LA Weekly

Who needs voters? The fix was in on the Eastside last night

By Max Taves

Waiting for a full vote count didn’t get in the way of a good time at the John Perez for Assembly HQ late last night. After the polls closed, the party—al estilo Mexicano—began: There was an eight-man mariachi band playing loudly, a lot of margaritas and fajitas, and then a not-so-Mexican Japanese drum ensemble.

“This is the best victory party in the county,” Eric Bauman, chair of L.A. County’s Democratic Party, told the 100-person crowd at downtown restaurant La Fonda.

This victory was celebrated earlier than almost any other contest in California. Perez, a longtime union political director, had zilch competition because his main opponents—Arturo Chavez and Ricardo Lara—strangely quit months ahead of election day. That guaranteed Perez a cakewalk victory—and City Hall bloggers reacted by skewering the man behind the scenes, Perez' first cousin, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, for squelching a lively race to “anoint” his cousin into power.

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By Guelda Voien

Of all the things upon which to base a docu-drama, a recounting of ballots, accented with heart-warming characters such as Katherine Harris, seems a dubious choice. However, Recount, an HBO film based on Florida's 2000 election voting woes, is just that. Neither a documentary nor a legal procedural, it's a fictionalized account of the ballot battle allegedly told in a non-partisan fashion.

To promote the movie, HBO unearthed the actual voting machines used eight years ago in West Palm Beach. They furnished the functional polling booths at the Grove in Los Angeles on Tuesday, where shoppers could take a participate in a little make-believe democracy. The set-up was meant to mimic Florida's actual confusing voting circumstances.

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You gotta love the brilliant decision by the respected polling group, Public Policy Institute of California, to once again sneak in subtle test questions of California residents while asking them to opine on everything from whether we should borrow from the Lottery (voters say No) to whether Schwarzenegger is doing a good job (again, No) to whether the 120 legislators in Sacramento are doing a good job (that's a triple-quadruple NO).

Californians seem on pretty solid ground with those three answers. But after looking so smart, residents fell on their collective face when the sly folks at PPIC tucked an IQ test into the poll, dressed up to look like perfectly innocent political questions.

The pollsters wanted to know some real, simple, basic info. Fifth-grade stuff.

By their answers, Californians showed themselves to be so ignorant, we might be better off having fifth-graders streaming into the polling places on election days.

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By Marc Cooper

It was far too beautiful a day in Southern California to have spent much time following the West Virginia primary. Taking a late afternoon bike ride is when I finally tuned into the results -- just in time to hear Hillary's victory crow.

What a humdinger! She more or less lifted Jesse Jackson's who-cleans-the-bedpans speech from twenty years ago. Or was it more like Warren Beatty's great scene in Reds when, in character as John Reed, he excitedly vows to a crowd of ruddy-cheeked Russian toilers that American workers are now joining him in world revolution! All hail Comrade Clinton who fights against all odds and all enemies to defend the orderlies, the bus drivers, the waitresses, the coal miners and, presumably, the Kronstadt sailors!

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From Marc Cooper's blog:

It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

Tuesday night Barack Obama effectively clinched the Democratic nomination -- again. He did it the first time when weeks ago he racked up a dozen primary victories and built his insurmountable delegate lead.

We've spent the last half-dozen weeks or so indulging in a Second Life fantasy that granted Hillary Clinton some sort of real viability.

That game ended tonight in North Carolina and Indiana. Obama has won a smashing victory in North Carolina and, as we write, will finish close behind in Indiana. When all the votes are tallied, Obama will finish the evening with a net gain in pledged delegates i.e. he will increase his lead as front-runner. Whatever remote, if not impossible, shot Clinton had of snatching away the nomination went up in smoke tonight when she failed to win NC and failed to stage a blow-out in Indiana.

Click here to read the rest of the post.

And in an interesting bit of left-wing / right-wing group-think:

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By Marc Cooper

Zero hour in Pennsylvania.

Or is it? We've had to somehow fill the gap of the six weeks since the last primary, so we've sort of convinced ourselves that something momentous is about to happen Tuesday in Pennsylvania. Fact is, it's highly unlikely that the results of the voting will have some game-changing impact on the underlying fundamentals i.e. that Hillary Clinton is running close behind but definitively in second place to Barack Obama and, further, that is precisely the way the nomination process will end.

You can spin this stuff anyway you please but we're going to wind up always at the same point of departure --or if you prefer-- terminus: in America we have a simple tradition of declaring as winner whomever it is who gets the most votes, in some cases directly. In other cases, by count of delegate or elector. Period.

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And by "listen," I mean "look" or "read."

LA Weekly's political cartoonist and equal opportunity offense machine Mr. Fish was listed by Best Life magazine as #1 in a list of "the 10 most important voices to listen to this election cycle."

Here's some of the nice stuff they said:

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Hillary Clinton may have dominated the Massachusetts Democratic primary last Tuesday, weathering the endorsements of both Ted Kennedy and John Kerry for Barack Obama, but she was beaten handily by Obama in her old college town. According to the Wellesley Townsman, the Wellesley College grad picked up only 2,971 votes to Obama's 3,466.

Wellesley, an affluent Boston suburb home to the prestigious, all-female college, was thought to be a Hillary stronghold. Last November, after a rough outing at a Democratic debate in Philadelphia, Hillary returned to her alma-mater, known for its commitment to feminist politics, to help get her momentum back.

The move appeared to pay off. The outpouring of support she received from the women of Wellesley was so powerful that ABC News' Eloise Harper, covering the event for the network's blog, began her piece:

"There's no place like home. Or, in the case of Hillary Clinton, there's no place like Wellesley."

Apparently not.

Obama not only beat Hillary by a roughly 53 percent to 46 percent margin, but he nearly doubled the vote totals former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney received in the Republican primary.

The Wellesley vote may have done nothing to sway the statewide primary results, but it's hard to deny Obama's ability to find support in the most unexpected of places.

For voting results from other precincts of note, the New York Times has a fascinating state-by-state, county-by-county breakdown of the recent primary and caucus results.

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Election cross-over dreams become a nightmare

Last Friday members of the nonpartisan election group, CourageCampaign.org, were surfing the Web when they discovered a blog posting noting that Los Angeles County voters faced what organization spokesman Rick Jacobs calls "bubble trouble." In order for any of the county's 776,000 voters who have registered Nonpartisan to vote in the open primaries for the Democratic or American Independent parties, they would have to mark an extra bubble on the ballot naming the party for which they wished to cast a cross-over ballot. After a weekend of research, Jacobs says, CC.org contacted the office of L.A.'s Registrar of Voters on Sunday and were told it was true -- an extra bubble had to be inked, and, yes, it could prove to be a big headache on election day. The bottom line: If the “declaration” bubble is not inked on a Nonpartisan ballot, the voter's presidential preference would be voided, though not the part pertaining to propositions.

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Maria Shriver, the first lady of the state of California and cousin of Caroline Kennedy, has endorsed Senator Barack Obama. Shriver made an impromptu appearance at an Obama rally at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion Sunday, where Michelle Obama, wife of the presidential candidate, Oprah Winfrey, and Caroline Kennedy, daughter of former president John F. Kennedy, spoke to an enthusiastic crowd.

“The thing I like the best (about Obama) is that he’s not about himself,” said Shriver from the stage, surrounded by the other prominent women. “He’s about empowering all of us.”

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David Mixner, a gay politico who was an integral part of former Bill Clinton’s kitchen cabinet during his successful 1992 run for the White House, now endorses Senator Barack Obama.

Mixner was raising money for former Senator John Edwards. He’s a major player in LGBT politics—he hauled in $4 million for Clinton in 1992 and continues to be a high profile fund raiser and political strategist.

You can read his endorsement at his website: http://www.davidmixner.com

Contact Patrick Range McDonald at pmcdonald@laweekly.com

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The vibe was heavy at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood on Thursday night, and an always blood-thirsty press didn’t imagine it into existence. With U.S. Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama debating one-on-one for the first time in a long campaign season to decide who would be the next Democratic presidential nominee, the tensions hovering above Hollywood Boulevard between Highland and Orange avenues were obvious and real, and the voting public felt it.

At the front entrance of the Kodak Theater, an hour before the much-anticipated showdown, Obama and Clinton supporters were shouting down each other, elbowing their rivals for better position in front of roving television camera crews, and sneering at any poster, T-shirt, or button that didn’t plug their favorite candidate. Passions were high, and the break out of a minor scuffle seemed entirely possible.

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Des Moines - After a stunning defeat and finishing third in Thursday night's Democratic caucuses, Senator Hillary Clinton congratulated Barack Obama and John Edwards, and vowed to jumpstart her national campaign and win her party's nomination for president.

"I am ready as I can be," Clinton told a crowd of a few hundred invited guests at a downtown hotel ballroom. "We're going to take this enthusiasm and go to New Hampshire."

But, as she spoke, shock and despair seemed to replace enthusiasm in the Clinton campaign. Months ago, the New York senator rolled into Iowa with an aura and attitude of invincibility. She now leaves the state for next Tuesday's primary in New Hampshire after suffering a humiliating finish nine points behind Obama and one point below Edwards.

Clinton was joined on the stage by her husband Bill Clinton and a pack of other Democratic luminaries including former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, former General Wesley Clark and Antonio Villaraigosa, the mayor of Los Angeles.

As the TV networks projected Obama's insurgent victory about 90 minutes after the opening of the 7 p.m. caucuses, Clinton's rented ballroom seemed the loneliest place in town. Not a single guest was seen on the cordoned-off floor. And then shortly after the network projection was broadcast, the tightly disciplined Clinton campaign literally assembled the crowd for the batteries of TV cameras in the room.

Putting the best face on her stinging defeat, Clinton attached herself to what she called the "clear message of change" manifested in the massive Democratic turnout. After congratulating her two top rivals she claimed that "together we have presented the case for change" and declared the results to be "a great night for Democrats." Both Obama and Edwards, however, vigorously counterpoised themselves as agents of profound change and generational turnover against an ossified status quo embodied by Clinton.

Click here to read the rest of Marc Cooper's column at Huffingtonpost.com

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Obama wins the Democratic Caucus in Iowa, with 37 percent of the vote, leaving Edwards and Hillary to battle it out for second. On the Republican side, Huckabee took the gold, followed by Romney, then Thompson, then McCain.

All of this has been so fully gamed out that it's hard to add any new insight to the issue. Obama is now the favorite. Clinton's aura of inevitably has been banished, and whatever momentum she had has been crushed. It's tough, though not impossible, to imagine her regaining it. Edwards' path to the nomination is unlikely. Gravel's coronation looks increasingly uncertain.

More from Ezra Klein at the American Prospect

Huckabee was declared the winner at 9 p.m. Eastern time, easily besting Mitt Romney — a storyline that was unthinkable just weeks ago. With 76 percent of precincts reporting, Huckabee led Romney 34 percent to 25 percent.

More from Politico here

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Obama campaign top strategist David Axelrod said, "He can't help but be optimistic about tonight's results."

He described the energy bubbling at the Iowa headquarters as "incredible," but refused to predict exactly where his candidate will finish tonight.

"We're in uncharted waters," he said. "We've never in a campaign like this before."

Axelrod expressed confidence that there would be an elevated turnout in tonight's caucuses, saying that the campaign expects 150,000 Democrats. That would be about a 20 percent increase over the 2004 turnout and consistent with polling information that projects a bump of young and first-time voters. Polls that show Obama ahead in tonight's race suggest an increased turnout would be a key ingredient to an Obama victory.

Read the rest of Marc Cooper's post here.

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Des Moines, Iowa -- Barack Obama capped off his quest to win the statewide Democratic presidential caucuses by emotionally exhorting the youthful core of his supporters to make sure they show up at tonight's prolonged exercise in voting.

"In a few hours you will have a chance to make history, Iowa," the hoarse Illinois senator said at a sometimes tumultuous rally Wednesday night that filled every square inch of a local high school gym with at least 2000 in attendance. "You will have the chance to prove the pundits wrong."

"They said you're too disappointed about the politics of the past to turn out and caucus for the politics of the future," Obama said to the markedly youthful crowd that stood and excitedly cheered on several occasions, chanting O-ba-ma!. "Tomorrow you will have the chance to say 'yes we can!'" he shouted to the audience.

Zero hour for Obama and for all of the other Democratic and Republican hopefuls sounds Thursday at 6:30 p.m. when Iowans interested in choosing a nominee must show up at a local caucus site and literally stand for their candidate. In spite of the intense retail politicking that ripples through Iowa for months before the caucus, turn-out is usually low. In 2004, barely 125,000 Democrats came out to stand for a candidate.

The most authoritative of Iowa polls conducted by the Des Moines Register shows Obama going into Thursday night's caucus with a hefty seven and eight point lead respectively over Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. But that result is leveraged on a projection that an unprecedented wave of young and first time caucusers will turn out.

Click here to read the rest of Marc Cooper's article at Huffington Post.

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