Of the voters that stated race was a important factor, blacks went 90% Obama while whites went 70+ for Clinton. It's by far the greatest dichotomy of any contests so far, though Alabama came close.

I don't find it that unexpected. In fact, I would have been surprised if Hillary won.

where can i see up to the minute results?

I don't find it that unexpected. In fact, I would have been surprised if Hillary won.

And what percentage of voters said race was an important factor?

Interesting how you have made a big deal about the Clinton campaign/supporters bringing race up and you do the same now. So white voters who vote for Clinton are racist but Black voters who vote for Obama are not? More importantly if 70% of white voters who list race as an important factor vote for Clinton it means almost 30% must be voting for Obama in large part because they would like to see a black man become president.

Seriously, you probably make the single largest contribution to posting stuff like this that is meant to be nothing else but an easy bait. I'm not denying that there are people out there who will not vote for Obama simply because he's black, in the same way some will not vote for Hillary because she's a woman. However, a white voter voting for Clinton does not make them automatically racist. If you feel going down to that level, though, it is only fair to bring up the other side. If Obama had the same beliefs, same history, same ability to inspire...if his character was exactly the same but he was a white man would you argue that he would lose a huge chunk of his support among African Americans? Are blacks automatically racist for voting for a black man?

WTF?

As you know, here at TPM we've been really curious what happened up in the Republican caucus in Washington state. For probably the first time in all the primaries and elections I've ever watched, the folks running the election decided to stop counting the votes with 13% of the votes uncounted. And this wasn't a 70-30 blow out, but a tight race where the two top vote getters were separated by less than 2% of the vote. Then this morning, state party chair Luke Esser decided to declare McCain the winner.

Now, when we were watching this last night and I was trying to examine the tea leaves this morning, I was assuming they'd come forward with some story that there was some hang up with the votes or some mechanical issue. Whether it would be true is another matter. But you'd think you'd at least come up with a good story.

But state party chair Luke Esser said that he just thought it was the right thing to do. According to Esser, sometime overnight Esser did some sort of back of the envelope statistical analysis of the the margin of McCain's lead (1.8%) and the number votes left uncounted (13%) and decided that Huckabee didn't have a chance and he'd shut the thing down and declare McCain the winner.

So was that a good idea? Here's Esser's rationale ...

“Maybe it would have been safer if I hadn't said anything. But it was an exciting and historic day for the state and I thought if I was confident about what the outcome would be I should share that with the people who had gone out to their caucuses.”

So it was just such a rollicking good time Esser figured he owed the participants a decision as long as he was confident what the outcome would be.

Clinton has just fired her campaign manager and now plans on positioning herself as the underdog. My how times have changed!

It worked for Obama.


Many, including yours truly, have been waiting more than four years for Hillary to run and have her chance. She was almost in as of not even a month ago. So, yeah she is now the underdog. I'm hoping this fuels her campaign some.

Hate Springs Eternal

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: February 11, 2008

In 1956 Adlai Stevenson, running against Dwight Eisenhower, tried to make the political style of his opponent’s vice president, a man by the name of Richard Nixon, an issue. The nation, he warned, was in danger of becoming “a land of slander and scare; the land of sly innuendo, the poison pen, the anonymous phone call and hustling, pushing, shoving; the land of smash and grab and anything to win. This is Nixonland.”

The quote comes from “Nixonland,” a soon-to-be-published political history of the years from 1964 to 1972 written by Rick Perlstein, the author of “Before the Storm.” As Mr. Perlstein shows, Stevenson warned in vain: during those years America did indeed become the land of slander and scare, of the politics of hatred.

And it still is. In fact, these days even the Democratic Party seems to be turning into Nixonland.

The bitterness of the fight for the Democratic nomination is, on the face of it, bizarre. Both candidates still standing are smart and appealing. Both have progressive agendas (although I believe that Hillary Clinton is more serious about achieving universal health care, and that Barack Obama has staked out positions that will undermine his own efforts). Both have broad support among the party’s grass roots and are favorably viewed by Democratic voters.

Supporters of each candidate should have no trouble rallying behind the other if he or she gets the nod.

Why, then, is there so much venom out there?

I won’t try for fake evenhandedness here: most of the venom I see is coming from supporters of Mr. Obama, who want their hero or nobody. I’m not the first to point out that the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality. We’ve already had that from the Bush administration — remember Operation Flight Suit? We really don’t want to go there again.

What’s particularly saddening is the way many Obama supporters seem happy with the application of “Clinton rules” — the term a number of observers use for the way pundits and some news organizations treat any action or statement by the Clintons, no matter how innocuous, as proof of evil intent.

The prime example of Clinton rules in the 1990s was the way the press covered Whitewater. A small, failed land deal became the basis of a multiyear, multimillion-dollar investigation, which never found any evidence of wrongdoing on the Clintons’ part, yet the “scandal” became a symbol of the Clinton administration’s alleged corruption.

During the current campaign, Mrs. Clinton’s entirely reasonable remark that it took L.B.J.’s political courage and skills to bring Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream to fruition was cast as some kind of outrageous denigration of Dr. King.

And the latest prominent example came when David Shuster of MSNBC, after pointing out that Chelsea Clinton was working for her mother’s campaign — as adult children of presidential aspirants often do — asked, “doesn’t it seem like Chelsea’s sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?” Mr. Shuster has been suspended, but as the Clinton campaign rightly points out, his remark was part of a broader pattern at the network.

I call it Clinton rules, but it’s a pattern that goes well beyond the Clintons. For example, Al Gore was subjected to Clinton rules during the 2000 campaign: anything he said, and some things he didn’t say (no, he never claimed to have invented the Internet), was held up as proof of his alleged character flaws.

For now, Clinton rules are working in Mr. Obama’s favor. But his supporters should not take comfort in that fact.

For one thing, Mrs. Clinton may yet be the nominee — and if Obama supporters care about anything beyond hero worship, they should want to see her win in November.

For another, if history is any guide, if Mr. Obama wins the nomination, he will quickly find himself being subjected to Clinton rules. Democrats always do.

But most of all, progressives should realize that Nixonland is not the country we want to be. Racism, misogyny and character assassination are all ways of distracting voters from the issues, and people who care about the issues have a shared interest in making the politics of hatred unacceptable.

One of the most hopeful moments of this presidential campaign came last month, when a number of Jewish leaders signed a letter condemning the smear campaign claiming that Mr. Obama was a secret Muslim. It’s a good guess that some of those leaders would prefer that Mr. Obama not become president; nonetheless, they understood that there are principles that matter more than short-term political advantage.

I’d like to see more moments like that, perhaps starting with strong assurances from both Democratic candidates that they respect their opponents and would support them in the general election.

Ironic that Obama has blown away two lily-white states today and faces a close contest in Louisiana. Exit polls show Louisiana white voters as quite racist, but that's another matter.

I won’t try for fake evenhandedness here: most of the venom I see is coming from supporters of Mr. Obama, who want their hero or nobody. I’m not the first to point out that the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality. We’ve already had that from the Bush administration — remember Operation Flight Suit? We really don’t want to go there again.

[You could also make the comment that A-A voters are sexist, if you want to travel down that road, which fortunately you didn't.