There are primaries today in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia. Latest polling data is here:
If Hillary loses all three by 15+ points, as the conventional wisdom is projecting, will she be able to survive, momentumless, until Ohio and Texas vote in early March?
If McCain wins winner-take-all Virginia, will Huckabee drop out?
1:40 PM: Might as well get this started. Mike Huckabee has won all 18 delegates from the West Virginia GOP convention. WV does not have a Primary or Caucus, but a convention:
Huckabee won in the second round of voting in West Virigina.
Romney picked up 41 percent of the vote in the first round, but failed to get the necessary 50 percent in the second round to win it.
The blogs are buzzing about a potential deal made between McCain supporters - who bombed the first round - and Huckabee delegates.
1:56 PM: I'm sure that it doesn't matter to anyone, but I will not be at Brookens tonight. Live blogging is still planned, absent any emergencies.
7:23 PM: Live-blogging from the couch, rather than at Brookens. Spending an evening trying to collect stool samples from a four-month-old put all of this in perspective, of course.
Early calls (read: blowouts): Illinois and Georgia for Obama, Oklahoma for Clinton. New Jersey, Connecticut and Illinois for McCain, Massachusetts for Romney. NJ and CT are big wins, as they are winner take all. As for the other states, I wonder why the networks even project winners in states like Illinois, where the delegate allocations are largely district-by-district. I'd love to see vote totals and exit polls for each Congressional District in Illinois, for example, to give some idea of the eventual delegate counts.
7:30 PM: Arkansas goes to Huckabee and Clinton. No surprise. Alabama has also been called for Huckabee.
7:41 PM: Champaign County results here. Nothing reported yet.
Illinois results here. Also nothing reported yet.
7:45 PM: If these early, leaked Democratic exit polls are accurate, then Obama clobbered Clinton today. If.
7:47 PM: More early national exit polling, for Republicans. Notice that there have already been at least one state (Delaware) called in contradiction to its exit polls, which is just further reinforcement of how exit polls are for entertainment purposes only.
8:12 PM: Lots of chatter in both blogospheres about shoddy exit polls. Deleware has already been called for McCain, though the exits said Romney would win it. I wonder if any of these states called as their polls closed based solely on exit polling are going to get pulled back later.
8:15 PM: Still no local results, but at this point I'm willing to make an early call based on exit polling in one crucial race: in Cunningham 23, IP.com is now willing to project that Gordy Hulten will be elected Republican Precinct Committeeman, based on a exit poll sample of one voter. :-)
8:22 PM: McCain projected winner of all of New York's delegates. Expected, but still a huge number of delegates.
8:24 PM: Full Illinois exit polls for Democrats and Republicans.
8:45 PM: Massachusetts just called for Clinton, in contradiction to its exit polling. Clinton is up 21 percent there, with 45 percent reporting. Huge upset win for Clinton, IMO.
Still nothing locally.
9:27 PM: Local results are starting to trickle in. With 24 precincts reporting:
9:42 PM: Note of interest: with almost none of the rural/GOP precincts reporting, and with some campus precincts in, Dem ballots outnumber Republican ballots about 5-3. I still think the Dems will break 20,000 ballots, easily setting a record.
9:45 PM: To put those Urbana Park District results in context, the following ten Cunninham precincts are in: 2, 3, 7, 8, 13, 16, 18, 20, 23 and Urbana 4. I suspect, given the 17 precincts still still out there, that it will end up passing. I hope not, though.
9:46 PM: the three contested GOP Congressional Primaries in Illinois appear to be settled enough to say that Balderman, Oberweis and Schock will win those nominations. Schock is getting over 70 percent in a three-way race so far.
9:49 PM: Quick thoughts, while there's a break in the returns:
9:55 PM: 38 precincts reporting in Champaign County:
10:03 PM: I should really be putting the latest updates at the top. I'll start a new post.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch released this yesterday:
Democrats:
Republicans:
There's a also a poll of state issues which was released today, including new approval and job performance numbers for Gov. Blagojevich.
On the pundit civil wars, Rush Limbaugh declared on the radio this week, "I'm here to tell you, if either of these two guys [Mr. McCain or Mike Huckabee] get the nomination, it's going to destroy the Republican Party. It's going to change it forever, be the end of it!"
This is absurd. George W. Bush destroyed the Republican Party, by which I mean he sundered it, broke its constituent pieces apart and set them against each other. He did this on spending, the size of government, war, the ability to prosecute war, immigration and other issues.
One, I don't think the party is distroyed, as it is splintered and changing.
Two, a number of Presidential candidates could have and should have repaired such splintering by campaigning on conservative ideas and issues. Instead, we have a festival of pandering. Neither McCain nor Romney nor Huckabee will destroy the Republican Party. But they each have declined the opportunity to undo the damage done by the last seven years of profligate waste in favor of promising that the federal government can and should solve everyone's problems for them. And so, even if one of them wins the White House, the Republican Party will continue to drift without an ideology, without any philosophical underpinning for a daily diet of "problem-solving" reactions by their administration, without a direction.
As disappointed as I am in the wasted opportunities of the present administration, I'm more disappointed in the campaigns and candidacies of McCain, Romney, Huckabee and Giuliani. Each clearly knows the failures of the past seven years, and each of them is hoping to exacerbate rather than remedy those failures.
I'm not the only one.
Rush Limbaugh said today:
I can see possibly not supporting the Republican nominee this election, and I never thought that I would say that in my life.
I'm not a big Rush listener, but his concerns and my concerns seem to line up on this race - that McCain, Romney and Huckabee are all big-government nanny-state liberals claiming to be conservative.
I wonder if he shares my frustration that so many otherwise well-intentioned conservatives are falling for it?
At the risk of continuing my embarassing streak of awful predictions, tonight is Michigan Republican Primary. Many are saying that if Romney loses here, his campaign is finished, but I think he'll be done when he's tired of spending his own money. That said, if Romney doesn't win in Michigan, I don't know where he will win.
McCain is polling very well after winning New Hampshire, and won Michigan in 2000. Romney is leading in Michigan polling, and Kos is urging Democrats to vote for him as a way to prolong the GOP race.
That said, I think McCain will win Michigan narrowly tonight. He's got momentum, and I think his appeal is much greater to independents and Democrats than Romney's, despite Kos' urging. Huckabee comes in third.
What do you think?
Did George Will just advocate for Obama, over a Republican? I'm kinda confused...this throws my entire world out of balance...up is down, down is up, right is left, left is right...
Barack Obama, who might be mercifully closing the Clinton parenthesis in presidential history, is refreshingly cerebral amid this recrudescence of the paranoid style in American politics. He is the un-Edwards and un-Huckabee -- an adult aiming to reform the real world rather than an adolescent fantasizing mock-heroic "fights" against fictitious villains in a left-wing cartoon version of this country.
In the earlier paragraphs, Will takes Huckabee and Edwards to task for over-the-top, unfounded claims of a shrinking middle class. Money quote:
He and John Edwards, flaunting their histrionic humility in order to promote their curdled populism, hawked strikingly similar messages in Iowa, encouraging self-pity and economic hypochondria. Edwards and Huckabee lament a shrinking middle class. Well.
Economist Stephen Rose, defining the middle class as households with annual incomes between $30,000 and $100,000, says a smaller percentage of Americans are in that category than in 1979 -- because the percentage of Americans earning more than $100,000 has doubled, from 12 to 24, while the percentage earning less than $30,000 is unchanged. "So," Rose says, "the entire 'decline' of the middle class came from people moving up the income ladder." Even as housing values declined in 2007, the net worth of households increased.
As a voter, I've never cared for or liked Edwards; his most recent campaign seemed had too much of a "look at me, look at me", shrill tone to it, in my opinion. I hadn't formed an opinion on Huckabee, until the recent foreign affairs naivety came up; my opinion of him lowered after that, but not irredeemably so.
interesting times...
HG
From Real Clear Politics:
Clearly, last night was the embodiment of what we've been sensing all along: this is an election about change. But last night was also the triumph of authenticity in both parties: the two winners were candidates who were not the most experienced, did not speak in terribly specific policy terms, but nevertheless were the most real and most sincere in their pitch to - and ultimately in their connection with - the voters of Iowa.
Last night we saw the result of the 'authenticity gap' in this race. Mitt Romney spent $7 million in Iowa touting himself as a candidate of conservative values and came away with only 25% of the vote. Hillary spent $6.7 million trying to portray herself as an agent of change and finished in third place with under thirty percent support. Voters simply did not buy the repackaging of these two candidates and instead opted for candidates who were, to use a cliche, exactly who they said they were.
Yeah - I've never really gotten over my nagging feeling that Romney doesn't really believe all the conservative things that he's now saying, and that he's only saying them now because he thinks that's what Republican Primary voters want to hear.
New Hampshire is going to be interesting - that's usually the Primary whose voters have the most finely tuned BS detectors. Polling currently has John McCain - another "genuine" candidate - with a slim lead. If Romney loses New Hampshire, I don't know if his campaign can recover.
Clinton also has a small lead, but the trend is that she's quickly losing ground to Obama. If Obama wins New Hampshire, then I think the nomination is his.
This is the most compressed Primary election schedule in history, but the news cycle also moves much more quickly than it ever has. Is there enough time between now and Tuesday for a major changes in the dynamic?
Well, both of my predictions from this morning were wrong, which shouldn't surprise anyone.
What does this mean? I think Obama is almost certainly going to win the Democratic nomination. I still don't know who is going to win the Republican nomination.
UPDATE: Local blogger and Democratic County Board member Matt Gladney live-blogged the results. Good stuff. (I watched the Illini game instead. Bad stuff.)
Not that I read World Net Daily that often, but when I saw a link to Pat Buchanan's column on who is still a viable contender for the GOP nomination, I had to read. And I saw this really interesting nugget:
The front-runner since spring, Rudy Giuliani, is close to toast.
By dropping out of the Iowa Straw Poll in August, Rudy ceded Iowa and the cornucopia of publicity the winner receives. He is running far behind in Iowa, sinking in New Hampshire and certain to be skunked twice by Jan. 9. If so, he will lose Michigan, then South Carolina, where he is already far behind, and Florida, his firewall, where he is now slipping behind both Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney.
If Rudy is 0-4 going into Florida, he loses Florida. If he is 0-5 going into the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday states, his national lead will be ancient history. In some national polls, it has already vanished.
He says the same for Fred Thompson.
His best guess:
If Mitt Romney wins New Hampshire, drop the curtain for Rudy, Thompson and McCain – and they know it. For if Mitt wins in New Hampshire, none of the three beats him in Michigan, they will not beat him in South Carolina, and they will not beat him in Florida.
Can McCain, who kicked away what seemed a near-certain nomination by embracing the Bush-Kennedy amnesty and stiffing the Iowa Straw Poll, win? Not impossible. If he can win New Hampshire and make himself the national alternative to Huckabee, a desperate GOP establishment might rally to him for lack of an alternative.
But McCain's fate is not entirely in his own hands. He needs an assist. He needs Huckabee to defeat Romney in Iowa, where McCain will be waxed, then to come back and beat Romney himself in New Hampshire. Two losses by Romney in states where he has invested millions would put his campaign on life support.
But if Romney wins Iowa, he will win New Hampshire and Michigan, and go into South Carolina 3-0. If Romney wins the first two, he is almost surely the nominee. For that would eliminate Rudy, McCain and Thompson, leaving the only man able to stop him in South Carolina, a twice-defeated Mike Huckabee and his Christian prayer warriors.
I'm wondering what has caused Rudy's decline and why Thompson has never gotten off the ground. Because Rudy (Gordy) and Fred (Mark) have strong supporters here, I want to see what they think as well. And what do you see as Huckabee's role in all of this. If he wins Iowa, can he really be the nominee?
Discuss.
From Patrick Ruffini, who used to work for Rudy's campaign and is one of my favorite bloggers:
The fascinating thing is that the much-predicted social issue rebellion isn’t happening. Rudy had his huge social issues fight last spring. He was bruised from it, but by clearing the decks in Houston, he was able to recover. If the current shift from Rudy has any catalyzing event, it might have been the NYPD story. That makes sense on one level — voters can more readily dissect a personal narrative than a policy debate, even over partial-birth abortions. At the same time, Rudy’s slide has coincided with the broader Huckaboom, which has been especially punishing on the Mayor’s poll numbers. The likability-minded conservatives who kept Rudy at improbable highs for so long are finally jumping ship.
At this point, the Republican Presidential race is as fluid as any I've ever seen. I've been saying for months that only Romney and Giuliani has realisitic scenarios in which they could win the nomination. Now, I think that Huckabee and McCain can find a path to the nomination, as well - and McCain has been absolutely without hope for more than six months. I think Huckabee's boomlet has already subsided, and we'll start to see the effects of that in national polling shortly, but I can't be too sure - I never really saw the appeal of a such a big-government candidate anyway.
On February 5, there could still be four choices remaining (I think Thompson will drop out after not winning SC): Giuliani, McCain, Romney and Huckabee.
Hang on - if nothing else, it's going to be fun to watch.
Over the weekend, the Chicago Tribune released a poll of Presidential preferences for Illinois Republicans and Democrats.
Favorite son Barack Obama holds a 2-1 advantage over native daughter Hillary Clinton among Democrats looking to cast ballots in Illinois' Feb. 5 presidential primary, but voters are split between the two when asked who has the best chance of winning the White House, a new Tribune/WGN-TV poll shows.
Among Republican voters in the state, the poll shows that former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's surge of support in Iowa also has reached Illinois. He and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani are in a virtual dead heat atop the list of GOP contenders, though few of those polled said they believe Huckabee would win the general election.
Discuss.
From Reuters.com: President Bush to outline 5-year rate freeze. Essentially, the sources quoted in the Reuters story claim "the plan envisions covering subprime loans taken out between January 1, 2005, through the end of this past July, with rates that are due to reset over the coming 2-1/2 years." Later on, more specifics are offered:
Under the plan pitched by the ASF, distressed homeowners would be offered mortgage help according to their ability to pay.
Borrowers with strong credit would be encouraged to drop their existing loan and be shepherded to more affordable mortgages like those offered under the Federal Housing Administration. In August, Bush expanded that government program so that it could reach an additional 240,000 troubled borrowers next year.
A second class of borrowers who simply do not have the resources to make mortgage payments would return to the rental market.
A third group of borrowers who have shown that they are a reasonable credit risk but who could not afford their homes with higher rates would qualify for "fast-tracked" loan modification and a five-year interest rate freeze.
Other existing borrowers who have struggled to keep up their loan payments could still qualify for the freeze, but would face more scrutiny before receiving any loan modification.
I've said this before: why should the government be involved, at all, with protecting (or otherwise aiding) lenders or borrowers that, through their own willful actions, are in danger of defaulting? No one held a gun to a borrower's head, and forced them to sign an adjustable rate mortgage; no one held a gun to a lender's head, and forced them to lend money to a high-risk applicant.
The one line that absolutely kills me: "A second class of borrowers who simply do not have the resources to make mortgage payments would return to the rental market." Does that mean the plan will force both the lenders and the borrowers to convert the mortgaged property to a rental unit? Or force people to move out of the mortgaged property to a rental property? Or wave a magic wand and *poof* the mortgage is gone, no penalties, no worries, here's a listing of local rental units?
Seriously, if that group of borrowers can't afford the mortgages, why are they not renting already?
To me, this is a gigantic slap in the face of every responsible homeowner; the ones who had the ability and the foresight to plan ahead, to only take out as much money as they needed, to work hard to make their monthly payments. Now, Bush's plan is to reward irresponsible behavior: take out too much? didn't plan properly on ballooning payments? decided to buy that $2000 hi-def TV instead of putting that money towards your mortgage? Don't worry, we'll take care of you...
The other thing that galls me is this: what happens after the 5 years is up? Do the rates suddenly go up again? Do we go through another round of this? Or is it simply a matter of "That's the next guy's/gal's problem"?
One of the sidebars in the Reuter's article links to a "FactBox", a quick-hit of the major candidates stands on this "mortgage crisis". The talking points speak for themselves...
HG
Mike Huckabee has been rising quickly the last few weeks in the polls, but it looks like people in Illinois won't have a chance to vote for him. Filing has closed at the State Board of Elections, and if their on line list is accurate, Huckabee didn't file. The bar is not that high (3000 signatures). And since he got a number of people filed as delegates, it wasn't for lack of volunteers. In fact, if the delegates filed in Districts 16, 17, 18, and 19 all had enough signatures for their own petitions, a like amount would have been enough for Huckabee to get on the ballot.
One wonders whether Huckabee got his own paperwork done to get on the ballot. If Tom Tancredo can get 3000 signatures, shouldn't Huckabee? And if Huckabee's volunteers did get those signatures, who dropped the ball after that?
EDIT: Almost forgot to mention that while Huckabee couldn't manage to get on, you'll get another shot to vote for Alan Keyes.
EDIT AGAIN. Sorry folks. I checked the list. Giuliani's name popped up at about 5:05 as a 4:53 filer. I kept checking, the last time at 5:33. When I didn't see Huckabee, I called SBE, who didn't answer, and then posted. Not sure of the delay exactly, although maybe it will come out that Huckabee had so many signatures it took a long time to turn them in.
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