Hurrah? I think so
Sam Hart
2008-05-07 14:09:19Okay, so you probably have already heard that Obama won North Carolina heartily and Clinton squeaked out a win in Indiana. The results (with 99% reporting) were [IN] [NC]:
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If you recall my post from yesterday, I said that Obama had an uphill battle here in Indiana largely due to the population here. I really hadn't expected him to win here, but I had hoped that he would.
Well, looking at the extremely small win here for Clinton (~2%), I am thoroughly pleased. Indiana performed beyond my expectations... color me impressed. In fact, Clinton's win is so small, I think it warrants a special sound:
Now, there's more detail about her... ahem... "win" than you might first realize. Let me elaborate...
First, if you recall my comment yesterday, a significant number (1,134,427) of voter registrations were canceled. In particular, 137,164 voter registrations from Lake County (a county on the IL/IN border, a county which Obama was projected to win) were among those canceled. That's 48% of the votes from that county canceled and nullified! If you look at the numbers for that county, Obama won 55% to Clinton's 45%. Personally, I'm highly suspect that all 137,164 registrants from that county could be invalid, but if even half of those were incorrectly discarded can you imagine how much bigger the win would have been for Obama there? Can you imagine what it would have done to the rest of the state?
Speaking of the rest of the state, there's another tidbit that you should be aware of.
For those completely out of the loop, in February of this year "big fat idiot" (to quote Al Franken) Rush Limbaugh urged his conservative Republican listeners to pimp themselves to Hillary, e.g., go out, re-register as Democrats, and vote for Hillary to sabotage Obama's chances for the White House. He gives all sorts of reasons (citing how hated the Clinton name is among conservatives) for this, but I always felt it goes back to race versus sex; Let's face it, it's easier to get away with sexist comments than racist ones, and since Rush's modus operandi is to be as insulting as possible he knows he'd be able to get away with a lot more if he was against Hillary (a woman) than if he was against Obama (a black man).
Well, Rush has a rather massive following here in Indiana. Of all the places I've lived, I've never seen more people clustered together who take this idiot seriously. In addition to this, in Indiana you didn't have to be registered as a Democrat to go out and vote in the Democrat primary. This means they didn't even have to re-register as Democrat... they could just show up at the polling booth and vote for whomever they want. In short, Indiana has given Republicans all the tools they need to completely and totally nullify the state's Democratic primary results!
And, in fact, there's evidence that they did... or at least... they tried.
See, I wasn't aware of this little tidbit when I went out to vote yesterday. I thought that we were at least being sane enough to hold a Democrat primary for Democrats. I had no clue any John Q. Crazyperson could come in and vote for whomever the fuck they wanted, I thought at least we'd only concern ourselves with those who (at least on paper) subscribe to the Democrat ideals. I mean, this is not a general election here... it's a Democratic primary!
But when I went in to vote yesterday afternoon, I snooped. As I was standing in line (and the lines were long) I was astutely watching the sign-in book for those coming to register. On this sign-in book's pages I noticed that everyone's name had a party affiliation next to it. While I shouldn't have been, I was shocked to see that, of the dozen or so pages I snooped at, my wife and I were the only registered Democrats listed. I'd estimate I saw a good 40-50 voter affiliations just in my district, and they were all Republican.
My personal experience at my local district seems to be backed up elsewhere. The Jed Report suggests that 1 in 8 Clinton supporters in Indiana were actually McCain supporters. And, if you eliminate the Pro-McCain supporters from the primary results, Obama actually wins (narrowly) by 51% to Hillary's 49%.
So, it certainly seems that many of my fellow Indiana people took Rush's advice and tried to sabotage the election. However, in spite of this, it still didn't do any real damage.
And that's why I feel I can safely call the results from yesterday a "Hurrah!" Even with an assload of backwoodsy Indiana conservatives trying to sabotage the vote, Obama only lost by 22k votes, and Hillary narrowly squeaked by.
And then when you combine this with the major win for Obama in North Carolina, it seems that there may actually be hope for this country after all...
I can sleep well tonight.