The Mail is Here! The Mail is Here!

Created: September 25th, 2008 | Written By: Michael Tedesco

I hate the mail, but it has not always been that way. If it were up to me, I would take every piece of mail that comes into my box (other than my weekly copy of The Nation and Newsweek) and pile it up in a corner, shred it or burn it.

Sphere: Related Content

From The Barack Obama, Elections 2008, Politics department.

Is Leach the Canary in the GOP Coal Mine?

Created: August 26th, 2008 | Written By: Michael Tedesco

Living in Canuckistan has it’s down sides, one of which is the lack of US news coverage in the evening pacific time. I had only two televised choices to catch up on the goings-on at the Democratic National Convention last night, MSNBC’s replay of the events or CNN’s whatever the hell it is CNN thinks they are doing. As you can imagine I chose the former and as such was left with only the highlights of Michelle Obama’s and Ted Kennedy’s speechs. Lucky for me, CSPAN has fantastic online coverage of the convention (insert shameless plug for one of our blogads here) and I was able to catch what seems to me to be the most underreported story of day one, Jim Leach’s GOP defection speech.

Sphere: Related Content

From The Uncategorized department.

The Beltway as Bret Michaels

Created: July 25th, 2008 | Written By: matttbastard

In 17 words, Gabriel Sherman unwittingly sums up precisely what is wrong with American campaign journalism:

[T]he press wants to put its love somewhere, and, right now, that love is up for grabs.

Fuck the public interest–it’s all about who’s ready to rock Adam Nagourney’s world!

h/t Atrios

Sphere: Related Content

From The Journalistic Ethics department.

Dark Humor and Talking Points

Created: June 12th, 2008 | Written By: D Metzger

Why bother coming up with canned “liberal talking points” when the GOP’s been so successful at giving us so many? And the best part, all we have to do is repeat the GOP bottom-line. It’s almost not fair…

h/t: Queen of Spain

Sphere: Related Content

From The Elections 2008, Stupid Fun department.

Is media bias against Obama causing them not to report objective facts?

Created: May 7th, 2008 | Written By: tas

As I talked about in my last post, Hillary’s done. Any objective analysis of the empirical facts proves this. Save for an act of God, there is now no way that her campaign can surmount the delegates that Obama has amassed. Given this fact, shouldn’t the media project Obama as the winner of the Democratic nomination? News networks use analysis of exit polls and raw voting data all the time to project who has won an election. Just last night, we were told — accurately — that Obama had won North Carolina before a single vote had been been counted there. So if they use empirical evidence to report to us who won a primary, why aren’t they using the empirical evidence now to say that this race is over?

Sphere: Related Content

From The Barack Obama, Elections 2008, Hillary Clinton, Politics department.

Just how done is Hillary?

Created: May 7th, 2008 | Written By: tas

Suppose this were November of any presidential election year and both candidates are still mathematically in the race, and vote totals are yet to come in from three states: California, New York, and New Jersey.

At that point, which candidate do you think the networks would declare the winner? It’s a pretty stupid question.

That’s the position Hillary is in right now. Technically speaking, she could still win — but she needs a ridiculous amount of the vote from the primaries left. We’re talking 70-75% in her column — an impossible task.

How impossible? Well, there’s 404 delegates left to be voted on. The number of delegates Hillary needs to clinch the nomination is 324; for Obama, it’s 183. If I go by conservative estimates and say that Hillary gets 55% of the remaining delegates, leaving 45% for Obama, Obama just won 181 delegates. At that point, he would need just two more superdelegates to break his way to win the nomination.

That’s how desperate the math is for Hillary. She’s not technically mathematically eliminated from this presidential race, but she might as well be.

If this were happening in November, every news outlet would make Obama their projected winner. So why are they holding back now?

Sphere: Related Content

From The Barack Obama, Elections 2008, Hillary Clinton, Politics department.

Hillary: Done.

Created: May 6th, 2008 | Written By: tas

Somebody correct me if my math is wrong, but I do believe the contest is over.

From The Barack Obama, Elections 2008, Hillary Clinton, Politics department.

Let’s let a Hillary supporter speak for herself [Updated]

Created: April 25th, 2008 | Written By: tas

Why don’t you like Obama, janiscortese?

From The Barack Obama, Elections 2008, Hillary Clinton, Politics department.

A Black and White Issue

Created: April 22nd, 2008 | Written By: tas

I suspect this post will be unpopular, but… Let me throw some facts and figures at you: In Ohio, exit polls show that whites made up 76% of the people who voted in the Democratic primary. In Pennsylvania, whites made up 80% of the vote. And in general, whites make up 82% of the United States’ population; in 2004, exit polls show that whites voted almost to their demographic force, making up 77% of the electorate.

Digest those numbers for a minute — we start to see why swing states are so important now.

Sphere: Related Content

From The Barack Obama, Debate, Elections 2008, Hillary Clinton, Politics, Racial Issues department.