North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper cracked down on the misleading and deceptive robo-calls by Women’s Voices. Women Vote that implied voters had to wait for and fill out a registration packet before they could vote. He stated that the calls are breaking state law. (Audio of the call here).
What is particularly egregious is that the calls went out after the registration deadline for the presidential primary — and were targeting minority neighborhoods, using a fictitious caller named “Lamont Williams.” In a measure of damage control, a press release landed in my inbox from WVWV in the late afternoon yesterday. A snippet is below the fold.
This is the explanation:
“We understand concerns have been raised about the source of phone calls placed by Women’s Voices, Women Vote. These calls were our sincere attempt to encourage voter registration for those not registered for the general election this fall. We understand North Carolina’s primary registration effort deadline was April 11. We apologize for any confusion our calls may have caused. Our intent and purpose was solely to call attention to the registration applications we hope will be completed and returned to the Board of Elections office making thousands more North Carolinians participants in one of the most important elections of our lifetimes.Obama delegate and board member of Women’s Voices, Women Vote, William McNary, also spoke up in defense of the organization.Women’s Voices. Women Vote has been in contact with the North Carolina State Board of Elections to work together to resolve any confusion regarding our voter registration efforts.
I have seen up close the work of Women’s Voices. Women Vote and know well the commitment, passion and leadership our organization has shown in helping make the voices of unmarried women and other underrepresented voters heard. There may have been mistakes made in this particular registration drive in North Carolina, but Women’s Voices, Women Vote’s motives were not malicious or intended in any way to confuse voters. Ironically, just the opposite. I know the staff is making every effort to right the situation.Yet something still isn’t right about this story. Take a look at this:
As for why the group’s calls had used an apparently fictitious persona named “Lamont Williams,” Johnson first said, “as far as I know, it is a recorded message.” But when I asked why the group had used that name when there is no such person working with the group, she said she did not know why the name had been used.There are some serious unanswered questions about the call itself as well as the strange ties to the Clinton campaign — they continue to turn up. Sue Sturgis at Facing South, which broke the story:The group also used a female caller named “Julie,” Johnson said (although she was not sure of the name). She told me that she would check to see if there was any particular reason why certain calls were made by Julie and others by Lamont.
But that practice would stop, she said. “This not identifying ourselves on the call, that’s not something that is going to continue as we move forward. Our phone calls in the future will correct any confusion about the calls.” When I asked if there had been any particular strategy behind not identifying the group as making the calls, she said no.
But one of the most striking connections between WVWV and the Clinton campaign — and one particularly relevant to a story involving what appear to be voter suppression efforts right before an election — was pointed out to us by a reader. He notes that the firm in charge of voter outreach for WVWV is MSHC Partners, whose president is Hal Malchow. Sourcewatch.org reports that Malchow was a member of WVWV’s leadership team.UPDATE: Chris Kromm of Facing South called the Virginia State Police, which investigated similar robo-calls before that Virginia’s primaries last February — that investigation concluded that the source of the calls was Women’s Voices Women Vote. Yet the mistakes occurred time and again in several other states.At the same time, MSHC also does direct mail and outreach for the Hillary Clinton campaign. In fact, the campaign owes MSHC $807,000, according to Politico.com.
* In Arizona last November, election officials were “inundated with complaints” after Women’s Voices sent a mailing erroneously claiming that recipients were “required” to mail back an enclosed voter registration form. Many who received the mailing were already registered; the mailing also gave the wrong registration date. Secretary of State Jan Brewer denounced the group’s tactics as “misleading and deceptive.” A similar mailing in Colorado that month “[drew] fire and caused confusion,” according to a state press release.What the defenders of WVWV have to come to grips with is that if this series of “mishaps” were occurring in a GOP organization, they would be ALL OVER IT. The bottom line is that, either purposely or by gross incompetence voter suppression resulted, and it wasn’t random. Where is the outrage?* In Wisconsin, state officials singled out Women’s Voices for misleading and possibly disenfranchising voters, stating in a press release [PDF]: “One group in particular — Women’s Voices. Women Vote, of Washington, D.C. — apparently ignored or disregarded state deadlines in seeking to register voters,” sending in registrations past the January 30 deadline and causing “hundreds of Wisconsin voters who think they registered in advance” to actually not be.
* Michigan officials ended up “fielding tons of calls from confused voters” after Women’s Voices did a February mailing to “380,000 unmarried women” — including numerous deceased voters and even more that were already registered. Sarah Johnson of Women’s Voices “seemed confused by the confusion,” the Lansing State Journal reported.
* A 1.5 million-piece Women’s Voices mailing in Florida falsely stated: “To comply with state voting requirements, please return the enclosed application.” Pasco County’s elections supervisor called it “disingenuous”; another said it created “a lot of unnecessary panic on behalf of the voters,” reported local newspapers. Sarah Johnson of Women’s Voice said, “I’m sorry to hear that.”
* By March, Women’s Voices was backing off the erroneous “registration is required” language, but there were still problems. For example, a mailing in Arkansas allowed that “registering to vote is voluntary,” but a clerk in Washington County reported that “the majority [of forms] sent back to the county come from registered voters, causing needless labor for office employees.”
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Mao said “Once is misfortune, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.” After half a dozen incidents, it is an established fact the WVWV is a vote suppression outfit. But, WTF is an Obama delegate doing hooking up with them?
Aaaah. Obama’s person defended WVWV. So is his campaign now behind this horror story?
No. Hillary Clinton’s campaign is. Because she’s teh evil! And Obama is not!
It seems this is well thought out operation to identify/register black and hispanic voters so they later can be given wrong information.
http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2008/5/1/84059/86757/73#c73
What Stoler and Becky Bond don’t admit to is that the registration period is not over. Voters can register and vote today and tomorrow. Potential voters are being badly misled.
1. WVWV doesn’t just target unmarried women. they target hispanics and african americans. so it’s not surprising at all that they are targeting black voters in n.c. they’ve done this in partnership with organizations like the NAACP in 2004 and National Council of La Raza more recently. they use their methods and infrastructure from the unmarried women work to get minorities on the roll. for instance, field groups and funders will pay them to do mail-based voter reg on african americans who don’t live in the urban core where they can be cost efficiently registered via door knocking and mass site registration (at bus stops for example). so where minority voters may be more geographically dispersed, WVWV is employed to do that registration by mail order.
2. there is always a spike in voter registration around primaries AFTER the registration deadline has passed. this is the best time to register voters. research confirms this. around primaries people are reminded that they need to register in time for the general. WVWV has done a lot of research in this area. they know when people are most likely to register. unfortunately, what makes sense in registering the largest aggregate number of voters for the general election at the lowest cost is having a confusing effect in the N.C. primary which is hotly contested and very charged.
3. WVWV has done a lot of research on how to layer communications so as to have the greatest registration rate at the lowest cost from its mail in programs. the calls increase the open rate of the envelopes with the voter registration forms. i’ve seen research they have done looking at volunteer calls before registration packets arrive v. robocalls. also i’ve seen research on the effect of who the call is from based on the gender and ethnicity of the targeted voter. are calls from a generic voter participation organization the most effective? or from an individual with a name and way of speaking that is similar to the target dem
via this thread
dailykos.com/story/2008/5/1/84059/86757/567/506918
I agree that this seems a bit strange. I read the same post that squashed read last night and it really seems difficult to tell whether this is an error due to incompetence or whether this really is a coordinated voter suppression effort. I’m glad its being investigated.
I do want to point out that the southernstudies.org link is a little misleading about the effects of WVWV’s error - at least in the WI case. WVWV’s error in not getting the registrations in on time wouldn’t have prevented anyone from voting, because WI has same-day voter registration. That doesn’t mean its ok, because you need to bring additional identification to the polls if you aren’t yet registered, so some people may not have been able to vote, but its probably not as big of a problem as it is for people in states that do not have same-day registration.
Is there any way to broaden this story to include the chilling effect that the Supreme Court just had on minority, working class, and elderly voters (sometimes, all three are the same person)? I think that these campaign tricks can be nasty, but the real losses are felt with gerrymandering and hoops that voters have to jump through (ID laws, faulty/sparse voting booths). I think that focusing in on our horse race obscures the fact that the changed judicial landscape made disenfranchisement that much easier.
I don’t think people are getting how bad this is. It means people get milsed into not voting, chum. When you give them false information (please, explain the significance of “Lamont” and the not-identifying the source of the call in a not-shady way?) and tell them to wait around, they get confused. They certainly don’t line up for the early voting in person if they’re waiting for a package in the mail that never comes. It’s funny– the Obama camp is doing ground-level, door-to-door, standing at the intersection voter registration and telling people over and over to “go vote early, here’s how” and WVWV is doing… this. Which one of these camps do you believe when they say we’re just trying to get people into the process?
I’m not saying that WVWV is a Clintonista outfit– although the facts kind of are– I’m just saying that if Clinton is any kind of a progressive leader, she needs to smack them down and promote some honest vote-getting.
The hillary crew is working over time trying to snuff this story. amusing. (there is something funky in this operation)
http://southernstudies.org/facingsouth/2008/04/same-firm-does-voter-contact-work-for.asp
Same firm does voter contact work for robo-call group, Clinton campaign
In our earlier investigation revealing the outfit behind the misleading and illegal robo-calls made to North Carolina voters just days before a critical primary election, we reported that questions have been raised about the connections between that group — the D.C.-based nonprofit Women’s Voices Women Vote — and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.
We noted, for example, that WVWV Founder and President Page Gardner has donated generously to Clinton and to HILLPAC, but has given nothing to the Obama campaign, according to OpenSecrets.org. We also noted that WVWV Executive Director Joe Goode previously worked as a pollster for Bill Clinton, and that WVWV board member John Podesta is the former chief of staff for President Clinton as well as a Hillary Clinton donor.
There are other connections that we did not mention, but that have been pointed out in comments here and at other sites. For example, Maggie Williams is a former member of WVWV’s leadership team, according to Sourcewatch.org; she also served as chief of staff to First Lady Hillary Clinton and to the Clinton Foundation in New York, and she was named the manager of Clinton’s campaign in February. And Holly Schadler, WVWV’s attorney, helped set up the Back to Business Committee in 1994 to defend Bill and Hillary Clinton from attacks by political enemies.
that Open Left commenter ibaxter put together
WVWV spokeswoman is quoted on Feb 9th saying:
http://hamptonroads.com/2008/02/virginia-voter-registration-effort-proves-legit-after-fears-scam
Sarah Johnson, communications director for the organization, said Friday that not including information about the source of the voter registration effort was “absolutely an accidental omission.”
She said the group was changing its nationwide phone alerts to make clear who is coordinating the effort.
and then Sarah Johnson is quoted again today, April 30:
tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/04/nonprofit_womens_voices_women.php#more
But that practice would stop, she said. “This not identifying ourselves on the call, that’s not something that is going to continue as we move forward. Our phone calls in the future will correct any confusion about the calls.” When I asked if there had been any particular strategy behind not identifying the group as making the calls, she said no.
————–
yep, they are doing this on purpose.
They’ve done the same thing in at least 10 different states — Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin — and have been reprimanded by various secretaries of state’s offices and yet, in each case, their spokes person, Sarah Johnson, trots out to express how sorry and surprised she is for the confusion which was certainly never intended. I find this risible and I find it shocking that people continue to defend it.
Aaaah. Obama’s person defended WVWV. So is his campaign now behind this horror story?
No. Hillary Clinton’s campaign is. Because she’s teh evil! And Obama is not!
Mr. McNary is an Obama delegate, but he’s also a WVWV board member. Upon hearing of this problem, he had 3 options: resign his seat; start a boardroom war to oust senior management (either for gross incompetence or corruption); or stay loyal to the org and defend it in public He quickly chose the latter, which tells me where he’s chosen to stack his chips. Unfortunately for him, the more we hear about this story, the more it looks like this was a bad move.
Either he’s been a very passive and hands-off board member, or executive management has been very successful in keeping details of their sleazy side operation and bungling away from the boardroom (both situations occur frequently in the for-profit world, but non-profits aren’t immune from it). Whatever Obama supporters there are in WVWV, the day-to-day policy decisions in any organisation are made by upper management. And in WVWV it’s stacked with Hillary supporters.
Again I’d ask: which Democratic Presidential candidate benefits from these shady robo-calls in multiple states? Until Hillary’s supporters can answer that question as honestly as the rest of us can, we can’t take their excuses and obfustications seriously.
At this point, what is there to indicate that this has ANYTHING to do with Hillary Clinton? The Obama supporter who’s ensconced in the organization already said there’s nothing to it.
But wait… Maybe it’s a double sooper seekrit campaign to ricochet outrage off Clinton and help Obama! Or to make it look like Obama would benefit, which looks opportunistic, which benefits Clinton! Diabolical! ZOMG, to the virtual barricades!
“Where is the outrage?” Seriously? There’s a ridiculous outrage surplus.
I never thought I’d read on a feminist blog that registering women to vote is a bad thing. Christ.
I know people are very worked up about this, but I happen to personally know a number of people directly involved in the organization. WVWV is not some astroturf vote suppression organization, and they’re not affiliated with either of the primary campaigns. They’re made up of supporters of both candidates and they really don’t have a dog in the primary fight. Their objective is increasing turnout among unmarried women in the general election, a demographic that is disproportionately likely not to vote, but also disproportionately likely to vote Democratic when they do vote.
I’m not going to apologize for them. No question the robocalls were badly done. They absolutely should have identified the group behind them. I would go so far as to say that the whole thing was grossly incompetent.
But it’s just incorrect to say that they’re trying to influence the primary in one direction or another. A voter registration drive HAS to take place during the primary season, especially one as protracted as this year’s. In the end, if they end up registering a large number of unmarried women in key states, there’s no question it will help whichever Democrat is the nominee in November.
Tamens, that comment was the comment of a fucking trooll. The objection was that this is a group that helps discourage turnout, apologizes and then discourages turnout in another state. Rinse, repeat 11 fucking times. Calling themselves a group dedicated to registering women does not stop them from being a voter suppression group. Feminists will oppose this for the same reason a civil rights group will oppose the white citizens council, even when they call themselves civil rights activist.
If you want to argue it is unfair to hold Clinton responsible for this - well it is a point on which reasonable people can disagree. If you want to defend WV from charges of being a voter suppression outfit, you are a troll or a fool.
I never thought I’d read on a feminist blog that registering women to vote is a bad thing. Christ.
Want to know how pathetic that accusation is, tamens? It’s so lame that not even FlipYrWhig would try to make such a blatantly baseless statement (although the FUD continues to issue from that corner, too).
Neither Pam nor Amanda said any such thing, nor did anyone else in this thread. The statements you claim to have read here are as non-existent as those sniper bullets Hillary said she dodged in Bosnia.
At this point, what is there to indicate that this has ANYTHING to do with Hillary Clinton?
Her campaign manager helped run the organization.
I’ll say up front that I am an Obama supporter. I am suspicious of the possible Clinton link but don’t have enough information to judge with certainty.
The basic fact is that this group needs to be investigated, which apparently the NC attorney is doing. Either they are grossly stupid and incompetent or this whole thing is a plot to confuse and disenfranchise certain voters. Either way, their conduct is not acceptable. No one should be able to do something like this in so many states and just shrug their shoulders.
“Where is the outrage?” Seriously? There’s a ridiculous outrage surplus.
An organization has been reprimanded 10 separate times by the attorneys general of 10 different states for illegal tactics and there’s an “outrage surplus”?
I guess any action at all is fair as long as your candidate wins.
There is a super-delegate tracking counter widget that can be installed on WordPress blogs; I have one installed myself.
Barack Obama has had a bad month: he got hammered in Pennsylvania, the professional media started talking about whether a black candidate could win, Jeremiah Wright became more and more of a problem, and new polls have Hillary Clinton defeating John McCain by a significant margin with Mr Obama only up a couple of points. It would seem that everything is trending Mrs Clinton’s way.
But, when I look at that super-delegate counter, which had Mrs Clinton up by about 25 when I installed it, while the numbers fluctuate, the only trend is that Mr Obama keeps narrowing her lead amongst the superdoopers; it’s down to 16 now.
So, why isn’t Mrs Clinton gaining any ground? What’s going on out there that, with all of this supposedly devastating news for Mr Obama, he’s maintaining his lead?
Hmmm. Somehow the last line, “Do you think it’s because people simply don’t trust Hillary Clinton, and stuff like this is an example of why?” didn’t go through.
“So, why isn’t Mrs Clinton gaining any ground? What’s going on out there that, with all of this supposedly devastating news for Mr Obama, he’s maintaining his lead?”
This is what happens when you assume that what Chris Matthews and his ilk are blabbering about represents anything close to reality.
As Digby says, they live in The Village, while the rest of us live here. And seldom doth the twain meet…
The more I’m reading about this “scandal,” the less I think it has anything to do with voter suppression. You do know this is a registration drive for the NOVEMBER election, right? The group claims that the best time to register is just post primary, so calling right before a primary seems to fit. Yes, it’s stupidly confusing, but attempts to register women and minorities seems pretty much opposite of what I see some foaming-at-the mouth commenters are accusing.
And forget the Hillary link. This group should certainly get their lists correct, AND they should call people up and correct the confusion, AND they should have caller ID.
However, to call this evil and Rovian is about as stupid as equating Obama with Ronnie Reagan. But maybe I should just say that my Obama compatriots are “spinning” to say otherwise.
Kiss the Supreme Court goodbye for two generations if we don’t stop this stupidity. Bash Hillary for the insane gas tax “holiday,” but be a bit more realistic about what this is all about.
(faints dead away)
OMFG! Sharon AND Dana are … are … MAKING SENSE!
making sausage … strange bedfellows … arrggghhhh…
Again, if they hadn’t done this exact same thing in multiple states previously and been reprimanded by other attorneys general, they might get a pass. But when you do the same “stupidly confusing” thing multiple times in multiple states over the course of several months even though multiple attorneys general have pointed out that you’re doing something illegal, there’s something more than a silly mistake going on here.
At this point, what is there to indicate that this has ANYTHING to do with Hillary Clinton?
Except for the close political relationships between Hillary and WVWV’s senior executives and some board members, and the fact that the org’s Rovian efforts (or errors) worked in Hillary’s favour in state primaries, there’s not much to directly connect the Clinton campaign to this voter-suppression outfit.
Which is precisely the point of using a cut-out, or allowing a surrogate to commit shady acts on one’s behalf.
“Where is the outrage?” Seriously? There’s a ridiculous outrage surplus.
Someone has to make up for the outrage deficit shown thus far by Hillary in regard to this business. At the very least, in the interest of dispelling an very real appearance of impropriety, she should be announcing that she in particular and the Dems in general don’t need the help of a bunch of incompetent clowns. But all we have is silence.
Compare and contrast with how Obama dealt with Rev. Wright — he got out in front of the problem immediately, before it became a real problem, and used it as an opportunity to discuss race and class. That’s pro-active leadership. And now, despite the efforts of others to keep Wright in the MSM spotlight, Obama’s view is prevailing amongst younger and many older Democrats: Wright is yesterday’s identity-politics activist using outmoded Boomer rhetoric and tactics.
Sort of like a certain politician we know …
Ms Kate: I think the Sharon commenting on this thread might be different from the Sharon to whom you have referred. That Sharon supports John McCain, as I do.
That said, Senaor Obama is clearly the less objectionable Democrat from my point of view. Not only do I think that he’d be easier for Mr McCain to defeat, if the Democratic nominee is elected in November, most Republicans could at least tolerate Mr Obama, while we’d absolutely loathe the idea of Mrs Clinton as president. That is certainly my position.
There are MANY Obama supporters on the board of this organization. It’s a non-story. At this point, it’s become outrage masquerading as righteousness.
I’ve been posting here since before Amanda even came on board. On feminism, sexuality, pop culture topics, I’m still loving it. On the primary, not so much.
Whether or not Hillary Clinton is in some way involved is a non-story.
Whether or not the organization been deliberately suppressing minority voters is very much a story, especially given the shenanigans surrounding the 2004 elections. Again, if you’ve been warned multiple times in multiple states that your tactics are illegal and you continue using them, “oops!” is no longer a good enough response.
Dana May 1, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Barack Obama has had a bad month: he got hammered in Pennsylvania,
The campaign gets the minimum (-9%) The worst case scenario was 10%, and everybody was hoping 5%.
It’s a question of we could have done better. But definitely not “hammered”.
Come on. you know that…
There are MANY Obama supporters on the board of this organization. It’s a non-story.
How about Obama supporters in senior management?
In any case, you seem to imply that this is neither gross serial incompetence nor deliberate voter supression? Either situation is indeed a story, as either involves an organisation impeding Democratic votes. What do you think is going on?
I have to say that Dana, for all his wrongheaded support of McSame and delusions about Obama being easier to defeat, is showing more candour here than Hillary’s supporters have.
I’m still loving it. On the primary, not so much.
I hear that a lot from Clinton supporters on various blogs. Understandable, since the blogs are concerned with campaign issues other than lapel pins, and because Hillary’s campaign has given us one gaffe after another to discuss. No wonder she’s so frustrated with the “netroots.”
We’re all tired of the primary. If we’re lucky, Hillary will get over her sense of entitlement and concede to Obama sometime in June. Then we can all get back to mocking St. John’s supporters.
HOLY COW…!!!
Hillary team is so afraid, they pull string and get free TV!
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/5/1/14578/83009/309/507176
Politico is reporting that “This Week” on ABC will hold a Hillary Townhall on Sunday with questions from voters in North Carolina and Indiana.
I’m not up on the election laws but previously Hillary paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for her townhalls broadcasts on obscure cable channels. Now ABC is handing her free airtime on their national network 2 days before the primary in Indiana and North Carolina.
This just proves that the Corporate Media will go through untold lengths to prop up the fading Clinton Campaign. I call for ABC to open up their network to all the other candidates.
squashed, I’m with you on that suggestion. Such blatant favors need to be parallel ones.
Still, it seems like the amount of overlap in Hillary and Barak supporters in this voter registration group shifts the focus to their competence and/or motives rather than blanket smears on particular candidates.
Again, I hear silence about the biggest voter suppression issue, the Supreme Court’s upholding of ID laws in FREAKIN’ INDIANA. So, are actual voters the issue, or is it just a horse race? I’m a little more concerned about actual enfranchisement beyond the primaries, I am.
To be fair, according to the Politico item:
“ABC News has also extended offers to both Sen. Barack Obama and John McCain, according to an ABC spokesperson.”
There’s no point in McCain accepting, of course — even given his embarrassing “win” in Pennsylvania, he does himself no good engaging the public.
Obama has a mild dilemma: submit himself to another go-round with George The Empty Suit and citizen luminaries like Nash McCabe, Lapel-Pin Inspector; or cede Hillary all that airtime. Guess he’ll take the latter. With any luck, the Kossaks will infiltrate enough people to ask Hillary some uncomfortable questions.
Making the same mistake eleven times in a row makes incompetence seem a pretty unlikely explanation. After the first two times you are informed your campaign committed felonies, someone guilty of only honest mistakes would do something to prevent a third felony violation. The voter suppression side effect is a feature not a bug. Some things really have to malice. I don’t believe in innocent forcible rape, and I don’t believe in innocent unintended multiple instance voter suppression.
You want to argue about motive, fine. But there has to be a motive; the voter suppression has to be an intentional effect. T
TG May 1, 2008 at 4:42 pm
“ABC News has also extended offers to both Sen. Barack Obama and John McCain, according to an ABC spokesperson.”
yeah come on. It’s steph. (Clinton ex communication director)
The entire program will be SNL-esque, propped on Hillary side.
1. it is designed to patch Hillary’s connection
2. design to kick everybody else in the groin.
If I wer to make strategy. I’ll let Hillary do the TV jibe, then slam her with ad. later on. She is going to lie for sure in it. (plus, what wil she do? talk about something else? that’ll trigger an official complain.)
Oh, it is worse and worse.
If I wer to make strategy. I’ll let Hillary do the TV jibe, then slam her with ad. later on. She is going to lie for sure in it. (plus, what wil she do? talk about something else? that’ll trigger an official complain.)
That gives me an idea for another option: Obama refuses to take part in the dumb-show, but demands his share of the airtime for ads or a pre-recorded speech. McCain will follow suit, reducing everyone’s airtime to 1/3, but it still works out fairly well.
Squashed wrote:
No, I don’t know that. Way back in college, one of my favorite political science professors told us that a 10% victory was considered a “landslide,” and that’s what Mrs Clinton earned. If you are going to use percentages where the last significant digit is a whole number, it’s 10%, not 9%.
From The New York Times:
Hillary Clinton —-1,260,444—– 54.6%
Barack Obama ——-1,046,220—– 45.4%
To say that Mr Obama improved his position from months earlier, or that he did better than expected is just spin; I want him to win the Democratic nomination, and I even changed my registration and voted for him in the Pennsylvania primary, but I can still recognize hammered.
Mrs Clinton won 60 out of 67 counties, including Bucks and Montgomery, where Mr Obama had hoped to do much better; they’re largely upper-middle class white counties, with high education levels, the section of the white population in which he has done better in the past.
I wouldn’t put much stock in how Pennsylvania voted. It’s a big eastern state, with a lot of delegates, sure, but nothing much to say about how the rest of the nation will vote.
More DC/Big East Coast narcissism - shrug.
Dana May 1, 2008 at 6:33 pm
No, I don’t know that.
well now you know. (This is PA primary we are talking right? )
The problem with Obama, he doesn’t control old style party machine and large chunck of media. That is the point why changing guard is very hard.
A lot of party people who support Hillary owe their politics to Hillary. (Those DNC super delegates?)
10% was expected for a long time because obama was behind like 20%. (if you note a lot of states Obama wins 20%. Your landslide theory works for general election, not party’s primary where the voters are different)
This group is lead by VERY people who run Hillary campaign.
www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/5/2/64733/51431/906/507604
NPR also makes clear that WVWV has many strong ties to Hillary Clinton. They point this out not just in the All Things Considered piece but in a comprehensive table that accompanies the story on its website. I was aware of many of WVWV’s connections to Hillary that are in the table, but some of them were new to me. Here are highlights from the table:
1. Page Gardner, founder and president
Connections: Served as as deputy politcal director for Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign and presidential transition team.
Donations: $4,200 to Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign in 2005; $2,500 to HillPAC in 2006.
2. Joe Goode, executive director
Connections: Pollster for Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign.
3. Micheal Lux, board member
Connections: Worked on Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, and later served as his special asst. for public liaison.
Donations: $2,500 to Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign in 2000-2001; $1,000 to HillPAC in 2002.
4. Mimi Mager, board member
Connections: Member of the Clinton-Gore transition team; founding member of Emily’s List, which supports Hillary.
Donations: $2,000 to Hillary Clinton in 2007.
5. John Podesta, board member
Connections: Former chief of staff for President Clinton.
Donations: $2,300 to Hillary Clinton in 2007; $1,000 to HillPAC in 2001; $2,000 to Hillary’s Senate campaign in 2000.
6. Hal Malchow, leadership team
Connections: Hillary Clinton’s campaign owes Malchow’s firm, MSHC Partners, nearly $1 million for printing expenses.
Donations: $2,000 to Hillary’s Senate campaign in 1999-2000 and $2,100 in 2005.
7. Pat Griffin, leadership team
Connections: Former top advisor to President Clinton; served as asst. to the president for legislative affairs.
Donations: $4,600 to Hillary Clinton in 2007; $3,000 to Clinton from 2000-2005.
8. Maggie Williams, leadership team
Connections: Current campaign manager for Hillary Clinton, and many other ties to the Clintons.
Donations: $4,600 to Hillary Clinton in 2007.
From The Field Negro, a very liberal Philadelphia bloger, comes the story that the Clinton campaign migyht just have slightly retouched a picture of Mr Obama in an ad, to make him appear “blacker.”
The differences are very subtle, enough to allow “plausible deniability” to those inclined to give Mrs Clinton the benefit of the doubt.
I am not so inclined.
http://themoderatevoice.com/politics/scandals/19320/jackboot-feminism-new-details-emerge-on-wvwvs-voter-suppression-scandal/
That is a transcript of the robocalls that voters in predominately black districts, which is to say Barack Obama-leaning areas, received in a ham-handed voter suppression effort by Women’s Voices Women’s Vote that was clearly intended to try to help Hillary Clinton in the run-up to the May 6 primary in North Carolina.
WVWV president Page Gardner has apologized for any “confusion” caused by her group.
But it is obvious that Gardner is playing the news media and others for suckers because the more we learn about the high-tech suppression effort the more obvious it becomes that it was black North Carolinians whom the women’s advocacy group was trying to confuse in the service of getting one of their own elected — a proclaimed feminist who like them has mastered the manly art of dirty politics.
It is minorly ironic that Jeff Fecke over at Shakesville has been one of the bloggers to depants Gardner in providing details of WVWV’s jackbooted approach to electoral politics. Ironic because certain Shakesville contributors expend considerable bandwidth pushing back against the perceived enemies of feminism, often in locker room language.
Anyhow, Fecke details the insidiousness of the WVWV effort, which is now under criminal investigation by North Carolina authorities:
* The robocalls made no allowance for people who already were registered to vote, merely stating that the recipients of the message must sign and date a packet mailed out by WVWV and returned so they would be able to vote.
* The calls did’t note that the packets had zip to do with registering for the primary.
* Primary registration already was closed when the packets were mailed out and calls were made.
* The calls contained no identifying information such as a call-back number or mention of who was underwriting and making the calls, which is one of the several violations of state law perpetrated by WVWV.
So who the heck is Lamont
The end (Mrs Clinton’s victory) will justify the means. From flower children of the 1960s to deceivers of black voters in North Carolina in 2008. A long, strange trip indeed.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2008/04/clinton_nixon_nixon_clinton.cfm