Tag: obama

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North Carolina’s Patience Pays Off

While watching the primary coverage last night, I was curious about the seemingly large number of delegates that were at stake here in North Carolina. As the Daily Kos reports, it turns out North Carolina received bonus pledged delegates from the DNC as a reward for playing it cool and going late in the primary process:

“To keep states spread out and not all clustered in February, the DNC offered bonus pledged delegates to those states that went late in cycle. Thus, instead of only getting 66 pledged delegates to the Democratic convention in Denver, Indiana gets to send 72. And North Carolina went from 89 delegates to 115. Those extra delegates put Indiana ahead of Tennessee and Maryland and gave it as much voting strength as Minnesota and Missouri. And North Carolina bypassed Massachusetts and New Jersey.”

So thanks to North Carolina’s willingness to wait our turn, not only did we most likely cast the deciding ballots in the race between Clinton and Obama, but our fine state will have more political leverage at the convention. Well done North Carolina, I always knew you were a class act!

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NC’s Audacity to Hope

14 percentage points and over 220,000 votes later, Barack Obama has won North Carolina. I’ve never been prouder to be in this great state than I am today. Today my fellow North Carolinians stood up and voted for integrity, change and hope, and for that, I thank them. I believe Barack when he says that when he’s the Democratic nominee in the fall, he will compete in the “swing” state of North Carolina. Would the same be true if Hillary was the nominee? Doubtful.

I look forward to the possibilities of a blue NC, but for now I’ll take our moment in the sun when we all decided to speak up, make a difference and vote against entitlement and politics as usual. Thank you North Carolina. Thank you.

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North Carolina: Primed & Ready

No one would have expected when the presidential primary season started that little ol’ North Carolina would play such an important part in the selection process. Our state’s late primary has always been something of an “also ran” to the rest of the nation, but not this time. Now we’re center stage and I think I speak for North Carolinians when I say “Let’s do this thing!”

Like many of my fellow NC’ers I’m ready to get in there and vote in the Democratic primary and help elect Barack Obama as our party’s choice for President of the United States. I was speaking to my friends Anthony and Corey this past week at lunch and they both agreed with me that no matter what the outcome, they want to get the primary completed and get onto the general election. Hillary has made several calls to each of them and I could hear the impatience in their voice as we talked over lunch. As the large number of NC early voters reveals, they are not alone.

If the latest Zogby polls are to be believed, then Obama still holds at least a 9 point lead over Clinton as we start the week. Things are tighter in Indiana, but something tells me that Barack just may pull it out and finally, thankfully, put the nail in the coffin that is the Clinton campaign. But knowing Hillary and her “entitled” attitude, it would take nothing short of a miracle to get her to drop out of the race early. Something tells me if Indiana and North Carolina go the way I think they will, she’ll see a number of super delegates abandon her en masse.

I feel like North Carolina is that underused rookie sitting on the bench who turns to his manager and says with fantastic enthusiasm “Send me in coach!”. Our time at bat is almost here and for our sake, and the sake of our children, I hope we step up and hit a homer.

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Clinton By 13%

So today is the big day in the Keystone state. They’ll be much analysis and endless talk about what the candidates could have done better, but at the end of the day I say Hillary will win PA, as she has always been predicted to do. Although Barack has made impressive in-roads in the state, it won’t be enough for an upset. Of course, he doesn’t need an upset, he just needs to hold her win to the lower double digits. And so I’m guessing when all is said and done, Clinton will win Pennsylvania by 13%. It would be awesome if he could hold her to single digits, but I’m not going to get my hopes up.

In the end, none of this matters because she’ll still be behind in pledged delegates, popular votes, states won and funds raised. She’s already lost, she just hasn’t admitted it yet.

UPDATE: Close! When the dust settled Clinton won the state by 10%. She only netted only 9 – 12 delegates though and cut Obama’s popular vote lead by about 150K. It’s been said before, but I’ll say it again: She. Can’t. Win. Enough with the drama, vote Obama.

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What He Said

Last night’s New Rules from Bill Maher were spot on. Bill managed to put into words exactly how I feel about the political climate in this country and the coming election. He spoke about Obama’s supposed “bittergate slip” (which the majority of PA’ers evidently don’t have a problem with) and elitism. Here are some of the best bits:

“So let’s separate the bitter from the idiots. If you think the Democrats are going to take away your bible, you’re an idiot. If you think they’re going to take away your guns, you’re an armed idiot. And if you think they’re going to take away your gun and give it to a Mexican to kill your god, you’re Bill O’Reilly.”

and

“So let’s focus on the thing… that the people who claim to be the non-elitists are the ones who constantly shift tax burden from the people who fire you, to you. John McCain voted to repeal the estate tax. Voted against the minimum wage. Has no health care plan and is fine with keeping the working class in Iraq for a hundred years, but he’s a real “man of the people”. And the President went to Harvard and Yale and inherited your country from his dad, but he’s not an elitist because he can neither read nor write.

What does it take to label someone elitist these days anyway? They wear shoes? They all buy their groceries at the gas station? Their dog has a name and their truck doesn’t?

You know who’s bitter in America? I am. Because shit-kickers voted twice for a retarded guy they wanted to have a beer with and everybody else had to suffer the consequences!”