Barack Obama
scientificactivist | February 21, 2008Two weeks before what could be a decisive Texas primary, Barack Obama picked up the endorsement Monday of Congressman Chet Edwards, whose district includes Texas A&M University, the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library, and George W. Bush's Crawford ranch. I'm not going to go so far as to say that I called this one, but I certainly pointed out last week that Edwards was saying some pretty favorable things about Obama (although his office said he hadn't taken an official position yet). I usually don't track endorsements too closely, but I think this one is significant because not only…
scientificactivist | February 13, 2008Yesterday, Barack Obama won all three contests (Maryland, Virginia, and DC) in the "Potomac Primary", all by sizable margins. This means that he has won all eight contests that have occurred since Super Tuesday. He now leads the delegate race--even when superdelegates are included--and he maintains an incredible amount of momentum going into the February 19th contests of Hawaii and Wisconsin, where he is expected to do quite well again. However, his delegate lead is still slim, and if he wants to become the true frontrunner, he'll have to have a strong showing on March 4th, particularly in…
scientificactivist | February 10, 2008Barack Obama swept all three Democratic contests yesterday, winning the popular vote convincingly in Louisiana (57-36), Washington (68-31), and Nebraska (68-32). In case there were still any doubts about his broad appeal, for the record that's a largely African-American Southern state (Louisiana), a white progressive West Coast state (Washington), and a white conservative red state (Nebraska). This means that Obama and Hillary Clinton are virtually tied in delegate counts, with Clinton holding a small advantage if preliminary superdelegate counts are included, and Obama holding a larger…
scientificactivist | February 6, 2008On the morning after Super Tuesday, the dust has mostly settled, although all results aren't set in stone quite yet. There weren't any huge surprises last night, so there's no need to go into a detailed accounting here (at least not right now), but for a little more, The New York Times has a nice, succinct analysis of where the presidential races stand after last night. (The Times also has a nice graphical summary of last night's results.)
As expected, McCain widened his lead in the Republican race, although he didn't win big enough to claim the prize just yet. Huckabee did surprisingly…
scientificactivist | February 5, 2008Although Hillary Clinton has been the perceived favorite to win the Democratic nomination since the 2008 presidential race began, Barack Obama has been picking up momentum continuously for the last week and a half, starting with his unexpectedly large win in South Carolina and leading up to today's Super Tuesday vote. Twenty-two states will hold Democratic primary elections today (to decide the fate of about half of the Democrats' delegates), and the largest of these is California. Here, although Clinton was once favored, Obama has taken the lead in the polls. And, as of today, he leads…
scientificactivist | February 5, 2008For one reason or another when I was a student at Texas A&M University, I seemed to find myself in the student paper, The Battalion, fairly frequently--whether I was writing a letter to the editor, being quoted in a story, or reporting science news (as I did during my last semester there). It's been a while, but in a throwback to the 2001-2005 era, I'm once again quoted in a story today about presidential candidates using social networking sites:
"A candidate who doesn't take advantage of this is clearly out of the loop and out of touch with young people," said Nick Antis, class of 2005…
scientificactivist | January 30, 2008Today John Edwards officially dropped out of the race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. However inevitable this was, it was still sad to see it finally happen. Edwards fought a clean, issues-driven campaign, but it wasn't enough to compete against the wild but justified excitement of the prospect of a formative Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton presidency. It's unfortunate to see Edwards leave, but I'm sure many more good things from him are still to come.
The obvious question--one that remains to be answered--is who will his supporters turn to now? The two overriding themes…
scientificactivist | January 28, 2008The Democratic Party is doing the very cool thing this year of giving Americans living abroad their own delegation to the 2008 Democratic Convention. This means that anyone currently living outside of the US can vote in the Democratic Presidential Primary for their own 11 delegates. Voting will take place online from February 5-12 and in person on some of those dates at a variety of locations. To be able to vote online, you just need to register (for free!) with Democrats Abroad by January 31st. Even better, though, to vote in person you just need to show up with your passport. You don't…
scientificactivist | January 27, 2008Last night, Barack Obama won the South Carolina Democratic Primary with 55% of the vote, doubling second place finisher Hillary Clinton's 27% share of the vote. John Edwards came in third with a disappointing 18% of the vote. Nobody should have expected Obama not to win South Carolina, but a victory of almost 30 points was not widely anticipated. He needed a big victory to gain some momentum going into Super Tuesday (February 5th), and he certainly got that last night.
While Clinton still seems to be the favorite candidate of the Establishment, the numbers tell a different story. Last…
grrlscientist | January 9, 2008tags: politics, NH primary, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, 2008 Presidential primaries, news coverage
Past Primary campaign buttons from the collections of the NH Historical Society and the NH Political Library.
Image: WBUR, Boston's NPR affiliate.
I was hanging out in my local watering hole last night, watching the primary coverage for New Hampshire on television until the results were announced. While I was there, I overheard a particularly empassioned conversation between the bartender (a musician in his mid-forties) and a "regular" (a medical doctor in his mid-fifties) where they were…
scientificactivist | September 20, 2007While thousands march today in protest of modern day racial injustice, it's pretty difficult to not be aware of the Jena Six. Certainly all of the Democratic presidential candidates are.
Apparently, though, staying up to date on current events isn't a prerequisite for the Republicans.
Asked about the Jena Six case today on his way into a San Antonio fundraiser, [Fred] Thompson said, "I don't know anything about it."
Thompson's comments come as he and his Republican colleagues are taking increasing flack for ignoring minority voters, particularly for skipping out on forums aimed at black and…
scientificactivist | August 21, 2007Although he took some flack for a similar stance in last month's CNN/YouTube Democratic Presidential Debate (see video at bottom of post), Barack Obama has an opinion piece published in The Miami Herald today in which he stresses the need for bilateral talks with Cuba and promises to "grant Cuban Americans unrestricted rights to visit family and send remittances to the island."
The primary means we have of encouraging positive change in Cuba today is to help the Cuban people become less dependent on the Castro regime in fundamental ways. U.S. policy must be built around empowering the Cuban…
scientificactivist | August 12, 2007Last week, I attended a seminar at the Oxford Internet Institute presented by J. Ignacio Criado and entitled "Political Blogging in Campaign and Political Communication: Political Leadership 2.0?" (see my announcement and the event's abstract here). My impressions are mixed, particularly in relation to the relevance of the seminar and the methods and conclusions of the presenter. I'll touch on these methodological issues briefly, but the main point that I took home was this: campaign blogging is fundamentally different from everyday political blogging, and it doesn't truly fit into the…
scientificactivist | June 27, 2007The results of a New York Times/CBS News/MTV poll were released today, and they by and large indicate that young adults today are more progressive (based on stances on individual issues and on personal identification) than their parents' generation. Although this liberalization has been a general tendency in America (and fits the stereotype of the idealistic liberal youth), some may have worried that the rise of the religious right over the last few decades was indicative of a reversal of this trend. That's not the case.
The pollsters interviewed 659 Americans (giving a margin of error of…
scientificactivist | April 20, 2007On Wednesday, when the Supreme Court upheld a federal ban on "partial-birth abortions" in its 5-4 decision on Gonzalez v. Carhart, it dealt a potentially huge setback to US reproductive freedoms. Although intact dilation and extraction makes up only a small subset of all abortions, this ruling is significant in that it explicitly does not allow for exceptions when the mother's health is at risk. The decision is also notable in its lack of adherence to Court precedence, its lack of reliance on solid legal reasoning, and its ignorance of medical opinion. Much can and should be written about…
scientificactivist | January 4, 2007The "liberal media" is at it again, and by "liberal" I don't mean it in the political sense. No, I'm talking about the media relying on liberal (sloppy) oversight/editorial practices.
After CNN slipped up Monday by broadcasting a graphic with the question "Where's Obama?" overlaid on a photo of Osama bin Laden, Yahoo News followed suit yesterday by including the caption "Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaida" under a photo of Senator Barack Obama. Corey Anderson broke the story and Greg Sargent has more.
Here it is:
If there is any confusion lingering still, let me state definitively here that…