Are you tired yet? After turning off your TV last night have you read the morning newspapers or listened to talk radio? We have just watched non stop TV coverage of the New Hampshire primaries where Sen Clinton, the Democratic party victor, won 9 delegates for the upcoming national convention. Sen Obama, while finishing thousands of votes behind Hillary, won the same number of delegates based on the formula of the DNC.
On the Republican side Sen McCain came away with 7 delegates followed by Romney with four and Huckabee with one. You would think all the front runner candidates won their party endorsement by their speeches.
Let’s take a step back to catch our breath.
There will be 4,049 votes cast by the Democrats at the Aug 25-28th Presidential nominating convention being held in Denver, CO. The victor must capture 2,025 to win. Well, you might call NH a start.
On the other side of the aisle the GOP will have 2,380 delegates in their Sept 1-4 convention that is being held in Minn/St.Paul, Minn. The victor on the GOP side will need to capture 1191 delegates to become that party’s standard bearer.
Let us not overlook Super Delegates in following the individual state primaries and caucuses.
Hillary Clinton already has over 150 committed super delegates while Obama has only 50. I have read that they can support any candidate regardless of the caucus and primary outcomes.
These Super delegates are members of Congress statewide office holders and party leaders. As such the DNC is controlling 20 percent of the delegations regardless of how you may vote in your own state. In effect, should Obama win the popular vote, based on Hillary’s Super Delegate numbers, he could end up the loser in Denver.
Super Tuesday is coming up on Feb 5th. There will be 1,081 delegates up for grabs for the Republican candidates and 2,075 for the Democratic candidates. That is the time for us to get all excited. This past weeks coverage of Iowa and the New Hampshire voting, while entertaining, has been blown out of proportion. Yes, it is surely helpful to win a primary to prove yourself and increase your bank accounts and endorsements but we have a long road ahead.
What have we read. Some candidates spent upwards of $200 per vote for the 250,000 caucus participants in Iowa. Multiply that by the number of voters in the Nov General Election and you can see that it is costly to be a candidate running to be commander-in-chief. In the 2004 presidential election 125 million votes were cast of which each major party captured 60 million in that close dog fight. Each side will easily top $100 million AFTER they win the primary.
Be prepared for some heavy duty “swift boating” from both sides. That’s all part of the game.
And watch as the candidates sit back in denial. “I know nothing about that attack ad.”– You cannot find any comment by me stating that “I endorse the above message.” Yea, right!
Juice readers. Now it’s your turn to sound off.
When do you think Edwards, Richardson and Kucinich will drop out?
Will Congressman Ron Paul stay to the end and later run as an independent?
Rudy has been missing in action in these early contests. Did his failure to actively campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire hurt his campaign?
What’s your thoughts on the chances of Fred Thompson capturing one or more of the southern states?
Mike Huckabee, with limited resources, has surprised many of the pundits with his early achievements. How far do you think the former Arkansas governor will go as we approach Super Tuesday?
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