That's probably true of McCain's plan since he hasn't (to my knowledge) proposed to replace the lost revenue with anything else.

I don't think that's necessarily true of Clinton's plan since she's been very clear that she'd only want to do it if the money was replaced with that windfall profit tax.

Maybe it's true as mans_best_friend suggested upthread that suspending the gas tax would pass and paying for it with a tax on the oil companies would not. I don't hear most people making that argument though. It just seems like a lot of people are only quoting half of her plan in a deliberate attempt to misunderstand it.

I'm not a Clinton supporter by any stretch of the imagination, but this whole discussion seems to have a lot of intellectual dishonesty about it.

Posted at April 29, 2008 7:20 PM in response to Hillary's First "Contrast" Ad In Indiana Attacks Obama On Gas Tax Holiday

Well sure, and I acknowledged that in my original comment. It's an empty gesture, but I don't think it's an empty gesture that imperils our infrastructure as many are suggesting, and it's an empty gesture that will appeal to a number of voters.

Posted at April 29, 2008 6:23 PM in response to Hillary's First "Contrast" Ad In Indiana Attacks Obama On Gas Tax Holiday

I don't understand why everybody is saying that Clinton's plan would lead to crumbling roads and bridges. If her plan replaces money that is brought in by the gas tax with a windfall profit tax on oil companies, then doesn't the road fund have the same amount of money?

Now I can see the argument that prices would rise to fill the void (particularly if oil companies want to recover some of the money that's just been taxed away from them). I can also see the argument that the savings wouldn't be very much and would be spread very thin. Both of those combine to make it an empty gesture, but isn't that what politics is?

Clinton is wrong about a lot of stuff, but this doesn't seem like one of them to me.

Posted at April 29, 2008 6:13 PM in response to Hillary's First "Contrast" Ad In Indiana Attacks Obama On Gas Tax Holiday

In all 3 of those states, there is only a total of 162 delegates available. Obama leads by between 154 and 158 by this count. Clinton would need to win all of those states by 100% to pull ahead of him, and that's before you consider states that are likely to give him a net delegate gain like NC and OR. Now, Clinton can't really break 60% much less 90 to 100%, so I don't think anybody is really forgetting WV, KY or PR. There just isn't enough there to shift anything.

Posted at April 29, 2008 1:31 PM in response to Obama Nabs Another Super-Delegate

I don't accept the premise of your hypothetical. I don't think there's any chance of those set of circumstances coming to pass.

However, if that did happen, assuming that Obama maintains the lead he currently has in delegates, then the Dems should nominate him.

It's more than just one election. It's the future of the party that the Dems really need to concern themselves with, and if they are seen as overturning the will of the voters (especially in this historic case) -- even if they seem to have a good political reason for doing so, then I believe that is a blow to the party from which they will need a generation or more to recover.

I'd think that was true even if they knew for a fact that McCain would beat Obama. However, your hypothetical doesn't even have that assurance. It only posits a poll indicating that might happen, and one thing we know for sure, polls change.

It isn't worth sacrificing the party to win the battle.

Posted at April 29, 2008 1:12 PM in response to Obama Nabs Another Super-Delegate

Clinton was begging for money in her PA victory speech last night, and I've seen multiple news stations repeating that plea for cash. The talking heads have gone out of their way to say that Clinton needs money, and I've no doubt that plenty of Clinton supporters who don't pay enough attention to realize that she's lost this thing already were more than happy to login to her site and kick in a few bucks.

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that she'd fudged some of the numbers, but then I wouldn't be very surprised to learn that she hadn't either. Clinton still has a lot of supporters (just shy of half of the democratic party), and plenty of those people would be more than happy to give her cash.

Posted at April 24, 2008 2:55 AM in response to WaPo: Clinton Hit $10 Million Mark Since Polls Closed In Pennsylvania

The total vote is actually 2,305,652, not 2,305,952.

My math works out as follows:

Clinton total votes - 1,260,208
Obama total votes - 1,045,444

So, adding the two together, we get a total vote of 2,305,652

Now, if we take 1,260,208 and divide by 2,305,652 we see that Clinton's percentage of the vote is 54.657338%

If we take 1,045,444 and divide by 2,305,652 we see that Obama's percentage of the vote is 45.342662%

Now, we subtract Obamas percentage of the vote from Clintons and find that the spread is 9.314676

Or, to make it simple, we round down to 9 points. CNN is rounding their percentages before doing the math to make it pretty for their page, but in fact, she beat him by just over 9 and not by 10.

Posted at April 24, 2008 2:47 AM in response to WaPo: Clinton Hit $10 Million Mark Since Polls Closed In Pennsylvania

The page you linked to currently shows the vote totals as:

Clinton total votes - 1,260,208
Obama total votes - 1,045,444

So, adding the two together, we get a total vote of 2,305,652

Now, if we take 1,260,208 and divide by 2,305,652 we see that Clinton's percentage of the vote is 54.657338%

If we take 1,045,444 and divide by 2,305,652 we see that Obama's percentage of the vote is 45.342662%

Now, we subtract Obamas percentage of the vote from Clintons and find that the spread is 9.314676

Or, to make it simple, we round down to 9 points. CNN is rounding their percentages before doing the math to make it pretty for their page, but in fact, she beat him by just over 9 and not by 10.

Posted at April 24, 2008 2:35 AM in response to WaPo: Clinton Hit $10 Million Mark Since Polls Closed In Pennsylvania

He expected to lose PA. I expected him to lose PA. Everybody with half a brain expected him to lose PA. So, the fact that he did in fact meet expectations is not going to send him careening wildly off track in some kind of desperate attempt to to shift the momentum back to him. He's still on track to win the nomination. If anything, he's sitting better today than he was on Monday since Clinton once again failed to reach the percentage she needed to substantially cut into his delegate lead, and now there are way less delegates available to pull from.

Posted at April 23, 2008 9:50 AM in response to Will Obama Campaign Start Hitting Hillary Over Whitewater And Cattle Futures?

Is anybody paying attention to the Republican results? McCain is the de facto Republican nominee, and 30% of PA republicans refused to even vote for him.

Yes, the Democratic party is still roughly split as to who they'd rather have, but McCain's failure to get more than a 1/4 of his party to vote for him seems like the bigger story here.

Posted at April 22, 2008 10:34 PM in response to Exit Polls: More Hillary Voters Would Desert Obama And Back McCain