below 3 per cent all night.
He didn’t campaign there. He’s concentrating on Florida.
I noticed that too Adam. McCain may not be as unpopular with the grass roots Reps as some pundits think. A McCain win, of course, will present the biggest threat to the Dems. Current polling shows him leading both Hillary and Obama in head to head contests.
Super Tuesday should be very interesting. Saw a new pole of Oaklahma today showing clinton 45, edwards 25 obama 19. I would expect hillary to do well in Arkansas, Alabama, Colorada,Tennessee, New York, New Jersy. So if Obama wins Nevada and South Carlonia looks like California will be the decider.
Hehe Republican might need to wait till march 4 to find out
214 Indeed Adam and by the looks of the polling so far, he’s got some work to do in Florida too.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/fl/florida_republican_primary-260.html
Anyone else notice the massive gender difference in the exit poll results on the CNN page?
Hillary can still bring out the sisters…
Yes that’s a bad trend for Giuliani, in a state he has put a lot of time into, and which is full of ex-New Yorkers (although most of them are Jewish Democrats).
and the winner of the Republican Primary is… the Democratic Party.
Excellent showing by all concerned. I think a celebratory glass of chardonnay is in order.
I agree.
Half of Romney’s vote comes from the four Detroit counties, which are of course overwhelmingly Democrat. Most of the Repub parts of the state voted for McCain or Huckabee. McCain carried every county on the UP except Chippewa.
That poll does show a bad trend for Giuliani, in a state he has put a lot of time into, and which is full of ex-New Yorkers (although most of them are J*wish Democrats).
Glen @ 163
Glen, there is propaganda and there is history,. What you are regurgitating is the propaganda.
The UN General Assembly only voted on the partition proposal on 29 November 1947, 3 weeks before the first Haganah/Palmach attacks began. Attacks which had been authorised on Nov 30th!
Plan D, which called for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from all areas with a J*ewish presence was agreed to on 10th March, 1948. It was a slight modification of Plan C which had been developed by, principally, Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, and Moshe Allon in meetings conducted in the ‘Red House’ in Tel Aviv during the 1930s, some 15 years before partition! (Ilan Pappe’s ” A Review of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine”)
Furthermore, David Ben-Gurion also rejected the partition plan because he believed it didn’t allocate at least the majority of Palestine to the Jewish state, so too had the 20th Zionist Convention by an almost unanimous vote.
Moshe Sharett, the 1st Israeli Foreign Minister, gave the following reasons why the Palestinians should reject partition:
Glen, in 1947 J*ws were 34% of the Palestine population (in the 1914 they were only 2% and most of these had arrived in the previous 20-30 years) and only about 10% were legally citizens of Palestine. Collectively, they had titles for only 7% of the land, not all of which were legitimate.
Partition was to give them, on your admission, 57% of the territory (60% is closer to the mark) and complete political control over it. Why would the 66% Palestinians accept that as a fair deal? Would you? If so, I can come around to make you the same offer on everything you own whenever it suits.
If you believe that the Israelis would have happily remained inside the allocated borders then you must not understand the concept of Greater Israel. The land allocated by partition was only even though of as a launch pad for total conquest by Ben-Gurion et al. To quote him:
The Aboriginals were in Australia for upwards of 60,000 years, which is much, much longer than the totality of the J*ws presence in the area. So when are you going to give whatever land you own back, without compensation, to the descendants of the tribe(s) that inhabited your area, and thereafter allow them to rule over you?
BTW-a bit of trivia: the Kingdom of Israel existed for a total of about 73 years. Not continuous years, but a decade here and a year or two there whenever its true Assyrian rulers were busy elsewhere. The southern Judah-Sameria was only a J*ewish state for about 350 years, although often with real power residing elsewhere.
If you are every ready to objectively look at the history of Palestine from the beginning of the 20th Century, I suggest the following, all by highly regarded Israeli historians:
Benny Morris – Righteous Victims, 1948 and After: Israel and the Palestinians, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, The Causes and Character of the Arab Exodus from Palestine: the Israel Defence Forces Intelligence Branch Analysis of June 1948
Ilan Pappe: A Review of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
Simha Flapan: The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities
Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World
Nur Masalha: The Politics Of Denial: Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Problem, Imperial Israel And The Palestinians: The Politics of Expansion, Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of “Transfer” in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948
And if you want to discover the true pre history of the area instead of the Biblical fairytales read any of the recents works by Israel’s top archaelogist Israel Finkelstein, particularly The Bible Unearthed.
Romney has already won Wyoming, but nobody cared to notice
that makes michigan the second state to go romney
Adam,
I didn’t realise Jewish was a swear word that needed editing for our youthful ears.
thanks for the tip will remember for the future
The word “Jew” appears 12 times in this thread, unexpurgated. I fail to see why comment moderation is such a trauma. If I had any sense, I’d moderate every comment.
Diogenes @ 198 – The US veterans’ doubts about McCain are of long standing, partly because they feel he hasn’t helped them as much as he could’ve, and partly because of his views on MIAs.
If they actively campaign against him it mostly won’t be about politics in the way the anti Kerry Swiftboaters stuff was, but personal.
72% of precincts reporting, Romney still can’t crack 40%.
I have just been crash reading some of the comments on this thread. I can see that Adam and Glen have agreed on something. I have also agreed with Glen on some things. But let me get this straight, you guys are saying that if someone says you have to give up 53% of your land, and you don’t want to, you are being greedy??? FAIR DINKUM, THAT WILL DO ME – AS WELL AS MOST PEOPLE I’M SURE WITH EVEN A REMOTE SENSE OF FAIRNESS DECENCY AND JUSTICE!
In the USA, you can vote uncommitted LOL, you can vote to harm the chances of the party you don’t like, and you don’t have to vote at all. This is a CIRCUS!
American politics MUST be studied very closely here in Australia and marked
“NEVER TO BE COPIED UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES”.
Adam, you seem to be saying that the Democrats gave Romney his margin. However, the cnn exit poll has the plurality of Democrats backing McCain. Have you some other source, or are you just looking at the votes by area, which could be misleading because Romney could be doing well amongst Republicans who live in Democrat areas?
Of course the Democrats could have been lying to the exit poll. Personally I want Romney to win because he’ll be easier to beat, so if I was living in Michigan I might well have voted for him, but I mightn’t admit it to the exit pollsters – worst thing would be for it to look like Democrats gave it to him.
It seems pretty clear to me. The bulk of Romney’s support is coming from the Detroit area, the most Democratic part of the state, while the outstate counties, small-town conservative Republican heartland, are mostly backing McCain or Huckabee. Democrats can choose to vote in the Republican primary if they want, and websites like the Daily Kos have been urging Democrats to vote for Romney in order to stop McCain, whom they see as the most dangerous Republican candidate.
A difficult one – if Dems were voting for Romney to screw the Republicans data and nominating process, they probably wouldn’t admit it to a pollster. But this assumes that the voting and response was so tactical and clever. It could all be conspiracy theorising, which wouldn’t make it any better for the Republicans. Basically Michigan is confusing and means little in abstract.
232 feral sparrowhawk- If I was a Democrat who lived in Michigan I would have voted Romney and lied about to the exit pollsters, as would any blue-blooded Democrat. His 10% margin over McCain looks suspiciously large when compared to the polls which showed Romney 2% ahead of McCain on average.
Oops! GOP congratulates wrong person.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080116/ap_on_el_pr/primary_wrong_release
Centre @ 231 – US politics is even weirder than that.. See, American’s don’t directly vote for a President. They vote the candidates a number of electoral college pledges, its the college – 538 citizens selected by the parties – that actually elects the Prez based on on the number of pledges each candidate gained. This is roughly equivalent to us electing a president by having Senators to do the selecting.
BUT he’s the kicker…if they don’t like the candidate with the most pledges they can choose one of the others! The Constitution gives them this option, though some states have made it illegal for their representatives to do so. So far no President has been elected against the wishes of the voters, but up to and including 2004, 158 members of the college have given their pledges to rival candidates – 71 because of a candidates death the others either by mistake or a deliberate choice.
And these guys want to spread democracy around the world. LOL!
Further compounding the dire straits of the Repugs are the favoured next three winners of Caucuses/Primaries.
Nevada-Romney
South Carolina-Huckabee
Florida-Giuliani
If Thompson could get off his lazy butt and win one they could hold a raffle.
Hillary 55%, Uncommitted 40%. Is there any message for Hillary in this?
And Adam, it doesn’t look like Mitt will make it to 40% after all.
How similar to this craziness was the proposed model in our Republic referendum, MayoFeral?
The message for Hillary is that she can poll 55% of the vote without even showing up. Not a bad message!
The message for the GOP is that they still don’t have a candidate. Maybe Dick Cheney should announce he is running after all. He’s five years younger than McCain.
MF @237,
Yes that’s all well and good in theory. And in theory the ALP members of the House of Reps could support someone else other than Rudd as PM on the floor of the House when it meets in Feb, and he’d have to resign as PM – if this happened all those voters who thought they’d voted him in on 24 November would get a surprise, wouldn’t they?
Like rogue US Electoral College members changing the election “result”, this sort of scenario is more of a curiosity than a real possibility.
A “hung” College, with an independent holding the balance of power, would be interesting though.
And at least our old-fashioned pencil and paper method seems to avoid “hanging chads” and the like.
MayoFeral, Those jews they are just so unreasonable!
Adam @ 241,
I’m not anti-Hillary but I have trouble seeing this as a good result for her.
Agree with you that it’s a horrible result for the Republicans.
Daily Kos cites all polls since July1 2007: Edwards heads McCain 46-41, Obama edges McCain 45-43, Clinton ties with McCain 45-45.
Andos the Great – from memory, the President would have been selected by a vote of the fed parliament and not by popular vote.
Personally, I’m not keen on having a popularly elected President. First, you inevitably end up with a politician instead of eminent persons like Zelman Cowen or Ninian Steven (okay, and the odd turkey), and if both the Prez and PM can claim a mandate then who has the ultimate authority? The fact is we already have a number of parliament selected officials that have some power over governments, auditors-general, be the first that comes to mind.
I should also have noted in 237 that the US Constitution does not in fact require the pledges to be decided by popular vote. Each state’s legislature may choose them if it wishes. The legislature could even delegate the choice to an individual such as the state’s governor.
MF @246,
Agree with you about popular vote for President – I don’t see the point of it here.
Dyno, don’t fall into the media trap of over-analysing everything. This was a non-event for the Dems. No-one campaigned, there were no delegates at stake. 330,000 Dems voted in a state where 2.2 million voted for Kerry in 2004.
Fair enough, Adam.
Yes Mayo F. There is no doubt now that the party must select their leader and present that leader to the people for election. This is madness in the US.
I was originally in favour of the people directly electing a president here in Australia. Not anymore. A committee should be formed to nominate the candidates for our head of state and then parliament only should vote. And our president should purely replace the role of the Govenor General comprising symbolic powers only.
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