US News
Pressure for Clinton to quit; Michigan election deal offered (Roundup)
May 9, 2008, 0:34 GMT
Washington - Pressure was mounting Thursday for Hillary Clinton to quit the Democratic presidential race and give Barack Obama time to unite the party ahead of a general election fight in November.
Michigan Democrats, meanwhile, said they hashed out a compromise that would give the state a voice in the hard-fought presidential battle. Michigan flouted national party rules by holding a primary on January 15, earlier than allowed.
Their proposal 'splits the difference' between the demands of Obama and Clinton in the long-running dispute and will be presented to the Democratic National Committee at the end of the month, the state party said in a statement.
The Los Angeles Times carried an editorial with the headline 'Clinton can't win,' and the Washington Post wrote that Clinton has 'no plausible route to victory' after unfavourable primary results in North Carolina and Indiana.
Obama on Tuesday handily won North Carolina, while Clinton barely edged him out in Indiana - an outcome that allowed Obama to add to his delegate lead with only six smaller contests remaining.
The Illinois senator was not among those pushing Clinton to exit, though he did say he was looking forward to a general election battle with presumptive Republican nominee John McCain.
'I don't want to be jinxed. We've still got some more work to do,' Obama told broadcaster CNN.
Since Tuesday's results, Obama has reportedly picked up the support of another handful super delegates - party elite and elected officials who hold about one-fifth of the total delegate votes to the nominating convention in August.
A candidate needs 2,025 delegates to secure the Democratic nomination. Obama leads by 1,850 to 1,696 for Clinton, according to a tally by realclearpolitics.com.
The Michigan compromise would only give Clinton a 10-delegate shift in her favour.
Clinton and her surrogates remained defiant Thursday, promising that the race would move on to West Virginia's primary on Tuesday and beyond.
'We can still win this thing if you vote for her big enough,' former president Bill Clinton said at a rally in West Virginia.
George McGovern, the Democrats' 1972 presidential nominee who lost to Richard Nixon, switched his support from Clinton to Obama on Wednesday and called on the former first lady to quit the race.
McGovern said it was time for the Democratic Party to unite ahead of a difficult general election race against Arizona Senator McCain, the presumptive Republican Party nominee.
Clinton, a New York senator, held rallies Thursday across three states - West Virginia, South Dakota and Oregon. She planned stops Friday in Kentucky, which votes along with Oregon on May 20.
Obama met with members of Congress and held fundraising events Thursday in Washington before heading to Oregon for the weekend.
The final primaries in the state-by-state voting, which began January 3 in Iowa, are June 1 in Puerto Rico and June 3 in South Dakota and Montana.
COMMENT
blog comments powered by DisqusLatest Headlines in US
- 1. Mitt Romney Addresses Tea Party Summit Pictures
- 2. Seven injured as US Navy plane crashes into apartments
- 3. At least three injured in US Navy plane crash
- 4. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, others to face death penalty trial
- 5. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, four others to face death penalty trial
Older Talkback
page: 1
This is the party called Democrat. The party leaders want her to dropout, as opposed to giving all their constituants a chance to be heard.
They are so afraid of the convention, the superdelegates and how it will look, they are willing to gag the primary vote.
Clinton pulls out all the stops by playing the WHITE CARD,THE WOMEN CARD and any other card she thinks will work.This women cares about nothing but getting her ass in the white house.This is typical washington bull shit,if she cared about this country she would get out of this dead end race.Bill Clinton is a liar and so is she,don't put this person in the white house....
America has been going soft for a long time- doing all the right things wrong, and trying to make doing all the wrong things seemingly right- all for the sake of a shallow sense of politcal correctness. We watch, and pretend to work hardto protect our core values, as our nation's core manufacturing industrial base is dismantled, and our 'post-industrial' plastic pyramid replacement ecconomy slowly collapses because the foundation is built upon producing nothing except paper, and senseless spending of plastic money. We can bail out the bankers for making foolish gambles on derivatives, but we can't bail out the worker who loses his job when the plant closes and moves abroad to exploit labor.
We watch the politicans spin their self-serving wheels in vehicles being driven by their lobbyist friends for over thirty years, supposedly doing something about the 'pending' petroleum crisis, but we still do not have a coherent national energy policy. We have to be so afraid of nuclear power that we can't produce the energy Eisenhower envisioned in the atoms for peace. We feel that the government can't do anything right, except wage wars, and use nuclear devices to kill populations in wars, yet we silently let the government run hundreds of nuclear power plants without producing any energy for domestic consumption. Where are all the passive solar panels mounted on buildings that should be wide-spread in use, pre-heating water, and saving lots of fuel? Can't have that, it makes too much sense. Instead we watch as a third world country, Brazil, achieves basic petroeum fuel independence with hybrid engines using ethanol produced very efficiently from sugar beets, while we pay corporate farmers welfare subsidies to grow corn for the very inefficient production of ethanol, driving up food costs for livestock feed, and consumers to high prices.
We can't have a national health care policy, because that sounds too scary, while we watch the insurance paper-pushing 'industry' gouge the working class families with no relief in sight, and causing our country to spend more money on basic health care than if we just dismantled the insurance racket, and put the monies directly into providing health care for the citizens of our country.
In our foreign policy of national insecurity, we are too afraid to go after osama bin laden, and al qaeda bases in Pakistan because we might offend a military dictator who has nuclear weapons and other WMD. But we can attack and destroy Iraq just because we wanted to believe that they may have had WMD that our own weapons inspectors said they didn't have, and then pretend that Iraq had something to do with the 9/11 attack. Who would have thought we would employ such a brilliant winning stategy?
It is no wonder to me why some intelligent Americans think we have gone soft as a country.
It's ALWAYS been like this for America. We've had wars, slavery, riots, etc. our whole existence. America is a patchwork quilt of history.
America is a fluke.
Ol GW and I mean George washington, in a pivotal moment, resigned when he could have been King.
It changed everything.
In case after case, we've had to overcome our weaknesses.
And we have.
Look what we;'ve accomplished:
Abolished Slavery. Gave women the vote, fought and won two world wars, built an invincible military, went to the moon, invented the telephone, the Airplane, modern R&D, mass produced autos, cured Polio, the Panama Canal, broke the sound barrier, built the Internet, the personal computer, the microchip and figured a way to make $3.00 on a cup of coffee that comes in a 50 lb bag for about $10.00!
America on the ropes???
No f--king way.
we didn't all come from the ghetto!!!
...should be ashamed. They go on TV every night telling us all the wonderful things they will do if elected president. All three of them are sitting members of the legislative body of our government. Why haven't they been doing all these great things already?
Two of the candidates are members of the party who controls the legislative body right now. What change have they delivered? What have they done beside trying to punish the opposing party.
Shame on all three of them.
Idiot, your commentary is worthless. Get a life.
since when is michigan a state?
I think the comments demonstrate a wide array of misunderstanding the issues of your forthcoming elections .Rather than throwing mud at eachothers,you should start studying programs,actions and laws being passed .None of you adresses the serious issues that are at stake .Are you satisfied with the present standards of health care in the USA?The most expensive system,yet the most deficient,that is what happens when you leave it to corporate greed to judge your health problems .it rates you somewhere in the status of third world countries .I'm not talking of technical or academical standards,just about the way the system worls and the benefits you all derive from it .Much better should be accomplished with the infrastructure available to you .Same for education,you have some of the fines universities,yet average education is below average,or average at best .Two tird of your population have a problem with Dazrwin ,biology,physics,mathematics nd other modern sciences .Yet the current administration is still reducing access to education for the lower classes,budgets are cut,only the spin is raised to explain that shamefull situation to you .
Don't you think it is a educational problem when a 4 year old toddler is
accused of sexual harassment by his teacher because he lays his head against her breast ?Don't you think there is something horribly wrong when a six yer old kid is charged with sexual assault against a girl because he slapped her on the bottom during play ?Teachers,school administration,police and judge failed to even notice that a six year old kid has no sexual acts or even understanding of those .Yet they are accused by teachers ?Where did thehose teachers get a decent education,or the school,administration,the police ?
To what else but flawed education can such repression be attributed ?Biggotry perhaps ?
To Sunday School,
It is trash pit blogs like yours that spoil the rest of the good apples in the barrel. If you do not like decent people, go find some hate mongers to play your immature game.
if you think the peoples votes mean anything in a presidential election
think again .look what happened in the last 2 ..
Your rambling diatribe, which has nothing to do with the article, again, actually produced something worth talking about.
Pearls from Swine....well, it's the best we can hope for...
The fact is, education in America IS a mess, but only in some places. Many of these are in the cities.
I've been to schools all over the country. Most of them have:
Clean, warm, well-lit classrooms
Teachers with FAR better credentials than many other nations, who seem to score better
Current Texts, as mandated by many state laws
So, whats the problem?
Teacher Unions - have featherbedded themselves to the point where the teachers are not required to do almost anything.
Administrators - stymied by the unions, they no longer control the schools
The federal government - a supplier of endless money, more of which will yield absolutely zero in better ed, as proven by the last 40 years of performance.
Now, you can disagree, but Ol GW and his buds seem to think Vouchers are the answer. In fact, so do the liberals running Washingtoon DC schools, who are at the end of their rope.
The democrats, most of which send their kids to private school, like Chelsea, however, are in a pickle, because they owe their souls to the Teachers Unions (see above) who are two legs of the primary problem. Consequently, they are holding back reform (golly, what a surprise.
Those social issues you discussed Tonny, all the legal messes...?....these are exacerbated by the democrats other friends, the Trial Lawyers, who make lots of $$ suing these schools for these rediculous issues.
Finally, the Parents, the one's who have the most influence, are stymied by the Unions, the dems who are stymied by the Unions too, and are unable to effect reform. Other parents will simply not make their children go to school, with a 25% graduation rate in Detroit, a solidly democratic stronghold, as the stellar example. Don't believe me, go check Ogden and see what their rate is!
Bush's No-Child-Left-Behind has been useful, except he has not mandated it's enforcement, to the bewilderment of us who supported it>
Yes, Tonny, you have a point about american ed. Liberalism has ruined it. We need vouchers, school choice and to flush the unions as soon as possible. Even liberals in the cities want it now, and are begging for it.
So, in conclusion, it seems to me that, if you want ed reform, your best hope is a Conservative. A pity there is not one running.
page: 1
Democrats: afraid of a 60 year old woman.May 9th, 2008 - 02:33:02
Try appeasement, they want to do that with Iran....
Report this comment