The Blue State

Barack Bouncing Back - CWU Nevada Endores Obama

Despite taking second place in the New Hampshire primary, Barack Obama has picked up a huge endorsement from the Culinary Workers Union of Nevada; the site of the next caucus.

The union, which boasts a membership of more than 60,000, is seen as akey endorsement in Nevada, a state where there are less than 500,000registered Democrats in the whole state and certainly not all come outfor caucuses.

This could be enough to push Obama over the top in Nevada; a state where he was trailing Clinton by almost 20 points only a month ago. Nevada's Caucuses are scheduled for January 19th, with the South Carolina Primary following a week later.

First Ballots Cast in NH

At midnight Today, residents in Dixville Notch and Hart's Location New Hampshire casted the first ballots of the New Hampshire Primary. Although only 46 votes were cast, (23 for each party,) the results are staggering.

Barrack Obama 16 
Hillary Clinton   3
John Edwards   3
Bill Richardson  1

Although it's doubtful the final results will be as extreme as this, it shows Obama as the overall favorite in New Hampshire with Clinton and Edwards trailing.

More results to follow...

Obama now Leading in Recent SC Polls

With the New Hampshire Primary only hours away, new polling data from Rasmussen and SurveyUSA show Obama now leading Clinton in the South Carolina Primary.

These polls are the only two taken since Obama's victory in Iowa last week. Here's a look at the shift.

Rasmussen 12/16  Clinton-33  Edwards-17  Obama-33

Rasmussen 1/6     Clinton-30  Edwards-14  Obama-42

SurveyUSA 12/17-18 Clinton-41 Edwards-17 Obama-39

SurveyUSA 1/4-6      Clinton-30 Edwards-16 Obama-50

As you can see, the polls show a massive jump for Obama, with the extra support coming from Hillary's camp (SurveyUSA) or from Second Tier Candidates asking their supporters to back Obama (Rasmussen.)

The O-mentum continues to build!

Daily buzz on 2008 Democratic front-runners

A few of the 2008 Democratic potentials are in the news:

• Mark Warner is in the Middle East right now as he continues a week-long schedule of policy briefings with leaders in the region.  According to The Richmond Times Dispatch, Warner met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and will fly to and Lebanon and Jordan to get briefed by the leaders of those countries as well.
• Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack is backing a $50 million water quality campaign in his state, as written about in today's Des Moines Register newspaper.  This will be a difficult challenge for him because the Republicans hold control in the state House.  "This is a watershed moment for the environment," Vilsack said.
• In an exclusive interview with the newspaper "The News and Observer", 2008 presidential hopeful Evan Bayh explained what he thought Democrats need to do if they intend to win the presidency the next time around: "We need to make this election a referendum on the future of thecountry. What it's going to take to make that future what it ought tobe for the middle class in America. That's going to involve growing theeconomy. Restoring our finances. Improving our energy situation andproviding security for this country in a way that is both tough andsmart.  We also need to reach out to people in the Midwest andthe South and let them know that we are not cultural elitists. We sharetheir values."

In other campaign news, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and John Kerry round out the top-three favorites in the state of Ohio for the Democratic nomination:

Listed as the favorite by 37 percent of Democrats, Clinton leads bothmembers of the party’s 2004 ticket: Former Sen. John Edwards of NorthCarolina got 23 percent, while 19 percent said Sen. John Kerry ofMassachusetts should get a do-over.

And today, Jonathon Alter wrote about how the Democrats might want to learn from the FDR nomination:

Democrats who today despair of finding a leader should take heart fromhow unpopular FDR was within the party before he became president. In1932, he was seen as weak and not especially bright, so unprincipledthat he was dubbed the "corkscrew candidate" for acting as if theshortest distance between two points was a corkscrew. He flip-floppedon the League of Nations and so straddled the Prohibition issue that hewas labeled neither a "wet" nor a "dry" but a "damp." All of the toppundits thought he was the worst possible candidate for the Democratsand a likely loser to Herbert Hoover. The New York delegation to the1932 Democratic Convention was so opposed to its own governor that hiscampaign manager, Jim Farley, couldn't even get a seat in thedelegation. (Can you imagine the same thing happening to Karl Rove inthe 2000 or 2004 Texas delegation?). When he was (barely) nominated forpresident on the fourth ballot, the galleries booed.

I guess FDR didn't turn out so bad!  In other words, some of the most unpopular individuals within a party might sometimes hold a party's best answer to solving all of its problems.