Barak Obama is picking up steam....

[2ez2brich]

Obama scores 10th straight victory

Barack Obama cruised past a fading Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Wisconsin primary and Hawaii caucuses Tuesday night, gaining the upper hand in a Democratic presidential race for the ages.

The twin triumphs made 10 straight for Obama, and left the former first lady in desperate need of a comeback in a race she long commanded as front-runner.

"The change we seek is still months and miles away," Obama told a boisterous crowd in Houston in a speech in which he also pledged to end the war in Iraq in his first year in office.

"I opposed this war in 2002. I will bring this war to an end in 2009. It is time to bring our troops home," he declared.

Sen. John McCain, the Republican front-runner, won a pair of primaries, in Wisconsin and Washington, to continue his march toward certain nomination.

In a race growing increasingly negative, Obama cut deeply into Clinton's political bedrock in Wisconsin, splitting the support of white women almost evenly with her. According to polling place interviews, he also ran well among working class voters in the blue collar battleground that was prelude to primaries in the larger industrial states of Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Clinton made no mention of her defeat, and showed no sign of surrender in an appearance in Youngstown, Ohio.

"Both Senator Obama and I would make history," the New York senator said. "But only one of us is ready on day one to be commander in chief, ready to manage our economy, and ready to defeat the Republicans. Only one of us has spent 35 years being a doer, a fighter and a champion for those who need a voice."

In a clear sign of their relative standing in the race, most cable television networks abruptly cut away from coverage of Clinton's rally when Obama began to speak in Texas.

McCain easily won the Republican primary in Wisconsin with 55 percent of the vote, dispatching former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and edging closer to the 1,191 delegates he needs to clinch the GOP nomination at the party convention in St. Paul, Minn. next summer. The Arizona senator also won the primary in Washington, where 19 delegates were at stake, with 49 percent of the vote in incomplete results.

In scarcely veiled criticism of Obama, the Republican nominee-in-waiting said, "I will fight every moment of every day in this campaign to make sure that Americans are not deceived by an eloquent but empty call for change."

McCain stepped up his criticism of Obama on Wednesday, suggesting the Democrat doesn't have the experience or judgment on foreign policy and defense matters needed in a president.

"There are a lot of national security challenges and I know how to handle them. Senator Obama wants to bomb Pakistan without talking to the Pakistanis. I think that's dangerous," McCain said in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America." "I think that's an important factor — experience and judgment. Ready to serve and no on the job training."

McCain's nomination has been assured since Super Tuesday three weeks ago, as first one, then another of his former rivals has dropped out and the party establishment has closed ranks behind him.

Not so in the Democratic race, where Obama and Clinton campaign seven days a week, he the strongest black presidential candidate in history, she bidding to become the first woman to sit in the White House.

Ohio and Texas vote next on March 4 — 370 convention delegates in all — and even some of Clinton's supporters concede she must win one, and possibly both, to remain competitive. Two smaller states, Vermont and Rhode Island, also have primaries that day.

With the votes counted in all but one of Wisconsin's 3,570 precincts, Obama won 58 percent of the vote to 41 percent for Clinton.

With 100 percent of the vote counted in Hawaii, Obama had 76 percent to Clinton's 24 percent.

Wisconsin offered 74 national convention delegates. There were 20 delegates at stake in Hawaii, where Obama spent much of his youth.

Washington Democrats voted in a primary, too, but their delegates were picked earlier in the month in caucuses won by Obama.

The Illinois senator's Wisconsin victory left him with 1,303 delegates in The Associated Press' count, compared with 1,233 for Clinton, a margin that masks his 145-delegate lead among those picked in primaries or caucuses. It takes 2,025 to win the nomination at the party's national convention in Denver. Allocation of the 20 Hawaii delegates was not being calculated until later Wednesday.

Obama's victory came after a week in which Clinton and her aides tried to knock him off stride. They criticized him in television commercials and accused him of plagiarism for using words first uttered by Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, a friend. He shrugged off the advertising volley, and said that while he should have given Patrick credit, the controversy didn't amount to much.

The voters seemed not to care.

Wisconsin independents cast about one-quarter of the ballots in the race between Obama and Clinton, and roughly 15 percent of the electorate were first-time voters, the survey at polling places said. Obama has run strongly among independents in earlier primaries, and among younger voters, and cited their support as evidence that he would make a stronger general election candidate in the fall.

Obama began the evening with eight straight primary and caucus victories, a remarkable run that has propelled him past Clinton in the overall delegate race and enabled him to chip away at her advantage among elected officials within the party who will have convention votes as superdelegates.

The economy and trade were key issues in the race, and seven in 10 voters said international trade has resulted in lost jobs in Wisconsin. Fewer than one in five said trade has created more jobs than it has lost.

The Democrats' focus on trade was certain to intensify, with primaries in Ohio in two weeks and in Pennsylvania on April 22.

Obama's campaign has already distributed mass mailings critical of Clinton on the issue in Ohio. "Bad trade deals like NAFTA hit Ohio harder than most states. Only Barack Obama consistently opposed NAFTA," it said.

Clinton's aides initially signaled she would virtually concede Wisconsin, and the former first lady spent less time in the state than Obama.

Even so, she ran a television ad that accused her rival of ducking a debate in the state and added that she had the only health care plan that would cover all Americans and the only economic plan to stop home foreclosures. "Maybe he'd prefer to give speeches than have to answer questions" the commercial said.

Obama countered with an ad of his own, saying his health care plan would cover more people.

Unlike the Democratic race, McCain was assured of the Republican nomination and concentrated on turning his primary campaign into a general election candidacy.

In one sign of progress in unifying the party, he split the conservative vote with Huckabee in Wisconsin.

Huckabee parried occasional suggestions — none of them by McCain — that he quit the race. In a move that was unorthodox if not unprecedented for a presidential contender, he left the country in recent days to make a paid speech in the Grand Cayman Islands.

McCain picked up endorsements in the days before the primary from former President George H.W. Bush and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a campaign dropout who urged his 280 delegates to swing behind the party's nominee-to-be.

[MR.cashcream]

The democratic party nomination is gonna come down to texas and pa from the looks of it.

[midlifecrisis]

Originally Posted by MR.cashcream

The democratic party nomination is gonna come down to texas and pa from the looks of it.

Or a courthouse. Im betting on a courthouse.

[ILIEKFUDE]

They should really just have the other runners drop out now n save their money and crown mccain. Ive never seen such an easilly visable outcome to a presidential race in my long, esteemed and prestigious life (all 20 something years of it lol).

[2ez2brich]

Originally Posted by midlifecrisis

Or a courthouse. Im betting on a courthouse.

what do you mean ?

[2ez2brich]

Originally Posted by ILIEKFUDE

They should really just have the other runners drop out now n save their money and crown mccain. Ive never seen such an easilly visable outcome to a presidential race in my long, esteemed and prestigious life (all 20 something years of it lol).

McCain will suffer from the residual affects of his Republican predecessors. He will never win the Presidency.

Democrats will win this election.

[midlifecrisis]

Originally Posted by 2ez2brich

what do you mean ?

Its going to be fun watching the democratic party realize in a big way, that the Clintons have allegience to one thing and one thing only, and that is to themselves. They wont mind bringing the party down, so long as they know they have exhausted every possible effort to win.

Its very plausible at this point that the democratic nomination could be determined in a Florida court of law over delegates. The Clintons are already maneuvering to try to seat delegates in Florida and Michigan, two states that beforehand the Clintons had agreed, along with the DNC, to not seat and to not campaign in those states. Hillary is trumpeting a big win in Florida, yet its a state that the DNC agreed would not be seated and that no candiates would campaign in. She has no soul Im telling you! Most beleive that if the delegate count is close, which it clearly is now, the Clintons will try to back track and steal these delegates. Most think that will land this whole thing in a court of law to be settled. How ironic would that be? Here is more on the story....

Hillary Clinton camp wants 'redo' over Florida & Michigan delegates
BY MICHAEL McAULIFF
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Sunday, February 17th 2008, 4:00 AM



MILWAUKEE, Wis. - The Clinton and Obama camps continued to squabble Saturday over the knotty issue of what to do with the delegates stripped from Florida and Michigan.

A top Clinton adviser, Harold Ickes, a superdelegate who had voted to penalize the states, now is arguing against the move he helped pass and wants a "redo."

Both states were punished for defying party rules by moving their primaries ahead of Super Tuesday. Sen. Hillary Clinton won the vote in both states and is pushing to get Democratic Party chief Howard Dean to reverse the original decision and add the delegates to the overall count.

"We hope the national chairman will engage the Democratic leadership of both of those states and work out a suitable compromise," Ickes said.

Campaigning in Milwaukee, Clinton echoed Ickes, saying, "The rules provide for a vote at the convention to seat contested delegations."

Neither candidate campaigned in the two states, and Sen. Barack Obama wasn't even on the Michigan ballot.

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe responded by blasting his rival for trying to change "the rules they agreed to at the eleventh hour in order to seat nonexistent delegates from Florida and Michigan. "The Clinton campaign should focus on winning pledged delegates as a result of elections, not these say-or-do-anything-to-win tactics that could undermine Democrats' ability to win the general election."

Ickes admitted the Clinton campaign made some early bad decisions, saying in a conference call yesterday, "We didn't make as much of an effort as we probably should have" in caucus states.

He predicted Clinton and Obama will go all the way to the last primary in Puerto Rico on June 7 without locking up the nomination, though he insisted Clinton would be in the lead.

"Sen. Obama wants to rush to judgment on this deal and cut this thing down - you know, he'd like to be nominated right now. But there are a lot of delegates yet to be selected," Ickes said.

If neither candidate locks up the nomination after the primaries, party and elected officials will push the nominee over the finish line. "Both of these candidates are going to need them in order to nail down the nomination," Ickes said.

Many Obama supporters have been calling such a prospect undemocratic because the candidate who wins the most votes from the people - right now, Obama leads - could be denied the top prize by party hacks.

[Mickey]

Originally Posted by midlifecrisis

Or a courthouse. Im betting on a courthouse.

I hope not! How terrible would that be for our country?!?!

[midlifecrisis]

Originally Posted by 2ez2brich

McCain will suffer from the residual affects of his Republican predecessors. He will never win the Presidency.

Democrats will win this election.

Under normal circumstances that would be exactly true. BUT, leave it to the Clintons to fuck it all up for the democrats. The only way the democrats lose this thing is if they get to engulfed in fighting each other. And yet that is exactly what they are doing....big time.

[DrewDog]

i'm just waiting for one pundit to slip up and refer to both clinton and mccain attacking Obama as a "lynching"

[LanT]

Originally Posted by 2ez2brich

McCain will suffer from the residual affects of his Republican predecessors. He will never win the Presidency.

Democrats will win this election.

I wouldn't bet on that.

[methyl mike]

What's all this delegate and super delegate nonsense anyway? What happened to americans just going out and voting? Politics don't really make sense anymore.

[Gymintensity56]

Originally Posted by LanT

I wouldn't bet on that.

ya i wouldn't either. based by facts, ya the dems should get this election. but the from the looks of it mccain is gonna thumb these 2 idiots out of the way. Whether we like it or not, there are still many americans, dems and reps alike, that still dont want a woman president. Obama is really burying himself by not wanting to swear in through the bible and put his hand over his heart during the pledge of allegiance. I mean seriously what is this guy thinking? I dont know if Mccain is the best man for the job, but I guarantee you he's not in 3rd place out of 3 nominees.

[2ez2brich]

Originally Posted by Gymintensity56

ya i wouldn't either. based by facts, ya the dems should get this election. but the from the looks of it mccain is gonna thumb these 2 idiots out of the way. Whether we like it or not, there are still many americans, dems and reps alike, that still dont want a woman president. Obama is really burying himself by not wanting to swear in through the bible and put his hand over his heart during the pledge of allegiance. I mean seriously what is this guy thinking? I dont know if Mccain is the best man for the job, but I guarantee you he's not in 3rd place out of 3 nominees.

I don't think the Bible issue will be that deep....when you think about the state of our economy and international issues in Iraq. Jobs are being lost along with Homes, which is suppose to be the American dream. Billions spent overseas, No Bin Laden, No WMD. the FED has instituted a plan to help those with Subprime mortgages.......what about those with Alt-A's who are also experiencing challenges. People are looking for a change...and I don't think the Bible issue will matter against these other so called bigger issues.

Bush messed things up for the Replublicans......

[RichGenetics]

Originally Posted by 2ez2brich

I don't think the Bible issue will be that deep....when you think about the state of our economy and international issues in Iraq. Jobs are being lost along with Homes, which is suppose to be the American dream. Billions spent overseas, No Bin Laden, No WMD. the FED has instituted a plan to help those with Subprime mortgages.......what about those with Alt-A's who are also experiencing challenges. People are looking for a change...and I don't think the Bible issue will matter against these other so called bigger issues.

Bush messed things up for the Replublicans......

With a man like Obama as president, I will for sure know the end of days is coming sooner than we may think.

Obama is a "FAKE" Christian, and a "FAKE" American.

Muslims across the world are cheering him on with full force.

Let me ask you this question: Obamas president, and Iran starts attacking Israel. Do you think for one second a Muslim backgrounded president will protect our biggest ally, and GODS country? If he doesn't, America is doomed.

Without Israel, American will perish.

Read the book, it's all in there.