Primaries Plus Democrats in TEXAS?!?!?

The trouble with weather forecasting is that it's right too often for us to ignore it and wrong too often for us to rely on it.
-Patrick Young

Today's quote of the day is rather appropriate, I think. But the forecasting that I'm thinking of today is political not weather.

If you think back to June of 2007, back before everyone knew that Clemens was a steroid user, political forecasters foresaw a couple of things for sure, John McCain was done, the Republican Primary would probably go to Rudy Gulianni, but if Fred Thompson entered the race, he could become a viable candidate, and on the Democratic side, Barack Obama was interesting, for sure, but the race would be over very quickly with Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee.

Well, as we travel from the past back to the present, we can see that Gulianni and Thompson are both out of the race, and with the backing of Mitt Romney and former President Bush, McCain should have the nomination sown up by early next month at the latest. Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, while prognosticators where correct in regards to the interest the nation has taken in Senator Obama, they handed Senator Clinton victory a little too quickly.

Sticking with the idea given us by Mr. Young in the quote of the day, we've seen many projections and polls in politics that have proved to be false. As recently as the New Hampshire Primary, polls showed Hillary Clinton trailing, and yet, she won the Primary.

As it stands right now, Senators Clinton and Obama are polling neck and neck in Wisconsin (the State of Cheese). A victory here would be huge for Clinton as just last week she was given no chance. She appeared to be following a "keep your eyes on the big states" type of strategy looking ahead towards Texas and Ohio next Tuesday and Pennsylvania on April 22nd, conceding everything in between to Obama. Her strategy shifted, however, perhaps due to the critiques her plan was recieving throughout the media, and she began to spend some time and money in Wisconsin.

At the very least, she's made things interesting again. I'm beginning to believe more and more that the Democratic nomination will not be decided until the Democratic convention in August.

Texas remains important, though. If Senator Clinton pulls out a victory in Wisconsin tonight, then getting less delegates from Texas then Senator Obama doesn't become as big of an issue as it would if she gets swept out of February after Super Tuesday.

The interesting thing about Texas is the fact that Clinton could win the overall vote in Texas, but be awarded less Texas Delegates then Obama. The reason for this is that the Democratic delegates are weighted by the amounts of Democratic voters in the county in the last election for Governer. A county in which 75% of the vote went Democratic will award more delegates then a place where only 25% of the vote went Democratic. So, if you're a Democrat in Texas, your lonely vote for Chris Bell might actually have meant something after all. What makes this important is that in that election, the areas with a strong Latino presence, Hillary Clinton's strong constituancy, are in primarily Republican counties.

You may recall the redistricting scandal a few years back when the Republican controlled State Congress redrew the voting lines primarily to break up the strong Latino voting districts (which voted primarilly Democratic) and placed them as smaller pieces into largely Republican districts, removing some seats from Democrats. This is the main reason why the areas with Latino voters will have a smaller number of delegates to give then other areas, areas with younger, more affluent, and better educated voters, and areas with a large number of African Americans, all of whom tend to vote in larger numbers for Barack Obama. Add to that the fact that polls now have Obama nearly spliting the woman's vote and the elderly vote with Clinton, the gender and age group that she used to dominate, and Clinton's one remaining strength (the Latino vote) is less of a strength then one might have originally thought it would be in Texas. So while Senator Clinton is counting on the large number of Latino voters in Texas to propell her to victory here, the delegates will be larger in the areas where Senator Obama has the edge, meaning Clinton might win the state, but Obama's delegate lead will still grow.

But, like I said at the beginning, polls and predictions can often be wrong, at least often enough for us to be stupid to put our faith in them completely, but they also are right often enough for them to be worth paying attention to.

Either way, the fact that today in the city of Houston, Barack Obama will be giving his post primary speech in the Toyata Center excites me. Last week, Hillary Clinton was in El Paso. Thursday they will be debating in Austin. How crazy is this, Democrats who are running for President are campaining in Texas? W.'s state?

Enjoy it while it lasts Texas Democrats, because things like this don't happen too often around here.