It’s been a long 48 hours for me here in the heart of Texas. Monday night I went to check out Barack Obama for myself at one of his stops in Houston. The crowd was about six thousand or so strong and was composed mostly of people of color (probably an 85-15 split) including quite a few South Asian Americans. I’d never been to a political rally and figured this would be my chance to witness one first hand. I would have loved to have gone to a Clinton rally as well but my schedule (and hers) didn’t permit it. My observations from the rally were many, but here are a few:
1) There are a lot of sheep who will bay at just about anything
2) People seem to go crazy when free stuff is being handed out. When free Obama placards were being handed out (to wave around at the rally) I felt like I was in the middle of a disbursement of flour in the Gaza strip, given the way people started acting
3) The vast majority of people want to believe in someone other than themselves
4) Gas prices seem to be the most important thing to the group of people I was with
I realized that a rally just doesn’t do anything for me. I am a policy wonk and find it more satisfying when I feel the candidate is talking directly to me rather than simply trying to inspire me.
I early voted in the primary but I also caucused after the polls closed at 7 p.m. CST tonight (Tuesday). This dual primary-caucus system is unique to Texas and is often described as the Texas Two-Step. At 7:15p.m. you sign in and declare which candidate you are caucusing for. You have to caucus for a candidate in the same party as the person who you voted for earlier in the primary. However, there is nothing preventing you from splitting your “two votes” among two candidates if you choose to.
The caucus — officially dubbed a “precinct convention” — begins at 7:15 p.m. or when the polls close, whichever is later.
Caucus-goers arrive and put their names and presidential preference on the “sign-in sheet.” Ideally, they should show proof of having voted in the Democratic primary, but it is not absolutely necessary, according to the Harris County Democratic Party.
The group first elects a chair and secretary. Those two then take a count, noting the total number of people and how many are for Obama or Clinton. Delegates then are distributed proportionally.
For example, say 100 people show up at a given precinct on Tuesday night. If 75 of them support Clinton, and 25 support Obama, then she gets 75 percent of the delegates and he gets 25 percent. If the precinct has 20 delegates to allot, Clinton gets 15, Obama 5. [Link]
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p>I live in a heavily African American district so I expected that the caucus at my local precinct, an African American church directly adjacent to my apartment building, would be filled with Obama supporters. It was. I also expected there to be a heavy representation of health care professionals since the area of town I live in is called the Med Center area. There was. So many people showed up that just signing everyone in took an hour and a half. Since I was one of the first to sign in, and since I lived right next door, I left the caucus, made barbecue and lime salmon with steamed asparagus, ate my dinner, and then returned to the church just in time to begin the caucus.
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p>At this point the Obama supporters were asked to go to one side of the room and the Clinton supporters to the other (no other candidate had enough supporters to meet the threshold). The caucus vote was roughly 370-80 in favor of Obama which meant that the delegate breakdown for my precinct was 29-7 in favor of Obama. Now we had to vote, from among the remaining caucus participants (half left after signing in and being counted), who would serve as elected delegates to the state convention. I think I had a pretty decent shot at being elected a delegate by my peers but I passed. I am instead thinking of making a power play to become captain of the entire precinct (the person coordinating a caucus). If Jindal can win in Louisiana why not I in Texas 
? Baby steps like these are a way in which desis can get more politically active on a small scale while keeping their day jobs. Plus…I’m power hungry.
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p>In any case, I observed that most of the desis there (about a dozen or so) caucused for Hillary Clinton, and that all of those present until the end were under ~35. I also noticed that many of the African American participants questioned every detail, afraid that their vote might not be counted or that the middle-aged white Obama supporter who serves as the current precinct captain might change his vote or might not be sufficiently loyal enough to Obama. Not a single black man remained to caucus for Clinton, but a handful of black women did.
I left just after 10 p.m. CST feeling pretty satisfied. I excersied my vote to the fullest extent possible. Juding by the results, every vote counted.
ruchira & rahul:
re: darkened ad. mandy grunwald has denied the ad is theirs, though fox news says it is, though they also say it wasn’t darkened. a clinton spokesman also says the ad was darkened, but that’s part of a normal process necessary for production. i recll time mag going thru this re OJ.
I agree. But the issue here is hypocrisy.
If one wants to
passive aggressivelychangefully insult one, one would use this strategy (directly taking on one’s record, on the other hand, is called whining). Also, one might want to read one’s posts before dissing one. Anyway, one is tired of the gazillion go-arounds on this, so one is going to stop now.Even Obama has copped to inaction on this one because he was too busy running for president. Maybe he should check his own talking points.
I agree. The first time he’s running against a credible candidate who’s not a nutjob or a domestic abuser, his limitations are shown up. If he can’t run a convincing campaign when his halo is strong, how is he actually going to get anything done in 4 years when he is constantly under the lens?
speaking of dirty tricks, the one pulled on jack ryan ranks pretty high up there. to release private details about a marriage, details both spouses wanted kept secret (no he didn’t hit her as far as i know; he liked to watch her have sex w/ other men) when a child was involved strikes me as worse than nixonian or clintonian.
i wonder who was behind it. maybe the liberal judge did it on his own. maybe alan keyes. maybe obama, in which case he will have won PAfDs and rahuls respect.
Oh Manju, surely you know it was the vast left-wing conspiracy that infiltrated the judge’s mind. I agree that it should not have been, but trying to finger Obama or the liberal judge (“This judge was appointed by Jerry Brown, the most liberal governor of California in history,” the campaign talking points maintained. That claim was incorrect. Schnider, who in 2000 received the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s Outstanding Jurist Award, was first appointed to the bench in 1981 by superior court judges in Los Angeles. He was named a full judge only two years ago by Gov. Gray Davis, a moderate Democrat.) is quite a great touch. You win my respect.
Against her consent.
Jeri Ryan said her then-husband took her on three “surprise trips” in the spring of 1998 to New Orleans, New York and Paris, during which he took her to sex clubs. She said she refused to go in the first and went into the second at his insistence. “It was a bizarre club with cages, whips and other apparatus hanging from the ceiling,” she said in the court document, adding that her husband “wanted me to have sex with him there, with another couple watching. I refused.” She said on arriving at the third club, in Paris, “people were having sex everywhere. I cried. I was physically ill. [He] became very upset with me and said it was not a ‘turn on’ for me to cry.”
Don’t know about you, personally, domestic abuse is not something I look for in my reps.
Although, I agree: if all it was was just sex clubs or orgies or whatever, it should be politically irrelevant.
56 · Rahul said
a man forces (“against her consent”) his wife (in your view) to perform sex acts and you don’t think its politically relevant?
I thought I made it clear, but I will restate: The problem with the Jack Ryan situation is that it was against her consent, if it is consensual, it should be irrelevant (although it probably isn’t, in practice).
you’re clear. if its private consensual behaviour between a republican and his wife you’ll figure out a way to imply it was non-consensual or a crime (domestic abuse), but if its a rape or sexual harassment charge against pres clinton its a vicious personal attack on his private sex life. i get it.
Thanks for correctly representing the “facts”. My respect for you grows by the minute 🙂
60 · Rahul said
well you’re not being clear. we know the facts. they’re unsealed. at first you say it was against her consent (55) and therefore, like sexual harassment, open to public scrutiny. then in 56 you say “if all it was was just sex clubs or orgies or whatever” then its not fair game. but all it was was sex clubs and orgies.
kyrial @48, I agree with most of your comment, especially the following:
. My general point was simply that a) this sort of an attack (personal rather than issue-oriented) bodes terribly for a potential Obama-Clinton ticket (which was why I posted on this topic in the first place)
If this was any other candidate but a Clinton, the DNC would have stepped in already and stopped this in the best interests of the party there’s too much clout from her end for the DNC to do anything.
If the roles had been reversed, the pressure on Obama to step down by now would have been immense and the “party elders” would most likely have stepped in to end the primary battle by now. At some level, I just think that it is unfortunate that two such strong candidates have to be pitted against each other, especially when the Republicans are so short on quality leaders.
As an aside, 2000 exposed the weakness of the rounding scheme of the electoral college – as well as the duplicity of the supreme court, and 2008 is showing up the primary process, at least on the democrats’ side. Yes, Obama might get the lead on delegates, and yes, I am inclined to say that, given the current system, that is the best indicator that he should be the Democrats’ candidate, but the fact is that his lead will end up being small, and the primary process is so noisy and imperfect that I don’t know how meaningful that lead in delegates really is.
That Rahul and Manju are hogging up the dance floor. You two dance like a couple of long-tailed cats in a room full of rockin’ chairs. I tell ya, what’s a girl gotta do to get a little two-step action? Cut in?
I am sure it would be more meaningful if Hillary was leading.
Perfect process: lets just anoint Hillary as the President and do away with primaries and elections altogether, then she along with her husband can rule over us benevolently and keep us safe at night, bring Universal health care to all, and all will be well in the world and when her 8 years are up, Chelsea can run and claim that she has 35 years of experience, since she has been in public service the day she was born, being born to the two greatest presidents the US has ever had.
Popular vote will matter. she’s behind by like 600k right now, excluding fl and mich. if she wins the pop she can make a “will of the people” argument, but that still necessitates 60-40 blowouts the rest of the way, so unlikely.
i think her strategy is to keep it close and damage obama so much that she’ll argue to the supers that he unelectable.
good times ahead.
bessie mae, is that what the kids are calling it these days?
I agree. Not pretty in the least, and potentially not good for the dems in November. And while it is not good that Hillary is doing this, and her motivations are (clearly) not altruistic, I think that even if Obama is the dem nominee, he’s going to get beaten up by the republicans in all these ways and worse, and tested in a way that none of his campaigns so far have. And he’s not going to win purely with the high ground posturing and passive aggressiveness that have been his game so far.
I read an article that argued that the fact that Hillary won the TX primary but lost the caucus works in her favour.
For instance, the numbers in each were something like 2.5 Million vs. 100K. So, she can argue (to the Supers) that the caucuses are not very representative. Since Obama has won a lot of caucuses, it can be argued that if those states had held primaries, the results may have been different.
Could someone explain the rationale for a caucus? It seems unfair to people who cannot make it at a particular time…
Now, the Hillary camp is comparing Obama to Ken Starr for asking legitimate questions. Delicious!
Libran 38:
Caucuses were set up (particularly in less populated rural areas) to encourage participatory democracy. Whether or not it makes sense (it certainly doesn’t in big urban areas like Houston where caucusing descended into chaos in some precincts on March 4) is really not the point here. Everyone knew the rules before the race started and a single vote was cast. None of the Democratic candidates (including Hillary who believed then that she had victory in her pocket) at the starting line had a problem with the campaign set up, including penalizing MI and FL if they didn’t follow party directives. You can question crappy rules but not AFTER you’ve agreed to play by them.
It was only after Iowa and successive dominoes falling for Hillary in caucus states that we started hearing grumblings about caucuses from Bill Clinton and the rest of the Clintonites. Now, they are not only moving the goal post with every victory and defeat but also re-setting the clock. According to Hillary & Co. Ohio is now the new Iowa and Texas the new NH. Whatever it takes to change the narrative – nothing matters unless she wins.
Just a comment about the “popular vote” argument: It think the popular vote argument only really holds water if you also have a lead in some other major area because elections in this country on the presidential level are not strictly a popular vote issue (just ask Al Gore). Obama, for example, will most likely have the elected delegate lead when all is said and done (baring blowouts the rest of the way), so he can say “look, I’ve not only got the popular vote but I’ve got the delegate vote as well” and, might I add, he can throw in for good measure “plus I’ve beaten her 2-1 in actual primaries/ caucuses”.
If Hil wins the popular vote, it does give her some weight to throw around in the convention but again Obama has shown himself able to draw from the middle ground (independents/ liberal republicans) and THAT is where the battle will most likely be this fall. Clinton, by virtue of the very name, is polarizing: there are many Americans who would come out and vote against her in an election whereas Obama doesn’t really have too many people who consider him an unsavory character.
Again, this bodes very poorly for the democrats this summer/ fall because they a) face a split at the convention and the possibly fracture of the party (new guard vs. old guard) and b) the withering attacks are going to take their toll, and if Obama starts firing back which he probably will, it’s going to seriously damage both candidates. It’s quite ironic that after 8 years of a republican president who has launched a very unpopular war, seen the economy go into the tank and eroded civil liberties there’s as good a chance as not that we’re going to see his party continue in the White House come 2009.
I am not arguing about changing rules, nor am I commenting about MI & FL. I am sure that the party will sort it out.
I was just curious about the rationale of caucuses. If the parties want more people to participate, then in future, they should just do away with them and just hold primaries. In a general election, these rural areas don’t caucus, they just vote like everyone else does. I agree that in the past it may have made sense to have caucuses, but now it just seems like an idea whose time has gone.
Primaries cost more than caucuses, so some state parties prefer them for that reason; also, some factions within any party prefer that “high-intensity” preferences be (over)represented, so that’s another reason you’ll find some support for caucuses.
Libran 38:
I agree with you about the usefulness (or the lack thereof) of caucuses. While we are at it, let us get rid of the antiquated electoral college too in the presidential elections in November. I would like to see the president of the United States elected directly by a majority (or plurality) of popular votes irrespective of states and delegates won. After all, the presidential election is the only one in which all Americans vote for the same office.
As for proportional representation of states, the House takes care of that. Protection of smaller states is ensured by Texas having the same number of US senators as Wyoming. The president on the other hand, represents the whole nation. It will be refreshing to see the office of the president decided free of regional influences and red – blue color coding.
Sheep bleat. Hounds bay.
brilliant move. admitting that the vrwc was right about the Clinton’s is too hard a pill to swallow for many democratic partisans. they’ll rather throw obmama under the bus than admit they’re wrong.
obama’s in a pickle. if he retaliates he risks undermining his entire narrative. while half the clinton supporters think he lacks toughness, the other half think he’s a nixonian racebater. damned if does, damned of he doesnt. even the faln pardons, a low hanging fruit in a time of terror, is off-limits b/c of peurto rico and the fact that its precisely the type of thing many dems don’t want to believe about the clintons. what to do?
Ruchira: I once read a book called “The American Constitution: A Biography”, where the author, Akhil Amar Reed, a Yale law professor, went through the Constitution line-by-line and put it into historical and political context. It is a bit of a dry read, especially at the start, but once it gets going, it is fascinating.
Anyway, he had an interesting take on the electoral college. His argument was that when the Constitution was written, Southern (slave) states counted its slave population for representation purposes, i.e., number of seats in the house, but did not allow them to vote. So, when it came to the presidential elections, they were in a pickle. They didn’t want to allow them to vote, but they wanted them to be counted. Thus, they hit upon the idea of the Electoral College; its strength is equal to the sum of House+Senate seats.
I can’t see why the smaller states will give up the advantage they have under this system. If it was a straight popular vote, no one will bother campaigning in states like WY, ID, etc.
Rob: Yeah, I also read that it is cheaper to hold caucuses. But, by that argument, it is even cheaper not to hold anything at all 😉
vivek
p.s. His take on why Wyoming was one of the first states to give women the right to vote, is that WY had a very lopsided male-female ratio (6:1 or something like that), and to attract women to move there, they “bribed” them with the right to vote!
re: MI&FL, etc.
Obama is running on a post-partisan platform, i.e., he can negotiate with the other side without the usual rancor. Let’s see his skills in negotiating with the Clinton campaign. What will he give up in order to reach a compromise.
This is one thing that bothers me about him. He has a very progressive voting record (more power to him), but he talks a centrist game. It’s not clear how he will go about satisfying the progressives as well as the centrists/conservatives. If he gives up too much, the progressive base will be upset (witness the bitter feelings over Clinton’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy), but if he doesn’t give up enough, then why would the other side be interested?
vivek
Obama is held to some ridiculous standard of perfectness, while Clintons always get a pass for their fear mongering,race-baiting and outright lies. He is passive-aggressive, hoprah, he is not to be believed, he is nothing but a charming snake-oil salesman according to some on SM. To some on this board and the country, he will never be good enough no matter what he does, I wonder how much of it has to with his being black?
77 · libran said
if this results in a hillary nomination, he’ll have post-partisan depression
Manju:
Not if he designs a few campaign ads based on this image of Hillary.
But then again, may be he doesn’t have the gumption after all. We of course know that the Clintonites suffer from no such compunctions.
Obama is held to some ridiculous standard of perfectness, while Clintons always get a pass for their fear mongering,race-baiting and outright lies.
I commented on this as well in a previous thread, but yes, Obama’s higher standard are dually influenced I believe, one due to his own comments, and two, his race.
yogi, I don’t think it has anything to do with his race, but rather to his statements like “we are ones we have been waiting for”, or his supporters, e.g., Oprah declaring “He is the One” (or something to that effect).
to add to what rob, ruchira , and libran have said, many of these anti-democratic curiosities that we see in the american system go back to classic liberal thinkers and their fear of “tyranny of the majority.” ironically, the great democratic thinkers were obsessed with the idea of restricting democracy, b/c they saw the conundrum: the majority using democracy to oppress a minority or even overturn democracy itself…a problem we see muslim nations grappling with as they inch toward democracy.
so we have a senate, an electoral and caucus system, a bill or rights, ie restrictions on democracy so an elite can maintin liberty, though they themselves are restricted by a seperation of powers. liberals were particularly concerned about religion, b/c they knew the irrational power it held over men, thus you get an establishment clause for example. extremism and sects are discouraged, though allowed to operate as long as they adhere to the social contract.
classic liberal were practical thinkers, trying to establish a system that worked. philosophical consistency be damned.
I don’t think electoral college and senate which are more heavily tilted towards smaller states are a bad idea at all. They prevent democracy from being the tyranny of the majority such as it is in India for example, where populous states like UP and Bihar have had a stranglehold on electoral politics in India with the massive amount of MP’s (like Congressional representatives) they send to the Loksabha. Rajyasabha which is like the senate is largely a toothless organization with no real powers. This marginalizes non-Hindi speaking states, especially the small north-eastern states like Nagaland, Mizoram etc. I think a system like the electoral college could go a long away in addressing the alienation these states feels and may be there won’t be as many separatist movements in the Northeastern states.
something for the Hillary-haters 😉
http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/4771/hillaryobamawarsgr0.gif
How are you so sure? I have had more desi friends/acquaintainces express reservations about Obama than my non-desi friends,some of them have admitted to being somewhat apprehensive because of his race. On the other hand, desis are very forgiving about Hillary’s tactics, her lies, her padding of her resume. I don’t understand this love desis have for Hillary, consider a thought experiment if Obama was Desi American say one of the bloggers on the mutiny does anybody have any doubt that Hillary would invoke every negative stereotype there is about desis to throw him/her under the bus? As for the other points you have mentioned. If Obama has many more supporters than Clinton, how is that to his detriment? If he speaks well why is that a bad thing? and what exactly is wrong with relying on yourself to make changes instead of trusting someone to solve your problems? Oprah’s comment is over the top but I am sure if you dig enough you could come up with outlandish statements made by her supporters about her too. Oh wait, she makes these statements herself, to wit 35 years of experience, vast foreign policy experience and on and on it goes.
What I meant re: statements like “We’re the ones we are waiting for” is that they sound very messianic; he probably meant, “I am the one you’ve been waiting for”. Well, that’s how I read it. And, he wants to get away from “politics as usual” and lift the conversation to a higher plane. That’s all well and good and very noble, but I am guessing that’s why he is being held to a higher standard. If he goes negative, then he will be just another one-term senator running for president…
I don’t have a clue why desis tend to support Hillary (as I replied on a different blog, it must be the self-loathing ;-)).
Anyway, maybe it is because Hillary and Bill are well-known back home, and are quite popular. I remember when Bill went to India and spoke in the Parliament, he was mobbed by the MP’s…
Makes sense for desis back in des, I was actually wondering about the desis in the US, especially the folks that came here in the 60’s and the 70’s.
Anyway I have to go now, so last post on this thread.
mine too.
According to Strobe Talbott in his book “Engaging India”, where he talks about his conversations with the Indian govt., in particular, Jaswant Singh, post-1998 nuclear explosions, Bill Clinton had a huge role in ending the Kargill war. Clinton read the riot act to Nawaaz Sharif. According to Talbott, this was the first time, and Indian PM, Vajpayee, trusted a US president to do the right thing on an India/Pakistan issue, and Clinton didn’t disappoint. Maybe that’s what the desis who came here in the 60’s and 70’s are responding to. Also, it could be a generational thing.