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In tonight’s non-binding Florida Democratic Party, one million VOTERS may have cast their ballot for Senator Clinton.
Keith Olbmermann, Chris Matthews and Joe Scarborough on MSNBC made all sorts of juvenile snarky remarks about what they view as Clinton’s phyrric victory. They talked over her speech and cut away in the middle of it so they could tell the country that a million votes and substantial victory over Senator Obama do not matter.
CNN didn’t broadcast Clinton’s speech at all. This is inexcusable!
It’s not as if the windbags on the cable news networks have lots of Britney Spears stories to discuss. They each dedicate hour upon hour to Florida Primary coverage.
In case you are wondering how one million votes cannot matter. Here is a synopsis…
Last spring, the Florida Republican Governor and Legislature decided to violate party rules and move the state presidential party from March until January in order to have a greater impact on the process. Both parties threatened to decertify the primaries, but only the Democrats decided to play by their established rules. Therefore, Florida delegates are not supposed to be seated at the Democratic convention, thereby making the primary a straw poll rather than delegate-awarding primary.
All of the Democratic candidates promised not to campaign in Florida, yet Barack Obama broke that pledge and ran frequent commercials across the state (more here & here). I personally saw them last week while working in Florida.
Sure, I wish that Senator Clinton was not asking for the Florida delegates to count now that she won. The voters of Florida should sue to reclaim their franchise. However, since her opponent is getting so much favorable press and so clearly broke the party rules regarding campaigning in Florida, Clinton had very little choice, but to give voice to the wishes of the electorate who chose her by a huge margin.
One would think that an activist with a commitment to civil rights, like Senator Obama would 1) play by electoral rules and not run expensive commercials across Florida and 2) fight to make sure that the votes of Floridians count.
By the way, not one pundit pointed out that Senator Clinton’s Florida thank you speech was made without the need for the TelePrompTer relied upon by Senator Obama.
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Read more about the Florida Primary mischief at www.makeitcountflorida.com
PS: Rudolph “9/11” Giuliani (who came in 3rd in his must-win primary) just said that he ran a “positive uplifting campaign.” Those TV commercials featuring the attack on the World Trade Center didn’t seem uplifting to me. MSNBC is running Rudolph Giuliani’s entire speech. I guess losers deserve more respect.
Tough guy Rudy just got choked up when he said, “Reagan.” The biggest loser just came out for school choice (including home schooling and parochial schools too). Great stuff!
This just in! MSNBC cut away from Guiliani (we’ll have to wait for whether he stays in or quits like he did when Hillary Clinton won her Senate seat). They cut away for the Great Rudy for 2nd place Romney’s speech. That must really sting.
Romney just said that America is competing against “countries like Asia and India.” Perhaps Obama can lend Mitt his TelePrompTer?
Veteran educator Gary Stager, Ph.D. is the author of Twenty Things to Do with a Computer – Forward 50, co-author of Invent To Learn — Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom, publisher at Constructing Modern Knowledge Press, and the founder of the Constructing Modern Knowledge summer institute. He led professional development in the world’s first 1:1 laptop schools thirty years ago and designed one of the oldest online graduate school programs. Gary is also the curator of The Seymour Papert archives at DailyPapert.com. Learn more about Gary here.
At least they mention your candidate; Ron Paul is lucky to get any press at all, let alone positive. In the last republican debate he got 6 minutes vs. 20-odd minutes each for the front-runners.
My actual candidate was Senator Biden. He didn’t get much air time either even though many people thought he won some debates.
The Obama commercials ran nationwide on CNN and MSNBC. I’m not sure you can buy a national commercial on a national cable network and have it blacked out in one state. In any event, the commercials didn’t help him much in Florida.
Surely you can target cable ads. Lots of local companies advertise on national shows.
In any event, it seems ridiculous to criticize Clinton when she played by the rules.
Aren’t all the pundits, by definition, arrogant?
However, I think Simon Rosenberg describes the problem with Hillary’s Florida campaign the best here. As to alonga81’s comment, I think it was referring to the fact that the Obama camp is claiming that all the florida ads were national, not targeted.
But Obama’s campaign spokesman Bill Burton disputes the pledge was broken. He said the campaign asked CNN and MSNBC to pull Florida from the ad buy, but the networks said they could not.
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20080123/NEWS/801230668