What should Dems do about Michigan & Florida delegates?
(PHOTO CREDIT: AP)
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
The Democratic Party is already under pressure from the Clinton campaign to seat the delegates from Florida and Michigan.
Last summer, the party stripped both states of all of their delegates for breaking the rules by moving up the dates of their primaries. At the time, all of the major candidates agreed to boycott the two states.
Fast forward 6 months and 8 consecutive losses for Hillary Clinton, and her campaign now wants the votes in Florida and Michigan to count toward delegates that would help her gain on Barack Obama.
Obama's campaign says this is a blatant attempt by Clinton to ignore the ground rules set last summer, adding that there's not a lot of appetite for this kind of stuff in the country or at the DNC.
Clinton didn't say a word last August when the party punished Florida. When it came to Michigan, Clinton chose to leave her name on the ballot while Obama removed his. She said at the time, "It's clear, this election they're having is not going to count for anything."
But once Clinton won in Michigan, she suddenly changed her tune: Now she's saying, "The people of Michigan and Florida have just as much of a right to have their voices heard as anyone else." I wonder if she would be saying that if Obama had won.
Some Democratic activists are also worried the party is alienating voters in some of the country's biggest battleground states, and some civil rights leaders say it amounts to disenfranchising voters in Florida and Michigan.
One option still out there for both states is to organize party-run elections that would count toward delegates.
Here’s my question to you: What should the Democratic Party do about the Michigan and Florida delegates?
Interested to know which ones made it on air?
Did Senate Ethics Committee go far enough with Larry Craig?
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i.l.cnn.net/cnn/2008/images/02/14/art.larry.craig.gi.jpg caption=" Senator Larry Craig."]
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
Want to hear an oxymoron? Senate Ethics Committee.
After months of investigating disgraced Senator Larry Craig who was arrested cruising the men's room in the Minneapolis Airport trying to have sex with an undercover cop, the Senate Ethics Committee is out with its response. They wrote Senator Craig a letter.
The committee said the Idaho Senator acted improperly and brought discredit on the Senate. They also said Craig's effort to withdraw his guilty plea after his arrest was an effort to duck the legal consequences of his actions.
The Senate Ethics Committee told Craig they believed he committed the crime to which he pled guilty, and that he entered his guilty plea knowingly.
Senator Craig also used $213,000 of campaign money for legal expenses and public relations in connection with his public toilet trolling arrest. Campaign money, donations made by people so he could run for office. The Senate Ethics committee didn't say there was anything wrong with that but that Craig should have asked their permission first.
Did they censure him? No. Did they ask him to resign? No. Are they going to expel him from the Senate? No. As for Craig, he says he'll "continue to serve the people of Idaho." Which means Larry Craig plans to remain in the United States Senate until his term expires in January.
Of course, when his disgusting behavior, arrest and guilty plea became public, Craig said he would resign at the end of September, but then he changed his mind. This is our government at work
Here’s my question to you: Did the Senate Ethics Committee go far enough with Larry Craig by simply sending him a letter saying he acted improperly?
Interested to know which ones made it on air?
Hillary Clinton’s base eroding?
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i.l.cnn.net/cnn/2008/images/02/14/art.texas.gi.jpg caption="]
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
In politics, the base is everything… and Hillary Clinton is losing hers.
Suddenly, in the Potomac Primaries this week, Clinton started to lose advantages she'd held up until this point among groups like women, whites, older and working-class voters. It's an ominous sign, and if it continues her dreams of being the next president could be doomed.
Exit polls show that Clinton is losing ground with groups that have been strongholds of her support. In Virginia and Maryland, she got the backing of only about four in ten women and three in ten men. She got the votes of 45% of people 65 and over and just more than one-third of people earning less than $50,000 a year or with high school degrees or less.
Obama won huge margins among African-Americans, young voters, higher income and better educated voters, and that didn't leave Senator Clinton anywhere to turn for support. Thus the lopsided victories for Obama. If this trend continues in the upcoming primaries in Texas and Ohio, it's pretty much over.
Meanwhile, a Time Magazine piece asks the question: "Is it too late for Hillary?" It explains how the Clinton campaign was built on inevitability, calling it "a haughty operation so confident it would have the nomination wrapped up by now that it didn't even put a field organization in place for the states that were to come after the megaprimary on February 5."
The article says while Clinton was busy running as a "pseudo incumbent", Obama seized on the theme of change and built a fundraising and ground operation that has topped Clinton's in almost every way.
Here’s my question to you: Why has Hillary Clinton suddenly started to lose her advantages among women, whites, older and working-class voters?
Interested to know which ones made it on air?
@jackcafferty on Twitter
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