I'm back with a Saturday smattering of thoughts. Hopefully, this will show the variety of what I will try to include in the content here and that the blog won't be about only, or even primarily, music (Dan Juilfs take note)
I just got back from watching the first three Nigel McGuinness vs. Bryan "American Dragon" Danielson encounters. For those non-wrestling fans out there (most of you, probably). Dragon and Nigel are the top two wrestlers in Ring of Honor (ROH), which is the #3 pro wrestling promotion in the United States. I won't belabor this, but I'll just do one sentence on each match.
Weekend of Champions, Night Two--Starts a bit slow with some excellent holds and reversals, but ends brilliantly when Dragon hits a springboard dive that proves to be his undoing.
Generation Now--Similar to the first match except for here it's Nigel who looks poised to win before Dragon pulls out a clever, unexpected finish.
Unified--My favorite match ever. Just totally un-freaking-believable.
END WRESTLING
Ok, all you non-wrestling fans can come back. I promise.
So, Texas and Ohio had to go and mess up everything Tuesday by voting for Hillary and prolonging the nomination process. Now, I make no bones about being an Obama suppoter, but even from an objective point of view I think it's hard to see Hillary's triumph as a good thing for Democrats. Why?
Quite simply, Hillary has almost no chance of winning. As long as she keeps winning states she has a legitimate spot in the race, but the math just doesn't work. Barring a total collapse from Obama, there simply aren't enough delegates out there for Hillary to catch up. RealClearPolitics shows Obama up 123 total delegates and 155 pledged delegates. Hillary can certainly make up some ground, but even in a best case scenario she'll end up 80 or so pledged delegates behind. The superdelegates simply won't overturn that kind of a deficit and make her the nominee. Her only hope is that the Florida and Michigan delegates are seated according to the results of their January contests.
The American people, however, are not stupid. That would be widely, and I believe rightly, viewed as a blatant attempt to steal the election. Florida could plausibly be counted because Obama was at least on the ballot there, but for Michigan to have it's delegates seated, they'll have to hold another nominating contest, likely a caucus. Given that recent polling indicates Obama and Clinton are nearly even with Michigan voters and that Obama has dominated caucus all nomination season, it seems doubtful that Michigan can provide Clinton with a strong margin.
The media wants to say that Clinton is "back in the game" and "has momentum" but the evidence suggests that many of the upcoming states should be fertile ground for the Obama campaign. Indeed, just today Obama won a 19 point victory in Wyoming. He's also up in the polls in Mississippi and North Carolina. There is really no such thing as momentum in this campaign and never has been, except perhaps in Wisconsin. Each candidate has a solid voting bloc. Clinton needs to win everything from here on out and my large margins in order to win. It won't happen.
If there's one good thing that may come out of this prolonged struggle, it's that Clinton is eliminating one of the weaknesses that she criticized Obama for. Her campaign claims that she is vetted and that there is nothing new that the Republicans can slam her with that she hasn't heard before but that Obama will be fresh meat for the GOP attack machine. Well, at this point I think it's clear that he'll be pretty well vetted by the time Mark Penn and the rest of Clinton's attack dogs get done with him.
By the way, here's my take on the whole Rezko business. Obama wasn't the only one caught with his pants down, so to speak, when Rezko got indicted. I know for a fact that the University of Chicago had ties with Rezko. Does it mean that the University was doing something sketchy. No, they were dealing on good faith with a donor, as they always do. The same is true for Obama. There's no proof that he did anything but associate himself with someone less than reputable. Dealing with someone who turns out to be a crook does not make one a crook by association. My understanding of the Rezko hubbub is that Obama got a good deal on his house because Rezko bought some adjacent land from the sellers at full price. This isn't illegal in any way. It does raise some eyebrows because one has to wonder what Rezko expected in return for doing this favor, but in reality he probably just bought himself some extra attention from Obama. Sort of a "I'll do this for you, and you'll remember me when you're the President, okay?" deal. You have to be pretty naive to believe that Clinton or McCain don't have their favorites who they'll be taking care of if they win. You just don't win the Presidency because well, gee golly you're the best person in America, and you deserve it! It takes more than the work of one to get to the top and nobody does anything for free. How do you think Clinton and Obama are sweet-talking superdelegates (ahem, I mean "automatic delegates")? Certainly there not doing it by convincing them of the relative merit of their health plan. All of this is to say that Obama got unlucky that Rezko is crook but really this is all much ado about nothing.
P.S. I know there are a bunch of proofreading errors in there and probably some in the first postings, too, but I really can't be bothered to proofread them. I barely make an effort to proofread term papers let alone blog posts.
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