Saturday, February 09, 2008 - Posts
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It looks like Mike Huckabee is probably going to win in Louisiana—but it won't count. Despite clear evidence that the state prefers Mike Huckabee over John McCain, no delegates will be awarded based on this primary. That's because of a silly rule that the Republican primary results only impact the state's delegate allotment if the winner gets more than 50 percent of the vote. Instead, the delegates will be based on a late-January caucus that barely anyone cared about. To make things even more confusing, the "winner" of the caucus wasn't a candidate—it was a "pro-life uncommitted" slate. That means those state delegates can pick John McCain or Mike Huckabee at the state convention. From there, the national delegates will be selected.
Confused? Check out our previous post on the Louisiana caucus. A choice excerpt to whet your arbitrary-democracy appetite:
But here's the thing—their Tuesday night vote didn't actually select a nominee. The 10,000-plus people merely chose delegates for the state convention—and the winning delegate body didn't even represent a specific candidate. "Pro-life uncommitted" won the Louisiana state caucuses, which means every Republican besides Rudy Giuliani has a chance of getting those delegates because the delegates will remain uncommitted until the state convention later this year. At the state convention, a select number of delegates will be chosen to go to the national convention to represent Louisiana. They'll have to commit to a candidate before they do that.
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We don't know which Republican won in Washington quite yet, but we do know that even if John McCain wins, he lost.
With 37 percent of the precincts reporting, John McCain is winning 22 percent of the vote while the rest of his opponents run laps around him. Mike Huckabee, who has no business winning in Washington, is leading with 27 percent. But that's not even the juiciest story line. Ron Paul is only two points behind McCain, and Mitt Romney is only five points back. In case you needed a reminder, Mitt Romney is no longer running for president.
We already knew that McCain hasn't yet convinced conservatives that he shares their values. But that was partly because Romney was still in the race and Huckabee was playing well in the South. But now John McCain—to reiterate, the Republican nominee-to-be—can't even pull one-quarter of his party's vote in the Pacific Northwest. Moreover, Washington is a blue state, so McCain's moderate stances shouldn't scare his own party as much as it does elsewhere.
More than 67 percent of Washington residents caucused for Huckabee, Paul, or Romney tonight. But that's not the worst of it. McCain failed so badly that 10 percent of caucus-goers showed up only to stay uncommitted. McCain, it seems, is inspiring the apathetic to stay apathetic.
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Barack Obama won both Nebraska and Washington state—and by won, I mean made Hillary Clinton look like a second-tier candidate. Obama has once again produced impressive margins of victory, and once again the victories come in two caucus states.
With the majority of precincts reporting, Obama has at least two-thirds of the vote in both states. That’s the eighth time he’s topped 60 percent of the vote in caucus contests (Iowa and Nevada are the only exceptions). Clinton has won only one caucus—Nevada—where she pulled in 51 percent of the vote. (John Edwards barely factored into the results.)
Naysayers and the Clinton campaign will probably suggest that Obama naturally does better in caucus systems, where his “fervent” supporters can try to convince their neighbors to switch allegiances. That thinking may have applied in Iowa and Nevada, but it doesn’t anymore. Now that Edwards is out of the race, viability thresholds aren’t as prevalent of an issue, so these caucuses are more like glorified straw polls than democratic wasteland. When it’s one candidate against another, caucus meetings morph into a really disorganized primary—and that doesn’t favor either candidate.
Sure, caucuses take longer than primaries (an hour or two compared with 15 or 20 minutes). But these caucuses were on a Saturday, when most people—fervent fans and lukewarm supporters—have an hour to kill. Clinton competed hard in Washington—she made more campaign stops than Obama—and she got beat. No complaining allowed.
Obama isn’t beating Clinton in caucuses—he’s beating her in the Pacific Northwest, Great Plains, and the Rockies. Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Idaho, Colorado, and Washington have all chosen Obama over Clinton. Attempting to cheapen his wins by crying caucus is so early January. It’s time to ask why Obama caucus states favor Obama, not caucus procedures. Add Utah to the mix and it’s clear the region, not caucuses, want optimistic change, not experience, to take up residence in the White House. And they're making their voices heard in impressive margins.
To Clinton’s relief, there are only two more caucuses left on the primary schedule. But considering the black vote once again handed her a loss in Louisiana's primary and that she's expected to lose Virginia's and Maryland's primaries on Tuesday, things still look bleak in the short term. According to exit polls in Louisiana, only 19 percent of voters there thought experience was most important in a candidate. Clinton should be thankful that momentum doesn't matter this cycle. But losses still do.
At this point, the one thing that should really soothe Clinton's nerves is that after tonight, almost every Great Plains state is out of the way. Ohio and Texas can't come vote soon enough.
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John McCain is going to stop Mike Huckabee from winning the nomination, but he can't stop him from winning Kansas. Huckabee won 60 percent of the vote, more than twice the number of votes as Mr. Nominee-to-Be. He'll get 39 delegates, an ego boost, and an excuse to stick around a little longer. Hooray for Huck.
More importantly, about 17,000 fewer people turned out for the Republican caucuses than the Democratic caucuses earlier this week. That's a small margin in a multimillion-vote state, but not in Kansas. Both of the caucuses were closed, so the 17,000 gap implies nearly twice as many true Democrats caucused as true Republicans. In 2004, nearly twice as many Kansans voted for George Bush than for John Kerry.
Granted, the Republican race is Nanook of the North to the Democrats' Transformers. Plus, the governor of Kansas is a vocal Barack Obama supporter, which may have stimulated turnout for the Democrats (Obama won 74 percent of the vote). But if even Kansas is more excited about Barack Obama than John McCain, all of the Republicans-are-unexcited nightmare scenarios could come true. Once again, we may be asking ourselves, What's the Matter With Kansas?
Note: For those unaware, the slightly risque headline owes its heritage to Arrested Development.
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