skippy the bush kangaroo

Friday, February 15, 2008

hillary finally wins one

sen. hillary clinton got a whole 1 extra delegate after the new mexico caucus votes were finally counted. asspress:

state democratic chairman brian colon made the announcement after a marathon hand count of 17,000 provisional ballots that had to be given to voters on feb. 5 because of long lines and a shortage of ballots. the final statewide count gave her a 1,709-vote edge over rival sen. barack obama, 73,105 or 48.8 percent of the total vote to 71,396 or 47.6 percent.

the former first lady’s victory in the popular vote swung the final unallocated new mexico delegate into her column, which gave clinton 14 delegates in the state to 12 for obama.

with the addition of new mexico’s delegate, the national delegate count stood at 1,276 for obama and 1,220 for clinton on thursday.


one whole extra delegate? looks like bubba wasted his super bowl sunday.

and if being slightly less corrupt is a good reason for being president, we'd have to give the edge to sen. clinton, as far as giving cash to super-delegates go. boston.com:

while it would be unseemly for the candidates to hand out thousands of dollars to primary voters, or to the delegates pledged to represent the will of those voters, elected officials serving as superdelegates have received about $890,000 from obama and clinton in the form of campaign contributions over the last three years," the nonpartisan center for responsive politics reported today...

obama's political action committee has doled out more than $694,000 to superdelegates since 2005, the study found, and of the 81 who had announced their support for obama, 34 had received donations totaling $228,000.

clinton's political action committee has distributed about $195,000 to superdelegates, and only 13 of the 109 who had announced for her have received money, totaling about $95,000.
gee, how do you become a super delegate? sounds like a cush job!

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posted by skippy at 10:33 AM |

4 Comments:

I like Gov. Richardson's new satanic goat beard. He looks a little like Ming the Merciless let himself go.
commented by Blogger liquiddaddy, 10:43 AM PST  
HORRORS!

I thought Obama was all about changing the atmosphere in Congress! I didn't think he'd just buy a new one!
commented by Blogger Carl, 12:46 PM PST  
Uh...superdelegates are quite often elected officials.

There's nothing unusual about politicians donating to the campaigns of others in their party. Many, many elected officials at the federal level have their own PACs and donate money from them to their colleagues.

The question is, who are the superdelegates to which each contributed? I'd be willing to bet there's not a one in the bunch who is not an officeholder or has not run for office, but I can't *prove* it because I don't know the names of the individuals to whom each "gave money".

If I'm right on this, and I think that I am, it's not a mark against Obama to have supported others in the party in comptetitive races, and in fact, it's more of a negative for Hillary, who burned through $30 million in a non-competitive Senate re-election race...money that might have helped put other Democrats over the top if she had shared more of it around.

I sure wish these tempest in a teapot candidate flame wars would die down.
commented by Blogger Jennifer, 7:57 PM PST  
As mentioned above, "superdelegates" are either elected Democratic office-holders, or top executives of the state and national Democratic Party. E.g., the head of the Louisiana Democratic Party might be a superdelegate for Louisiana, as well as the top Democratic elected official in the state and any elected Democratic congressmen and Senators from the state.

So for the most part, they're all politicians, all of whom probably have received campaign donations from all manner of PAC's. It is unclear whether they received this money before or after Clinton and Obama announced that they were running for the Presidency. If before, there's little chance that it's a payoff for a vote. If after... well, clear ethical questions can be raised then.
commented by Blogger BadTux, 12:05 PM PST  

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