There is evidence of significant momentum building up behind the Obama campaign, which has just picked up the endorsement of 170 influential environmentalists. No one knows where the Edwards voters are going to go, but a poll by US bloggers reveals Obama has scooped up huge amounts of activist support.
The Gallup organisation says he has now cut the gap with Clinton to 6 percentage points among Democrats nationally and is strengthening by the day. Clinton's lead is 42% to Obama's 36%, with pre-drop-out Edwards, claiming 12%. These numbers tell a critical story as voters in more than 20 states vote or caucus next Tuesday.
That would be me. When you've been following a primary you eventually have to decide which of the candidate's results watch parties to attend. Hopefully, you pick the one who eventually wins. Well, so far, I have an unbroken record in that regard. Thanks Hillary and Mitt and thanks - tonight - John McCain.
Kudos to the Senator. His music was kinda cheesy but well-chosen - the Rambo theme to welcome him to the stage (you may remember how Sly endorsed him) and "Johnny Be Good" when he had wrapped up. The beer and sandwiches for the press were free. And the speech?
"We're family!" Obama said today in El Dorado, Kansas, a Godforsaken place of some 12,718 souls. His trip to the Flint Hills of Kansas, the geographic dead centre of America, allowed him to tell a personal story that is not very well known in the US. On the flight to Kansas, Obama said he wanted to remind voters about his roots and that he was not born into privilege. It was his first, and possibly last visit to El Dorado. But it was productive.
We can't say goodbye to Florida and it's primary tonight without at least mentioning hanging chads once. Remember? Of course you do. It is eight years since Florida singlehandedly sabotaged the 2000 presidential election - and Al Gore - with its disputed vote counts and hanging chads (or was it dimpled?). When the whole mess was cleaned up, a certain Bush (with help from the Supreme Court) ended up claiming Florida by a margin of barely more than 500 votes and thus the White House.
You will not be surprised to learn, therefore, that the old punch-card system of voting that gave all those half-indented chads was long ago done away with in Florida. The state spent boatloads introducing zippy touch-screen voting machines. Even the Zimmer-frame folk from Palm Beach could surely work those. Certainly if they had ever used a cash machine they could.
Obama is set to dominate the headlines today with an important speech at American University where he will wrap himself in the mantle of JFK (pictured here at the American University in 1963) and steal the thunder of George Bush who delivers his last State of the Union speech tonight.
If only the media would follow the "button poll" they might not get things so badly wrong and start calling some of these amazing races correctly for a change. I'm talking about the daily tally of candidate button sales at at Politicalshop.com, run by a political junkie from Independence Missouri, where President Harry Truman was born.
We are waiting for the polls to close in South Carolina and all day the candidates have been buzzing round trying to get as many people as possible out to vote. On a warm winter’s day, it looks like its going to be a huge turnout thanks to the excitement among Democrats – who are mostly black – at having an outstanding black candidate with a crack at the White House. Race is never far from the surface in South Carolina. In the grounds of the elegant Statehouse, the Confederate flag blew in the breeze. In the morning Barack Obama visited at a Baptist church at Benedict College, a largely black university in Columbia (the last holdout for segregation in higher education in the US, it was finally ended by the courts in South Carolina 1963).
Michelle Obama does not like taking questions from the media, so yesterday she was the opening
act for a much friendlier, albeit younger, audience. She read two books to children at the South Carolina University's early learning centre as their parents looked on. Education is in a dreadful state in South Carolina where eight school districts - poor, rural and black - are suing the state for failing to fund education. The state says it is doing all it is required to do under the constitution which is to provide a "minimally adequate education".
Thanks Sly, but two of our campaign horses will be able to trumpet endorsements considerably more important than his this morning. The Grey Lady has spoken. In its editorial pages tomorrow, the New York Times will identify which candidates it prefers from each party. Any great surprises in the way she turns? Not really. One New Yorker gets the newspaper's nod...and one Arizonan.
Reporters always have a license to ask. What, I wanted to know, was the police officer doing emerging from his cruiser by the beach in Boca Raton with a fistful of rainbow coloured hoola-hoops? And why does he proceed to plant them edgewise in the sand to create what effectively is a long tube? Poodle training? Wave action energy generation? Dolphin trap? And why isn't he with every other member of the town's police force preparing to direct traffic for tonight's Republican primary debate?
It was a wistful Bill Clinton who entered the diner shortly after 8.30 yesterday morning. Even though he had been beaten up in absentia during the latest bad-tempered encounter between Barack Obama and Hillary the night before it was soon clear that the old pro was enjoying the limelight once again. He protested that he was no longer any good on the campaign trail,
because he was "rusty and out of practice," but he lit up the room when
came into the Lizard's Thicket and had the mostly black waitresses
swooning over him.
Scour the calendar of Democratic primaries beyond South Carolina this weekend and you will find no mention of Kensington or Calcutta. Not surprising, really. Last time we checked, foreigners were not invited to participated in the US presidential elections, although maybe they should given that the identity of the next occupant of the White House matters to more than just America. (I will spare you my usual rant as a green card holder here who pays his taxes and can't play either. Did I hear, "No taxation without representation"?) No, this is about Americans living abroad who will shortly be participating in a first-ever expatriate primary via the Internet.
It looks like Hilary Clinton is doing "a runner" from South Carolina for much of the rest of the week. This might be seen as wise given the nasty edge to tonight's debate where she used all the opposition research to hand to personally attack Barack Obama. She even dug up the allegations that he consorted with a slum landlord while he worked as a Chicago lawyer. Now her plan is to go on the hustings in California, Arizona, New Mexico, New Jersey and New York, all of which vote on 5 February, effectively conceding South Carolina to Obama.
It's been several days since I've seen Hillary on the stump and the withdrawal symptoms are severe. (Night sweats, loss of appetite, empty notebook.) How thrilling then to open the post today and find a glossy invitation to the New York premiere this Thursday of Hillary: The Movie, followed by swanky reception at the Bryant Park Grill. Never heard of it. But count me in.
My igorance is shocking. Turns out that this 90-minute documentary sponsored by a conservative group called Citizens United has been generating some early headlines and not just because of its less than charitable message. (The film reportedly trots out every Hillary-hater in the land from Dick Morris to Ann Coulter to explain why her becoming President would lead America into the abyss.) Rather it was plans by the producers to run TV ads about the film in states preparing to hold primary elections that the drew the ire of the judges. Either disclose who financed the film, they said, or forget the ads.
You'd think that American voters would know a few things about Obama by now. His campaign is deeply worried that an ugly internet rumour mill is doing more damage to his candidacy than all Bill Clinton’s intemperate outbursts. That explains why he spent what seemed an inordinate amount of time explaining to a largely black audience in South Carolina, that he is not, in fact, a muslim.
"I've been to the same church - the same Christian church - for almost 20 years," he said, "I was sworn in with my hand on the family Bible. Whenever I'm in the United States Senate, I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. So if you get some silly e-mail ... send it back to whoever sent it and tell them this is all crazy. Educate."
The Nevada Democratic Party has now sheepishly admitted that Obama did indeed earn one more national delegate than Clinton. So his campaign is not wrong, but it is disingenuous (or rather, reaching for whatever it can). Hillary won almost two-thirds of the Latino vote and edged Obama even for the union vote. She has all the momentum going forward. Delegate counts are close to irrelevant - they have played no role in any Democratic nominating contest since 1968. So the broader point remains. Obama lost, and any attempt to pretend otherwise is just spinning in the wind.
What’s striking about South Carolina is how the black and white communities live such separate lives that they do not even share the same electoral calendar. It passes without comment in these parts that the Republican electorate is white and the Democratic electorate largely black. Separate lunch counters for blacks and whites and other aspects of institutionalised racism were banned decades ago but in the South they have found ways of keeping the colour line going. Those voting in this Saturday's Democratic contest will be as overwhelmingly black as last Saturday's Republican electorate was predominantly white.
So Hillary Clinton won the Nevada caucus, right? Not if you ask the Obama campaign. Sure, the former First Lady got more votes - 51 per cent to 45, according to the official returns. But the Obama camp claimed last night that, thanks to the arcane mathematics of the caucus process, they had picked up one more delegate to the national nominating convention - 13 to Clinton's 12.
As political spin goes, this is as outrageous as anything to come out of the woodwork, in a campaign rife with outrage. (Earlier in the day, just to give one other example, Bill Clinton was virtually foaming at the mouth about Obama supporters intimidating his wife's voters, even as he stood inside a caucus site at a Las Vegas casino and urged everyone coming in - without a shred of intimidation, naturally - to vote for Hillary.)
There is consternation in John McCain’s campaign following the discovery that hundreds of electronic voting machines failed in the Myrtle Beach area of South Carolina where he is expected to do well.
As many as 90 per cent of the controversial iVotronic voting machines malfunctioned in some key districts. Attempts are being made to get a judge to order the polls to stay open, without much success.
Later today we will know if the creationist and preacher turned politician Mike Huckabee has become the Republican frontrunner for the presidency.
When he took the stage at Columbia University last night in his latest campaign event, he picked up an electric bass guitar and brought the house down with a version of "Sweet Home Alabama".
Huckabee’s Prairie Home Companion style of electioneering combines a populist touch that appeals to grungy students and an earnestness that the straight-laced Baptists love. Stripped of its folksy charm the Huckabee message is pretty reactionary. Dodgy on race and anti-gay, he is a storyteller who can weave a tale that has audiences eating out of the palm of his hand.
A strange thing happened to Hillary Clinton on the way to the Forum (the Forum in Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, naturally). Even as her surrogates - starting with her husband - were crowing last night about her 5-10 point lead in the last polls ahead of today's Nevada caucus, her chief strategist, rather weirdly, started laying out talking points in the event of her possible defeat.
Mark Penn's memo to the media was entitled "Will the polls be predictive in Nevada?" and oozed both resentment and paranoia in thick abundance. Essentially, he argued that the final polls were surely correct but that the Culinary Workers' Union backing Barack Obama would tip the playing field by packing special caucus sites along the Las Vegas Strip with casino workers they have mobilised.
Penn characterised the nine casino sites as "self-contained precincts" under union control and suggested they would, on their own, give Obama a 5 per cent edge across the entire state.
The argument is both mathematically incorrect and staggeringly dishonest.
It's the oldest trick in the foreign correspondent's book: arrive somewhere new, talk to the taxi driver, think you know it all. Except sometimes it really works.
Here's what my driver told me - free association style - as we zipped down the freeway from Las Vegas airport to a Bill Clinton event in the unlovely sprawling suburb of Henderson:
More than 140 years after Union and Confederate forces fought themselves to a pulp, mutant seeds of secession still thrive in South Carolina.
Outside a Mike Huckabee event, at the Flight Deck diner in the South Carolina state capital Columbia, several protesters wear Confederate flag-style jackets. Some hold up signs declaring that it is time for the state to declare independence from the US. One has a banner attacking Mike Huckabee: "Huckster to go Home" it reads.
Jim Hanks campaigns for the libertarian conservative candidate Ron Paul – when he not conspiring for South Carolina’s secession from the US. "We are secessionists," says Hanks, chairman of the state's chapter of Southern nationalist organisation, the League of the South, "we are not happy campers but time is on our side, the day of the grand empires is over."
"Politicians," he continues, "are too friendly with big corporations and that the only way forward is for the state to secede."
South Carolina has a well-deserved reputation as a firewall that immolates underdog candidates. Columbia is not only the capital of the small state, it is the national headquarters of slime politics. Some master practitioners are already back in business ahead of Saturday's Republican Primary.
"Make the bastards deny it!" was LBJ's timeless gambit when attacking his opponents. Forty years later the tactic can still work in South Carolina.
Here’s an interesting juxtaposition of circumstances. Dennis Kucinich, the Ohio congressman and outspoken darling of the American left, was excluded from last night’s Democratic candidates’ debate in Las Vegas, ostensibly because he does not enjoy enough voter support to merit a place at the podium. At the same time, Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who is never excluded from the Republican debates, went down in flames in the Michigan primary, finishing sixth with just 3 per cent of the vote.
The closer you look, the more absurd the logic of this gets, especially in a country that prides itself as a bastion of democratic values and free speech. Giuliani has now been beaten at the polls twice by Ron Paul, the libertarian congressman running for president as a Republican. And yet Paul has been excluded from televised debates at least as often as he has been invited. Most notably, Paul was told to take a running jump by Fox News on the eve of the New Hampshire primary, even though he had won more votes than Giuliani in Iowa just days earlier.
Nobody ever lost an election by coming over
all-patriotic, at least not in America. Hillary Clinton now wants all the
nation's children to recite the pledge of allegiance to the stars and stripes
every morning when they go to school.
At a town hall meeting in South Carolina she
volunteered: "Anybody who tells you that children cannot stand up and say the
pledge of allegiance in school is not telling you the truth... You got to understand that. It is
absolutely legal and right. And I personally believe every American child
should start the day saying the pledge of allegiance. I did, and I believe
every child should."
After his Michigan victory, people may start paying more attention to Mitt Romney's friends and his ostrich-like views on the subject of global warming. Much given to attacking plans for global warming legislation and rejecting efforts to make American gas guzzlers more efficient. Now he has surrounded himself with members of a cynical front group called the the American Environmental Coalition.
Irritation at the way American politicians invoke the possibility of terrorist attacks to score political points finally burst into the open during the Democrat’s debate tonight in Nevada. Barack Obama suggested that Hillary Clinton was engaging in the 'politics of fear' just like George Bush.
Did I say it was going to be a long night? Wrong again. Barely 10 per cent of Michigan's precincts had reported when NBC, CNN and the AP projected Mitt Romney the winner. So here we are, yet another Comeback Kid. Mitt is talking to his supporters down the corridor right now, the usual country club Republican crowd bathing in the light from their favourite candidate's starched white shirt.
Mitt! Mitt! Mitt! The chant is a bit skimpy, but the joy is real. You wonder what the Republican Party grandees are thinking right now however. Who the heck is the Republican front-runner now? And we haven't even reached the Florida primary, where Rudy Giuliani is still running strong in the polls. This is proving the most unpredictable race on the Republican side in nearly 60 years. Or just call it a mess.
Most polls in Michigan are closing right now. Mike Huckabee and John McCain have both decamped for South Carolina, which votes Saturday, but Mitt Romney has stayed behind, holed up in a room in the hotel a few floors above all of us here in the media room.
Will Romney be rewarded for staying put until the bitter end? Well, who knows, is the cautious answer. All we have so far is an exit poll cited on the Drudge Report showing him six points ahead of Mr McCain.
Still, there is still no cheering from across the atrium where all his supporters are currently coralled (with cash bar and nibbles). They know better than to take Drudge as gospel. Indeed, if this ends up being close, it could be a very long night.
While most of us wait in the snow to see which Republican will come top of voters' lists in Michigan, a fine little mess is developing in far-away Nevada where MSNBC, the cable network, is battling for its right to exclude marginal (but never boring) candidate Dennis Kucinich from a live debate this evening between Dems. Producers think three people slugging it out - Clinton, Obama and Edwards - is quite enough. They reason that Kucinich stands zero chance of winning the party's nomination. True, but...
As I write, Dennis - married, btw, to a British woman - is on a plane from Ohio to Las Vegas intent on participating anyway. A fools errand?
The election is moving from the quaintness of not quite door-to-door electioneering to the political equivalent of shopping at Wal-Mart.
After Michigan today, South Carolina will have its say over the next two weekends when the registered Republicans and then the Democrats vote. It is one of the poorest states in the nation. It also has a large African American electorate, which explains why the party bosses were keen to hear its voice, so soon after the white-bread states of Iowa and New Hampshire put their stamp on the presidential process.
The South Carolina race still has the charm of an old fashioned campaign, but it’s getting a lot harder for candidates without lots of money to get their message out.
You see a lot of gyms following the presidential candidates through the primary process. Lots and lots of school gyms, usually pasted with banners that children had been obliged to paint up for their esteemed visitors in red, white and blue (not unlike the one shown here...) Kalamazoo for McCain! Upton for Huckabee! Occasionally, we get to see the inside of a town hall or old peoples' centre.
It can get better than that, though. I still remember skimming the trees of Kentucky with then incumbent President George Bush Snr in 1992 in US Army helicopters during his doomed effort to fend off Bill Clinton in the general election.
Whether traveling around the country or in his Washington DC base, The Independent’s US Editor Leonard Doyle keeps a beady eye on the country’s low-down and dirty politics. Until recently The Independent’s Foreign Editor, he chronicles a country where George Bush exploits the politics of fear, and venal politicians are locked in a dizzying embrace with money and corporate interests and voters hardly get a look in.
He doesn’t like to advertise it but David Usborne is now covering his fifth US presidential election as correspondent for The Independent and The Independent on Sunday. Yet in 2008 he is no less addicted to the campaign circus as it wends its way all across the land than he was back in 1992 when George Bush Snr finally succumbed to a chaotically charismatic Bill Clinton (a certain Hillary at his side). His biggest ambition this time around: make it to North and South Dakota, the only remaining states he has not yet visited, preferably on someone's well-catered campaign plane.
Andrew Gumbel has been a US correspondent for the paper, based in Los Angeles, since 1998. His book Steal This Vote: Dirty Elections and the Rotten History of Democracy in America was published by Nation Books in 2005.
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