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closing rounds .....

closing rounds .....

Senator Barack Obama won a commanding victory in the North Carolina primary on Tuesday and lost narrowly to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in Indiana, an outcome that injected a boost of momentum to Mr. Obama’s candidacy as the Democratic nominating contest entered its final month. 

The results from the two primaries, the largest remaining Democratic ones, assured that Mr. Obama would widen his lead in pledged delegates over Mrs. Clinton, providing him with new ammunition as he seeks to persuade Democratic leaders to coalesce around his campaign. He also increased his lead in the popular vote in winning North Carolina by more than 200,000 votes. 

Obama Wins North Carolina Decisively; Clinton Takes Indiana

basket-balls

Quitters Never Win

By Ellen R. Malcolm
Saturday, May 10, 2008; A15

When I was growing up in the 1960s, I wanted to play basketball. In those days, the rules said girls could dribble only three steps and then had to pass the ball. To make sure we didn't overexert ourselves, we weren't allowed to cross the half-court line. It's a wonder our fans (our mothers) could stay awake when a typical game's final score was 14-10.

It's remarkable that my generation of women entered the workforce and began to compete in business, politics and the hurly-burly of life outside the home. How did we ever learn to locate, much less channel, our competitive instincts in a world that made us play half-court and assumed that we would be content staying home to iron the shirts? It's a tremendous tribute to women of my generation that we sucked it up and learned to compete in the toughest environments.

Which brings us to Hillary Clinton running for president. This brilliant woman believes that she can compete for the most powerful office in the world. She believes that she can do a better job than any of the men running to lead our country through these challenging times. And millions of Americans, women and men, believe that she is correct.

Yet over and over again the media and her opponents have claimed that she is defeated -- it's over, she can't win, she's a loser. And over and over again -- in New Hampshire, on Super Tuesday, in Texas and Ohio, in Pennsylvania last month, and in Indiana this week -- female voters poured out of their homes to cast their ballots for her. They know that women can compete, and they want to make sure that women, especially this woman, can win.

or living dust...?

At last: the Fall of the House of Clinton

Just as in the Edgar Allan Poe story, the great project hatched by Bill and Hillary is crumbling to dust
 
By Rupert Cornwell
Sunday, 11 May 2008

Never count a Clinton out. Not even when he – or, in this case, she – is sealed in a tomb. Bill came back from scandals that would have felled a less resilient politician. And now we have Hillary, refusing to accept a political death plain to all except her, yet commanding a grudging admiration for her defiance, even among her foes.

But there is a broader aspect to this high political drama, a sense that not merely a campaign but also a political lineage is approaching its end. In Edgar Allan Poe's macabre masterpiece The Fall of the House of Usher, set in a decaying castle, Roderick Usher's sister Madeline has been buried alive, consigned to the living dead. In the final moments of the tale she reappears to die, and the castle crumbles, vanishing for ever. As Clinton's inevitable defeat at the hands of Barack Obama draws closer, we are witnessing its political, albeit less gothic, equivalent – the Fall of the House of Clinton.

half-democratic Democrats

June 1, 2008 Democrats Approve Deal on Michigan and Florida By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE and JEFF ZELENY

WASHINGTON — To jeers and boos that showcased deep party divisions, Democratic Party officials agreed Saturday to seat delegates from the disputed Florida and Michigan primaries at the party’s convention in August but give them only half a vote each, dealing a setback to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The agreement, reached by the rules committee of the Democratic National Committee behind closed doors and voted on publicly before a raucous audience of supporters of the two candidates, would give Mrs. Clinton a net gain of 24 delegates over Senator Barack Obama. But this fell far short of her hopes of winning the full votes of both delegations and moved the nomination further out of her reach.

She now lags behind Mr. Obama by about 176 delegates, according to The New York Times’s tally, in the final weekend of campaigning before the nominating contests end.

Mrs. Clinton, who led the voting in the Michigan and Florida contests, which were held in defiance of party rules, picked up 19 delegates more than Mr. Obama in Florida and 5 delegates more than Mr. Obama in Michigan.

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Gus: Half a vote? They're half-nuts...

still punching above her weight...

from the Independent (4/06/08)

Clinton denies she is about to concede

Reuters
Tuesday, 3 June 2008

 

The Clinton campaign issued a terse statement: "The AP story is incorrect. Senator Clinton will not concede the nomination this evening."

The AP report came as the last two states, Montana and South Dakota, were voting in the nominating contests that have put Obama within a few dozen delegates of the number he needs to clinch the nomination and take on Republican John McCain in the race for the White House in the November general election.

The AP report quoted the campaign officials as saying that for all intents and purposes, Clinton's campaign was over.

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Gus: see toon at top... 

he won on points... she won on punches...

June 4, 2008 Obama Clinches Nomination; First Black Candidate to Lead a Major Party Ticket By JEFF ZELENY

Senator Barack Obama claimed the Democratic presidential nomination on Tuesday evening, prevailing through an epic battle with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in a primary campaign that inspired millions of voters from every corner of America to demand change in Washington.

A last-minute rush of Democratic superdelegates, as well as the results from the final primaries, in Montana and South Dakota, pushed Mr. Obama over the threshold of winning the 2,118 delegates needed to be nominated at the party’s convention in August. The victory for Mr. Obama, the son of a black Kenyan father and a white Kansan mother, broke racial barriers and represented a remarkable rise for a man who just four years ago served in the Illinois Senate.

“Tonight, we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another — a journey that will bring a new and better day to America,” Mr. Obama told supporters at a rally in St. Paul. “Because of you, tonight I can stand here and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States of America.”

In a speech to supporters in New York City, Mrs. Clinton paid tribute to Mr. Obama, but she did not leave the race. In a speech more defiant than conciliatory, she again presented her case that she was the stronger candidate and argued that she had won the popular vote, a notion disputed by the Obama campaign.