I've had enough of the "Hillary Clinton's 35 years of experience" argument, claiming that she has foreign policy and other experience that Obama does not.  Hillary Clinton is my Senator. She's got a half term more experience than Barack Obama.  Sure, I'm bitter about jobs she promised Western New York State and never delivered on, (unless you count outsourcing to India from a Buffalo home base) but I honestly think that she's blowing this "experience" out of proportion.

As much as I'm not a fan of hers, I would never short Clinton on her accomplishments. She's a smart, motivated, accomplished woman.  --But I've had enough of her touting her experience. Again, she's my Senator, a one and a half term Senator. THAT is her experience.  --and personally I don't feel she's represented my portion of the State very well.

For her to say that she has all of this experience is as the nice janitor at my work place would call it: bull-hockey. Being married to someone with on-the-job experience doesn't give you the experience. If Laura Bush were running, I doubt Democrats would be praising HER experience.

By Hillary Clinton's definition, you gather experience from osmosis from other people's experience.  I'm happy to start using her definition.  I feel like I've many worthwhile experiences in my crazy life, but by Hillary's classifications, I can do anything. Apparently if you sleep with someone, you not only sleep with everyone that person has slept with, but you experience all of their experiences.

I invite you to reply with your own Hillary-esque experience by osmosis.  Here are some of mine.

Me, I've dated two cellists.  I must have written Handel's "Messiah."

I've dated a woman who worked on some pretty major Hollywood films. I'm an Oscar nominee.

I hooked up with a  college professor, I must have my PhD.

I've dated several single mothers, and am an expert in childhood development.

I've slept with adult entertainers. I must be eligible for an Adult Video News award.

I've done it on a boat, I'm the friggin' commander of the Navy.

I dated a Goth girl. I am a vampire.  I've dated a hippy chick. I was in the Grateful Dead.

I've dated several certifiably insane women, I'm an expert in mental health.

I've dated women on drugs. I wrote "Trainspotting."

I could go on and on. By these standards, I'm a Washington Lobbyist, related to a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a State Police officer, a Judge, an expert in climate change, finance and bats, and so very much more.

I had ice cream with Bill Clinton and Al Gore once.  Am I more qualified that Hillary Clinton to  be your next President? By Hillary's standards, I think many of us are just as "experienced."

The spin doctors are already trying to paint last night’s results into a myriad of custom masterpieces, but I wanted to churn something out myself about the results.

Personally, I wish the voter turn out was getting reported more. It was record breaking in most places, especially for a primary.

Since the delegate awards are proportional on the Democratic side, “winning” a state isn’t as important as the margin of the win. This too is going to be misleading to the average voter while watching the news.

On the Republican side, the big shock was how well Mike Huckabee did.  Clearly the Republican base is still disenfranchised from their nominees, and the religious vote in the South turned out to keep the Huckster alive.

As a disenfranchised Democrat, I’m quite excited about how things went for Obama.  He pulled more state “wins” than Clinton, but more importantly (as noted above) he split the delegates.  Including super-delegates who are already pledged to one candidate or another, Obama is only behind Clinton by 93. *That’s my count as of 9:30 am EST.  (New Mexico still hasn’t been decided either.)

I think that this is spectacular. Though I’m an Obama supporter, and was hoping for big things, I still expected to be a couple hundred delegates behind Clinton this morning.  I never expected him to pick up mostly white states like MN and UT.  I bought too much into the talking heads on TV telling me how much race is effecting this race.  –But if you look at the exit poll data, something I predicted just before MySpace pulled down my old blog page is ringing true.  Hillary’s base has become older and elderly women.  Sure, she pulled votes with the Hispanics and Asians which helped win CA, but clearly her momentum is in that high-voter-turnout demographic of older ladies.

I can’t discount race entirely. Hispanics and Asians helped Hillary.  Obama dominated the black vote.  –But he also won white males and women under 40.  This gives me great hope for the weeks ahead.

I never expected Super Tuesday to end this race.  I did expect Clinton to do a lot better.  I knew she’d win MA and NJ. Any spin to the contrary today is just that: spin.  She polled ahead by many points in both of those states, except for a couple of days ago.  With as flawed as polls have been this year, you have to look at the data from the last couple of months as a whole, and discern some averages. 

While I had hoped Obama would win CA, and that could be spun for him today as a big victory, I’m satisfied with the fact that he was a close second, not to mention that he won 40% of Clinton’s adopted home state of NY.  I’m proud to say that Obama won my voting district in Buffalo.  He didn’t win all of the city, but he won our section. I was also proud to see he did well in my former home of CO.

As I said, I expected Obama to be a couple of hundred delegates behind Clinton today, so I am both relieved and hopeful. Let’s not forget that at this time last year, everyone thought Hillary Clinton was inevitably the next President of the United States.  We Democrats in the Obama camp have launched a strong opposition to that. No matter how this thing is spun, they can’t belittle that.

The next round of primaries will be interesting to watch, to say the least. Spin will play a big part of this thing. Obama’s momentum can only be stopped if his supporters become apathetic. We have to prepared to stay enthusiastic and energized about this campaign into the August convention.  This race is going to force a brokered convention, which is exciting to me.  We actually have a chance for real change.

Like any political junkie in America, I’m exhausted today, but more than ever I believe that, yes, we can.

this was my blog yesterday, but since I'm considering moving the bloggage over here to TMP, I'll post it here as well...
--MJS
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I am writing in hopes of encouraging my fellow New Yorkers, and fellow Americans who live in states that vote in February 5th primaries, to make certain they do so tomorrow.  It is a heated primary, an important primary, and it will do the entire nation some good if we see record numbers at the polls tomorrow.

I've studied the poll data, and find the samplings flawed myself, so I will refrain from making any predictions.  Personally, I feel that anything can happen tomorrow, in any state.  In a rare moment for modern American politics, ANYTHING can happen---if you make it happen.  Your voice will indeed be heard tomorrow, if you make it so.

If you're a registered Democrat, and I have become, our primaries offer proportional distribution of delegates.  With projected close contests, this gives we New Yorkers a very big voice.  New York is not a sealed deal for Hillary Clinton unless Clinton supporters rally.  If Obama supporters rally, Barack can walk away with many of NY's delegates.  I believe an upset is possible. I believe that Barack Obama can win Hillary's "home" state of NY.

And that leads me to the second part of this diatribe.  I will be voting for Barack Obama, and I would like to tell you why.  While at first I began supporting Obama because I believed he was the only one who could defeat Clinton, I have slowly come to the point of view that many reached before me.  America needs President Obama.

I believe that Obama is the only Democrat who can win a national election, especially against John McCain.  With Clinton, Republicans rally to vote against her.  With Obama, Republicans disgruntled with McCain either stay home or vote Obama.  Barack's message of hope and change in America from the ground up will appeal to independents even more than it has in the primary season. He will win with large margins, go into the White House with soaring popularity, and be able to push through landmark legislation.  He will push to end the reign of lobbyist power in Washington and we will see our system be repaired in needed ways.

A Rasmussen Jan. 26 polls show Clinton at 47% and McCain at 45% in a match; and it shows Obama at 46% and McCain at 41%. A NBC/WSJ Jan. 24 poll shows Obama and McCain tying at 42% and McCain beating Clinton 46% to 44%.  These aren't big wins, but if the Democrats WANT to win, they better choose Obama over Clinton.

Sure, we may not have the sweeping reforms of true visionaries like Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich, but we will progress.  Hillary Clinton will not bring progress. She will bring political deadlock, all the baggage of the previous Clinton administration, all the sleazy lobby dollars, and more of the same Washington dynasty.

I was wary of Barack Obama because he's voted at par so many times with Clinton on issues like funding the war and renewing the Patriot Act.   But I have come to respect him.  I thank him for taking Clinton to task over her health care plan, which would cater to the insurance industries (who contribute to Clinton in record numbers, more than any other candidate, including Republicans) by garnishing people's wages if they could not afford insurance.   If a poor person has to choose between feeding their family while paying their rent and personal health insurance, how will garnishing their wages help?

I've been studying Obama's record and have come to admire it.  He's been an elected official longer than Clinton. He's more experience as an office-holder.  His management work as a community organizer far exceeds any real management experience you can twist her record into showing.  The health care flop she managed in the 90s and sitting on Walmart's board is all I can discern as real management experience. Both I see as failures.  Obama was a successful manager who transformed neighborhoods.

He was right about the war.  And this issue means a lot to me.  Clinton can twist her words as much as she wants. Everyone in America knows that she voted to authorize the President to use force in Iraq and that he would use it.  She and her supporters often lie about the intent of different amendments surrounding that vote, but the record is clear, as the media has finally reported so well this week.  Clinton was clearly afraid of being on the wrong side of the issue, so she didn't vote against it. She thought the war would be over in a week and gas prices would drop significantly, and Americans would be happy about the war.  Obama on the other hand, like Al Gore, made public speeches warning us of what would really happen, and how immoral the war would be.  Plain and simple, they were right.  The politicians who practiced war out of fear were not.

Barack Obama does not take money from lobbyists or PACs.  This is an extremely important issue to me.  I invite you to read this long list of Clinton campaign finance scandals, and why I'm frightened to let the Clintons have another whack at selling our country out.

I've piles of research about how the scandals of the Reagan/Bush administration involved the Clintons in Arkansas, how Bill Clinton's administration carried on with many of those sad blemishes on American liberties, and how Bill Clinton opened the doors that allowed George W. Bush's administration to render our Constitution useless.  I'd love to discuss this with any of you and provide you with some reading.  To me, it is clear that continuing the Bush/Clinton dynasty is dangerous for our nation.

But even if you take Hillary Clinton out of the mix, Obama is still the right man, right now.  His magnetic personality, powerful ability for speech, and youthful vibrance make him the perfect man to run against old, monotone McCain.  America electing a young black man with the name Barack Hussein Obama will do us a world of good with our world image.  No candidate can offer the national and international healing by perception alone that Barack Obama can.

Sure, in my dream America, the constitutional warriors of the far right and far left, Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich would be cleaning up America with sweeping reforms.  But it didn't happen.  We're down to three candidates.  And as far as I can tell, there's only one progressive with any regard to the constitution left in the race, and his name is Barack Obama.

Tomorrow, you can sit home with apathy or take a little time out of your day to cast a vote. You can do nothing or you can do something.  You can continue to sit silent and let career politicians take away your liberties, give your tax dollars to corporate buddies, and betray our founding fathers' vision.  Or you can turn out in record numbers and remind everyone that Americans do care about America.

Please vote tomorrow.

I woke early, in hopes of getting to the polls before work. A progression of household delays will force me to do so after work today. Still, I was in position to get to the office early enough to enjoy a cup of coffee before the rest of the organization gets in, and that seemed like a solid goal for me.

When I arrived to the subway station, a college student was at the top of the escalators handing out Obama literature and encouraging people to vote. I passed on the literature, stating that Barack already had my vote. The young man thanked me and I took the stairs down to the train stop.

That’s when I noticed something far out of the ordinary for my morning routine. My fellow commuters, who I see every morning and afternoon, were engaged in conversation with each other. Usually, this crowd of mixed age, race, gender and preference casually ignores each other. They stand or sit quietly. They bury their faces in books or newspapers. They close their eyes. Rarely do they interact. Today, they were discussing politics with their fellow strangers.

All of this was inspired by the young man at the top of the station encouraging votes for Obama. It appeared to me that a majority of my fellow commuters were receptive to that encouragement. People were shouting, “Yes We Can!” Others asked each other if they’d voted yet and if they knew where to do so.

I decided to interact as well, and try to get a feel for people’s thoughts and ideas. As I was considering who I would survey, a couple of young black men shouted over their iPod earphone volume at me. “Democrat?” I smiled and nodded. They both responded with a hearty Kool-Aid man impression.

As I took my seat on the train, I was stunned by how everyone was still interacting. They were folding up their Obama literature and saving it. I asked an elderly gentleman nearby what he thought of this phenomenon. He smiled a Cheshire grin and told me that it gave him hope.

Two well dressed white girls, likely students, sat near me, and didn’t seem interested in the political conversations occurring around them. I decided to ask them why. “We’re Hillary girls,” one responded to me. I had to ask why.

“Because she’s a woman,” the other said enthusiastically.

The two black men I’d encountered outside the train chimed in from several rows away, saying that they were voting for Obama, but not because he’s black. They wanted to know what issues the girls were choosing Clinton over Obama for. The girls responded they were choosing Clinton because they liked her husband.

This made me pause. At first the ladies made me think they were choosing Hillary because of strong feelings for the need for a woman, but ultimately their reason was anti-feminist, and because they liked her husband.

My new friends that I’d met outside the train weren’t done interjecting. “No more Clintons. We can’t have more of the same.”

I felt bad for the girls, as they sunk down sheepishly, in an obviously mostly Obama crowd. I decided to push the Obama crowd on the issues to see how they made their choice.

Interestingly enough, the people I may have incorrectly stereotyped by appearance for not being politically minded, seemed to be the most astute on the issues. One told me about a pledge to honor the constitution as President that Obama signed and Hillary refused. (I researched this when I got to the office, it’s true.) Several spoke about the war. A nice couple spoke about Obama’s work as a community organizer and how they believed it would benefit the nation to have a leader who worked on the streets like that. Everyone agreed that Barack’s warm personality made him extremely likable and gave them hope.

A stylish older black man with a cane, the sort of character you see on the train and wish you’d brought a sketch pad, grabbed me by the arm and smiled. “You see this? That man, (Obama) has inspired all these people to get active in politics. I haven’t seen anything like this since the civil rights movement. You say you’re a writer. You write about this today.”

And so I did.

I can’t wait to cast my vote for Obama today. He at one point was my third choice, behind Kucinich and Paul. Now I’m excited to support him. THAT is the audacity of hope.