Welcome!

Before I begin today's post, I'd like to welcome anyone who comes wandering in here as a result of the link that I just emailed to my father. (Hi dad!) Welcome! :) Have a look around, and tell me what you think.

I love comments, even those critical of my positions, and I look forward to a lively debate with some of you. But be aware: I will ask of you the same as I ask of myself, so be prepared to cite any assertions that you make with articles from non-partisan news sites, and be aware that no matter how strongly you believe something, no one is a terrible person, or a stupid person, because they believe differently than you. In politics, it's easy to get worked up over things that aren't true without bothering to check into the facts of the situation, and it's important to keep the discussion squarely on the ground.

But as long as the tone remains civil, and the facts remain solid, I welcome a debate!

And now, the news...

Hillary In Trouble

Hillary Clinton's campaign is starting to show some signs of trouble, and not just because Obama won yet again in Maine on Sunday. Her campaign is starting to show some of the traditional signs of internal trouble that could easily boil to the surface and do some harm. First, she had to loan $5 million of her own money to her campaign. And now, after her losses in the post-Super Tuesday primaries, she has replaced her campaign manager. Of course, we have a prime example already of someone who came back from this kind of trouble (John McCain, for those who haven't been paying attention), but what's been going on in Hillary's campaign is still significant in that no one thought that it would get to the point where steps like these were necessary – at least not until the general election.

Huckabee For The Win

Mike Huckabee is pushing for every electoral vote that he can get. He's got lawyers protesting the results in Washington state, saying that they stopped counting the votes at 86% of total votes cast. Since the race was really close, Huckabee could have won it – at least according to his campaign. We'll see how things work out in the end.

It frankly surprises me that the vote in Washington was that close. I wouldn't have figured that state for a place with a lot of Huckabee supporters. Even this near win for Huckabee's campaign is very bad news for McCain, because it shows that Huckabee's got some kind of appeal outside of the bible belt.

Of Pawprints and Pundits

And this leads me to an interesting point that occurred to me while I was listening to NPR on my way downtown this morning. They had a pundit on who was expressing bafflement about why Huckabee was staying in the race when, mathematically, he has no chance of getting enough delegates to secure the nomination, even if he wins every state primary between now and the convention. In fact, pundits have been baffled over and over in this race – by Ron Paul's fundraising, by the rise of McCain, by Mitt Romney dropping out, by Hillary Clinton no longer being a shoe-in for the candidacy. I hear constant choruses of 'this shouldn't be happening', and while I listened to that refrain yet again on the radio, it hit me: If we think that something shouldn't be happening, and yet it IS happening, then it isn't reality that's wrong. It's our perception of what reality ought to be. The rules by which the pundits judge politics and current events clearly don't work anymore, and yet there's this weird resistance to figuring out the new rules. Which means that they'll continue being wrong until they come to understand how things have changed.

And what about me? I'm fast approaching pundit status myself – after all, this blog is called 'Pawprints on the Pundits'. Am I hampered by the old rules? I don't think so. I have explanations as to why Edwards and Romney haven't endorsed anyone, and why Huckabee isn't dropping out of the race, even though he supposedly can't win. Maybe it's my generation, who haven't been steeped in the old ways, who are best equipped to understand how things are now.

Of course, now that I've said this, I'm going to start being wrong about everything. ;)