A Hair Short

Pretty much every round up of the news has Mr. Romney now being declared the (unofficial) official nominee. However, he came up just a tiny bit short in the delegate count to make that declaration.

Mr. Romney won 105 delegates last night which puts his hard total at 1080. If you include party leader pledges, that number jumps to 1115. If you throw in projections from caucus states of Iowa and Washington, it jumps to 1139. I'm sure that there are a few other states that have not made their full allocation yet (such as Missouri and Louisiana) that have been included in the projected news totals and that puts Mr. Romney over the top.

But if you are doing that, what's the point? We've known since mid-April that Mr. Romney is going to be the nominee and if you are just tracking delegates so you can make a declarative statement, why not wait until you have hard numbers rather than just relying on projections from conventions? Granted, a number of those conventions meet this weekend, but still.

Looking forward, Washington State has their state convention as does Missouri and Louisiana this weekend. Mr. Romney had been projected to win 16 of Washington's 40 available delegates but I'm sure he'll walk away with more which will put him over the top. If he didn't, you have 25 delegates in Missouri and 23 delegates in Louisiana available and I doubt Uncle Ron's hoards will be able to thwart Mr. Romney in all of them.

On the Senate side, Mr. Dewhurst was unable to crack the 50% threshold (45-34) so he'll have a runoff with Mr. Cruz on July 31. The Democrats will also have a run-off between their two top vote getters: Paul Sadler and Grady Yarbrough.

Although no delegates were awarded, Mr. Obama managed to avoid the embarrassment that had marked the last three southern contests by snagging 88% of the vote against 3 challengers (including the same John Wolfe who took over 40% of the vote in Arkansas).

TX: Dewhurst vs. Cruz

Today is the Texas primary and Mr. Romney should officially clinch the Republican nomination today. As such, the focus is shifting to the battle for the Republican nomination for Senate.

The current seat is held by Kay Bailey Hutchison (R) who is retiring. There are a number of candidates but the two top candidates are Lt. Gov David Dewhurst and former Soliciter General Ted Cruz. Mr. Dewhurst is the protege of Governor Perry and is seen as more of the establishment candidate. Mr. Cruz is more of an outsider and has recently picked up the backing of the state Tea Party.

The last polls that I saw had Mr. Dewhurst with the lead but the situation is fluid. This isn't so much of a case of RINO vs. Conservative as it is a case of Insider vs. Outsider and it will be mildly interesting to see which side prevails.

Dropping Biden?

There have been several news stories over the past few weeks either critical or showing skepticism in Vice President Biden. These may be nothing, but it is possible that they may be building towards a decision to drop Mr. Biden from the Democratic ticket.

Political lineages have been relatively stable for quite a while now. The last time a siting Vice President was removed in favor of someone else (and not by his own request) was when Henry Wallace was dropped in favor of Harry Truman in 1944. Wallace had originally replaced John Garner in 1940, when Garner opposed Roosevelt for the Presidential nomination.

In more recent times, the closest we've had to this is the resignation of Spiro Agnew and his replacement with Gerald Ford in 1973. However, Agnew was re-elected with Nixon in 1972 and it was only after he was hit with a bribery scandal that he was forced out of office.

Now, all of these stories might just be grousing about Mr. Biden and Mr. Obama may have no intention of replacing him. The big question is who would replace him on the ticket should Mr. Biden be dropped. Most stories focus heavily on Mrs. Clinton, but I'm not really buying that one. Mr. Obama wouldn't allow Bill Clinton to overshadow him in his first term and I see no reason he would allow that to happen in his second term.

Once you get past Mrs. Clinton, who are you left with? I can't think of anyone in the cabinet that would be notable enough and there aren't a lot of prominent Democratic politicians in states that Mr. Obama needs to add to the ticket. Most of the battleground states have Republican governors and the only two that I can think of off the top of my head that have Democratic governors(Colorado and North Carolina), won't help him (John Hickenlooper just became governor in 2011 and Bev Purdue is not running for reelection amid dismal approval numbers). If he had kept more in the limelight, I would have suggested Ted Strickland (former governor of Ohio) but I'm also not sure that he has even been forgiven for his public support of Mrs. Clinton in 2008.

Even sitting Senators don't really stand out at the moment. Most are either prominent liberals from states that Mr. Obama will have no trouble winning (such as California) or they are engaged in hard fights to retain their seats in purple and red states. Bill Nelson of Florida might have been a good pick, but he's up for re-election this year and is expected to have a hard fight on his hands. Of course, he could take someone from a solid blue state as before, but no one is jumping out at me as a real game-changer that would justify dropping Mr. Biden who, warts and all, is highly seasoned and familiar with the job.

Almost There

Mr. Romney finally lost a county since Mr. Santorum's withdrawal back in April. He lost Trigg county in Kentucky to Uncle Ron. I doubt this bothered him much as he won all 42 of Kentucky's available delegates and all 33 of Arkansas' available delegates.

Mr. Romney's hard total is up to 975. Texas has 155 delegates available when they go to the polls next Tuesday. That 155 won't be enough to put Mr. Romney over the top in the strict hard count, but if you factor in the soft pledges from the party leader allotment (he has 59 officially) that does put him over the top. The remaining 339 delegates available in June would just be gravy.

On the Democrat side, Mr. Obama easily won both of his primaries, but the results (like West Virginia) should concern him a bit. In Kentucky, Mr. Obama only got 58% of the Democrat vote (in a closed primary). The remaining 42% went to "Uncommitted". In Arkansas, Mr. Obama is winning 59-41 over John Wolfe. Mr. Obama is almost certainly not going to win the states of West Virginia, Kentucky, and Arkansas so these results won't bother him particularly. But they are potential evidence of discontentment with Mr. Obama among blue collar workers. It is because of this that it is looking increasingly likely that Mr. Obama will not win North Carolina and could lose Virginia and Ohio.

Of course, an awful lot can happen in the next 5.5 months.

Kentucky and Arkansas Today

Kentucky and Arkansas go to the polls today. We actually had to remind my cube neighbor, who lives in Kentucky, that today was voting day. It was actually pretty funny.

Almost nothing of importance is coming up from the vote today. About the only thing of note will be whether Mr. Obama loses any part of Arkansas to Democrat challenger John Wolfe Jr. There had been a little polling done which suggested that Mr. Wolfe may get enough votes to take some delegates, especially in the rural 4th CD. It won't amount to anything of significance but it would be a slight embarrassment for the President.

Is it About My Cube?

Political Quickie

If anyone bothered to check, Mitt Romney won 70% of the vote in Nebraska and Oregon and bringing his official delegate total to 899.

The only other race of note was the Republican selection of State Senator Deb Fischer to run against former Senator Bob Kerrey for the open Senate seat in Nebraska. Fischer had a last minute surge that powered her past the establishment candidate AG Jon Bruning and his main challenger Treasurer Don Stenberg.

Primary Housekeeping

Yesterday, Ron Paul announced that he would no longer be actively seeking the Republican nomination. This just means that he won't be spending any money, rather than actually suspending his campaign. Not that either of these designations have stopped his followers. They have vowed to continue to vote and push for Uncle Ron until the convention. This really isn't any different from those folks still pushing Mr. Santorum or Newt, but the Ronulans feel the need to make a show of it.

Anyway, there are two primaries today, but only one will have delegates assigned as a result. Nebraska has a non-binding Presidential preference poll while Oregon ends it's primary-by-mail. Oregon actually does all it's national elections by mail and it designates a "primary day" by which all ballots must be recieved by the ballot station. If the post office lost yours in the mail and it is delivered the next day, too bad. The primary is proportional as long as the candidate gets at least 3.5% of the vote so I would expect to see some sort of four-way split of it's 25 available delegates. Oregon won't announce anything until 8 PM PDT (11 PM EDT) by which point I will be in bed.

Not that any of this really matters. Mr. Romney is the only man left standing and he should win the lion's share. This is just another pit stop on the road to official nominee, which he should hit with the Texas primary on May 29. If some glitch occurs and he doesn't hit 1144 by that point, the June 5th primaries of California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Dakota would most certainly put him over the top.

Victory Requirements

Amidst the flurry of spinning the results from North Carolina, Indiana, West Virginia, and Wisconsin last week, a few political strategists have been playing numbers games in trying to determine how either Mr. Obama retains the White House or Mr. Romney wins.

This far out, any analysis is pretty much useless. The best you can do is look back at 2008 and extrapolate based on current trends. From everywhere that I can find, it is expected that Mr. Obama will not do as well as he did in 2008 and that he will likely lose a few states that he won in 2008. I see no problem with this analysis and the question is how much he can lose and still hold on to the White House.

Two states that Mr. Obama will almost certainly lose that he won are North Carolina and Indiana. Mr. Obama won North Carolina by a margin of only 0.33% (14,200 votes) and Indiana by a margin of 1.03% (28,400 votes). These would require a switch of just 7,100 and 14,200 votes in each of those states and that seems quite likely at this point.

Florida comes next. Mr. Obama's margin of victory was 2.82% (236,450 votes out of 8.3 million cast) and a switch of just under 120,000 votes will swing the state. That is increasingly likely as Florida has tightened its voting laws and the poor economy has caused a number of potential snow bird votes from New York to lose their Florida homes and stay in New York (where Mr. Obama will win easily).

Ohio is the last state that Mr. Obama won with less than a 5% margin. He won Ohio with a 4.59% margin (262,000 votes). Ohio is still showing loyalty to Mr. Obama in the early polls. His strength will remain strong in the cities just as he will be pummeled in the rural areas. The make or break area will likely be in the southeastern corner of the state. A traditionally Democratic region (poor, blue collar) but that has been hit hard by the economic downturn and could go either way.

Virginia is the last state that Mr. Obama can lose and still retain the White House. Thanks to the strength of the Northern Virginia suburbs of DC, Mr. Obama won Virginia by a margin of 6.30% (234,500 votes). He'll still get very good returns in that region of the state, but if he doesn't retain the numbers he got from Richmond and the areas around Norfolk, Virginia will swing red again.

The tipping point state is Colorado. In the scenario painted so far, Mr. Obama would win 272-266. This means that if he loses any other state (other than the 3-pointers of Delaware, Vermont, or DC), he loses the election. Colorado was the next closest margin at 8.95% (215,000 votes). Iowa and New Hampshire are also obvious targets to turn as the margins in those states were 9.53% (146,500 votes) and 9.61% (68,300 votes) respectively.

Every state is different and while there might be a wild swing in one state against Mr. Obama, another state might push his margin of victory even higher than in 2008. However, the immediate take away is that Mr. Obama must limit his losses to less than a 4.5% switch across the board. If he does that, he'll win a second term. If he does worse than that, he will lose.

Mystery 2

Miss Marple (Joan Hickson version)



Miss Marple (Geraldine McEwan/Julia McKenzie version)



Inspector Frost

Delegates for Prisioner #11593-051

Another primary night has passed and very little that was unexpected happened.

In the Presidential primaries, Mr. Romney won all three states (IN, NC, and WV) with better than 60% of the vote in all. He will receive 27, 36, and 21 delegates respectively, bringing his hard total up to 881 while his projected total (including unsettled caucuses and unpledged delegates) sits at 939 or 82% of the needed total.

A funny side note on the Democratic side. Mr. Obama was up against a fellow named Keith Russell Judd in the West Virginia primary. Mr. Obama won the contest 59-41, however, Mr. Judd is currently in prison in Texas and the West Virginia Democratic party is at a bit of a loss whether to void the delegates that Mr. Judd should have won or not.

Outside of President, there were three races of note. The first was the primary defeat of Senator Dick Lugar (R-IN) to state treasurer Richard Mourdock. There was much hang-wringing and lamenting by the Washington insiders but this was not an unexpected outcome.

The second result of note was the passage of a constitutional amendment in North Carolina to outlaw gay marriage and civil unions. The funny thing about this (amidst the lamenting and moaning about this from the left) is that this actually changes nothing in North Carolina. North Carolina had already outlawed gay marriage and civil unions in the normal legal process. However, there was concern that this law could be struck down through the judiciary and so the constitutional amendment was passed, just has it has in 30 other states. The most likely cause of all the extra attention is the embarrassment of having this amendment pass by a large margin (61-39) in the same state where the Democratic National Convention will be held in September.

The third result of note is the finalizing of the contestants in the Wisconsin governor recall election. Scott Walker and his running mate, Rebecca Kleefisch will face off against Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett and Mahlon Mitchell on June 5. This is actually a rematch as Mr. Walker defeated Mr. Barrett in 2010 for the governorship in the regular election. One other little note about this race is that despite a hot contest between five candidates on one side and an essentially unchallenged incumbent on the other, there were only about 24,000 more votes cast in the Democratic primary than in the Republican (out of about 1.3 million cast). That can't sit well with Mr. Barrett in terms of voter enthusiasm and generating enough support to oust Mr. Walker in four weeks.

Interesting Election Day

Today should be an interesting election day. Not so much for the Presidential primary, as Mr. Romney should take nearly all of the 132 delegates at stake in Indiana, North Carolina, and West Virginia. If he does, that will put him well over hard 900 delegates and close to 1000 if you include projections and unbound party delegates.

No, the real interest will be in the Indiana Senate primary and the Wisconsin governor primary. In Indiana, six-term incumbent Dick Lugar is being challenged by a state treasurer, Richard Mourdock. Mr. Mourdock is favored by the Tea Party while Mr. Lugar is being back by the Washington establishment. Indiana is an open primary so while Mr. Mourdock is polling ahead, Mr. Lugar has asked Independents and Democrats to come vote for him. The last polls in Indiana close at 6 pm CDT (7 pm EDT), so a call in this race should be made at a reasonable hour.

The other interesting race is the Wisconsin governor's primary. Governor Scott Walker is being targeted for a recall election that will be held on June 5. However, first there is a primary to determine who the main opponents will be. Mr. Walker is nearly unopposed as his only challenger on the Republican primary ballot is the little known Arthur Kohl-Riggs (who seems to be just trying to stir the pot a little). On the Democrat side, there are five people vying to become the challenger to Mr. Walker, but the two who are most likely to win are Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk. Mr. Barrett is the more moderate Democrat and is ahead in the polls. Ms. Falk is the more liberal Democrat and will probably do very well in Madison but will need to take a large percentage of other areas to balance out Mr. Barrett's advantage in Milwaukee. Polls close at 8 pm CDT (9 EDT) but I would expect the counting to go on on the Democratic side for a little while.

Mystery Themes

One of my mom's favorite shows while I was growing up was Mystery! on PBS. At the high point of her watching, it would broadcast a lot of British serials done in the 80's and early 90's. Several of these seriels had some very distinctive themes and are quite good. I've had a devil of a time tracking a few of them down on CD, but now there is Youtube to help out.

This first one is the main theme for Inspector Adam Dauglish of the P.D. James series. I actually never cared much for these but the theme is so haunting. Finding this on CD has been absolutely impossible.



Second is Commissaire Maigret. Maigret actually has history going back to at least the 60's and his theme is established based on those. Mystery! actually broadcast a British version done in the early 90's with Michael Gambon (Dumbledore) as Maigret.



Third is the David Suchet version of Poirot. Poirot was actually made famous in the 70's and early 80's by Peter Ustinov, but David Suchet was cast in in the television serial and was highly memorable, as was the light jazzy theme.



Rounding out this round (of which I hope will be more) is Inspector Lewis. Lewis was much later as he actually started as the sergeant to Inspector Morse back in the late 80's. Morse has been so popular over the years (even after Jonathan Thaw's death) that the character was promoted and given his own show. His own sergeant is an obvious reference to Morse, reversing the relationship of the original show.