It’s easy to see why Hillary Clinton is talking up Pennsylvania, whilst talking down victories such as Mississippi. A CBS/Survey USA poll in Pennsylvania has Hillary Clinton with 55% support to Barack Obama’s 36%.
According to the poll, geographically, Clinton wins in every area except the southeast, which includes Philadelphia. Her largest support comes from the northwest with 79%, which includes Erie.
Another poll showed Obama gaining on Clinton in the state, cutting a 16% lead to just 6% however.
Sen. Barack Obama won the Mississippi contest to choose a Democratic presidential candidate on Tuesday, his second victory since a pair of big-state losses kept him from knocking rival Hillary Clinton out of the race, U.S. media projected.
Hot on the heels of news that Barack Obama looks set to win more delegates than Hillary Clinton in Texas, comes a report in the Wall Street Journal that California’s delegate count is being revised in Obama’s favour too. The final results are still to be certified, but already CNN has changed their delegate count from 204 for Clinton and 161 for Obama, to 203 for Clinton (-1) and 167 (+6) for Obama. Other news organisations are already following suit in their running totals too.
It looks like yesterday’s barrage against Hillary Clinton’s campaign was the start of a new media approach of rapid response and rebuttal. MSNBC reports that later today, Hillary Clinton is expected to say:
“On the campaign trail, Sen. Obama talks about clean energy. But in the Senate, he voted for Dick Cheney’s energy bill loaded with new tax breaks for oil companies. When he faced a tough choice, his support for a clean energy future turned out to be just words.” …
“It’s like how he talks about fixing NAFTA. But his top economic adviser assured the Canadian government that he wouldn’t really follow through. His position? Just words.” …
“Senator Obama promises to withdraw from Iraq within 16 months. But his top foreign policy adviser said he’s not really going to rely on that plan. I guess that plan is just words, too.” …
Obama’s campaign, firing off a rapid response which preceded the speech even being delivered, said:
“Proving once again that she will say and do anything to win this election, Senator Clinton today has unleashed a kitchen sink of distorted and discredited attacks that she knows aren’t true. Barack Obama isn’t about to be lectured on words from someone who’s actions spoke much louder when she voted against renewable fuels and higher CAFÉ standards until she started running for President, championed NAFTA as good for America until she started running for President, and supported George Bush’s disastrous war in Iraq until she started running for President.
“The fact is, the energy bill that Senator Clinton is using to score cheap political points actually raised taxes on oil companies and made the largest investment in renewable energy in our nation’s history, including the tax credit that’s kept the wind industry afloat and helped create jobs like the ones at the plant Barack Obama is visiting today. If Senator Clinton wants to have an honest debate about why she voted against that bill, we’re happy to have it, but she owes the voters of Pennsylvania more than same old attack politics that Americans have already rejected across the country.”
Polls suggest Senator Obama is leading in the state, which has 33 delegates to the August convention where the party will choose its White House candidate.
Mr Obama dismissed Senator Clinton’s offer to run as her vice-president.
Mississippi primaries opened at 12:00 GMT and will close at 24:00 GMT.
Barack Obama ridiculed Hillary Clinton today for her suggestion that he would make a great Vice President for her, but lacked the experience to be President, saying:
“I don’t understand that If I’m not ready, how is it that you [Senator Clinton] think I should be such a great Vice President?”
“With all due respect, I’ve won twice as many states as Senator Clinton. I’ve won more of the popular vote than Senator Clinton. I have more delegates than Senator Clinton. So I don’t know how somebody who’s in second place is offering the Vice Presidency to the person who’s in first place!”
“I want everybody to be absolutely clear that I’m not running to be Vice President. I’m running to be President of the United States of America.”
Six weeks ago, Toni Morrison, for the first time ever endorsed a presidential candidate. Fittingly for a winner of both a Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature, she wrote to Barack Obama to tell him why.
Her letter explains what Senator Obama means by “the fierce urgency of now”. The reason why, for all her good qualities, Senator Clinton is the wrong choice. Why Barack Obama is both “the man for this time” and “one of those singular moments that nations ignore at their peril”.
What Toni Morrison has to say in her short letter has inspired somebody - a registered republican no less - to make a video of it (although “Somewhere over the rainbow” was perhaps not the best choice of background music). We’ve also reproduced the letter in full below. In the cut and thrust of this campaign, it’s perhaps easy to forget why Barack Obama is backed by a new and enthusiastic movement for change. This is a good reminder.
Dear Senator Obama,
This letter represents a first for me–a public endorsement of a Presidential candidate. I feel driven to let you know why I am writing it. One reason is it may help gather other supporters; another is that this is one of those singular moments that nations ignore at their peril. I will not rehearse the multiple crises facing us, but of one thing I am certain: this opportunity for a national evolution (even revolution) will not come again soon, and I am convinced you are the person to capture it.
May I describe to you my thoughts?
I have admired Senator Clinton for years. Her knowledge always seemed to me exhaustive; her negotiation of politics expert. However I am more compelled by the quality of mind (as far as I can measure it) of a candidate. I cared little for her gender as a source of my admiration, and the little I did care was based on the fact that no liberal woman has ever ruled in America. Only conservative or “new-centrist” ones are allowed into that realm. Nor do I care very much for your race[s]. I would not support you if that was all you had to offer or because it might make me “proud.”
In thinking carefully about the strengths of the candidates, I stunned myself when I came to the following conclusion: that in addition to keen intelligence, integrity and a rare authenticity, you exhibit something that has nothing to do with age, experience, race or gender and something I don’t see in other candidates. That something is a creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom. It is too bad if we associate it only with gray hair and old age. Or if we call searing vision naivete. Or if we believe cunning is insight. Or if we settle for finessing cures tailored for each ravaged tree in the forest while ignoring the poisonous landscape that feeds and surrounds it. Wisdom is a gift; you can’t train for it, inherit it, learn it in a class, or earn it in the workplace–that access can foster the acquisition of knowledge, but not wisdom.
When, I wondered, was the last time this country was guided by such a leader? Someone whose moral center was un-embargoed? Someone with courage instead of mere ambition? Someone who truly thinks of his country’s citizens as “we,” not “they”? Someone who understands what it will take to help America realize the virtues it fancies about itself, what it desperately needs to become in the world?
Our future is ripe, outrageously rich in its possibilities. Yet unleashing the glory of that future will require a difficult labor, and some may be so frightened of its birth they will refuse to abandon their nostalgia for the womb.
There have been a few prescient leaders in our past, but you are the man for this time.
In truth it was a week which ended with Obama winning Wyoming by 61% to Clinton’s 38%, adding another 2 delegates to his lead over Clinton. The news from the Texas Caucus is also encouraging, although only about half of the results are in yet, Obama looks to have won the majority of the delegates in Texas too. Not bad for “a bad week”!
In the battle for the Democratic nomination, Obama has now won 30 states to Clinton’s 14. He leads the race in pledged delegates. Even with pledged superdelegates factored in, Obama is winning. Let me say that again slowly for the members of the media: Obama is winning.
Clinton’s camp dismisses caucus states, with one aide reportedly saying; “Obama has won the small caucus states with the latte-sipping crowd.” Yet it is the campaign which has included these contests which leads, to be fair CBS has also noticed.
In the main though the media has already decided that, like Wyoming, Tuesday’s Mississippi primary doesn’t really matter. (Obama is expected to win Mississippi too.) The fact that Clinton’s wins on so-called Super Tuesday 2 could be negated by his wins in these two states is nothing more than a sideline for the media.
Their attention is firmly on Pennsylvania, where Clinton leads in the polls and is already being spun as a “must win” for Obama, just as Ohio and Texas were spun, when in fact Pennsylvania is both a “must win” and “should win” for Clinton. However, the story has already been written it seems: Obama must win Pennsylvania before the media will accept that Clinton is losing. That’s nonsense already being fueled by the Clinton camp.
In this extraordinary contest, if Obama is a shiny new mountain bicycle, Hillary Clinton is an old rusty bike. Baring disaster, Obama looks set to maintain his delegate lead all the way to the Democratic Convention. No matter how Clinton and the media like to frame the contest, nothing will change that inconvenient truth.
Just after polls closed Saturday, Obama led Sen. Hillary Clinton, his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, 59 percent to 40 percent. The Illinois senator had 4,459 votes to Clinton’s 3,081, with 22 of 23 precincts reporting. (Click here for full Wyoming results.)
Having already broken one record by receiving over 1 million individual donations, Barack Obama last month notched up another — a record monthly donation total. In February 2008, $55 million was donated in an effort to secure the Democratic Party nomination. No campaign has ever raised this much in a single month in the history of presidential primaries.
Barack contacted us with this message:
As you know, we’ve won 27 of 41 contests and have maintained our commanding lead among pledged delegates.
But today I want to share another staggering number: supporters like you donated more than $55 million to this campaign in the month of February.
That’s a humbling achievement, and I am very grateful for your support.
No campaign has ever raised this much in a single month in the history of presidential primaries. But more important than the total is how we did it — more than 90% of donations were $100 or less, and more than 385,000 new donors in February pushed us past our goal of more than 1,000,000 people owning a piece of this campaign.
From the beginning, this campaign has always been funded by a movement of grassroots supporters giving whatever they can afford. And unlike Senator Clinton and Senator McCain, we have never taken money from lobbyists or PACs.
Senator Clinton has decided to use her resources to wage a negative, throw ‘everything including the kitchen sink campaign’. John McCain has clinched the Republican nomination and is attacking us daily. But I will continue to vigorously defend my record and make the case for change that will improve the lives of all Americans.
