Mississippi: 'Limbaugh Effect' Softens Blow For Hillary Clinton

Posted March 12, 2008 | 09:33 AM (EST)

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In the voting during January and February, Republicans were an average of 3.8% of the voters in the Democratic Primary, and they heavily supported Obama. But for the primaries in March, in Texas, Ohio, and Mississippi, Republicans have been 8% of the voters in the Democratic primary, and now they heavily support Hillary Clinton. This is definite proof of the "Limbaugh effect" coming through. Overall, 1.36% of the voters in the January and February primaries were Republicans who marked their ballot for Clinton; yet, 5.67% of the voters in the March primaries were Republicans voting for Clinton. Barack Obama's Republican numbers in the March primary showed only a modest increase, probably from moderate Republicans who shifted their support to Obama once John McCain's campaign was assured of victory.

In Ohio and Texas, 9% of the voters were Republicans, and they split almost evenly between Obama and Clinton. These votes, more than doubling the percentage of Republican voters in earlier primaries, gave Hillary Clinton a big advantage since Obama typically won more than twice as many voters as she did in previous primaries. In other words, about 3% of the voters in Ohio and Texas were Republicans newly voting for Hillary Clinton out of purely tactical reasons, to try to ruin the Democratic race.

The "HillPublicans" (insincere Republicans voting for Hillary) became a much larger force in the Mississippi election. Fully 9% of the people voting in the Democratic primary were Republicans voting for Clinton. That means that almost one-quarter of Clinton's votes in Mississippi came from Republicans, nearly all of whom hate Clinton but wanted to distort the results of the Democratic primary. By contrast, Obama's Republican vote, at 3%, was similar to his historical average throughout the primaries.

The exit polls in Mississippi proved that these "HillPublicans" are not sudden converts to the Clinton campaign. As this diary noted, 70% of those who have a strongly favorable opinion of McCain picked Clinton. In addition, 6% of the voters in the primary voted for Clinton and said they would be dissatisified if she won the nomination; only 1% of the primary voters went for Obama and said they would be dissatisfied if he won.

According to a Pew Research Poll in February, substantially more Republicans would support Obama (8%) rather than Clinton (5%) against McCain, so we know this voting is tactical.

Hillary Clinton's loss in Mississippi would have been far more dramatic if not for the concerted efforts of Republicans to save her campaign and damage Barack Obama. Of course, some Clinton supporters might claim that these numbers simply reverse what was happening earlier in the primary, when Obama had the support of Republicans and independents. However, this is highly doubtful. Obama's support came from moderates who are likely to switch parties in the fall. The votes he got came consistently during the early primaries when the Republican nomination was a hotly contested battle. It is unlikely that many Limbaugh supporters were voting for Obama back when they were so busy trying to deny McCain the nomination.

The "HillPublicans" had a dramatic effect on the analysis as well as the results. Pat Buchanan declared during the MSNBC coverage of the Mississippi vote, "Apparently Clinton's voters don't like Obama." That's probably because more than one-quarter of Clinton's voters were Republicans, and nearly all of them were voting in an effort to hurt Obama.

Rarely in American politics have so many people ever intentionally voted for a candidate they hate so much. Approximately 40,000 Republicans in Mississippi decided to vote for Hillary Clinton in order to help her destroy the Democratic Party this year with a divided convention. Hillary Clinton's "big wins" in March failed to help her close the delegate gap, and she cannot possibly win the pledged delegate race against Obama. The only hope for Hillary Clinton is that Republican voters will help her reduce the gap against Obama, and that the superdelegates will somehow be convinced to obey the will of Rush Limbaugh and his acolytes by stealing the election from the legitimate voters.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-k-wilson

HILLARY IS THE 9TH MOST WEALTHY PERSON IN THE US

I often find the claims made by the Clinton campaign to be founded on the
most perverse distortion of facts. Among the most questionable is the claim
that while she represents the working class, Obama is the voice of the
"latte liberals." To test this claim, I decided to check their most recent
personal financial disclosures to see who was really closer to the working
class - Barack or Hillary?

It turns out that while HILLARY IS THE 9TH MOST WEALTHY PERSON IN THE US
SENATE, Barack is only the 66th. In fact, Hillary's income for 2006 is
listed at $10,665,528, while Barack's is $572,490. According to my math,
that puts Hillary about 10 MILLION DOLLARS further away from the working
class than Barack is.

To see the Clintons - multimillionaire residents of ritzy Chappaqua, NY -
accusing Barack of being a "boutique" liberal is utterly absurd; in fact,
it's demented. In the meantime, Clinton Finance Committee member Geraldine
Ferraro says the "truth" is that Barack has only risen as far as he has
because of some sort of affirmative action excercised by the millions of
Americans who voted for him, i.e. "because he's black." What does it all
mean? Quite clearly, the Clintons are trying to use class anger and race
animosity to lock down white working Dems in PA as they did in Ohio. Here
we have the Clintons, who are supposed to be close to the African-American
community, trying to rouse the race-baited anger of working whites to their
own advantage. Here we have Hillary Clinton - the 9th most wealthy person
in the millionaires club that is the US Senate - calling her opponent a
limosuine liberal. Where has any semblance of regard for the truth vanished
to? More importantly, where has any regard for building a diverse coalition
of Americans under the banner of the Democratic Party gone? Barack has
never called Hillary's voters names. He has never said that McCain is
qualified to be president while Hillary is not. He has never insinuated
that her voters all come from one demographic group (a demographic group
that, whether latte-drinkers or African Americans, should presumably be
ignored so that we can focus on the important people who vote Hillary -
remember Bill shrugging off the South Carolina landslide by saying "Well,
Jesse Jackson won here."?). Barack has walked the high road all along, and
for that - and for so much else about this Senator - we can be truly proud
to call ourselves his supporters.

If you're as stunned as I am - please share this information with people.

Here are links to my sources:

For Hillary
http://www.opensecrets.org/pfds/CIDsummary.php?CID=N00000019&year=2006
For Barack
http://www.opensecrets.org/pfds/CIDsummary.php?CID=N00009638&year=2006


This email was sent from Michael Brown mjbrown55@gmail.com

How Clinton Loses Matters

Fellow Obama folk,

Please – don’t abandon the victims of the Rwanda Genocide again.

In 1994, the U.S., led by Clinton, had a UN obligation to intervene. Clinton avoided our obligation by denying it was genocide – even though Hutus were killing 56,000 Tutsis each week – a murder rate 5 times the Holocaust.

Incredibly, the media, Democrats, even African-American leaders, all trusted Clinton and abandoned Rwanda.

At least Bush is calling the crisis in Darfur what it is – genocide.

If you can hold Bush responsible for not intervening in Darfur (we do), then you must hold Clinton responsible for what happened in Rwanda:

Don’t abandon Rwanda a second time by keeping silent about it in a 2008 Presidential Campaign between Obama and one of the 1994 leaders. We’re not talking about infidelity – this is about genocide. It’s not a personal attack. It’s about a human rights disaster and a huge U.S. foreign policy mistake - very serious.

We’re all humans and we care about other humans, don’t we? If you can’t care about 800,000 humans dying needlessly than what do you care about.

If remaining silent about a genocide is winning with dignity, I’d rather lose my dignity, lose the election and speak out – wouldn’t you?

Fortunately, Obama’s on track to win the nomination anyway. So why bring up Rwanda?

It matters how the Clintons lose.

If Clinton is seen as losing to the rock star first African-American Obama phenomenon, we win the election and little else. We can do better.

If Clinton loses, in part, because America held them responsible for abandoning Rwanda – we win the election, earn a little more respect in the world, especially in Africa, and we take a step towards healing the wounds in our soul from 1994.

Can Obama raise this issue tactfully? Yes he can!

Perhaps his campaign can produce a counter to the 3am ad that says, "In 1994, the phone rang at 3am for 100 days in a row. It was the victims of the Rwanda Genocide. The Clintons denied it was ringing while 800,000 blacks were butchered to death.".

OK, maybe Obama's team can come up with something more gentle, but you get the point.

This small amount of justice for Rwanda may again give hope to African children and pride for American children.