March 9, 2008

Toss Up

-It seems that the "groundhog" has seen his shadow and we are in for another 7 weeks of primaries until there is Pennsylvania with a large amount of delegates. Hillary Clinton gained some momentum back on Tuesday when she won primaries in Texas and Ohio. Although she only gained 4 delegates on Obama that day, she has gained momentum that has been so valuable for Obama. She is now down 99 delegates and it will be very hard for her to win, but she believes she is in the perfect position to win this nomination. What lies ahead is unknown, other than the fact that this election is going to go on for quiet some time.

-The reason for Clinton's great success on Super Tuesday 2 was the fact that she switched her strategy for her campaign drastically. She has changed campaign managers, paid great attention to her campaign finances and had a clearer message about economic issues in our country to better her chances in winning. Although many people look at "new" attacks on Barack Obama as being negative to her campaign, I actually feel that they have been quiet successful in taking votes away from Obama. Obama had been getting extremely cocky after winning 11 straight states and he now has to take into account what Clinton did and formulate new campaign strategies so that he doesn't end up losing the lead he currently holds. Clinton's main strategy has clearly been to win the big states (California, New York, Texas, Ohio, etc.) while caring not much about the smaller states. It has been talked about that this is where Obama can hit Clinton hard because she has stated that she didn't care about losing some of the small states she has lost. It has also been said that Obama should target some of Clinton's foreign policies. Also, now that Clinton has a clear strangle hold on economic policy in a time that the economy could be our worst fear, Obama must give Americans a good look at the unique policies he can bring to the table concerning economics.

-Today political leaders debated the options regarding the situation revolving around the Michigan and Florida primaries. The suggestion was to initiate a mail-in ballot process for each state that had had their delegates striped from the nomination process. These two states have 366 pledged delegates and super delegates together. Clinton gained ground on Groundhog Day and the Democratic nomination may not be settled unless these delegates would be included. Both governors have stated that it would be a disgrace for their citizen's vote not to count, but there is going to be a problem finding someone to foot the bill for this mail-in ballot process. The primary in Michigan would cost approximately 10 million dollars while the Florida primary would cost 20 million dollars. Charlie Crist, Florida Governor, clearly stated that he would not put this large burden on his citizens by taxing them if they were not given money by outside sources. Crist really wants his state to have another chance in the Democratic primary, but said that the only way they would take part would be if the Democratic Committee would pay for it. Although this process could be attainable there may be some problems such as properly counting these ballots and the chance of duplication and fraud of ballots. These problems and the time constraint for setting up these two primaries could ultimately cause these two states to be disenfranchised from this year’s Democratic nomination.

1 comment:

graingerworker said...

It seems to me as though the federal government should have to foot the bill simply for the sake of the democratic process. However, what is the price at which it becomes not worth it?
I am not in a position to judge.