obama finally #1 in total delegate count

in the above image, states barack obama won are in red (since he does better in red states), and states hillary clinton won are in blue (since she does better in blue states), while states that neither has won are white. michigan and florida are light blue because they do not count and have 0 delegates to the convention. so anyway, barack obama now has 8 victories in a row (if you count the virgin islands that do not get to vote in november). he won 5 contests over the weekend and 3 more within the last 24 hours. and how many contests has hillary clinton won in that same time period? zero. that’s gotta hurt. barack obama is getting to be about as unbeatable as the new england patriots were prior to the super bowl, after their long winning streak (and he supported that team, too). hillary clinton has about the same chances for victory as the new york giants did (the team she supported). can she follow the lead of the new york giants and somehow manage to win? only jesus knows. and jesus supports mike huckabee. speaking of mike huckabee, his supporter jesus was not very helpful in the 3 primaries that just happened in virginia, maryland, and washington, d.c. john mccain won all 3. so here is the republican map, with john mccain blue, mike huckabee red, and mitt romney purple:



guess who is winning? john mccain, duh. john mccain is already the republican nominee; mike huckabee and ron paul are just in denial. so since the republican race is over, who cares about it anymore? what is interesting is how barack obama now finally is ahead of hillary clinton in total delegates, including all the superdelegates who have indicated which candidate they support. for a while now, he has been in the lead among pledged delegates (you know, the ones actually elected by we the people) but behind in total delegates due to hillary clinton winning about 2/3 of the superdelegates who have chosen a candidate so far. but now, he has gotten far enough ahead of hillary clinton in pledged delegates that it more than makes up for him having less superdelegates, so he is ahead in delegates. period. and he is way ahead when it comes to the number of states he has won. he has won twice as many: he has won 22 and she has won 11 (if you include washington, d.c. which also counts in november, and if you exclude michigan and florida because they both get zero delegates to the democratic convention). twice as many. and now hillary clinton is losing more top people from her campaign: first her campaign manager patti solis doyle, and now her deputy campaign manager mike henry. and she had to loan $5 million from a joint bank account she shares with her ex-president husband to her campaign to keep it afloat prior to super tuesday. and her top campaign staff agreed to go 1 month without being paid, to save her campaign money. barack obama raised 2 and a half times as much money as her in january. and if you look at the polls, just back in december, hillary was way ahead of barack obama, but she has steadily declined and he has steadily gone up, and now we are at the point where he is slightly ahead of her in the polls nationally. those trends show no sign of stopping. and barack obama would do much better against john mccain in a general election than hillary clinton would, according to the polls. so, the question for democrats is this: do you want to win in november? if you do, there is only 1 choice: barack obama. to win in november, you need not only your own party faithful, but independent voters, and we have seen how independent voters love barack obama but can’t stand hillary clinton. now on the internet, many republican “trolls” like to try and instigate trouble between hillary clinton and barack obama by posting in online message boards and comment threads, posing as supporters of one candidate and trashing the other viciously. they also often say things like how they have been in the democratic party for many decades but they are so put off by one of the 2 democratic candidates’ online supporters that if that candidate wins, they will vote for john mccain instead. or they say things like how they are a member of this or that minority group (asian, hispanic, native american, etc.) and that they and everyone else in their minority group does not want to elect a black man like barack obama. or they say that the idea of a woman president is a joke. anyway, maybe the person who said they were a democrat for several decades who was considering voting for mccain was not a republican troll, but actually a victim of the republican trolls. you see, by viciously insulting one of the democratic candidates, and pretending to be a supporter of the other candidate, they are able to alienate supporters of the candidate who is insulted, and get them to say things like how they would never support the candidate whose supporters say such vicious things online. on many websites, there are actually ways to find out that someone really is a republican troll posing as a democrat. like on youtube, this one guy who was trashing barack obama who claimed to have voted for hillary clinton, if you go to his profile (or rather, his channel page), you see that his favorites are full of pro-mitt romney stuff, and #1 on his list of subscriptions is the one to the mitt romney campaign videos. and this mitt romney supporter was going around bashing obama and claiming to support hillary, in the comment thread to a video about obama! this type of thing happens all the time on the internet. and as democrats, we should not assume that someone really supports a particular democratic candidate just because they claim they do, because if all they do is trash other democrats, it really makes you wonder. as for people like rush limbaugh and ann coulter and the rest of them trashing john mccain, we do know for sure that those people really are republicans, because they are public figures and we in the public know all about them. so, while many republicans hate their nominee john mccain, i think the vast majority of democrats would be satisfied with either clinton or obama... at least satisfied enough to vote for them in november, despite maybe being disappointed that their favorite candidate did not win. i know i would be satisfied with either one of the democrats... i just like one better than the other. if someone is viciously trashing clinton or obama, and/or threatening to vote for mccain or some third-party candidate if their favorite candidate does not win, this person is not a democrat, and no democrat should listen to them since they are most likely a republican troll on a mission to cause strife among the democrats. i mean, what else do conservative republicans have to do, other than go online and pretend to be democrats and cause trouble? they hate their nominee mccain. they probably have plenty of time on their hands. and they love doing dirty tricks to win elections by any means necessary. so, anyway, there is a stark difference between democrats and republicans, and we will see that in the general election between john mccain and whoever us democrats pick. and anyone who does not vote for their party’s nominee must not really agree with their party on the issues, because if they really cared about the issues, they would vote for whoever is closest to them on the issues. you know: democrats want to keep abortion legal, republicans want it outlawed; democrats want to end the war in iraq, republicans want it to go on another 100 years; democrats believe in scientific theories like evolution and global warming, republicans believe every word of the bible is literally true; democrats want a balanced budget and have adopted pay-as-you-go rules in congress to help achieve this goal, republicans want endless tax cuts to bankrupt our government. there are huge differences between the 2 parties, and only extremist loonies deny this. and if someone is indecisive between the 2 sides, well they must not have been paying any attention during the last 7 years of having dumbya as president. anyway, barack obama looks like he will continue to win more states and more delegates than hillary clinton, and win the nomination. and if anybody has a problem with the idea of him as president and thinks john mccain might be better, just consider: was george w. bush a good president? and how would john mccain be any different from bush? the same goes if hillary clinton is the nominee: how could she possibly be worse than john mccain, who basically agrees with president bush on everything? john mccain = 4 more years of george w. bush. even on issues where mccain goes against conservative dogma, he agrees with president dumbya. illegal immigration? they both supported the same proposal that conservatives called “amnesty”. campaign finance reform? bush signed the bill mccain wrote into law. john mccain was the earliest, most outspoken supporter of bush’s troop “surge” in iraq. it is hard to find anything that george w. bush and john mccain do not agree on. even “torture”. john mccain has been a vocal opponent of torture. george w. bush says “we do not torture”. they both claim to be against torture. what is the difference? none, at least as far as their publicly stated positions. my point is, there is virtually no difference between john mccain and george w. bush. so conservative talk radio show hosts and pundits who condemn john mccain are basically condemning george w. bush, since bush and mccain have all the same policies. if their republican nominee is not “conservative” enough for them, that is their own fault, for not supporting the most conservative candidates early enough and strongly enough. but people like rush limbaugh and ann coulter need to realize they were the ones who created this mess. they supported bush, who has all the same policies as mccain. and now they condemn mccain for writing all these laws that bush signed into law, after they supported bush all these years! talk about hypocrisy! hopefully the democrats will be above such foolishness once a nominee is chosen, and not have a bunch of traitors who turn against the party just because their favorite person was not chosen to be #1. we do not need any more zell millers or joe liebermans. i bet joe lieberman will give a speech at the republican convention in 2008, just like zell miller did in 2004. they are just as traitorous to the democrats as rush limbaugh, ann coulter, etc. are to the republicans. and if someone is a traitor to their party, it just shows that either they do not care one iota about any of the issues, or they were in the wrong party to begin with. zell miller and joe lieberman were probably in the wrong party to begin with, and are both so conservative, they should have both just been republicans all along. rush limbaugh and ann coulter are just doing this for publicity so they make more money, and they have no loyalty to anyone, and no morals whatsoever, and do not really care about any issues except for the issue of how much money they make. neither of them is welcome in the democratic party, no matter how much they campaign for hillary clinton. they ought to both become recluses, go into hiding, and never be seen or heard from again. i am sure the majority of democrats as well as the majority of republicans would probably agree that rush limbaugh and ann coulter need to go away and never come back. for years, they have both fought relentlessly against democrats, against liberalism, against science, and against rationality, and presented their conservative republican point of view in a very unflattering way that makes conservatives and republicans look bad. and now they have gone into open revolt against their own republican party and pledged to campaign for and vote for hillary clinton if she is the nominee. the guy they supported, mitt romney, was a complete liar and fraud just like both of them, who had flip-flopped on all the major issues just to get elected, which must be why they supported him. and now they are stabbing the republicans in the back when the republican party needs them most, in a most foul and cruel betrayal. i would like to thank them for that, by the way: they are really helping the democrats. but i still hate their guts. i suppose having jackasses like them spout their mouths off in public all the time with no “off” switch is the price we pay for living in a free society, and it is better than the alternative where no dissent is tolerated. so i suppose we should all learn to put up with people like them, since even if those 2 went away, there would be plenty more jackasses spouting ridiculous nonsense to sway public opinion in an illogical direction. but anyway, back to the main point: barack obama has now had 8 victories in a row. how long can he continue this winning streak? and can hillary clinton really win in both texas and ohio, like she needs to do if she wants to beat barack obama? even if she does win both states, close margins could mean that she and barack obama both get a similar number of delegates from both of those large states. since democratic primaries and caucuses are not winner-take-all, her strategy of focusing on large states does not make much sense. what should hillary clinton do next to get her campaign back on track? fire chief strategist mark penn. the p.r. firm he runs represents blackwater (the bloodthirsty mercenaries in iraq who are above the law), countrywide (the biggest lender of subprime mortgages that are responsible for the current recession), and many other “bad guys”. mark penn is a bad person, just like dick morris. hillary clinton should not consort with such hooligans; they are just like karl rove. just look at how dick morris has betrayed the clintons; how do we know mark penn is any more trustworthy? neither of them has any morals, and it was just as wrong for hillary clinton to insist that her husband hire dick morris as it is wrong for her to have mark penn as chief political strategist right now. mark penn will probably end up betraying her in the end; he is only in it for the money. he is the one hillary clinton should have fired, not the campaign manager and deputy campaign manager. her recent losing streak of 8 losses in a row is probably mark penn’s fault, since he is chief political strategist yet he has failed utterly at his job and proven himself to be incompetent. and look at what the public thinks of his p.r. firm’s clients blackwater and countrywide: nobody likes his clients, so obviously his firm has failed miserably in public relations for those clients. maybe if hillary clinton loses the contest for the democratic nomination, mark penn’s career will be over. we can only hope.