The Dead Guy

Another of the Clinton campaign and supporters cries of “fairness” is that the popular vote of the primaries should be considered when deciding the Democratic Presidential Nominee. If one angle doesn’t work, try another … and another … and another.

I will repeat the same response I have whenever someone tries to rewrite the rules. The DNC determines the Democratic Nominee by only one measure: Delegate count in sanctioned, legitimate elections. However, to quell the cries, I’ve laid out the math of the popular vote scenario. And in the end, Obama is projected to win the popular vote as well as just about every other concept the Clinton campaign wishes they could find a way to win (against the rules).

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This is not a new concept. FDR and The New Deal. The late Senator Paul Simon’s 1987 book by the same title as this post (Which I have a signed copy of - I had Senator Simon autograph it for me when he was in Iowa campaigning for the 1988 Democratic Presidential Nomination).

With a country that has resources and infrastructure in dire need of help, we need to put America back to work fixing these problems. Where could we start? Well, there are 10 pieces of U.S. infrastructure we must fix now!

And America needs jobs. The March 2008 unemployment rate is 5.1%. However, many thousands of unemployed workers fall off the rolls each month because they either can’t find a job while on benefits or just plain give up. The US Dept of Labor defines “unemployed” as those who “do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks, and are currently available for work.” It’s not a true look at how many Americans are out of work at any given time. When you add in the discouraged, marginally attached, and those working part-time but can’t find a full-time job - you end up with about 9% rate of unemployment.

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Mark Penn

NAFTA has not been good to America’s working families. It has been especially hard on working families in Ohio and Pennsylvania. President Bill Clinton signed NAFTA into law. Senator Hillary Clinton promoted it publicly while she was First Lady and up until she began her campaign for President, continued to say that NAFTA has been good to America. And recently, her former Chief Strategist and -still- pollster, Mark Penn, was lobbying to give the country of Colombia free trade status with America.

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Mark Penn

A big hullabaloo was made Sunday of Mark Penn “resigning” his position as Chief Strategist. However, Clinton Campaign Manager Maggie Williams states, “Mark, and Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates, Inc. will continue to provide polling and advice to the campaign.” This is what he (and his firm) did under his official position of “Chief Strategist”. Nothing has changed. He’s still doing the same work he did before, just without the title. This is nothing more than the ol’ 3-Card Monte trick and the “Jack” has been palmed so that the public can’t point him out.

***UPDATE (April 7 - 12:53 pm CDT) “Mr. Penn “is still going to be very much involved.”" - source The Atantic’s Marc Ambinder. Why did he resign? Well, it goes back to Free Trade and NAFTA. (more…)

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My first post in the blog is the math to the Democratic Presidential Nomination between Senator Barack Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton. This has been a highly contentious and very close race between two strong candidates and their campaigns.

The nomination, by DNC rules, is decided by delegate majority. Currently the magic number is 2,024 delegates to win the nomination. Neither Obama nor Clinton are able to attain that number of delegates without a certain amount of superdelegates. However, Obama currently holds the lead in elected delegates, while Clinton holds the superdelegate lead. More importantly is that Clinton’s lead in superdelegates has been greatly reduced since Super Tuesday, so that she holds a lead of approximately 30 superdelegates (at one time, that lead was over 100).

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