Blue Deluge
There’s been a lot of recent hand-wringing about whether Hillary Clinton’s continued fight for the nomination will fracture the Democratic Party and hurt its chances in November. But here in North Carolina, some Democrats say the protracted nomination fight is only helping the party within the state.
Check out these astounding numbers from the State Board of Elections:
Last week, 9,156 North Carolinians registered to vote. That’s a big number, and it continues the deluge of new registrants that state election officials have been seeing all year. But take a look at the party breakdown of all the voters who registered last week:
5,706, or 62 percent, were Democrats
3,153, or 34 percent, were unaffiliated
297, or 3 percent, were Republicans
Just 3 percent of the 9,000-plus voters who registered between March 23 and March 29 were Republicans. (Overall, about 34 percent of North Carolina’s voters are registered as Republicans.) Clearly one would expect an influx of Democratic registrations in advance of the contested presidential primary — and other states have seen that trend — but such a large disparity (62 percent vs. 3 percent) is pretty staggering.
“It’s really good for the vitality of the party,” North Carolina’s Democratic chairman, Jerry Meek, told Trail Mix recently. He added that the large grassroots networks that the Obama and Clinton campaigns are putting in place will likely continue to help the party in November.
Jack Betts has more on the huge numbers of new North Carolina voters here.
And you can crunch the numbers yourself by going to the state elections web site here.
Hillary is correct that Obama did say the primaries should end and that he already has the nomination after the Texas Caucus. Obama has now recently retracted his call for Hillary to quit the race and now says, “Hillary can stay in the race as long as she wants to.” His new stand is arrogant and sexist, Obama is giving his permission to Hillary to continue competing. Obama has always played hardball.
Obama Knows His Way around a Ballot by David Jackson & Ray Long, Chicago Tribune http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-070403obama-ballot,0,1843097.story?,page=1
Some say his ability to play political hardball goes back to his first campaign….His overwhelming legal onslaught signaled his impatience to gain office, even if that meant elbowing aside an elder stateswoman like Senator Alice Palmer…Obama’s first campaign clouds the image he has cultivated throughout his political career…first entered public office not by leveling the playing field, but by clearing it…
Illinois Voter on 04/03/2008 (4:25 pm)
Does any of this have to do with Rush?
on2them on 04/02/2008 (1:56 pm)
I am deeply concerned that many of these recently registered Democrats and Independents are actually Republicans trying to manipulate the Democratic Primary. I first heard about this from my mother, who is a precinct chair in Dallas, TX. She called me during their primary a couple of weeks ago to express her shock and disappointment at the number of folks who walked out of the voting booth and told her that they were Republicans who just voted for Clinton because McCain has a better shot against Clinton than he has against Obama in the general election. Now I’ve heard from several close friends that their Republican family/friends in NC are changing their voter registration so that they can do the same thing on May 6th.
It saddens me that anyone would want to disrupt the democratic process in this way. But we have no real way to prevent them from doing so. Unless Clinton drops out soon, I worry that this will distort NC’s primary results, which would lead to an even deeper division within the Democratic Party both in our state and across the country.
ADJ on 04/02/2008 (1:21 pm)
Sniper Fire over North Carolina - Clinton tells media Obama doesn’t want NC to Vote
Hillary Clinton’s latest lie is that Obama doesn’t want North Carolinians to vote.
She went on TV lying to local media and North Carolina Voters.
The Wall Street Journal, owned by Clinton’s friend and fund raiser Rupert Murdock, further spread the Clinton fairy tales.
She claimed that she just didn’t understand “why Senator Obama and some of his supporters didn’t want you to be able to vote.”
Clinton’s claims fly in the face of logic considering Obama’s huge popularity in North Carolina.In fact, that Obama was just in NC last week and is projected to beat Senator Clinton by 12 points there, this flies in the face of logic. This past weekend, he opened 13 offices across the state—local headquarters to help organize grassroots supporters from the mountains to the coast.
How is it that the media would give free air time to this politician who was recently and publicly branded as a chronic and brazen liar?
The Washington Post has even awarded Senator Clinton “4 Pinocchios” for her frequent and sizable whoppers.
more at the link
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/04/sniper-fire-over-north-carolin.php
Laura Roslin on 04/02/2008 (3:25 am)