Posted on 05/10/2008 11:35:14 AM PDT by The_Republican
The May 6 primary energized Indiana in ways no one had seen in years. The Democratic presidential contest was the number one topic of conversation among ordinary Hoosiers, young and old, black and white, rich, poor, and middle class. It filled pages of our local newspapers and hours of local talk radio and TV news airtime for weeks.
Thousands of new voters were registered, and Indiana had the highest primary turnout in 20 years--over 39 percent, nearly double the state's norm for presidential primaries. Twenty-two per cent of Hoosier Democrats going to the polls on May 6 were first-time voters. Sixty per cent of them supported Obama, according to exit polls.
The excitement generated by the 2008 race and the fact that, this year, Indiana mattered, spurred many college students to register to vote and even become active in the Obama, Clinton, and also the McCain campaigns. The primary made for great "teaching moments." The seemingly endless Obama anti-NAFTA mailings (and the far more rare Clinton direct mail pieces) provided great fodder for discussion in my International Political Economy class this semester. There was a buzz in my Intro to American Politics course, with students paying close attention to the campaigns and talking politics in the classroom.
Had Hillary Clinton bowed out before getting to Indiana and North Carolina--as some pundits and hand-wringing Democrats had advocated--Hoosiers would have missed out on one of the most exciting moments in our state's recent history, and the democratic process would have been the worse for it.
The blowout by Obama in North Carolina and Clinton's squeaker of a victory in Indiana (where she won by less than 15,000 votes out of a total of more than 1.27 million cast) killed whatever momentum Hillary had after the Pennsylvania victory.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
Can Hillary run a positive campaign?
Can she run the rest of the campaign without her flunkies going on cable TV and spinning us about how Obama can’t win certain states, etc, etc. ? And that if you add up votes or delegates from certain states in a certain way, that Hillary’s actually winning if you count it those ways?
Is it in her DNA to concede graciously whenever that times comes?
Re-Create ‘68!
Thank you, Commander Limbaugh, for your valiant and successful execution of Operation Chaos!
Well, she is a typical hard working white person... ;-)
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